by Jeremy Bates
Charlotte didn’t think she’d heard Luke right—though she must have, because she’d gone numb all the way to her bones. “What did you say?” she said, though she was no longer able to muster the false calm.
“I’m going to kill you, Char.”
She stared at him in horror. Then she stood so quickly she almost fell over.
“Whoa, calm down,” Luke said, standing too. “I’m not going to kill you right here. I’ll give you a few hours to think about it, get it on your brain.”
“Luke, you’re sick. You need help.”
“You were my help, Char. You were what I needed.”
“Luke, please, listen to me—”
“What’s going on?”
It was Tony. He stopped next to Charlotte, beer in one hand, margarita in the other. He was frowning at Luke.
“Let’s go,” Charlotte told him.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Luke said. “Don’t be so rude, Char. How about some proper introductions? I’d like to meet the guy fucking my girlfriend. Sorry, my ex.”
Tony set the drinks on the table. “Why don’t you take a hike, Luke?”
“Luke?”
“I thought that was your name.”
“Luke?” Luke repeated, scowling. “You don’t know me. You don’t know me at fucking all. Luke? The fuck you think you are calling me Luke?”
Other customers, Charlotte noticed, were looking at them.
“Come on, Tony,” she said. She took his hand to lead him away.
“That’s right,” Luke said. “Slither out of here on your belly.”
“Listen, buddy,” Tony said, holding his ground. “She’s not into you anymore. Get that into your fucking head—”
Luke threw a right hook. Tony dodged the blow, and Luke’s fist deflected off his chin. Charlotte’s cry of alarm was echoed by those around her.
Tony punched back, but Luke batted his arm aside, grabbed his hair, and rammed his faced into the table.
“Luke! Stop it!” Charlotte shouted.
Ignoring her, Luke lifted Tony’s head from the table and might have drove it down a second time, but Tony snatched the pint he’d recently purchased and smashed it against Luke’s ear. The glass shattered, spraying liquid everywhere. Luke stumbled away, a hand going to his bleeding ear.
Charlotte glanced about for help. Everybody appeared as scared and startled as she did, and she didn’t think they would jump in, not against somebody Luke’s size. Even the three university guys a few seats over were on their feet, backing away.
Luke drove his shoulder in Tony’s chest and plowed him into a woman in a blue dress. She fell to her butt. Tony tripped over her and went down as well. Luke rained punches down on him.
“Luke, stop it!” Charlotte cried, throwing herself into the fray, pulling Luke’s hair.
Suddenly the bouncer appeared, a massive black man who must have weighed three hundred pounds. He shoved her aside and wrapped his meaty arms around Luke’s neck, peeling him off Tony.
Luke, however, steered the bouncer backward, the two of them knocking chairs and tables aside like bowling pins. They crashed into the wall. Luke snapped his head back so his skull struck the bigger man’s face.
The bouncer loosened his hold. Luke turned, swinging an elbow that caught the bouncer on the temple. The guy dropped like a sack of rocks.
The whole patio was in a ruckus now, people yelling, threatening to call the police.
Charlotte was crouched next to Tony, helping him to his feet, at the same time not taking her eyes off Luke, who was coming toward her again.
“Luke, I swear to God—” she said, nearly hysterical.
But he brushed roughly past her, mumbling a threat, and disappeared down the street.
Someone called for him to stop, but of course he didn’t.
#
The police arrived ten minutes later, and the paramedics shortly after that. The concussed bouncer was taken away on a stretcher, while Charlotte and Tony gave their statements to a burly, fair-haired cop named Dunn, who was not much older than they were, maybe twenty-five.
“You sure you don’t want to be looked over?” Dunn said to Tony.
Tony nodded. His was holding a dishrag to his nose to stop the bleeding, though he didn’t think his nose wasn’t broken.
“So what’s going to happen now?” Charlotte asked.
Dunn stuffed his notebook and pen into a pouch on his gun belt. “We’ll put out an all-points bulletin and hopefully pick him up.”
“But what if you don’t? What if he comes back to my house again?”
“I’d recommend you stay at a friend or family member’s tonight.”
“She’ll stay at mine,” Tony said, his voice nasally.
Charlotte looked at him. “He got my address from the university. He could get yours from them too.”
“Shouldn’t they have a policy of not giving out the addresses of their students to fucking psychopaths?”
“I’ll get in touch with someone there,” Dunn said. “In the meantime, you two keep a low profile. We’ll get this guy. It’s only a matter of when.”
#
“I can’t believe you actually dated that nutcase for four years,” Tony said, still holding the dishrag to his nose.
“I told you, he wasn’t like this before,” Charlotte replied. “It’s like night and day.”
