S-Duality: A Marauders Novella (10 page)

He still felt ashamed as fuck when he thought about it. She was actually the only woman he'd ever felt ashamed of fucking. It had been a shitty thing to do. She'd never seemed to hold it against him and never even mentioned or hinted about it. It still made him feel like crap every time he thought about it, though.

When she came in with her short hair this time, he wondered if some asshole had broken her heart again, because he was pretty sure that's why she'd cut off her hair, but he didn't ask her. In general, he still avoided her, but he felt bad for her. Something was off, and he wondered why no one else noticed. He always noticed when people, especially women, were off. He just rarely knew what to do about it.

-
o0o-

Seattle, Washington

Trudy was in a bikini on the lawn when he pulled up outside their house. She was alone and must have been lying there trying to catch a tan while reading because there was a book face down on the ground next to her. The bike woke her up, and, still slightly drowsy from her sleep, she stumbled towards him and threw her arms around his neck.

“Missed me?” he asked while nuzzling her hair.

“No, but happy to see you.”

He held her face. “Something wrong?”

“I'm having one of those days.”

She had 'those days,' when bad shit surfaced and things came back to her. Those were bad days.
Sometimes really bad days.

“How do you wanna deal?” he asked her.

“I don't know,” she mumbled, “but I want you with me.”

Sometimes she wanted to deal alone and didn't want him anywhere near her. He didn't like those times. He fucking hated spending the night at some bar, knowing she was going through shit by herself at home. Nothing ever seemed out of place or off when he came home, and most often he found her sleeping, but he still hated it.

“Wanna stay at home and deal?”

“Yeah. Think I
wanna get high and lie on the balcony. It's really warm outside.”

He dipped his head down and gave her a kiss. “Okay.”

They lay in silence for a long time, and then Trudy started talking.

“It scares me,” she said.

“What does?”

“The thought of kids. What if I can't deal with seeing a girl grow up? You know, watching her when she's five and knowing she's the same age as I was the first time I was molested.”

He hugged her closer. “You think you would?”

“I don't know. I do it sometimes when I see kids. The only thing I can think about is what I was going through at the same age.”

“If you don't want kids, we won't have kids.”

“What if you start hating me when you start missing kids?”

“I won't. If you want it to be just the two of us, I'm fine with that, baby.”

“And if I want kids?”

“I'm fine with that, too.”

There was another long silence.

“I think I need more time to get used to the idea.”

“Okay.” He kissed her.

“Aren't you scared you'll become your dad?”

“No.”

He'd told Trudy about his alcoholic
, blue-collar dad who had usually started his drunken rampages by yelling about workers' rights and the rich fuckers studying at the university, and he'd ended them by beating up Sisco and his two younger brothers. Sisco always tried to get in between to make sure he got the bulk of the beating to spare his brothers as much as possible. To try to protect her sons, Sisco's mom tended to send them to live with their grandma when their dad went on longer benders.

As with most alcoholics, the sober periods got shorter and shorter, and by the time Sisco was fourteen, he and his brothers pretty much lived permanently with their grandma.

That had changed when his dad, drunk out of his mind, had beaten Sisco's mom to death. Sisco had no idea if he was still inside or if he was dead, and he didn't care. Their grandma was considered too old to take care of three boys, and they'd ended up in the system. Sisco had been sixteen at the time and soon ran away. He didn't think anyone had bothered looking for him, and he got jobs where he found them, Decker's garage was one of the places. When he was nineteen, he got a passport and left for Europe with Pete and Frank.

By the time he came back home, his brothers had adapted to living with their new families, and he
’d decided it was best to leave them alone, since he seemed to mostly remind them of worse times. His grandma had died a while later, and he'd pretty much had no one left. Then he met Trudy.

“But what if you lose it?” she continued. “What if you just snap and hit them?”

“If I could lose it, snap, and start beating on someone, I would've done it with you a long time ago. No one has ever been able to get on my nerves the way you do, baby.”

“That's true,” she smiled.

“And you're not gonna become a drug addict and sell your kids. You're gonna love the shit outta them. I know you will.” He kissed her again. “But if you don't want kids, we'll keep it like this and love the shit outta each other instead. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said and sat up. “Let's get inside.”

He got up as well and followed her. She'd have more days like this, he knew she would, but so far it'd been pretty easy to deal with them as long as he was allowed to stay with her.

He'd be okay even if they didn't have kids. He'd like to have kids with her, but it definitely wouldn't be a deal breaker if she chose not to. It would be fine with just the two of them as well.

He was home for a few weeks
rest before Riot Act was to leave on a huge fucking touring music festival in the US. There were a lot of good bands on the roster for it, but he was still a bit nervous. He'd been very uncomfortable with the bigger festivals in Europe, and in general, things felt as if they were getting out of hand quickly. Not just for him, but for all the damn Seattle musicians who had somehow been lumped together in something called 'grunge.' They all hated that label. All of them!

It had started as a joke in the eighties, and the last thing he
’d heard some idiot at a paper, who was real eager to find a new spin on the 'Grunge' thing, had published something called a Lexicon of Grunge. They'd been on the tour bus when they saw it, and had laughed their asses off. Especially at the phrase 'swingin' on the flippity-flop,' which apparently was 'the code' for hanging out.

