by Eli Constant
“Okay. I’ll go on my run, take a shower, and head out around five. I’ll give you the whole place to yourselves, even though my apartment’s off limits. Not to be a jerk, but I’m not too keen on having a duo of randy teenagers making out on my couch.”
“I’m hardly a teenager, Tori.” Dean sounds offended.
“You’re only twenty, Dean. Mei’s never had a boyfriend, because of her family life. Thus, teenagers. At least when it comes to relationships.”
“Twenty is not a teenager,” he says, offense obvious in his tone.
“Fine. You’re all grown up and that’s why you have to sneak behind your girlfriend’s father’s back and meet for a date at your work with permission from your boss. That sounds nothing like teenager life.” I’m smiling. Dean obviously can’t see it.
“Point taken,” he sounds sullen. “Thanks for letting us come there, you ancient twenty-five year old.”
“No problem, teenager,” I say the last word quickly and then hang up before he can make a fuss. I’m not quite quick enough and I do hear him curse. It makes me laugh.
I love running when it’s so damn cold that the air burns the hell out of your lungs. Nothing else quite makes you feel alive like that, with every footfall being an effort and you have to stay in constant motion to keep warm.
I go at a good pace, careful of icy patches on the path around the lake. The county’s great about salting the roads, but the walking and running paths don’t always get the same treatment. I get a massive cramp in my left calf about a mile in. That’s my fault; I didn’t stretch enough. I’m not quite to the level of fit that I can just stretch out a little and hit the road without a worry.
Stopping, I angle my foot and press the toe into the tree while leaning forward again and keeping my leg straight. It feels like someone’s injected my leg with botox. It’s rock hard and won’t relent. I keep pushing my foot hard into the trunk, holding it, and then releasing to see if the muscle has loosened up.
It takes a good ten minutes before I’m ready to move forward. I take it slower this time, a calm jog rather than a heart-pumping race.
When I’m moving again, I force myself into a place of relaxation. I open my mind to the world around. There’s still life everywhere, but it’s all gone a bit quiet with the cold. Soon, I am lost in the everything and turning around at Bonneau Beach like no time has passed at all. Oh, I can feel the burning in my legs and arms and lungs that tells me I’m reaching my limits, but I’m able to ignore the pain and go numb with the thwack, thwack, thwack of my shoes against the compressed gravel path.
As I turn off the path to pass Leslie Downing’s house, I hear a sound that sounds like tapping on glass. Confused, I slow to a halt and look around. Soon, I find Leslie herself standing behind the glass of one of her rear windows waving and then holding up one finger to tell me to wait where I am. I smile and nod.
Bending over, I grip my thighs above the knees and I breathe in and out slowly. My body wasn’t quite ready to stop, but now that it has, it’s going to be harder to start up again. It’s a good thing I only have a short ways to go—through Leslie’s yard, across the street, and down my long drive.
“Victoria, I’ve been trying to catch you on one of your runs. I’m so glad I did this morning.” Her voice is ancient-sounding, crackly like brown paper, but also warm and sweet like brown sugar. It matches her skin, lovely and warm. Her face is so wrinkled that she’s nearly cartoonish, yet her eyes are as bright and young as I bet they ever were. “My grandson went fishing last weekend at Lake Marion and he brought over so much. There’s no way I can eat it all. I thought that handsome male friend of yours could give them a good cleaning and fry them up for you.”
This isn’t the first time that Mrs. Downing has stopped me on my run to chat about Kyle. She’s always trying to pry information from me. Aside from her grandson, who lives in Santee, most of her family is too far away to visit often, so she takes a too-keen interest in my life. It’s been worse lately though, ever since she got back from Arizona and found out that I’d been in the hospital.
I cannot tell you how many casseroles she brought over after I was released. I still have two in the freezer.
“Oh, that’s so nice of you. I honestly don’t know if Kyle knows how to clean a fish, let alone cook one.” I sidestep her giant fur-ball of a cat, Gilly. He’s gotten even fatter.
