From the Chrysalis (35 page)

“Could I be charged as an accessory if they catch you?” she sometimes asked.
 

“After what fact, little darling?”
he’d answer, reaching behind to hoist her onto his bike, his hands caressing her thighs.

“Oh, I don’t know. Because you’re violating the terms of your parole?” she’d say, then open her jacket and raise her shirt and bra until her bare breasts rested against his back.
 

But when they hit the Gas Works and Abbey Road or the Riverboat in the late evenings, she forgot her worries. Drinking really did help. And music. Dace had been right; there was music in the air. None of the clubs were air-conditioned, but a cool breeze blew up from the lake, easing the heat. Liza had started wearing a little more make-up so she at least looked her age, though if the bouncers got a good look at D’Arcy Devereux, they didn’t card her.

Dace wasn’t a talker, except with her. If he’d written long letters in prison, he didn’t want to waste words now. Liza suspected prison life had fostered a natural taciturnity, an inherent disinclination to talk with strangers or share the minutiae of his daily life. He’d had to mind his own business for so long that even though he was a person with strong opinions, he didn’t think anybody would be interested in what he had to say. Except her.
 

“It’s okay,” he said, hugging her. They sat beside each other, in front of a jug of beer at the Silver Dollar. “Nobody’s going to find out I’m in Toronto. I’m going to make good, Liza,” he swore, taking her hand and looking into her eyes so intently she almost cried. Nobody else would ever look at her like that again, she knew that with every fibre of her being. “I’ve promised both you and my father. Never mind. We’ll stay here, at least until I’m off probation. I’ll open up a little bike shop, right near Christie Pits in the fall. There’s a garage for sale at the corner of Harbord and the Ossington.
Because it’s summertime and the living is easy,”
he whispered in her ear, lifting up the great weight of her hair.
 

“Now that’s an old song,” she said. She didn’t care, as long as this lovely interlude and their insularity lasted. And as long as they stayed lovers forever, the way they were meant to be.

Chapter 25

Something Wicked This Way Comes

I fear for you
 

I fear for me
 

I fear of what
 

Will come to be

*[ Densley, Matthew, “Fear”]

Maitland, June 13, 1972:

Six weeks passed before they came for him. When Dace had been Inside, she had mentally catalogued all his letters and treasured everything he said. When he came out she could practically read his mind. Somehow she never figured he would let them get him, no matter what he said. Surely he could resist them. How hard could that be? But he went off with the bikers so fast it looked to her like falling.
 

“We’re going to meet some friends,”
was all
he’d said earlier in the evening when he picked her up at the residence. That should have tipped her off right away. He rarely said where they were going. They just went and she liked it that way. She was tired of making life-altering decisions.
Please
, she thought,
just tell me what to do.
Not that Dace had any idea where they were going either, usually.

The bikers were waiting with their big black machines on the side of a dirt road just outside of Maitland, down by an old roadie bar.
Judging by their disgruntled expressions, they’d been waiting a little too long. They got off their shiny, well-loved Harleys and sauntered over, their meaty hands hanging by their sides.
 

Dace stiffened when she sucked in her breath. “Be cool,” he said, although his lips didn’t move.

Common sense warned her to stay on the Harley, but when he turned off the ignition and nudged her with his hip, she swung her right leg back over the bike and slid to the ground. He got off the bike too, but he didn’t take her hand.
Because it’s not cool,
she thought crossly.
Not cool if you’re one of
them:
a biker, a real man.
Seven bushy-haired, bearded bikers surrounded them. A relatively small club, she later learned. Liza wasn’t about to challenge anybody. She lowered her eyes until all she could see were boots.

One man reached out and touched her arm. She automatically shied away, repulsed by his tattooed forearms.
 

“Meet Sal “Dirt Beard” Perazzi,” somebody said. “Eye-talian. One of our lady charmers.”
 

Looks more like Dopey to me
, she thought.
 

“What’s the matter?” Dirt Beard challenged, his eyes measuring her protector’s reaction. “Too good for me?”
 

Smiling nervously, she lifted her gaze to the bikers and held her ground, taking her cue from Dace. He said nothing to Dirt Beard. She almost died when he let it go.

At first glance the bikers looked as muscular as he was, but the older ones were also overweight, more like beer-bellied trolls than men. Three of the men, including Dirt Beard, were a bit taller and looked like they might be nearer Dace’s age. The rest were in their late thirties and early forties. She was a little surprised by that, probably because she had always subscribed to the romantic notion that bikers were young men. Especially outlaw bikers.
 

The colourful insignia of three wolfhounds on their backs caught her attention. The men wore other insignia as well, but she didn’t know what the symbols meant. She studied the wolfhounds and swallowed nervously. She had no great love of dogs, especially large ones. Granny Debo’s dog had always tried to hump her leg. It had also liked to nip. If Granny hadn’t been there she would have run.
Oh, Dace,
she thought, trying not to stare. That same impulse to run shoved at her.
Some friends
.
 