Then it happened again. The singer of another band died of an overdose, and they had to face the reality that not only flannel was popular, so was heroin—
very
popular. More and more of the artists were dealing with their newfound fame, or the fact that they hadn't yet been discovered, by using heroin. And Sisco had to deal with Trudy's reaction to another death among their friends.

Or former friend, because as much as he had tried, he'd realized early on that you couldn't be friends with a junkie. It just wasn't possible. There was no place for anything but heroin in a junkie's life. They built a new world for themselves—a junkie world.

What really pissed him off was how the newspapers dug into it and wrote about the guy, but it wasn't really about him, it was just about his death. He'd been active on the scene for as long as Sisco. He'd been in a bunch of bands, was a real talent, but no one in the media had given a flying fuck about him until he was dead. Then they wrote about him as the undiscovered 'grunge' talent—the born rock star. It was all bullshit. The labels had scoped him out but had thought he was too far gone to be of any use.

A few days before they were set to leave again, Sisco went to a gig and brought some pot just in case. People still came up to him and asked, so he'd figured he could earn some extra money.

“Gotta ask,”
a guy named Josh said, as he handed Sisco the money for the pot. “You really married?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“To that painter?”

“Trudy. Yeah, that's her.”

“She selling anything?”

Josh had been one of the guys he'd been around a lot. He'd been in quite a few of the bands and was mildly successful. As opposed to the guys who'd moved on to heavier drugs, Joe stuck to pot.

When asked if he didn't want to sell heavier stuff, Sisco shrugged and told them there were others who could help them—he wasn't interested in getting involved in it. Actually, he didn't even need to sell pot, either. After years of struggling to make ends meet, he wasn't prepared to give up selling pot even if he was making more than enough on the touring. Especially since he didn't know how long the touring would last. He didn't want to take anything for granted.

Also, he really wanted Trudy to be able to stop working at that fucking café.
Which he thought was perfectly possible. Her paintings were getting a lot of attention, and in the spirit of support, a lot of the bands mentioned her art in interviews. It was always like that. They always wore t-shirts of other bands while they were on stage, took any chance to mention anyone they admired, no matter what the reason was. So Trudy was mentioned fairly often. She'd been offered a spot at a New York gallery, and she was going there to set it up and for the opening of the exhibition during the fall.

“She sells paintings,” he answered Josh's question. “If that's what you're asking about.”

“Yeah, I am. Seen some of her work, I like it. Especially those red paintings.”

Trudy'd had a red period, where all her paintings were painted in shades of red. A lot of people tangled up in each other, and the red made it hard to know if they were fucking or killing each other. Some of his favorite paintings were in the red series. She'd
painted a lot around that time, and he suspected she still had some left. Last time he checked, she’d had a stack of them in a wardrobe.

“Yeah. Think she still has some of those.”

“Tell her I'm interested.”

“Sure. I got your number.”

He stayed to hear the opening acts, but the main act was a band from LA who'd moved to Seattle to be discovered. He'd heard them before, and it felt like some guys realizing that grunge was the thing and just trying to mimic it. It was the same as happened every time something started selling—everyone was tried to rip it off. He didn't really mind it as long as they tried to at least put some personality into it, but most of them didn't. They just took the blueprint and tried to do the same.

When he came home, he found Trudy in bed. She turned around when she heard him enter the room.

“All good?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said and toed his shoes off
before getting rid of the rest of his clothes. “Saw Josh, he wants to buy one of your red paintings.”

“Okay.” S
he extended her arms towards him. “Come and hold me.”

“Love you,” he mumbled and gave her cheek a kiss
as he slipped under the cover next to her.

“Love you, too. How was the band?”

“I didn't stay until the main act.”

She giggled. “That bad?”

“Yeah.”

“Impostor band?”

“Exactly,” he laughed and tried to find her cocky nipples underneath the annoying t-shirt she was wearing.

“Ah,” she said and lowered her voice to her news anchor voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, here's the derivative, radio-friendly version of the dropped D music that has been coming from Seattle the last few years—better known as
grunge
. This is the non-challenging, non-confrontational version. Yarling guaranteed!”

They both laughed, and then he leaned his forehead to hers. “It's all going to hell, isn't it?”

“It always does when a lot money is thrown into the mix.”

“Think I'll just take my money and run off to some tropical island.”

“Let me know when we're going. I'll be ready with a coconut drink and a tiny bikini.”

CHAPTER EIGHT:

-
o0o-

Present day, Greenville, Arizona

Sisco was in the office at the clubhouse along with Mitch, and they were working on the finances.

When Sisco went inside, Brick had asked his youngest son, who by then was a member, to take care of the finances. Sisco
'd thought it was a good choice because Mitch'd helped him out even before that. He'd also known Mitch wasn't just good with numbers, he was about as good as Mech with computers and shit like that. Sisco didn't mind sharing the job, and definitely not when it was with a guy who could come up with new, better ideas.

Sisco still took care of the actual bookkeeping, both the official and the club version, but Mitch did most of the other stuff. He'd worked a lot with Dutch, the treasurer at the mother club, and by now he probably knew Dutch better than Sisco did. Again, nothing he was upset about, and he really liked the kid. Not just because he was good with numbers and computers,
but because he was never boring to be around.