Page 7 of Prohibited

“Alex.” Ryan’s voice, low and clipped with anger, brought him out of his thoughts. His brows were drawn together. Hands loose by his sides but a certain tension in his body hinted at a readiness for violence.

“We have a meeting.” Alex sauntered to the door of Ryan’s bedroom and looked over his shoulder at him, at the room. “A sharecropper shack is nicer than this shithole.”

“I’m not about to take interior decorating advice from you, Marie Antoinette.” Ryan grabbed his hat off of a hook at the back of his door and set it over his wet hair, looking distinctly unfriendly. “You’re the reason this place looks like a dump.”

“I’ve always wondered about the guillotine,” Alex said, stepping ahead of Ryan. “Vicious invention. Chilling to look at. But not very impressive when you consider that it was actually designed to provide as painless and swift a death as possible. Wouldn’t it be more ideal if it made death as agonizingly slow as possible? Perhaps if you fit a crank mechanism onto the blade instead of dropping it, and turned it, one circle at a time, and slowly pressed the blade through the victim’s neck.”

“Alex,” Ryan said after a pause. “You are fucking demented."

He smiled. “Everyone has their talents.”

"I'll wake Lindsay," Ryan said, rubbing his eye and turning to walk to the other side of the house. His voice darkened. "Unless you already dumped a bucket of water on him, too?"

"Lindsay isn't home." Oh no, he'd had a busy night. He was fast asleep in one of Alex's sumptuous spare rooms where Alex had left him, worn out, used up, bathed and bandaged.

Ryan grunted, not bothering to ask why.

"He isn't invited to this meeting," Alex added.

Ryan didn't respond. It took Alex a moment to realize that he had paused behind him. Alex turned to look, opening his mouth to hasten him on, but he stopped when he realized that Ryan was standing outside the slightly ajar door of Tommy’s bedroom. He stood perfectly still, eyes glassy, immersed in whatever private hell was coming at him through that narrow opening in the doorway.

Alex stepped forward and pushed the door open, curious about what it might feel like to see the untidy bedroom with its occupant dead.

Irritating, that was all. Irritating that Tommy was dead.

Ryan made an odd sound, a deep raw noise that flowed out of him on an exhale. Then he turned away, jaw set.

“Let’s get on with it.” He stepped forward and yanked the door closed, then pivoted on his foot and walked to the front door with purpose. Outside, Alex’s driver Ian was waiting in the shiny black Ford Model T, engine chugging in its rhythmic and satisfactory way.

Ian climbed from the driver’s seat and opened the back door of the car for the both of them to climb in. Alex gave him a nod as he moved past him. Ryan climbed in after Alex and settled in next to him.

“Does he wipe your ass, too?” he said, shooting Alex a look of disgust.

“None of your business,” Alex said, primly. Though, of course Ian did nothing of the kind. Alex kept his personal tasks to himself. Those things did not excite him. And as far as the things that did excite him went, he had a hard and fast rule to stay away from his house staff and his employees in choice of playmates.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going, or am I going to have to strangle it out of you?” Ryan stuck a pre-rolled cigarette between his lips and struck a match on the bottom of his boot. Alex watched his hands moving through the air like deep throbs of music, touching the flame to the tip of the cigarette.

“I told you, it’s a surprise,” Alex said. “A birthday gift.” He reached across the car and took the cigarette out of Ryan’s mouth, enjoying the way Ryan flinched. He brought it to his own lips, wishing he could taste Ryan’s hooch-sweetened saliva over the bitter, caustic flavor of burnt tobacco. He handed it back, blowing a gentle jet of white smoke toward the closed window of the car.

“My birthday isn’t until November,” Ryan grumbled.

“An early one, then,” Alex said, watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Ryan fell into a sullen silence the rest of the car ride over. As obstinate as he was and as much as grumbled, he still followed where Alex led, a fact that filled Alex with deep pleasure.

When they pulled around the back of The Gentleman’s Haberdashery, Ryan turned to look at him with something bordering on disgust. “What are we doing at the Crystal?”

“I told you, we have a meeting.” Before Ian could do it, he opened the door, himself, and climbed down out of the car.

“Wild goose chase,” Ryan muttered under his breath. He did so love to be the one in control. Alex so longed to show him how freeing it could be to hand the reins over to someone else, to find freedom in submission.

The two men walked toward the building, entering as they always did, through the back door. They slipped through the store front, silent as ghosts, and walked behind the register where Alex activated the secret door. Normally, there wouldn’t have been anyone else there, but Joey and Hiloha were still waiting patiently for his return when they descended the stairs and unlocked the front door of the speakeasy.

Hiloha was nursing a blackened eye and Joey’s knuckles were wrapped with bloodied linen. In spite of this, they both shared a look of grim satisfaction.

“He’s waitin’ for you,” Joey said, teeth bright as he smiled in the dimness of the lamplight.

“Who is?” Ryan asked.