“He’ll manage, dear. If he doesn’t know how, it’s a good skill for a man to have. Mr. Downing was a wonderful fisherman and cook. We used to camp together four or five times a year, you know. When he was alive.”
“Yes, I know. Mr. Downing was exactly what a man should be.” I smile at her. She wasn’t just a woman with rose-colored glasses. Corey Downing had truly been one of those men who did no wrong and he’d loved Leslie like she was nothing short of a queen. I was still pretty young when he’d died and left Leslie a widow. I remember his bright white teeth shining in his wide mouth. He was always grinning and waggling his snow white eyebrows, set like large pale caterpillars against his dark chocolate forehead.
“Well, here, come into the garage and I’ll load you up.” She waves me inside and I follow. When I enter, I’m struck by the smell of baby powder, vanilla, and lemony cleaning solution. I don’t know why, but it reminds me of what an American grandmother’s house should smell like. Grandmother Sophia’s Hellhole Bay house always smelled like earth, spices, and candles. It was heady, not in an unpleasant way, just in a different way.
Leslie’s house looks like a Grandmother’s house too—with its cornflower blue printed wallpaper, ivory doilies on every surface, teddy bears and little porcelain dolls stuffed onto wingback chairs. It hadn’t changed a bit from when I was a kid and she’d invite me over for cookies and milk when an evening funeral was going on. She used to say that a kid didn’t need to be around such things, that life was about joy and not grieving. I agreed with her. Of course, that sort of childhood wasn’t possible for the likes of me.
We walk through the hallway and exit out a door off the kitchen. The garage is very dim, despite the lightbulb swinging above us that she’s just pulled the string to. “Here, hold this.” Leslie hands me a tall white bucket. “You can return it whenever.”
When she opens the standup freezer, I see that she wasn’t kidding about her grandson loading her up. There was so much fish that I was surprised that she could get the darn thing closed.
“It’s mostly catfish, but there’s a few bass in here.”
As I stand there, Leslie fills the bucket until it’s heaving enough that it strains the muscles in my arms. “Are you sure you want to give me this much? Even having Kyle to feed, this’ll take me forever to finish.”
“I’m a single old lady. It’ll take me a heck of a lot longer.” She drops the lid to the freezer and it makes a suction sound as it impacts.
She depresses a button next to the stairs that lead inside and the garage door squeaks up. It sort of jerks and jolts until it stops midway.
“Shoot. I’ve got to get this thing fixed.” Leslie walks over to the aluminum door and grips the bottom, then proceeds to shake it like a mad woman. It protests, but moves a foot higher. “Well, that’s the best we’ll get I guess.”
“You know, Kyle is really handy.” I say the words before I’ve thought about them. It’s really not polite to offer someone’s services without their permission, even if that someone is your boy-toy.
“Is he? You tell that handsome young man that he’ll get a dozen cookies if he comes and takes a gander for me.” Leslie’s only seen Kyle up close once, but she was pretty much sold on the whole package from that moment on.
I laugh. “I’ll tell him that. I’m sure he’ll be chomping at the bit to come over, seeing as I can’t bake to save my life.”
“We’ll have to remedy that. No man wants to marry a woman who can’t bake a cake or two.”
“I hope we’ve advanced past that kind of thinking, Mrs. Downing. Not every woman has to bake and not every man has to k
now how to catch and gut a fish.” I don’t mention that I do, in fact, know how to bake quite well and I don’t feel like that downgrades my feminist ideals and social liberation at all. On the other hand, I’ve absolutely no idea if Kyle knows how to fish. I’ll have to remember to ask him.
“The world has gone downhill, hasn’t it?” Her tone is serious, too serious for her to be serious. She can’t hold the smile back for long. “Okay, get home and get those in the freezer. It’d be a shame to let them spoil.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you so much again.” The garage closes behind me as I hobble down the driveway and across the road. By the time I get home and drag myself and the bucket up the stairs, I’m ready to chunk every single fish in the trash.
I don’t, of course. I’m not poor by any means, but I also don’t waste. A product of my youth maybe, when the funeral home wasn’t doing well and times were tight with dad. All the fish barely fit in my small freezer. I have to sacrifice a half gallon of butter pecan ice cream in the process. I debate eating it all, but instead I square my shoulders and dump it down the disposal.
