Page 62 of Liquids

“Fight’s being held at the brick warehouse on East 114th Place. 10 p.m. Don’t be late. Entrance is around the back. Battered black door. Password’s annihilation. Don’t take your car, you hear me?”

“But we’ve got …” I start, but he taps the roof a couple of times and takes off in a long loping run down the sidewalk. “… three old ladies to take there,” I say into the empty space where he was standing.

Who the hell came up with that password? I look at the three wrinkled faces in the back. They’re all looking at me with identical smiles like I’ve got some solution to the car problem.

I glance at my watch. It’s 9 p.m. already.

“It’ll be fine,” Marni says, as I scroll through the map on my phone. “We can drop them off and go and find somewhere to park the car.”

When we arrive at the warehouse, the battered black door is easy enough to find, but there’s no one around at all. We pull off the road into the concrete parking lot surrounded by a chain-link fence, and another man appears suddenly at Marni’s window. He taps a gun on the glass, looking over his shoulder as he does.

Before I can stop her, Marni winds it down. “You were told no cars,” he growls.

Marni narrows her eyes at him. “We’ve got senior citizens in the back,” she shouts, right in his face.

His expression of comical surprise is almost priceless. He’s obviously not used to women giving him sass when he’s armed. He peers in the back, and his eyes narrow on Marni.

“You insane?” he says.

“I hope so. Better insane than scared of you waving that thing at me.” She reaches out and pushes his gun to one side.

“Fuck. Bitches. You ain’t allowed here. No one’s allowed to hang around here.”

Marni gestures at me. “This is Rig’s woman.”

“I don’t care if she’s Mary fucking Magdalene …”

Another man appears in a leather jacket with another firearm. “Trouble?” he says.

“Bitches.”

The man grins in that creepy way some guys have as he studies us. “They’re always trouble,” he says, reaching out and taking Marni’s face and moving it side to side like he’s inspecting her.

She slaps his hand away. “Get off me, you oily asshole.”

“Who’s Rig?” the first guy says.

“He’s that new fighter from the sticks.” Oily smiles. “He’s going to get annihilated.”

There’s that word again.

“In your dreams,” Agnes mutters from the back seat.

Oily leans his arm against the roof of the car. “Ladies, I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding.”

Then Marge appears suddenly behind him, and I swing around to see that the back door is open, and so I miss her hitting him over the head with her bag. What the fuck is she doing? Oily staggers a bit, dropping his gun and putting both hands on his head as he howls. Marge darts for the gun at a speed I’ve never seen her move at and brandishes it at guy number one.

“You think I won’t use this? I was shooting squirrels out of trees before you were born!” she shouts in triumph, holding the gun over her head and firing it in the air. The kickback causes her to stagger, and she keels over, losing the gun as she falls, and I’m out of my seat in a flash to check she’s okay, but about ten more men with guns come running around the side of the building. The first guy grabs the gun from the ground.

“You fuckin’ crazy bitch!” he screams as the car is surrounded.

“Uh-oh,” Marni says.

“What the fuck is going on here, Three? I can’t leave you guys for five minutes …”

Three? But when I glance at his hand, I can see he’s lost two of his fingers.

“These fucking bitches appeared from nowhere.”