Body Guarded

Chapter 1: Fly Swatta

Fly Swatta stepped out and admired his lily-white reflection with rakish confidence for the last time. A steam cloud billowed out of the glass shower and swallowed his reflection whole. The mirrors were draped in a warm fog that resembled the cooler version blanketing San Francisco twenty-two stories below.

The rapper hummed his recent platinum release and strummed the newly inked fret and strings tatted on his midsection. Then, he picked up his phone and dialed.

“Hello Miss Mia-Mia, I’d still love to see ya’.” He paused for an expected giggle but got none. “I have this event for the Harley Convention on Friday. I gotta go.”

Silence.

“I’d love your beautiful arm on mine. Whadaya’ say?”

“Fly. You know how Stein is. He controls all our public appearances.” She paused. “And besides, we’re just friends, that’s all. You need to quit asking. More importantly, I meet my new bodyguard that day.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” He nodded at his fogged-over reflection. “Damn Stein. Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you around.” He rubbed fifty-block on his white cue ball head. Bitch. Why did she get a bodyguard and he didn’t?

A bell in his penthouse rang. Fly rolled his eyes and made the universal gesture for FU outside his window. He pressed a button and speakers crackled to life. “Yeah? What is it?”

“Mr. Swatta, sir,” the disembodied English doorman’s voice mumbled. “There is a lovely young woman in the lobby with a floral delivery. She refuses to leave the box here.”

The twenty-three-year-old slid the bathroom door open. The steam escaped into the cool air like a secret. “Well, is she hot…and, you know…like, white?”

“Um, yes, sir.” His pregnant pause reeked with judgment. The older man cleared his voice. “I can send her up, if you would like, sir.”

“Ok, give me five.” His professionally ripped jeans lay abandoned in the closet. T-shirt? Nah, a cute little delivery girl deserved a free show; it was Sunday after all.

The elevator chimed. Fly’s eyes widened. She presented a three-foot-long box with black ribbon that seemed to defy gravity as much her double Ds.

“To whom do I owe this honor?” Fly gently rubbed his abs.

“Hi Mr. Swatta. I’m Robin.” She jutted out a pen and blinked as if trying to remember what to say. Her matte red lipstick bridled a show-stopping set of pearly whites.

Fly thought her lips were over-the-top puffy. He immediately imagined what they would be like wrapped around his unit. “Well, hi Robin. Tweet. Tweet.” He leaned forward, elbow to the wall. “I’d be happy to sign any part of your lovely body.” His eyes lingered on the skin above her silky off-the-shoulder dress.” He feigned a guilty chuckle before leaning back on his heels touching his lips. “Did I really just say that out loud?”

Robin wriggled with hesitation, then thrust out a clipboard. “Sign.”

Taking the Sharpie, Fly cleared his throat at the rebuff.

“Ciao, …Fly.” Robin pushed the lobby button.

He examined the box to avoid her bitchy gaze. The doors made the familiar sucking sound as the air left with her. Fly shrugged. Her loss.

He was controversial; yeah, well, who gave a shit? Stein, the agent he shared with Mia Fontaine always said no reaction was a bad reaction. Was that some kind of play on words? Did Stein mean that getting no reaction was bad? Or did he mean that no reaction could ever be bad? Maybe the flowers were from Stein? Fly had certainly rocked the performance to a sell-out crowd at the Fox. Girls cried; hell, even the guys cried. It was the Bay Area after all.

Fly was soaring. Interviews with Rolling Stone, Steven Colbert and a killer InTouch spread showing off his new tat. The article hadn’t gone over so well, but the photos were epic.

The reporter had leaned in and asked almost conspiratorially, “So, tell us, Fly, where did you get the name Fly Swatta and nickname, the White Knight?”

Fly had been coached about acceptable comebacks for his official moniker, but he couldn’t resist. His pale blue eyes slid to the side, and he leaned in with equal secrecy. “My daddy, God rest his soul, was a big wig in the White Nationalist movement, but I’m not supposed to talk about my beliefs, you feel me? But I’ve been known to swat a few little back things.”

It took weeks for Stein to get his panties out of a bunch over that one. If the world was getting to be so damn, ‘all embracing’, why the hell couldn’t he wear his white supremacist roots like the Jews wore their fuckin’ yarmulkes? He had the right to a worldview just as much as the homos and the slant-eyes, right? Unfortunately, the Stein Agency thought a full court press was necessary to play it down. He had to claim he was misquoted. Blah, blah, whatever. Fly knew it was all about Stein’s sponsor money.

Fly tugged the flower box open. Green waxy tissue encased a party of white blossoms. His eyes immediately fell on a shiny red thumb drive and white envelope. This was promisingly personal. He ripped open the card and examined the fine, swirly pen strokes. “Watch your surprise someplace private.” It was signed with a tiny red heart, two dollar signs, and two series of numbers.

This was definitely not from the bossman. He was getting a chubby imagining one of his recent conquests had secretly filmed them. Fly practically skipped into the bedroom for his laptop and jumped onto his bed.

