And I could’ve sworn I heard him chuckle as I dove toward him desperately.
Five
Can you get STDs from corpses?
—Constance to Odin
Odin
Seeing her on the side of the road, ready to kick the tire of her brand-spanking-new SUV, had me smiling wide. At least on the inside.
I was practically jovial as we made it to the courthouse with a few minutes to spare.
I pulled into the closest parking spot I could find and shut the bike off.
When I did, the woman behind me all but flew off the seat and launched herself onto the sidewalk.
She didn’t look back as she rushed to the front doors and threw them open wide.
I called Denver as she marched away from me. Without, might I add, a thank you for the ride.
“Odin,” Denver, the club president and my sometimes sort of friend, greeted me. “Heard you’re at jury duty.”
“Heard right,” I said, not one for small talk. “There’s a woman that’s in jury duty with me. Lives in town. She was on the side of the mountain this morning with a brand-new SUV dead to the world. Could you send Court out to pick it up?”
“Brand new?” Denver grunted, sounding disgusted. “Fuck, they can’t make anything good anymore. I bought a new Ford F350 two days ago, put new tires on it. Drove it around for all of an hour, and this goddamn thing tells me that the adaptive cruise control isn’t working. I try to switch over to normal cruise control, and that’s not working either. I take it back to the dealership to ask them what the fuck and come to find out you can’t change anything on the sons of bitches anymore because the cameras pick up the new wheels and shut everything down that has to do with those cameras. Everything. I had to take it to a performance place to get it ‘fixed.’ And by ‘fixing’ it they only put the old tires back on it, drove it around to recalibrate it, then fuckin’ told me that I couldn’t do automatic updates anymore or the same fuckin’ thing would happen again.”
I just shook my head, not bothering to touch the comment.
If I did, that would mean I invited him to converse even more with me.
And nothing against Denver, but I wasn’t a small talker.
I would listen, sure.
But I didn’t add anything on my end.
Mostly because I didn’t ever have anything to add.
“I’ll get Court out there with the tow truck.” He paused. “Unless you want me to take it to the dealership and throw my weight around.”
“I don’t know where she bought it,” I admitted.
“I’ll figure it out,” he said. “I’ll have Court look up the VIN number and we’ll go from there.”
“Thank you,” I said and hung up.
Knowing my president would take care of it for me and also wondering why the hell I hadn’t thought to call Court directly seeing as Court was the mechanic in town, I headed inside.
I stopped halfway up the steps when I realized that I still had my cut on.
I’d worn it yesterday, but the judge and the lawyers had pulled me aside as I was leaving and asked me not to wear it back inside.
They didn’t have anything against the club or anything, but it was against the rules, apparently.
And seeing as I needed to keep my nose clean, I chose to follow those rules even though it chafed.
After it was locked in my saddlebags, I walked back to the steps and inside the courthouse.