His friends were filthy, probably because they couldn’t help perspiring in leather vests and knee high boots. Their hands looked as if they were permanently covered in motorcycle grease. The yeasty smell of beer oozed from their pores. Dace was always scrupulously clean. Obviously showers had been at a premium in prison because now he couldn’t seem to get enough of them. He showered morning and night and sometimes in between. When the bikers met Dace and Liza, they were all smoking in an apparent attempt to ward off the black flies swarming in the swampy bulrushes by the road. She checked stealthily over her right shoulder but there wasn’t another vehicle in sight, not even the Crown Vic that had tailed Dace off and on for the past six weeks. Where the hell had that cop gone?
 

Reluctant to take her eyes off the bikers for even a moment, she took another deep breath. She decided to pretend they were the seven dwarves. Dopey, Happy, Grumpy … what the hell were the rest of those names? Dace still hadn’t said anything, but she wasn’t going to be afraid because he wasn’t. Besides, it was pretty clear from the moment they shook hands, thumbs up, forearms almost touching that they weren’t strangers. They had all met before.
 

In the Pen? She hoped not.
He wasn’t supposed to fraternize, to mix. Maybe they’d met here in Maitland when she was working. Then it was her fault. She’d had to work, though. She sagged a little at the thought, but it didn’t matter. A part of her was resigned, for he had warned her and somewhere in the back of her mind she had always known she wasn’t the only person waiting for him to come home. If it hadn’t been the bikers, it would have been somebody else, maybe somebody even worse, if that were possible. She watched, mesmerized, as a man wearing a blue checked bandanna around his head, sneezed, wiped his nose with his fingers and spat on the ground.
 

“Jeez, Boo-Boo,” somebody said. “You keep doing that, Princess is gonna puke.”
 

People need friends. Dace was no exception. If he had been, he would never have reached out to her in the first place. She had to accept these were simply that: his friends. Also, he’d probably been bored. For some reason he still wasn’t working, and he needed something to do.

She must have missed a signal because suddenly the bikers got back on their bikes and she climbed back on Dace’s, wrapping her arms around his waist. For a moment she was almost relieved. Then she realized they were supposed to follow. When nobody was looking, he cupped her hands.
 

Don’t be scared
, little darling, she heard him say, almost as if he had spoken aloud.

“Hey, Bro, is that your cuz?” the grey beard at the front of the pack inquired. His eyes raked Liza up and down, covering her damp T-shirt, her blue jeans and her black leather boots. At the same time, the man leaned off his bike and lifted her hand from Dace’s thigh. He raised it to his own bearded lips and kissed the back. She smiled a little before she withdrew her hand. He looked as if he might pass for a banker if he were cleaned up and dressed in a suit. Or whatever.
Doc
, she decided,
This one’s Doc.

A cloud of black flies hovered over his head, though strangely, none of them seemed brave enough to land. What was he wearing, bear grease?

He must be the leader,
she thought, surreptitiously wiping her hand on the back of her jeans.

Well, not the leader exactly,
Dace explained later.
That’s Billy, the Road Captain. Tiger, the leader, he’s in lockup downtown. He had some kind of beef with the law.
 

God, it was hot. She stretched up one slender arm to remove her silver helmet and her hair spilled down her back, flashing pinpoints of light like fireflies in the dark.

 
“What a mane!” Somebody whistled. “Let’s get back to the clubhouse, man, and we’ll have a few.”

“Any other ladies there?”

“You’re not sharing? That’s cool. Our old ladies are back there having a little party of their own.”

Sharing? Liza straightened, trying to hide her disgust. As if! Who did they think she was? She wasn’t sure what was happening, but she knew she didn’t have much of a choice. Without meaning to, she had followed Dace, stepping over yet another invisible boundary.

Clutching him even tighter, she rode with him to a boarded up clapboard building five miles outside of town. Insignia flags flew in the dark windows where curtains should have been. They pulled up way too soon to Liza’s way of thinking. Billy the Road Captain got off his bike, unlocked a metal gate topped with barbed wire, and ushered his gang inside the compound. A pack of wolfhounds growled greetings, but it was the floodlight that startled her. Dace was the only man who didn’t laugh when she darted behind his back.

The building looked dark inside, but somebody whistled and a trapdoor opened up from the dirt ground. Inside she spotted stairs. She followed Dace as he took the stairs down into a dank cellar, then up to the rest of the house. The place was basically a few rooms with a cluttered table and several chairs, three or four filthy mattresses on the floor, fly-infested garbage in every corner, and some Nazi memorabilia interspersed with a dying Jesus on the north wall.

She also saw a rudimentary kitchen where she imagined they prepared the kinds of treats that kept them happy. A rusty, temperamental toilet teamed up with an outhouse in the back.

Liza’s memory of that first evening in the Clubhouse was always fuzzy. She got drunk enough that after a while some of the bikers actually started to look appealing. When the club treasurer, Barry “Strangeman” Wilcox, an older man in his forties and the only one with glasses, asked, “What are you going to give me if I give you this, little lady?” she accepted the first Labatts with alacrity, desperate for the self-confidence only alcohol could bring.
 

Regardless of his moniker, Strangeman seemed all right, showing a glimmer of intelligence in his small, crinkle-cornered eyes. Or maybe he was just less high than the rest of them.
This one’s Happy,
she thought. She drank the warm beer straight from the bottle, uncomfortably aware of the bikers staring at her lips. Across the room from her, the Road Captain swept everything off the chrome-legged table, dumping the mess onto the floor, then doled out a well-thumbed pack of cards decorated with busty mermaids.