Page 25 of Angels Fall

The note inside said, Borrowing your car. Be back around noon.

The note on Tyler’s window said, If you love me then please, please stay away.

I don’t want to be his hope. I don’t even have enough hope for myself.

Chapter Six - Tyler

“‘If you love me then please, please stay away.’” She reads the note aloud.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “Found it on my car.”

“Uh-huh. And when was this?” she asks.

“Like two days ago. My original instinct was to just go find her. Y’know? Because, shit, we had just had sex so how could she mean that? But then I was like, well… Maybe if I show her that I can give her the space she needs, she’ll feel like she can trust me and then we can try again for real. But I don’t know how long to wait. Fuck. This shit is frustrating. I’ve never actually been in a situation like this. A relationship, I guess. Usually I just fuck a chick once or twice and then move on. Not sure what the play is here. Thoughts?”

A moment passes. Two blank stares face me. Then…

“Shit, kid, I dunno what to tell you. I’m a strip club owner, not a goddamn shrink. Raven, you got anything?” Pete looks over to the stripper whose name I just learned is Raven, who is holding the note Maddie left me. The note I’ve been rolling around in my fingers for the last two days like a fuckin’ fidget spinner.

“Babe,” she says in my direction, “don’t know how to break it to you, but you’re not in a relationship now.”

“But—”

“Well, YOU might be in one,” she cuts me off, “but Scarlett ain’t.”

Hearing this Raven broad refer to Maddie by her stripper name makes me sad and nostalgic at the same time.

“Kid,” Pete says, “what the hell are you doing here?”

“Dunno. Just felt like I needed to talk to someone about it all.”

“Don’t you have a family you can go to? Therapist? Anybody?” Raven asks.

“I mean, sure, I’ve got a friend whose house I’m staying at, but it’s three in the morning and he’s gotta work later and I didn’t wanna wake him up and, you know…”

“So you came here?” Pete asks.

I shrug. He and Raven look at each other.

Pete stands, rounds his desk, stops in front of where I’m sitting, and puts both of his hands on my shoulders in a grandfatherly way. (I’m assuming. Both my mom’s parents died before she had me and my dad’s dad took off on him and his mom when he was a kid, so I can’t know for sure. But I’ve seen movies with grandpas doing grandpa shit, and very often it’s the kind of thing Pete’s doing now.)

“Tyler… It’s Tyler, right?” I nod. “Tyler, when you came in here the first time asking about Maddie, I was a little nervous. You look like a homeless psycho, and I’ve seen enough of those in this business to know what I’m talking about. Right, Raven?”

“That’s for damn sure.” Raven kind of snorts.

“But then you told me the whole story, which is just too goddamn bizarre not to be true, and you seemed like a genuinely good guy who was trying to do right, and I felt like helping you.” (That, and I gave the guy five large. I’m crazy, not naïve.) “But kid”—he bows his head to stare in my eyes—“I think maybe I was right the first time. You might just be a psycho.”

He pats me on the shoulder and walks over to the door of his office. He opens it. Heavy bass thumps up the stairs as if riding along with the reddish glow emanating from the stage lights below. Pete doesn’t say anything. Just stands there with the door open. It’s clear that this is my cue to leave.

I nod a little bit, give this Raven chick a polite smile, stand and walk to the office’s exit, pausing there to say something to Pete.

But I don’t.

I just make my way down the stairs. It feels a little like I’m descending into some kind of hell. Like the end of that movie, Angel Heart, with Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet. The movie that got her fired from The Cosby Show for doing a really dirty sex scene. (Which, now that we know what we know about Bill Cosby, seems pretty fucking hypocritical, but you can’t know shit until you know it, right?)

I walk across the almost empty main floor. Probably fifteen or twenty sad-dicked dudes sitting around, nursing their drinks, watching some Pole Artisan on the stage spread her ass cheeks and jiggle ’em around.

The bouncer guy I almost got into it with a couple weeks back—Otis, I think—eyeballs me like he remembers me. I don’t give a shit. I’m not in the mood to fight anybody tonight.