Fixed Asset (Downrange), page 13
“You know, there’s a difference between men and women.”
“I’d say there are many differences—plural—not just a difference.”
“Right. Well, one of them is a man will call a woman girl as an endearment,” he educated. “But when a woman calls a man boy and does it all snarky, there’s something inside him that clicks and makes him want to prove his manhood.”
“In other words, women are smarter than men and don’t feel the need to pound our chests and drag our knuckles on the ground to prove we’re the dominant species.”
“No, Kitty. Women do that by batting their eyelashes, giving a man soft looks, and showing him what she thinks he wants to lure him in. Men like to think we’re the masters of our destinies, but the truth is, women have the power—they either feed the soul or they suck it dry. One of those gives a man what he needs, the other crushes his will to live.”
He wasn’t wrong. But I didn’t think he was speaking in generalizations. He was speaking from experience. Some woman had crushed his will to live. I wanted to know the story, but I knew he’d never tell me.
“Well, whoever she was, she was a fool.” With that, I patted his knee again and stood. “I’m gonna go pack up and ditch the phones Tom gave me.”
“Cat?”
I turned to look at Mason. He didn’t say anything right away, but something was working behind his eyes.
“Not all women are like you.”
“No, they’re not.”
“He’s lucky.”
I took that as the compliment it was meant to be.
“We’re lucky.”
“Glad to have you on the team, Catarina.”
I took that compliment and locked it deep.
“Good to be on the team.”
That meant when I walked away from Mason, I did it smiling.
Chapter Seventeen
Catarina stood with her backpack over her shoulder, arms crossed over her chest, eyes on my truck, frown firmly in place.
“If I’d seen this first, I would’ve been worried,” she strangely said.
I beeped the locks and reached for the door handle. “What?”
“It’s jacked up,” she rightly noted.
“Yeah.”
“Chevy Silverado HD, all blacked out and jacked up. That gives a woman pause, Jack. You know what they say about men with big trucks . . . they’re overcompensating for the small penises.”
I opened the passenger door and held out my hand. “Then it’s good you’ve seen my dick and know that’s not the case.”
Cat swung her pack off her shoulder and handed it over.
“See you tomorrow,” Mason yelled from across the parking lot as he pulled himself up into his truck.
Cat looked in his direction and waved. “Guess he’s not part of the Chevy family.”
Mason wasn’t part of any family except maybe Pete’s, but that didn’t extend to truck manufacturers.
“Mason is his own man.”
“His has a lift too.”
We’d just gotten off a six-hour flight from Belize. This after two hours in the car to get to the airport. It wasn’t late but it was well after dinner, and I was exhausted and hungry. Still, I’d stand in the parking lot of Brown Field having a ridiculous conversation about nothing if that conversation was with Catarina.
“I can’t say for certain,” I started. “I don’t have personal knowledge and don’t want it. But if the rumor is true, that lift on his truck says not one thing about what he’s packing.”
Mason’s Ram roared to life.
“What about the exhaust? Does that say something about what he’s packing?”
Mason gunned the engine, showing off for Catarina, and fishtailed out of the parking lot.
“Not sure what that says, baby. Hop up.”
Her foot went to the running board, and she heaved herself up. Before I could close the door, she asked, “So what’s the rumor?”
I should’ve known she wouldn’t let that go.
“That he’s hung like a horse.”
Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Damn, that must suck for him.”
That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. Out of sheer morbid curiosity, I asked, “Why does that suck for him?”
“Because, Jack, size matters,” she solemnly informed me. “There’s too small, too big, just enough, and holy wow. Women like just enough and holy wow if they find it. But too big is just that—too big. A woman will see that, consider her vagina’s future, and not want the repercussions of too big. Hung like a horse is way too big. Then there’s running; who wants a horse cock between their legs when they’re out for a jog? I mean what does he do, tape that bad boy up so he doesn’t bruise his thighs? And just in case you were wondering, you fall into the holy-wow category.”
