Knitting in the City 01 Neanderthal Seeks Human (47 page)

“
I-”

clobber

“-am going-”

clobber

“-to fuck-”

clobber

“-you up-”

clobber

“-bitch!”

It took me a moment to realize that Sandra was holding a ball of yarn in her other hand, the one not holding the gun. She stuffed it in the mouth of Goon#2 even as she brought the gun down for another bone crunching blow.

Fiona scrambled over to Elizabeth
, cupping her face and trying to shield her from further violence and Quinn pistol whipped Sam, knocking the tattooed menace out with a single blow.

Marie picked up the tequila bottle and swung it wildly at Goon#1 who
, seemingly, had just started to recover from the shock of being stabbed with a Susan Bates knitting needle. Goon#1 lifted the hand of his good arm over his face but a little too late; Marie brought the bottle down with a resounding
crash
and the tower of a man fell backwards, unconscious.

Kat and I were peaking under
the couch. The only sound in the small apartment was labored breathing until someone, I guessed Marie, said:

“Oh, shit! Sandra! Is that the limited dye lot Madelintosh aran you just stuffed in that asshole’s mouth? You know I can’t replace that!”

The police arrived not ten seconds later. It was a good thing, too. Marie was holding a broken bottle of tequila, shards of glass in every direction, and Sandra was holding a gun; they were arguing about the, apparently, very expensive and hard to find skein of yarn that Sandra had stuffed in the mouth of Goon#2.

Quinn turned towards me as soon as the police entered
. His eyes met mine and what I saw there was potent mixture of tension and relief. But, he didn’t come to me. Instead he placed his weapon on the ground then moved his hands to the back of his head, waiting for the Chicago PD. The room, small made smaller by a crush of large officers and subdued bad guys and my somewhat traumatized knitting group, felt unbearably large.

The distance between us felt impossibl
e.

It wasn’t until hours later, after statements and questioning and a pseudo-physical administered by an EMT, that we were all released
; actually, all of us but Quinn. Soon after the police arrived they handcuffed him and took him to the police station- despite protests from me, Kat, Elizabeth, Sandra, Marie, and Fiona.

Ashley arrived around seven and was quickly filled in on the details by Sandra. As she listened to the story I watched a spectrum of emotions cross over her features.

Finally she settled on exasperation, “Why does everything good happen when I’m not there? I swear, the next time Janie’s hot boyfriend saves ya’all from neck tattooed goons, ya’all better wait till I’m done with my shift or else I’m gunna be pissed.”

“He didn’t save us
, haven’t you been listening?” Elizabeth held an icepack to her chin where she’d been hit by a goon elbow, “Fiona stabbed one of them with a Susan Bates needle, Marie was wielding a tequila bottle, Sandra pistol-whipped the other, and I shot the third.”

“Where were Janie and Kat?” Ashley looked from me to Kat.

“Hiding behind the couch, like sane people!” Kat said before anyone else could speak.

 
Ashley gave us a suddenly watery smile, “Damn it, if something had happened to any of you, I would have been very upset. What were you thinking?”

She initiated a group hug which lasted well past what would have been considered typical as none of us wanted to let each other go.

~*~

After all the ladies left
, Elizabeth leaving with Marie, but before the last police car drove away, I approached a short, stocky guard who I instantly recognized and who’d been watching me since the police escorted us all out to the ambulance for our EMT checkups. It was Dan the security man from the Fairbanks building.

We walked towards
each other, meeting half way. His large brown eyes were big and kind and he gave me a small smile, it almost looked apologetic.

“Ms. Morris.” He nodded to me.

“Dan the security man.” I nodded to him.

He sighed, “Are you ok?”

I continued to nod. I didn’t want to say yes because I wasn’t, at that moment, at all sure how I was doing. However, I didn’t want to appear to be a basket case when I needed his help.

“Listen, Dan, I was hoping you could take me to Quin
n- um- Mr. Sullivan’s place.”

“It’s ok, I call him Quinn, too.”
Dan pointed with his thumb to a car behind him, a black Mercedes coupe, “That’s actually why I’m here.”

I half smiled and released a short breath, “Of course.”

“Come on.” He motioned with his head for me to follow.

When we were settled in the car and he’d pulled into traffic I noticed he was giving me long, sideways glances- as though he wanted to say something, ask something, but wasn’t sure how to start.

Taking pity on him I prompted, “Is there something you want to say?”

“Yes-” the word tumbled out of his mouth, “Yes, I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”

I blinked at him, wondering before how I’d missed his very distinctive Bostonian accent; “Sorry? Why are you sorry?”

“Because
Seamus is my brother and he is a complete fu- er, he is a very bad guy.”

I shifted slightly away, pressing my back to the passenger door so I could study him more fully, “Yes, well. In that case I suppose I should apologize for my sister. She is also a very bad… guy.”

He chuckled, “Yes. Yes she is.”

I squinted at him, “Did you know Jem?”

He nodded, “She is still just as crazy as she was when I knew her.”

“Oh- you saw her recently?”

He nodded, “This afternoon when you came to the new building with your friend, I was in the apartment with Quinn and Jem.” He glanced at me as he turned the steering wheel to the right and merged on to Michigan Avenue.

I stiffened, “So, you were there?”

“Yep- that bitch- er, your sister is crazy, but you know this. Quinn was trying to help her, he offered her money to disappear, but she started ranting and shit, taking off her clothes. I swear if I didn’t know her already- how nuts she is- I would have thought she was on something. Then she bit him, burned him with her cigarette, right through his shirt. It was crazy- blood coming from his neck.”

