Page 19 of Rev
“Remember anything?” He doesn’t leave my space, and his eyes don’t leave mine.
“Um. Up until Oscar brought me to that…thatplace. He wouldn’t let me go…and then…” I shrug. “After that, nothing.”
“Oscar Wendell is a piece ofshit,” he spits. “Vile, disgusting animal. You see him, you fuckin’runthe other way like the Devil himself is grabbin’ at you, ‘cuz with Oscar, it ain’t far from the truth.”
“I sort of gathered that.” I frown. “How’d I end up here? And whereishere?”
“Take the pill,” he orders.
“A pill like this on an empty stomach—”
“Take it,” he snaps, interrupting me. “I’ll feed you after.”
“But where am I?”
His eyes narrow, his expression doing the impossible and hardening further; he doesn’t verbally repeat his command, but it’s patently obvious he’s not going to repeat himself, and if I make him, something bad might happen—to me.
I toss the pill into my mouth, crack open the bottle, and take a sip to wash the big pill down. It sticks halfway, and I glug more water, until it finally goes down. “Gosh, that’s a big pill.”
He doesn’t laugh, or even smile, but the intensity of his presence somehow communicates amusement. “Good. Now come on, girl. Stick close.” He strides out the door, long legs eating space so that I have to almost trot to keep up.
The hallway beyond his room is narrow, the same high drop-tile ceilings and pale gray epoxy flooring with light blue flecks continue from his room into the hallway; the walls are the same pale gray blue as his room as well; the effect is overall industrial, clean, and new. I glance both ways quickly—I count a total of ten doors, five on each side of the hallway, spaced such that I figure each room is identical to his. At the far end, right of his room, a stairway leads up, an exit sign over the doorway, raw silver metal railings on both sides.
He’s already several feet ahead of me, and his command was to stick close, so I trot a few steps until I’m less than three feet from him. And good golly Miss Molly, what a view. His back is as muscular as his front, meaning rippling with muscle. He must be living in single-digit body fat to sport this kind of intensely visible musculature. Those shorts are very, ermmmm, brief, and leave little to the imagination, where his backside is concerned. And his backside is…well…? It’s difficult for me not to stare at it. Round and hard, bulging against the shorts, which reveal each half going taut and concave with each step. You could break a coconut open on it.
The hallway opens into a large common area.
To the right of the hallway, a deep, long U-shaped sectional that could easily seat fifteen people, facing an expensive projector TV with floor-to-ceiling speakers built into the wall on either side, more speakers hanging from the ceiling behind the couch. Further right of the TV, next to the speaker, a built-in glass-front cabinet houses several gaming consoles, a DVD player, the sound system unit, a cable box, and a couple other pieces of electronics whose use I cannot guess at. There’s a five-foot-square black-glass coffee table in the open space of the U, littered with beer bottles, game controllers, cans of soda and beer, empty liquor bottles, half- and partially full liquor bottles, rocks glasses, ashtrays, and a stack of white ceramic plates and utensils, used and dirty and waiting to be cleared.
Left of the hallway, an industrial kitchen and two long cafeteria-style table-and-benches. The kitchen is state of the art, with at least eight burners, a huge griddle, a walk-in freezer, two matching glass-front industrial refrigerators, a long island with white built-in cutting boards and roll-top chilled containers for produce, a frying station, and a massive rack containing pots and pans and cooking utensils and mixing bowls and a magnetic knife holder on the side.
The hallway continues on the opposite side of the common area, dead-ending at a three-way: a doorway at center leads to a gym, and two more doorways left and right lead to I can’t tell what.
The three men I pegged as brothers—the two blonds and the copper-haired one—are sitting together in a row at one of the tables, eating salad out of enormous mixing bowls. A name percolates up through my hazy brain for the copper-haired guy—Si. The one who’d been at the weird door with Si—the brawny monster who looked like he could bicep curl a Mini Cooper in each hand is at the griddle, scrambling a huge pile of eggs; he’s shirtless, and my mind boggles at the size of him. Kane? I think his name is Kane. To say he’s enormous is an understatement, but he’s got earbuds in and he’s dancing while cooking, and his movements are lithe and light on his feet, which with his size is somewhat scary.
The scary-huge-male quota doesn’t end there, though. There’s a coffee station near the rack of utensils, a decent-sized chunk of counter featuring an industrial double coffee maker, with the kind of sugar and milk setup you’d see at a big box coffee shop. At this station is a man who makes both Kane and my…rescuer?…seem positively puny. He’s swarthy, his skin the deep brown of someone born brown who spends a lot of time outside in the sun. If he’s less than six-eight, I’m Mary Poppins. His hair is black as ink, loose and glossy and down to his shoulders. He has tattoos covering his torso down to his diaphragm and full sleeves on both arms, the ink-work looking like genuine tribal designs, meaning done old-style with meaning, not just picked from a book to look douche-cool. Like all the males in the room, he’s shirtless. If Kane could curl Mini Coopers and overhead press Volvos, this guy could curl full-size pickups and overhead press a bulldozer. There’s a layer of fat, but it’s just that, a thin layer covering the thick armor-plate muscle. He’s barefoot, wearing massive basketball shorts that hang just past his knees.
My…guy—the one whose room I woke up in—sees that I’ve stopped to assess, and frowns at me, jerking his head at the tables. “Sit.” He dismisses me, assuming I’ll obey, and glances at the giant at the coffee station. “Yo, Chance—pour a couple more, wouldja.” Back to me. “How you take it, girl?”
“Um, black is fine?”
At the sound of my voice, four heads whip around and up, four pairs of eyes fixing on me. I feel, suddenly, like a kitten who wandered into a dog pound.
Like easy dinner.
“The fuck is that, Rev?” This is Kane.
“We can have girls down here?” This is one of the other blondes.
“No,” responds the giant at the coffee station. “We can’t.” He pours coffee into three diner-style mugs, and his huge hands make them look like princess teacups. “Rev, explain.”
I look to my…savior, I suppose he is. “Your name is Rev?”
A grunt from him is all I get. Then, to the giant—Chance: “Didn’t have much choice.”
I’m still standing in the hallway near the common room, since Rev hasn’t moved out of my way yet.
He glances over his shoulder at me. “Sit, I said.”