American Outlaw - Jesse James [61]
“Well?” she asked me on our first night there. “What do you think?”
We lay in bed next to each other, and I could hear the traffic whizzing by outside. It sounded like the ocean—if the ocean had an old internal combustion engine.
“This place is a dump.”
“Jesse,” Karla said, outraged.
“Oh, hell, I sort of like it,” I admitted.
“Man,” Karla said, snuggling closer to me. “We are going to be happy here. I know it.”
I’d never really had a home of my own in my entire life. It had always been my dad’s place, or my mom’s, or Rhonda’s mom’s—and it had always ended badly. That night on Hackett Avenue with Karla, I felt the oddest sensation of safeness.
My natural inclination, of course, was to celebrate the occasion with some violence.
“I’ve decided to teach you how to kickbox,” I told Karla, the next morning. “That way, you can keep safe when I’m at work.”
“I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself, Jesse,” Karla assured me.
“Well, now you’ll be even more capable,” I said.
We sparred for a few minutes. I showed her how to throw a cross.
“Not bad!” I said. “For a girl, you have pretty good form.”
“Oh, for a girl, huh?”
“Don’t get all offended,” I said. “Here, let me show you some combinations.”
I hooked a short left into her chest, and followed with a right jab. But Karla darted away from the left, and in so doing, she stepped right into my jab. I bipped her good, right on the chin.
“Oh, shit!” I laughed. “Sorry, honey, I didn’t . . .”
I never got to finish my sentence. Karla socked me in the face with her gloved fist, as hard as she could.
“Fuck!” I cried, holding my eye in pain. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“Instinct,” Karla snapped. She was still holding up her dukes in front of her. She stared me down like a boxer. “Reflexes took over.”
I tried to open my eye, but already it had begun to swell. “Instinct. Got it.”
“So what’s next?” she said cheerfully. She bounced nimbly from foot to foot.
“You’re done,” I said very quietly, unlacing my gloves. “Flying colors. You passed.”
We had tons of love for each other. But we were not a perfect couple. Adjusting to regular life after having been on the road for so many years proved a bigger challenge than I had anticipated. It wasn’t that I had been so wild on tour; quite the opposite, actually. As security, I was so used to constantly sweating to ensure that no drummers got stabbed and no groupies got pregnant that I’d rarely had the chance to blow off some steam. Now at long last, it was my time to be a shithead.
“I don’t like you going to strip bars,” Karla informed me.
“I don’t even speak to the girls, honey,” I told her. “Honest, no one gets a dime from me.”
“Then why are you even there if you don’t talk to the girls?”
“My friends make me go,” I swore. “I try to steer us all over to the library, but you know, they just won’t have it.”
I took Karla seriously, but I also felt like it was my God-given right to run around, talk shit, get into fights, and get drunk with my friends. I knew she couldn’t press me too hard about going to strip clubs; after all, hadn’t she been doing pretty much the same thing for years now? I guess it was kind of rotten of me to use that against her, but I did it anyway. I didn’t know any better.
“Let me be my own fucking man,” I demanded, coming home drunk in the middle of the night. “Just because we live together doesn’t mean we’re married. All right?”
“Yeah, you sure are a big man,” she said. “I love the way you’re acting, it’s so adult and cool.”
“I told you, you’re my woman, and that should be enough for you.”
“It’s not that, Jesse. I don’t like you running around with that crowd . . .”