I winced, thinking about Jem biting Quinn with such force that she drew blood. “Why was she taking off her clothes?”

He shrugged his shoulders, “I donno. Cause she’s
crazy
? When you got there he was cleaning the bite mark and all the blood. He was leaving to get some new clothes. I would have taken a bath in alcohol and hydrogen peroxide if she’d bit me.”

I chewed on my lip, taking all this in, feeling relieved and stupid and anxious. Dan parked the car in the basement of the building and escorted me up to Quinn’s penthouse. He opened the door for me but didn’t go inside.

I’d been quiet since the car, wanting to start sorting through my tangled mess of emotions and the evening’s events. But I was restless to see Quinn and not really capable of dwelling on anything until I wrapped my arms around him and felt, rather than saw, that he was safe.

“So…” Dan handed me the keys to the penthouse, “Quinn should be home sometime tonight. When he called me they hadn’t charged him with anything and they shouldn’t ‘cause he has a license to carry that gun.”

I stopped him as he turned away, “Dan, can I ask you something?”

His eyebrows lifted as he nodded his assent. “Sure.”

I shifted the keys from one hand to the other, tucked my hair behind my ears, “How long have you known Quinn?”

He shrugged, “Since we w
as kids.”

“Do you know why Quinn left Boston?”

He hesitated, his eyes narrowed as his lips twisted to the side, “Yes.”

I couldn’t help but smile at his one word answer, the very pictur
e of cautious loyalty. “So do I… I think.”

He stood very still, watching me, his eyes moving over my features with a concentrated intensity; at length he said, “You know, he is really crazy about you. Not
crazy
like your sister Jem crazy. But, trying-to-become-a-better-person crazy.”

I pressed my lips together
, my heart, whole again, skipped wildly in my chest before I replied, “The feeling is mutual.”

~*~

At first I didn’t even contemplate sleep. I did laps around Quinn’s bare apartment, wishing I’d brought a comic book with me, realizing I didn’t even have my stupid cell phone. However, in a fit of petulant annoyance, I threw myself against the bed and promptly feel asleep.

When I awoke I was confused. The panorama of the park and the lake and the city told me that it was still the middle of the night but I had no idea how long I’d been asleep. I stretched, planning to get up and check the time on my watch via the light of the bathroom, but I, acutely, realized that I was not alone.

There was a body next to me.

In fact, I was curled around that body.

And the body was not asleep.

My breath hitched, “Quinn?”

The arm around my shoulders squeezed gently before he removed it, shifting on the bed and propping himself up on an elbow so that we were facing.

“Hey-” his other hand immediately entangled itself in my hair, tugging my head back so he could cover my mouth with his. I leaned into his kiss, pressing my body to his, feeling joy and relief and gratefulness that were indescribable.

We kissed
, just kissed, for a long time. Sometimes I was over him, sometimes he was over me, sometimes we were sitting up, sometimes we were lying down. It went on and on and, were it not for the necessity of air, we might have kissed for the rest of our lives. I would not have complained.

He pushed my hair from my face
, at this point I was straddling his lap and we were on the middle of the bed, and rested his forehead against mine.

“Oh, Quinn, I am so sorry.”
I hugged him to me, my arms around his neck.

“Janie
, there is nothing to be sorry about-”

“But I assumed the worst, I saw you with Jem and I assumed that you- that you and her-”

His arms tightened around me, “Were playing ‘
hide the salami’
?” he quoted Elizabeth’s words from earlier which, despite the evening’s events, made us both laugh.

When the short burst of laughter ended I nuzzled my head into the crook of his neck, careful to avoid his earlier injury, “Dan brought me here and told me what happened
, with Jem. I am sorry she bit you.”

His hand rubbed circles over my back, with each pass his hand moved lower until he was stroking
the base of my spine just above the curve of my bottom. “It’s ok. I don’t care about Jem.”

I pulled just far enough away from him so I could see his face. He looked tired, weary.

“I also-” I sighed, “You should know that I do trust you.”

He offered
me a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, “We can talk about it in the morning.”

“No- no, listen-” I shifted backwards and at first he didn’t let me go but then finally allowed me to stand from the bed. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out the folded email
, my voice was still thick with sleep, “Olivia- at least I think it was Olivia- left this on my desk yesterday and I was going to show it to you today.” I shoved the paper at him.

He looked from me to the paper then, with clear hesitation, took the sheet from my hand. I crossed to the bathroom and flipped on the light which gave him just enough
illumination to read the contents. He pushed to the edge of the bed and stood, his long form unfolding, straightening, then stiffening as he read. A rush of breath escaped his lungs and his eyes flickered to me.

“I haven’t seen this but, Janie- I can tell you-”

I covered his hand holding the paper with mine, “No- it doesn’t matter. What I wanted to say was, what I want to say is that I saw this yesterday and- yes, admittedly, I had a momentary freakout but then I thought about it and I knew, I realized that I trust you. I knew there had to be a reasonable explanation and I was going to show it to you today, tonight, before everything went from Judd Apatow harmless to Quentin Tarantino horrifying.”

Quinn took a step towards me, shaking his head, “I asked them to-”

“You don’t have to explain. I just- I trust you, I trusted you. I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t worried. I- I- I have faith in you.”

This time his small smile did reach his eyes and he looked almost proud of himself
, and a little mischievous. His gaze moved over my face in a slow sweep as he licked his lips, “Let me tell you what this is about, ok?”