The screen crackled into silent white noise. A blob came into focus starting with a man’s pants swimming at his ankles. Butt cheeks gyrated. Some black dude was going to town with a white chick on a desk. Fly’s nose crinkled. The man startled and jumped back. He bolted from the desk into a dark void. His face and proud member were still unfocused. Then a silhouette of another man’s back appeared. His left arm was relaxed by his side, but his right arm was bent forward. Was he holding something?

Awkwardly, the camera angle jolted. The screen blipped jagged horizontal lines before the scene focused on a corner area. The camera zoomed in on a familiar black man backing himself into a wall. His mouth moved like he was crying or gasping. Suddenly, the victim clutched his left arm with his right hand as if shot. His head pitched back. Time stood still. Then the face looked down, inspecting his own palms. Fear in his eyes turned to pleading. He looked directly at the cameraman and mouthed: “Help me.” The video went into slo-mo as the stricken man collapsed sideways. His head bounced on the ground.

Fly bolted to the edge of the bed. A snuff film? This must be a prank. The grey silhouette threw something to the side and slowly turned around like John Wayne after a showdown. He moved toward the camera. Nothing about him was in focus. With each step, the shadowy image lightened. It was a young man in great shape. His pants hung low. As he paced toward the camera; the angle dipped. His shoes came into view, then his hips, then his midsection revealing something shockingly familiar.

Fly’s mouth dropped open. He had sketched that design himself. The outline began below the man’s hip bone and disappeared beneath his right arm into a sea of barbed wire and skulls.

The figure stepped closer. Fly broke into a sweat. In front of the man’s torso, two hands rose. The right hand formed a W, and the left hand bent down to form a P. The symbol of white power. Fly’s chin turtled in, as if in hiding from the screen before him.

The unknown figure stepped wide and began to lower himself. The face nearly tumbled out of the screen and straight into Fly’s bedroom. The top-of-the-world rapper scrambled back, deeper into his bed and gasped like a child. The face looking back at him was his own.

Chapter 2: Blake Sorenson

Blake stared outside his window toward the fountain’s white noise. Sleep mocked him as it had most of the past eighty-nine days. But this night was windier than most. Flickering light pierced the trees and confettied the path from the parking lot a hundred yards below. His eyes drifted over the wave of the silvery grasses, but something made him slowly sit up in bed. A distant light moved with intention.

A two A.M. doctor visit? No. It moved with a younger gait.

Blake’s heart ticked up a notch as the beam turned off the path and continued through the lawn. The cocky cadence persisted in the direction of his unit. Could they have found him? If the form came too close, he could run down the hall, through the front and go…where? Maybe, he could hit the fire alarm. But then again, if they came this far, they wouldn’t stop. More innocent people would die.

His truth finally resonated. If they’d found him, it would finally be over. He’d been planning to end it as soon as he was released anyway, albeit more peacefully than whatever was heading toward him. He sat still as his pulse raged. For the first time in years his throat didn’t spasm shut when anxiety gripped him. Those damn pills actually worked. A welcome change, although a little late.

He lay there staring through his dreads, jaw clenched. This would be better. His mom wouldn’t blame herself then curse him for taking his own life. The echo of Buzzcut whispered in his ear: “take it like a man, you pussy.”

The light grew until it reached his door and engulfed his chest. The last moments of his life slowed down as a card key clicked the sliding glass door open.

The figure stepped forward. “Grab your shit. I am springing you from this place.”

Chapter 3: Blake’s Savior

The Goethe girl seemed eager to appear uninterested in the task of kidnapping Blake for the second time in two months. In the dashboard lights, she seemed tinier than before. Then again, he barely remembered much of anything from that August night.

“So, you gonna tell me what this is all about?”

She blew a bubble. “You got the letter, right?”

Blake blinked slowly connecting the dots. “Yeah. I got it.”

She jutted her chin toward the steering wheel. “I’m just facilitating your transfer.”

Strange choice of words Blake thought. “In the middle of the night?”

“Are you sad you’re going to miss your avocado toast breakfast?”

“I wasn’t a star patient, but I think they’ll notice if I’m gone.”

“Early evacuation was my idea. You can thank me later.” She stole a glance from the road. Her eyes dug deep in their brief connection. “The last day before graduation in that place is brutal. I’m thinking you don’t need that soul-searching crap.”

He stared at her profile contemplating why she accented the word you, like she already knew him. That is, beyond knowing the state he was in when she, and some rent-a-cop, dragged his ass out of his third-floor walk-up on the edge of overdose. Blake sighed and dryly mocked her. “That’s your professional opinion?”

She did not say more until the non-descript Toyota came to rest at an In-And-Out Burger. “Grab a seat. I know what you need.”

I know what you need. That was the second time he heard that from her. What she didn’t know was that the good doctor had already put him through the pre-graduation exercise. She was right. It was brutal. Before the other eight inpatients, Blake had to show he could ‘own and articulate’ the roots of his addiction.