Fucking hell, she was funny.
“Good to know.”
“So? Do you think he has a shaft sling that contains it or does he tape?”
A shaft sling . . . good Christ.
As funny as she was, I was done talking about Mason’s dick.
I leaned in, hooked her around the neck, and took her mouth. Then I got her tongue and didn’t let her go until she groaned down my throat, and my dick twitched in warning it was time to get my woman home before I committed a felony and fucked her in my truck in a semipublic parking lot.
On a smile, she said, “I take it you’re done discussing Mason’s package.”
Yeah, I needed to get my woman fed and home.
To conclude the conversation, I closed the door, made my way around the hood, opened the back door, tossed her bag and mine into the back seat, and hauled my ass in.
She was still smiling when I hit the ignition and the dash lit up.
“It pains me to say this, but it’s a sweet ride.”
“I needed something to take up to the mountains when we train.”
“You said you had two trucks.”
I pulled out of the parking spot much slower than Mase and answered, “She’s an old nineteen-seventy-seven square body. The C10’s lowered, wouldn’t make it up the mountain, and I wouldn’t risk her getting dinged up.”
I was pulling out of the lot and rolling to a stop at the red light, waiting to make a right, when Catarina asked, “How far do you live from here?”
I wanted to correct that question to “How far do we live from here?” but I refrained.
“This time of night with no traffic, fifteen minutes. My house is out on the strand.”
“I haven’t been down to San Diego in a while,” she told me. “Is the Gaslamp district still the place to hang?”
“Can’t say I’ve been in that area since I’ve been back. If I go to a bar, I go to the Dirty Plank, and that’s in Imperial Beach.”
“Tell me about the Dirty Plank.”
“Can’t. You have to experience it for yourself. We’ll swing around for lunch before we head up to the mountains.”
Catarina fell silent, but I could feel her eyes on me instead of the sights. Not that there was much to see in this part of town, just a bunch of condos, houses, and palm trees. The beach was too far away, and the mountains were to our southeast.
“Tell me about your family,” she said.
I glanced over at her. She had her body turned facing me, elbow on the center console, chin resting on her palm, fingertips resting on her cheek. In the dim light of the dash, she looked younger than she was—not innocent, but the hard edges had softened. There was no danger lurking, no bad guys to engage, no reason for her to be on alert, so that part of her had shut down. This was a side of her I’d never seen.
From Vegas to Honduras to Belize, there had been moments when I’d seen her relax, but never completely powered down.
“I have an older sister, Anna. She was a biochemical engineer.”
“Was?”
I didn’t miss the uncertainty in Cat’s question.
“Was,” I confirmed. Then to put her mind at ease, I quickly added, “Now she lives in Alaska. She worked for a big pharmaceutical company in Durham. She fell in love with a pilot. After they got married and she got pregnant, they decided to move to Thorne Bay, where Craig grew up. Now she’s got four kids and twenty acres, and every time I talk to her, she’s got a kid screaming in the background, and she’s never been happier. Her husband still flies, but he does medevacs, wilderness flights, things like that. My mom passed away five years ago. Somehow, my sister convinced my dad to move up there. After all the years he bitched about the snow when I was a kid, I thought he’d pick a beach for his retirement.”
“I’m sorry about your mom,” she whispered.
“So am I. She was a good mom, the best.” I had to stop and breathe through the pain that five years later had not lessened. “I miss her.”
I felt Catarina’s hand on my shoulder before it slid down my arm and wrapped around my wrist. Then I gave her the rest.
“My dad retired a year after my mom’s heart attack, and Anna went to work on Dad. It took her another year and another grandchild for him to sell the house in Minneapolis. Now he lives about fifteen minutes from my sister and sees his grandchildren pretty much every day.”
“What about you? Do you go to Alaska to see them?”