No one can say I don’t have willpower of steel.
It’s two-thirty by the time I hop into the shower and rinse the running sweat and fishy smell from my body.
Chapter Four
I haven’t been to the bar since Jim died.
Kyle’s asked me to come over of course, but he’s understood my refusal. I still see Blackthorn in my dreams, the way he changed into the Snake Man, his toothy mouth turning to feast on Jim’s body. And Sausage Fingers, the man of clay with the spirit of a mentally challenged boy. I’m afraid if I walk into the bar, the nightmares—which have lessened to dark dreams—will once again resurge and send me screaming into the night.
Today though, with him there manning the taps and my home soon to become date central for Dean and Mei, I decide that maybe it’s time. Maybe I can handle it.
Donning sweat pants, because I’m a sexy beast, a fitted band shirt I’ve had for too many years to count, and a pair of purple Chucks, I pull my hair up into a quick high ponytail and grab my purse—which doesn’t match at all since it’s polished and sensible and my outfit is decidedly not. The only accessory I bother to wear is my dad’s watch. It’s been in a box for a long time, but I finally got around to replacing the battery and I like having the reminder of him around my wrist.
It’s four by the time I’m in the SUV and ready to drive.
When I pull into the bar, I notice that Kyle’s had it spruced up a little bit. The outside cedar siding has been treated so that the wood is a deep rich color again and the shutters have been painted a maroon shade that makes the whole establishment seem a bit too much like someone’s personal hunting lodge. The roof is new too, the color of the shingles almost matching the shutters.
Walking in, I’m hit with the not-so-pleasing sounds of pop music. Jim never played music. He didn’t care for it and he said he didn’t want people coming in thinking his place was some cheap dance hall where they could get sloppy drunk and get a few thrills while dancing poorly to twangy music. I search for the source of the sound—the singer almost sounds like Britney, but a bit more mature than her bubblegum and mini skirt days—and find a tall juke box in the corner of the main room adjacent to the bathroom doors.
I knew about the live music, the singers, and the karaoke night. I didn’t know about the metal box filled with CDs. I’m not sure why, but out of everything, the juke box bothered me. I know it’s totally stupid.
Jim must be rolling over in his grave, I think, striding towards the bar where Kyle is talking to a young blonde woman in crop top and too-tight shorts. It’s freaking winter. No one should be wearing such skimpy clothing… and looking that good in them… and flipping her hair as she talks to my boyfriend.
I find that I’m really, really regretting my choice of outfit.
I clear my throat as I approach and perch on one of the stools. They aren’t plain hard wood anymore. Kyle’s upgraded. The faux leather is plushy and black. A butt could get a little too comfy sitting on it ordering drinks. That’s probably the point.
Kyle looks away from the perky blond and finds my face. The smile that spreads his mouth warms my heart and puts me at ease instantly. The girl might be flirting, but she wasn’t taking Kyle in with it, not even a little bit.
Loyalty’s a damn hard thing to find—in family, in friends, in lovers. I’d take that over pulse-pounding passion any day. Of course… my nether-regions might disagree.
“Hey, babe.” He walks close enough to lean over the bar and kiss me. It’s deep and wet and the sensation spreads from my lips to… other regions. When he pulls away, it takes me a second or two to open my eyes. When I do, he’s no longer smiling, he’s grinning like a horny kid. “I’m glad you came by. You doing okay?”
I knew what he meant. Was I doing okay being back in the bar after what happened with Jim? Yeah, I think I’m okay. Although, I wouldn’t be peering too close at the spot where Jim fell, where Blackthorn attacked him, where… I shake my head, realizing quickly that saying ‘I’m okay’ would be a lie. I couldn’t lie to myself, much less lie to someone else.
“Yes and no.” An acceptable truth. “I didn’t even think about it when I first came in. I was distracted by the updates outside, the music inside and…” I didn’t finish the sentence the way I was going to, because the other thing would have made me seem like a jealous girlfriend. Which I was. “All the people.”