Time and excuses could not erase the lines of failure etched into most of their faces. A few born-agains nodded like eager recruits at an Amway convention. Conveniently, they blamed the devil for their screw-ups and their future was going to be all rosy. It was the poster of Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs for Human Motivation to Live” that finally crystalized to Blake that he no longer wanted a future. Nowhere did it mention what Blake lacked: the need for hope.

As his turn inched closer, he knew if he didn’t spew satisfactory trauma for the assignment, the other patients would be on him like rats sniffing rotting meat. His eyes fell to the letter, moist in his palm. He had not talked to Hugo in years. The fine parchment contained the only favor his best friend had ever asked of him, and it was absurd.

Blake had nothing but amateur sharpshooting skills. He wasn’t qualified to pretend to be a bodyguard for anyone, temporary or not. Blake had heard the name Mia Fontaine somewhere. Another Britney-Spears-Wannabe? Probably a pain in the ass, but at least the job would give him three squares and a bed.

On the hot seat before him, a bitter 20-year-old spoke of a photo of her parents she had kept it hidden beneath the floorboards in Thailand where she had been drugged and trafficked. No one knew how she had escaped.

He could admit addiction was his own fault, although he couldn’t understand how it happened so suddenly. But he’d let too many people down to hope for a desirable future.

The smell of fries assaulted him as the straggly kid plopped down two white bags and straddled the cement picnic bench. He knew he needed to play nice. “You gotta name?”

She blew a bubble and let it pop before sticking the wad squarely on the top of her cup. “I’ll tell you, but you’ll have to tell me something.”

“Actually, I don’t have to tell you anything.”

She chewed on the straw and took a pull. “Settle down there, cowboy. No one’s holding a gun to your head here.”

Blake unfolded the big greasy mess and watched as she squeezed packets of ketchup into a long line. He immediately thought of the blood trail.

“Want some?”

His lip recoiled at the thought before he refocused on his dripping burger. His eyebrows lifted slowly as he chewed and inspected what she called the secret 4x4. It was heavenly.

He caved. “Okay, what do you want me to tell you?”

She grabbed the biggest fry and rolled each side in the sauce and held it out to him. “Tell me one of your favorite childhood memories.”

His eyes fell to the offering and winced before closing them to think. “Okay. How’s this? My Grandpa used to dress up as Tinman and take me trick-or-treating.”

“Huh,” she nodded. “Not what I expected, but I can roll with it. Say more. Were you Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion?”

Blake took another bite and attempted to speak though lettuce. “Petunia, Gramp’s dog, wouldn’t do straw, but she could sit in the wagon with a lion’s mane on without complaint.”

She threw her head back and laughed with an unsightly mouthful of fries. Her demeanor was unbridled and free like somebody’s little sister. But then without warning, an image of his mom laughing and skipping in her ruby slippers stole Blake’s thoughts. That was just days before his life went off the rails. Blake cleared his throat and pushed back from the burger.

Silence resumed, fry after bloody fry.

“Penny Lane.”

Blake evaluated her Goethe outfit to avoid eye contact and guffawed “Penny Lane? Like Sgt. Pepper’s Penny Lane?”

“Shut up, douchebag. In between overdoses, my mom was a Beatles freak.”

Blake stared into space. “Sorry to hear that. And your dad?”

“One of the great mysteries of the world.” She barked a laugh with terminal acceptance.

Blake thought about saying his father was MIA too but shook his head instead.

“Okay, now I get to tell you something you’ll actually be interested in.” She put the gum back in her mouth.

He put his wrappers in the bag with distain and a curled lip. A bull scratching the ground. “You’re oddly…overconfident, for what are you, sixteen or have you even hit puberty yet?”

Green eyes glared back. “Twenty-one. My professional opinion is that opiates stole the last eight of your thirty-dumb-ass years.” She made air quotes. “’Said addiction’ resulted from painful esophageal spasms which you self-medicated with alcohol throughout childhood. A baseball injury your senior year at UW got you your first taste of that delicious demon. You know how to shoot a gun like a pro but have zero self-confidence. You think you have nothing to offer this world and you are, once again, completely full-of-shit.” Penny’s lips were a thin line as she grabbed the bag from him and made a three-point-shot for the trash can and walked to the car. It swooshed, nothing but net.

The dashboard lights revealed a less animated driver. More repentantly, Blake asked “so, what is it that you think I want to know?”

She made him wait for an answer. “My contacts told me stuff. Past chatter about you suggests both major gangs revered you. They called you Dread-Luck. But when the shit-hit-the-fan shoot out happened last August, chatter started calling you Dread-Lost. They trash-talked you for about a month, but then it suddenly stopped.” She swiped at her septum ring. “I can’t say for sure what that means, but I thought you’d want to know.”

Blake was stunned speechless by what had flown from her spiky profile. He stared out the window until she had finished ‘facilitating the transfer’.

“Any chance you can find out more of those professional opinions?”

She ignored him, lead him to the condo, opened the door and motioned him inside. “You seriously don’t recognize me?” Penny looked him squarely in the eyes.

“You say that like I should?”

She smiled and shook her head. “This is good. This is very, very good.” She turned and walked away.