“I went up for a visit before I moved down here. If Craig’s not available to fly you up from Ketchikan, it’s a pain in the ass to get there. A ferry ride from the airport over to the mainland, then another four-hour ferry over to Hollis, then you’ve got another hour and a half up to Thorne Bay. Last time I went up, he was out flying. It took me almost six hours to get to my sister’s place after I landed in Alaska. I swore I’d never go back unless Craig came down in his seaplane to pick me up.”
“I don’t believe that.”
I loved my sister, my dad, and my nieces and nephews, so she wasn’t wrong. I also liked my sister’s husband, and the fishing wasn’t bad. Though I didn’t like it enough to move there, which was my sister’s constant refrain.
“What about you? Where’s your family?”
I felt her hand on my wrist spasm and chanced a look over at her. She was staring out the windshield, her expression completely devoid of emotion. I twisted my wrist free, reached for her hand, laced our fingers, and rested our hands on my thigh.
“I’m an only child. My parents died when I was four. Snowmobile accident. They went away for the weekend for their anniversary. I was with my grandmother. After they died, I stayed with her.”
“Damn, baby, I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t imagine losing both parents at such a young age. Losing my mom in my thirties had been torture on me and my sister.
“I don’t remember them,” she softly confessed. “I remember the stories my gran told me. I have pictures of them. But I don’t have any real memories.”
Christ, that was rough. I had a memory bank full of good times.
“Growing up, I knew I was missing out, but I didn’t feel like I was. That probably doesn’t make sense, but I didn’t. I didn’t have my parents, but I had my grandmother. She did everything she could to make sure I knew how much she loved me. I can’t really remember losing my parents. I can’t remember if I cried for them, though I’m sure I did. But I was four. All my childhood memories are with my grandmother. Now, when she died, that hurt. I didn’t think I’d ever stop crying.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen. She had type one diabetes. She’d had it her whole life. She took care of her health the best she could—stayed active, was vigilant with her diet and insulin. She went to sleep one night and never woke up.”
Holy fuck.
“Baby.”
“I looked it up—nocturnal hypoglycemia—it’s called the dead-in-bed syndrome. Her blood sugar dropped in her sleep. Almost half of severe diabetic shock episodes happen at night while sleeping. If I had known, I would’ve slept next to her. I would’ve watched over her the way she looked out for me. But I didn’t know, and she died in the room next to mine while I was asleep.”
“Catarina.” I squeezed her hand.
My attempt at support was lame. But I knew firsthand no well-meaning words could take away the pain of losing someone you loved.
“After she died, I went to live with my uncle and his family. That’s my mom’s brother. By this time, my parents’ life insurance had run out. My uncle tolerated me being in his house, having another mouth to feed, but his daughters and wife did not. Especially his oldest daughter, who now had to share a room. I lasted there about a year. Then I moved in with my aunt—my dad’s sister and her husband. They didn’t have children. That was by choice, and neither were happy to have a fifteen-year-old with a chip on her shoulder and an attitude problem.”
What the fuck?
My hand on the steering wheel tightened.
“They said that shit to you?”
“Every chance they got. Though it was more her than him. My aunt thought my dad had a stick up his ass while they were growing up, and she said I’d inherited it from him. I might not’ve had memories of my parents, but I didn’t like her talking badly about them. One night there was this huge blowup. She called CPS and had me removed from her house.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Well, I did, but none of it was good. “Actually, I do. Your aunt’s a world-class bitch.”
“Yup. Thankfully my mom’s cousin, Lina, took me in. She was divorced, had two sons, lived in a not-so-great trailer in a not-so-great trailer park. She was a waitress at a truck stop. One of her sons was a little older than me. Her other son was twenty and still living there. He actually moved in with his girlfriend so I could take his room.
“You know, my uncle and his family didn’t live in all that great of a neighborhood and didn’t have a lot of money. The house was old, cluttered, and messy. My aunt’s house was a wreck. Her and her husband drank their paychecks away. They were at the bar more than they were home. I can’t be a hundred percent sure—living with them was a nightmare—but I don’t remember either of them cooking.