“If it’s too hard, don’t stay. I’ll understand.”
“No, I’m here now.”
He nods, his face slipping a little from happiness to deeply-buried grief. When he turns away, he notices the blonde is still standing in the same position. She looks annoyed, or at least, she does to me. “Cherry, we’ll have the kitchen up and running in the next week, but for now keep the tables cleared and you can help me bring stuff from the back.”
“That’s Mikey’s job.” She whines, literally, like a toddler. “I thought you hired me to help you behind the bar.”
“No, I hired you to be a Jane-of-all-trades. Mikey runs the bar for me and he does most of my errands and liquor restocking. You’re our first-ever waitress and I need you to keep the tables clean, help make sure the bathrooms stay tidy, and when the kitchen is operational, your main duty will be to the customers.” Kyle is speaking in a calm, soothing voice. He’s treating her way nicer than she deserves.
“I swear that’s not what you said in the interview.” She grumbles, putting her small hands on her hips and sticking out her bottom lip.
“I’m sorry if you misunderstood what I was expecting of you. It’s a big place and we’re expanding. Right now, there’s only three of us working. We all have to do things we might not like. If that’s not agreeable to you, then I can go to one of the other people that applied and I turned down to give you a chance.” Kyle picks up a cloth—one that’s a damn sight cleaner than the kind Jim used to use—and he swipes at the glossy surface of the freshly-varnished bar. It’s already clean enough to eat off of, but I think he need something to keep his hands from strangling the difficult girl.
“I need the job, Kyle.” She pleads, and his name is a little more heated with lust than I think I can stomach.
“Then do the job you were hired for.” Kyle stops moving the cloth, he closes his eyes and his fingers clench and unclench. My eyes are drawn to his forearms and how thick they are. Now that we’ve been dating a while, I don’t always notice how muscular he is. Honestly, he’s huge. “I don’t have time to keep arguing about it. You’ve got until the end of the week to shape up or ship out. Period.”
I fought back a smile. Jim used to say that to patrons that were getting a little too rowdy. “Shape up or ship out, boys. This isn’t a wrestling arena.” Normally, they’d shape up. The few times they didn’t shape up nor ship out, Jim would pull out his shotgun and go a little… unorthodox on them.
Cherry sighs and drops her hands from her hips to
sway listlessly at her sides. “I thought because you were friends with my mom that you’d give me an easy go of it.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” Kyle opens his eyes and goes back to cleaning the counter. The stress in his arms and shoulders remains, as if the veins are threatening to burst under the pressure.
When Cherry has left, stamping all the way to the back room like a tantrum-throwing child, Kyle gives me a sorrowful stare. “Sorry about that. She’s a little…”
“Annoying? Childish? Lazy?” I hand out a few options like candy at Halloween. It’s not often that I instantly dislike someone.
“All of the above.”
“So you’re friends with her mother?”
Kyle seems a little sheepish then. “We dated a few years ago. We didn’t fit though, decided it mutually. Cherry wasn’t so prickly back then. Her mother was desperate for her to find a job instead of sitting around the house.”
“She looks old enough to secure her own jobs.”
“Oh, she is. She had a lot of potential too. Graduated top in her class beginning of last year, but then something happened. She doesn’t like to talk about it and not even her mother knows what it was. Now, she’s what you saw today. Just generally hard to get along with.”
“I think she wants to get along with you.” I tease, walking my index and middle finger across the bar and over to his hand that’s still holding the cleaning cloth.
“Don’t even joke about that.” Kyle pushes the cloth under the counter and turns around to fill me a glass with ice and water. He knows I don’t drink. Now that he runs the bar, I don’t have to pretend. I’d have never admitted to Jim that I didn’t care for alcohol. I really believe he would have taken some personal offense by it, even though what I put in my body has nothing to do with anyone else.
The cold water slips past my lips and over my tongue. It tastes clean and wonderful, but it also brings to mind when I came to the bar hunting for information on Donald Mayer. Vodka over ice. A simple, clear drink. Like the water.