Page 24 of Angel’s Doll

“That’s the first time anyone here has asked me that.” Past the fence line the light’s gone soft, no teeth in the dark tonight. “I kept waiting for the interrogation. It never came. They handed me a fork instead.”

I pull the shoelace out from under my collar so the ring hangs in the open, small and bright against my shirt. His eyes go to it, then back to my face, and he says nothing about it. That nothing is the whole reason I can leave it out.

“Darling explained claimed to me,” I say.

He goes quiet. His thumb finds the seam of the mug and stays there. “That so.”

“She says it doesn’t count until the woman says it back. That there’s a waiting period. That the club bets on it.”

“The club bets on everything. Two prospects have money on which day Glitch shaves and on what day Cash irons his shirts.”

“Angel.” He turns his head. In the last light, the line of his jaw is hard, and it has never once been hard with me. “Yesterday, when I wanted you to stay, I was afraid of the dark and you were the biggest thing between me and it. That’s not what tonight is.”

He nods slow, eyes on the ring.

“Ten years of being told what I was. A day and a half of being free. I know what I like best. Tonight I’m not afraid. I’m asking anyway. Please come to my room when you’re done with the fence.”

He picks up the clipboard, writes one line, and hands the rotation schedule to the prospect at the gate on his way past us. Then he’s standing, holding out his hand, done with the fence.

“Asked and answered, Doll.”

I take his hand.

13

DOLL

We come off the steps with my hand in his.

The lot is half dark, the floodlights doing their work along the fence, and nobody we pass says a word.

Halfway across the lot, a whistle comes down off the roof, two notes. Angel’s hand leaves mine and lands on my shoulder, moving me, all in the same second. His body between me and the fence before I understand there’s anything to be between. A sedan rolls past the gate, slow, lights off. It doesn’t stop. The floodlights track it, and up on the roof a prospect follows it.

“Tonight’s first?” Angel asks the dark, not me.

“Second,” the roof says.

The sedan takes the corner and is gone. Angel watches the empty street exactly as long as he needs to, and then his hand finds mine again.

“Somebody’s counting our cameras,” he says. “Let them count. Counting’s free.”

And then we get to my door and he stops.

He could open every lock in this compound, and he stands in the hallway holding my hand, waiting for me to open my own door. I asked him to come. He came exactly that far. Everything past the threshold is still mine to say.

I open my door.

Around us the clubhouse is turning itself down for the night but voices in the bar are still loud, one bike coming in late and shutting off after a loud growl. Out past the gate are the Quinlans and whatever we’ll find out about them tomorrow. Ian Durey is out there. Victor is out there in his big house, minus the only two boxes in it that mattered.

The entire world is out there. Tonight it can wait.

He toes off his boots and lies down on top of the blanket like he did last night, arms crossed behind his head, space between us. Last night I slept beside him at the end of the second-worst day of my life, too wrecked to be afraid of anything smaller than everything.

Tonight the asking was mine.

That should make this easier. It makes it worse. Fear I know how to carry. Want has no handles yet.

I lie down facing him and leave the lamp on.