“But Lina’s trailer was spotless. Her boys had no father. They were big boys, rough looking, but they had good manners. Lina made sure of it. She was kind to me. She cooked dinner before she went to work. She asked me about school and how my grades were. The son who moved out, Lars, came around a lot to check on his mother and little brother, but also on me. Steven, the one who lived there with us, acted like my big brother.”
Thank fuck she’d ended up with a family that showed her love and kindness after she’d lost that from her grandmother.
“I joined the Army because of Steven.”
“Really?”
“When I was a senior, Steven was working at an auto parts store. His job sucked. There wasn’t much opportunity in Fredericksburg. San Antonio’s an hour drive each way. He decided to go into the military. I went with him to the recruiter and listened to the First Sergeant talk about all the opportunities available. I knew then I was going to join. But after Steven came back to visit after he went through basic and AIT and I saw the change in him, I knew that was what I needed.
“I graduated high school, got a job as a waitress, worked my ass off making as much money as I could. Right before my nineteenth birthday, I went back to the recruiter and enlisted. Six months later I shipped out, and when I did, I handed Lina the keys to a fifteen-thousand-dollar car I’d bought her. It wasn’t enough, but it was the only way I could thank her. Out of all the people in my life after my grandmother died, Lina was the only one who showed me kindness, and she was the one who had struggled the most financially. Yet she never made me or her boys feel like a burden. She taught me that kindness was free, and if you didn’t show others compassion and consideration, that made you a plain asshole.”
I wasn’t surprised to find that under Cat’s tough exterior there was a heart of gold. What I was surprised to learn was there was no bitterness, no anger toward those who had treated her like shit.
“Hey!” she shouted. “There’s an In-N-Out. Can we stop? I could murder a Double-Double with grilled onions and extra sauce.”
I ignored the emotional whiplash while I signaled, changed lanes, and narrowly made the exit.
“I gotta ask, baby, are you using food as a way to change the subject?”
“What? No. Why?”
“That was an abrupt outburst.”
I heard her chuckle but didn’t take my eyes off the road.
“No, I really am starving, and I love In-N-Out. I’m not changing the subject, though there’s not much more to say.”
“Do you talk to Lina? Steven? Lars?”
“Oh yeah. All the time. Well, not Steven so much. He’s still active duty, stationed in Korea. Lars is married, not to the same girl from when I moved in. Thank God, that chick was a pill. He met this girl online and moved to Houston to be with her, and talked Lina into moving down there with him. I haven’t visited in about a year. But they’re doing well. Lars has two little girls—Irish twins. They’re absolute terrors. I mean that in the sense I think they’ll grow up to be criminals. I wouldn’t be surprised if at six, they’re planning their first bank heist.”
I didn’t bother hiding my amusement and laughed.
“No, really, I’m serious. Lars made them this nook under the stairs as a little playhouse. I think they go in there and plot and plan. Lars thinks they’re little princesses and spoils them. Lina says it’s because he didn’t have a dad growing up and he’s determined to be a good one. His wife, the heathens’ mother, does her best to rein them in, but I think she’s realized it’s a lost cause and is saving for bail money instead of college.”
“Can’t say I won’t spoil my girls,” I told her. “I have a good dad. He was tough but fair. But he did his fair share of spoiling Anna—one of those ways is him selling the home he bought with his wife and raised his family in to give her what she wanted.”
“And your mom? Did she spoil you two?”
I waited until I found a parking spot and rolled to a stop so I could give her my full attention.
“My mother spoiled the hell out of me,” I told her. “Make no mistake, she loved Anna. But she thought the sun rose and set with me. Anna’s my dad’s. He loves me and taught me how to be a good and decent man. Lots of lessons while I was growing up, but the most important one was how he loved the women in his life. My sister is Dad’s favorite, his princess. My mother was the queen of his world. He taught me by example how to love to an extreme. But my mom was all about me. Her and Anna were close, very close, especially when Anna got older and in high school. Mom was always doing stuff with her.
