CHAPTER 4: TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK

U PTOWN, VALERIE AND Lisa hopped off the elevated train at Argyle into the chilly night air, their breath floating white wisps into the city. The street was populated with an occasional shadowed person walking quickly against the cold wind that started to blow. Run-down buildings and convenience stores lined either side of the street as the roaring of the El briefly drowned out the noise of the city.

"Damn, it's cold."

Valerie pulled her leather coat around her tighter as they walked down the block, her eyes darting back and forth as she searched for Teddy's apartment.

"You can say that again, Val. Ugh, how much further? This doesn't seem like a very safe neighborhood."

Lisa cautiously looked around as she rubbed her hands together, blowing on them while she walked briskly along the sidewalk, her long hair whipping behind her.. With a sigh, Valerie looked over at the dark-haired girl and shook her head.

"Relax, will you? You're such a farm girl, Lisa. I know this area, we'll be fine."

Pausing at a three story flat of run-down apartments, the taller girl stopped and pointed up at a dimly lit window with a sheet curtain and smiled. The steps leading up to the apartment entrance were littered with broken glass and empty beer cans. A police car streaked by with sirens wailing as the two girls reached the stoop.

"See? Here it is, no biggie."

"Right.."

Lisa muttered as she followed Valerie up the stairs, looking back over her shoulder as the cop car continued down the street. A blur of movement raced past the darkened building across the street and down around the block. Lisa turned her head as Teddy's gruff voice came through the intercom and the door buzzed to allow entry.

"Get in here."

Valerie pulled open the door and started in as Lisa hesitated on the steps. Glancing back over her shoulder, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Sometimes...sometimes, she really missed home and her family. Lisa spared a wistful thought of their farm in Indiana, her parents, her sister. A tug on her arm brought her back as Valerie pulled her inside and they started up the dark creaky stairs, the dim light from the street outside barely enough to find their way.

"'Bout time."

Teddy's gravel voice carried across the smoke filled room of the messy, cluttered apartment. Valerie and Lisa had walked in when they noticed the door slightly ajar and as soon as they were inside, one of Teddy's bulky friends shut it and locked it tight. Teddy was seated in the middle of a low dirty yellow couch, his arms resting on his knees as he leaned forward and reached across the grimy glass coffee table in front of him. He was a shaggy brown haired hulk of a man, his scruffy face at one time might have been considered handsome if his personality hadn't been such as it was. He wore a black leather vest, opened at the chest, and black leather pants and motorcycle boots. Under the vest was a black strap with chain links and round hooks attached to it. Even in the light of the apartment, a faint diagonal scar was visible across his bare chest, the origins of which neither girl knew. With a glance, Teddy took in Valerie and her companion and nodded slightly.

"Sit."

Valerie just rolled her eyes and shook her head as she headed over to the floor in front of the coffee table and sat. With a hint of sarcasm, Valerie smiled at the big man.

"Your manners are something else, Teddy."

Teddy grunted and resumed his activities. Lisa paused at the door and scanned the room. Aside from the big guy who locked the door, the rest of the apartment was occupied by various people, most of them men in leather lounging on couches or standing in the kitchen. There were a few girls there too, all around Lisa's age. One blond girl was leaning against the hallway wall talking in slurred words to a short stocky man. Another red haired tall girl was seated on the lap of a bearded man, a linked chain around her neck dangling in his hands. And next to Teddy was a very young girl, maybe around sixteen. Her dark hair was spiked on top and longer in the back, braids of leather intertwined. She wore leather pants and a leather vest as well. She sneered over at Lisa before turning to Teddy.

"So, who's the new hole, Teddy?"

Teddy turned his head and growled at the girl, his hands pausing over the white powder in front of him.

"Shut up, Tara."

Looking up, he caught Lisa's eye and raised his chin, a smile crossing his lips. With a wave of his hand, he spoke.

"Come on in...you must be Valerie's friend. She's mentioned you."

Lisa smiled a nervous smile and moved forward, taking her coat off and sitting next to Teddy on the couch. Valerie smiled at her from her spot on the floor and winked. Somehow the room got a little darker and the music that Lisa had barely noticed got a little louder. Lisa watched as Teddy leaned forward and went back to his work, cutting the pile of white powder into smaller sections with a shiny silver razor blade. Each cut was accompanied by the clinking of metal on glass as the muscular guy partitioned off the powder on the table. Tara leaned back on the couch and looked across Teddy's large leathered back at Lisa and eyed her with a glare.

"So, you just fall off the apple cart or something? What's your story?"