They were in the backseat of a taxi, heading to Tony’s place on College Street. Dusk had settled, cloaking everything outside the window in washed-out blues and purples. The mountains loomed in the distance, black silhouettes.
Tony said, “What was that you mentioned—you know, about what happened to him being the army’s fault? I mean, they didn’t set up the ambush that killed his unit. How can you blame them?”
Charlotte explained the Chapter 10 Luke was made to sign and the hypocrisy with the way the army was screwing soldiers out of disability benefits.
“It’s a bloody travesty,” the taxi driver interjected. He glanced at Charlotte and Tony via the rearview mirror. “My grandson was in the army. Went to Iraq for the big hoo-ha in oh-one. Served two tours, made lieutenant, and then was diagnosed with a personality disorder and kicked out without so much as a thank you. He wanted to be a state cop, but with the personality disorder on his record they wouldn’t touch him ’cause he was supposedly damaged goods.”
“How’s he doing now?” Charlotte asked.
“Not good,” the driver said, pulling to a stop across the street from Tony’s building. “He’s in a permanent coma at the hospital.”
“My God,” she said. “What happened to him?”
“Shot himself in the head last year with his dad’s rifle.” He stopped the meter. “Sixteen fifty, kids.”
#
While Tony paid the driver, Charlotte stood on the sidewalk, her arms folded across her chest, looking about nervously. Then the taxi drove away, and Tony took her hand. “Relax,” he said, leading her across the street to his building. “There’s no way he knows where I live, Char.”
“He followed me to the bar, and to do that he had to be following me all day, from when I left my house in the morning. Who’s to say he’s still not following us right now?”
They reached the opposite sidewalk and stopped. Tony glanced up and down the street. “I don’t see him anywhere.”
Charlotte almost felt like crying. “What am I going to do, Tony?”
“You’ll be fine here.”
“But what about tomorrow? You’re going to Charleston.”
“Oh shit,” he said, frowning. Then he shrugged. “Guess I won’t be going anymore.”
“No, Tony. It’s your sister’s debut. You can’t miss it.”
“Of course I can. Luke threatened to kill you, Char. By the way, what was that he said on the way out? Something about running?”
“‘Better start running, bitch,’” she said, recalling Luke’s words.
Tony shook his head. “Who the fuck does this guy think
he is? He’s like Dirty Harry’s evil twin or something.”
“That’s why you don’t need to get involved in this.”
“I already am. He tried to break my nose.” He flourished the blood-soaked dishrag as proof.
Charlotte said, “He might try to kill you too.”
“You really believe that threat?”
“You saw what he’s become like.”
“Beating up the guy screwing his girlfriend, to paraphrase his words, isn’t the same as trying to murder him.”
“I don’t think he looks at killing the same way you or I do anymore.”
Tony thought about that, then nodded. “Okay, how about this—you come to Charleston with me. You’ll be away for the weekend. The police will probably have picked him up by Sunday. And if not, we can stay with my sister longer. She has her own house. She won’t mind.”
“Really?” Charlotte said, liking the idea immediately.
He nodded. “Actually, why don’t we just leave tonight? I have a friend in Colombia who I was going to visit this weekend anyway. I’ll give him a call. We can crash at his place tonight. It’ll break up the drive, two hours tonight, two tomorrow morning.”
“He won’t mind?”
“We’ve known each other since we were kids. He’ll be stoked.”
#
Half a block away Luke sat in the driver’s seat of the white van he had stolen in New York and which he had been living in since. He watched Charlotte and the dickhead she’d called Tony talking on the sidewalk. Then they went inside a four-story apartment building, presumably where the dickhead lived.
Luke drank from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and lost himself in his thoughts for a while until someone passed by the van, unwrapping a chocolate bar. That reminded him of how hungry he was, and he was about to cruise around for a fast food joint when Charlotte and the dickhead emerged from the building, the dickhead carrying a red piece of luggage. They went to the adjacent parking area and got in a shitty maroon Ford.
Hunger forgotten, Luke started the van and followed them.
Chapter 5
Charlotte didn’t return to her house to pack a suitcase. She didn’t know if Luke had gone there to look for her. Instead, she decided to buy whatever she needed when she reached Charleston the following morning. She hadn’t done any clothes shopping for a while, and she deserved to splurge on a few new pieces for her wardrobe.
She and Tony were now zipping southeast through the night on Interstate 26. The inside of Tony’s Ford Taurus reeked of cigars because the car used to belong to his father who, Tony had explained, had smoked several stogies a day.
Tony was speaking on his phone to his friend, whose house they were planning on crashing. When he hung up he said, “All good.”
Charlotte said, “You sure he doesn’t mind us just stopping by?”
“Nah. He has a couple pals over anyway. Do you play poker?”
“I know the rules.”
