Page 76 of Devil’s Disciples

As the doors opened, our lips parted.

I studied his face. He was feeling what I felt. The proof was sprinkled throughout his steel-blue eyes.

He brushed my hair away from my face and looked at me intently. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but those same eyes answered me before I could speak.

There was nothing wrong.

Everything, on that night, was right.

31

Baker

Goose finished washing the dishes, inspected each of them for imperfections, and put them in their respective places in the cabinets. After the kitchen was as tidy enough for him to accept it, he poured a cup of coffee and sat down.

“I don’t know how you can drink that shit black,” I said. “You’re going to have ulcers before you’re forty.”

“Coffee doesn’t produce ulcers.” He took a sip. “It’s therapeutic.”

I lifted my cup of cream and sugar laced java. “If it’s doctored up.”

“Adding cream and sugar to coffee is like adding cinnamon to a chili recipe. It ruins it.”

“Who the fuck puts cinnamon in chili?”

He gave me a cross look over the top of his raised cup. “People like you.”

“On another subject. Dinner was a huge success.”

“She like the coxinhas?”

“The fried chicken balls?”

“Legs,” he said. “They were supposed to look like legs.”

“They looked like fried teardrops.”

He stood, finished his coffee and then poured another cup. On his way back to his seat, he shrugged one shoulder. “It was the best I could do on short notice.”

Goose was addicted to caffeine the way a heroin addict was addicted to smack. He needed it all waking hours of the night and day. He was the only member of the MC that would alternate drinks of beer and coffee at the same time.

“Seemed to like ‘em,” I said. ‘She ate half a dozen of them.”

“They’re a bitch to make. Good little fucker’s though.”

“I appreciate it.” I tilted my cup toward him. “It went better than I expected.”

He took a drink of coffee and then chuckled. “I know you didn’t go to a movie.”

The shark-toothed blowjob story had made its rounds enough times that everyone knew my position on going to the movies. The men were also well aware of most of my superstitious beliefs. Most of them.

“No. We went for a ride.”

“What’d you take?”

“The bumble bee.”

“The old GSX-R, huh? Wouldn’t have guessed that.”