The questions came in an even tone, barely disguised hostility under the surface. Glancing over at the scrawny teenager, Lisa cleared her throat before she spoke, summoning attitude she didn't feel but knew she needed to have to deal with this uncomfortable situation...something she had learned from her sister.

"What's it to you?"

Teddy and Valerie chuckled while Tara glared back. Narrowing her eyes, the girl curled her lip at Lisa.

"Fuck you. How about I kick your ass, pretty girl?"

Teddy stopped his cutting and turned towards the hostile youth, the glare he gave her unseen by Lisa. Through clenched teeth, he spoke in a low growl.

"Tara, knock it off. Go get us something to drink."

Lisa watched as the girl stared back at Teddy and then glared at her. She could tell this girl had some serious problems, most of them centering around her pissy attitude. Looking back at the leathered man's steel gaze, Tara huffed, got up, and went off into the kitchen. Teddy turned and smiled at Lisa, his brown eyes meeting hers.

"Sorry about that..she's a little juvey. If she wasn't my kid sister, she'd be history."

Lisa smiled and glanced over at Valerie who was laughing. Lisa seemed to be finding herself in crowds of questionable strangers more often these days. She had never really been in trouble as a kid, though she was always in the shadow of her older sister's achievements. She longed to fit in anywhere and had left her family in hopes of doing just that, making her own name. Truth was, she was jealous of her sister and how things came so easily to her. The problem was she also loved her and when she had left, Lisa felt...abandoned. It had always been the two of them roaming around their farm. Her sister had taken Lisa under her wing at school, made sure she wasn't picked on for her awkward social graces and her academic shortcomings. When she left for college, Lisa's social support crumbled. Her parents expected more from her and pressured her, she had no friends, had no real direction. And so she took off one winter day to make a new life; she hadn't seen any of her family since.

"You wouldn't mind sharing some of that before we go out, would you?"

Valerie's voice drifted across the coffee table as she lit a cigarette and blew out the match. Soft laughter came from the hallway and the room got smokier by the minute. Teddy stopped cutting the powder and looked over at Valerie, his voice a low rumble.

"Depends."

Valerie looked back at him with a sultry gaze while she took a long drag from her cigarette. Blowing out the white-grey smoke, she smiled playfully and raised her eyebrow. Valerie looked older than her age, the years and her bad habits had conspired to age her in subtle ways.

"On what?"

Teddy chuckled, turning briefly to smile at Lisa before starting to portion the powder into fine white lines.

"What's in it for me?"

Valerie pulled a dollar out of her pocket, holding the cigarette between her lips while she rolled the bill up tight. With a puff, she put the cigarette down in the dirty ashtray on the table and smiled.

"Our usual arrangement."

Lisa watched the exchange, feeling like she was one step behind the conversation. For the three months she'd known and been out with Valerie, it always ended up with her roommate picking up some dirty stranger and going home with him. Sex for drugs was Valerie's game, not Lisa's, so she had always cabbed it back to their apartment after Valerie left her for the night in some dark club. However, as far as Lisa knew, her roommate never mentioned she had that kind of relationship with Teddy. Valerie was pretty upfront about the men she slept with and the drugs she got from them. But Lisa didn't know what this 'usual' arrangement was and she wasn't particularly sure she wanted to either.Teddy gruffly nodded and bladed a line across the coffee table to Valerie.

"Fine, but I've gotta OK it with the boss."

Valerie raised her chin in agreement before she leaned over and took the line in one quick inhale, her eyes closing as she smiled against the tingle.

"Oh yeah.."

Lisa watched her roommate sigh in bliss as Tara came back into the room with three beers. Putting one on the table in front of Valerie and handing one to Teddy, the girl smiled as she took a long drink of the remaining one as she sat down and glanced over at Lisa. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, the teen smiled sweetly.

"Oh, I'm sorry...did you want one?"

Teddy glared back at his sister and grabbed his beer and handed it to Lisa.

"Here."

With a smile, the big guy nodded his head and Lisa took the beer and drank, needing something to calm her nerves and make her feel more comfortable in this odd room. From the back of the apartment, a number of people started filing out, saying their goodbyes to Teddy. She noticed that most of the men were paired up in some fashion or another; one had his hands cuffed behind his back while he stood quietly behind another, one man actually had a dark leather hood over his head, his wrists restrained by tight leather binds. Even the two girls, not including Tara, were similarly attached to their respective partners. Lisa had never really understood the leather scene and she tried to keep an open mind about it, but frankly this particular crowd scared her. She'd known a girl once who was into the scene and she and her friends were cool. However, Lisa was getting a gut instinct about these men and this place and Teddy and everything that told her things were not right just below the surface. But Valerie was here with her so she felt some measure of safety.

Lisa took another drink of her beer as she watched everyone leave except for Val, Teddy, Tara, and the big hulky guy who appeared to have door duty. After he locked it, Teddy leaned over and took in one line of powder and then another in a quick blast, leaning back into the couch. Looking over at him, Lisa could see traces of the fine white powder on the scruff under his nose. She herself had shied away from drugs, the insidious brainwashing of Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' program from her school days apparently working. While she enjoyed a beer or two, she had never really tried anything more. She had been drunk before and had found out that she tended to be a bit..uninhibited. As long as she kept it under control, Lisa thought she'd be fine.

Glancing over to Valerie after taking another sip of her beer, she saw her roommate smile as she pulled out a neatly rolled joint. Unfortunately, with her insecurities and her need to fit in, Lisa had no chance. With Tara glaring at her from across the couch and Teddy's friend leaning against the door, his beefy arms crossed over his barrel chest, it was just too much. Lisa decided to say Yes to more than just a beer.

After clumsily taking her first line of powder, she felt edgy but that was quickly replaced by a mild euphoria when Valerie passed the joint to her and she inhaled her first hit. She had watched enough TV to figure out how all of this was done and it was kind of surreal to actually be doing drugs. It was a long way from how she grew up and for a wistful moment, she wished she hadn't let herself feel like she needed to fit in with these people. But, to be honest, she was starting to feel more comfortable. Tara got her another beer without too much hostility, Valerie was laughing and joking with her, and Teddy was an endless supply of white which seemed to make her feel alive.

"Here."

Teddy nudged Lisa with his elbow and handed her something. Opening her hand, she looked at a small brown square of paper and looked up at him quizzically.

"What's this?"

Valerie smiled and laughed as Lisa looked over at her and then back down at her hand. With a soothing voice, Val spoke as she exhaled smoke from her cigarette.

"Go on, that'll just make you feel better."

Hesitantly, Lisa picked up the piece of paper and held it between her thumb and forefinger, looking at it. Turning her eyes back to Valerie, the one person in this room she trusted the most, and spoke.

"What do I do with it? Are you sure it's not..."

She paused, not wanting to sound like she actually did just fall off the apple cart. She wasn't entirely sure what it was she was holding but she didn't want to appear like she was stupid. It was bad enough that she couldn't live up to her sister's intelligence, with these people, she could at least appear like she knew what she was doing. Valerie smiled at her.

"Just put it in your mouth and leave it there. You'll be fine."

Lisa looked at her roommate and the one friend she did have in Chicago and then looked back at the small brown square of paper in her hand. She was torn between fearful indecision and the intense desire to be something she was not. Maybe just this once she could step out behind her sister's golden shadow, have her own friends, be her own person.

"Well, here goes nothing."

With a shrug and a smile, Lisa made her decision.

* * *

Hours passed in a whirl of smoke and powder and beer and music and laughter until Lisa was faintly aware of them leaving Teddy's apartment and piling into a big black Van, it's shaggy carpeted inside reminiscent of every 70's stereotype possible. With the music thumping, she and Valerie, Teddy, Teddy's friend Leon (his name she finally found out when she laughingly asked him after he had picked her up and carried her down the stairs), and Tara, still sullen but the most sober of them all took off into the city. Lisa decided to down another beer when she realized Tara was driving the van at breakneck speed north through the back streets of Chicago. Sitting on Leon's lap, Lisa glanced over at Teddy, her eyes barely focusing on the big shaggy face seated in the leather lounge chair with Val next to him.

"So, where we goin'?"

Her own voice sounded strange to her as Lisa tried to comprehend what she had just said. Things were starting to feel a bit disconnected and out of place. She was having trouble keeping any clear thoughts in her head, each time something came to mind, it quickly left. She looked down at her own hand holding the beer bottle and wasn't quite sure if that hand was attached to her or not. Something was definitely not right here. Hearing a sound, she raised her head and turned. As if the sound and the source were delayed, she watched Valerie's mouth and then heard her as she laughed. Dazedly, she watched as her roommate scooped up a small amount of powder with her fingernail from a small vile, snorting it with a grin. With an elbow nudge to Teddy, she smiled over at him.

"Tell her."

Teddy smiled as his arm draped over the back of the lounge seat and he shifted in his big motorcycle jacket, his bare chest still visible. Lisa listened as his voice rumbled towards her in waves, sounding like an echoing roll of thunder. She barely heard them as she grabbed Leon's bulky frame, trying for one last ditch effort at holding on to reality. The words he said lost meaning as she felt herself sinking deeper and deeper.

"Cirra's Cage."

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 576