“What’s better, three jacks or a straight?”
“A straight.”
“All right, you can play. Five dollar buy-ins.”
“Thanks for the permission, Tony. So what’s this guy’s name anyway?”
“Ben. He lived a few houses down from mine growing up. His dad’s my godfather.”
“What does he do?”
“Works for his dad. They own a big pet store.”
“What about your parents? They still in the same house?”
“They retired early and moved to Florida a few years ago.”
“So no meeting the folks, huh?”
“Aren’t you disappointed? What about yours—they still in New York?”
“They’re dead,” she said.
Tony glanced at her. “Shit, Char. I’m sorry.”
“They died a long time ago. I was only eight.”
“What happened to them?”
Charlotte looked out the passenger window but saw little except her ghostly reflection. “They were shot during a break-in,” she said. “My grandparents raised me.”
“I’m really sorry, Char.”
“Thanks.” To change the topic, she said, “How much longer to your friends, do you think?”
“Another hour or so.”
“Mind if I put on the radio?”
“Go for it.”
The frequency was set to 93.3, a Forest City rock station she listened to sometimes. Kid Rock was rapping about topless dancers and his Motown crew. She liked his country stuff better, but even the gangster lyrics were preferable to talking about her deceased parents.
#
Tony’s friend Ben lived on the outskirts of Columbia in a 1950s bungalow that was nearly obscured by a weeping willow in the front yard. They parked in the driveway behind a pickup truck and knocked on the front door. Nobody answered, so Tony opened the door. The entry hall was dark and filled with sneakers. The living room to the left had a large bay window, ornate cornicing, and timber flooring. It could have been described as charming had it not been for the posters of half-naked Amazonians taped to the walls. Voices floated from the adjoining room, which turned out to be a man cave if Charlotte had ever seen one. A neon Budweiser sign blinked sporadically over a red bar fridge. ESPN played on a large screen TV. And an admittedly impressive chandelier made from upside down beer bottles hung from the ceiling. Three guys wearing a lot of plaid sat around a green-felt table crowded with beer bottles and ashtrays.
“Who’s winning?” Tony said, announcing their presence.
His friends welcomed him with expletives and hugs and backslaps. Ben was tall with a hunched posture, as if he was embarrassed by his height. He had curly hair, a turned up nose, and lizard-green eyes. He probably could have passed for the villain in a movie except he had a genuinely friendly smile. The other two were named Steve and John. Steve looked to be of Indian ancestry, was cleanly shaven, and used way too much gel in his short, spiky hair. John had a pasty white complexion, which accentuated the razor burns on his neck, and he was so drunk he could barely stand.
Tony introduced Charlotte.
“What’s your name again?” John said to Charlotte all of five seconds after Tony had told him it.
“Charlotte,” she said.
“Sharlut,” he repeated, nodding astutely. “Listen, Sharlut, I got three words for you. I. Love. Humans.”
“Would you shut the fuck up with that shit?” Ben shook his head. “He’s been saying that all night. He’s not drunk. He actually is retarded.”
“Respect,” John said, flopping back into his chair. “Show some respect.”
“Anyway,” Ben said. “Nice meeting you, Charlotte. Now I know why Tony loves Asheville so much.”
“Awww,” she said, smiling.
“He has to make up for his looks with flattery,” Tony said, “or he’d never get laid.”
“And it works,” Ben said.
“On Jenny maybe,” Tony said. “But so would a steak around your neck.”
Ben swatted Tony’s head, making a face and pointing to the door at the other end of the room.
“Jenny’s here?” Tony said, surprised.
Ben nodded. “I told her you were coming by,” he said, lowering his voice. “She wanted to see you. She brought Amy too.”
Tony’s eyes widened. “Fuck off.”
“Sorry, dude. I told her you were bringing a new missus, but she didn’t care. What was I supposed to do, not let her in?”
“Who’s Amy?” Charlotte asked.
“My ex,” Tony said, running a hand through his hair. “And she’s almost as bad as yours.”
#
Jenny and Amy were in the backyard seated on plastic chairs next to a small swimming pool, which was lit eerily with green underwater lights.
They heard the screen door slide open and, at the sight of Tony, jumped to their feet, squawking happily. They hugged him and kissed him on the cheek, careful not to spill the champagne in their flutes.
The peroxide blonde looked C
harlotte up and down like she was the anti-Christ. She was wearing a denim jacket over a turquoise top, a short floral skirt that showed off miles of leg, and ridiculously over-the-top four-inch pumps for a friendly neighborhood visit. “You must be Cheryl,” she said, offering her hand.
Charlotte shook. “Charlotte,” she corrected, “but close enough. And you must be Amy.”
“That’s right, darling. And this is Jenny.” She indicated the brunette, who waved shyly. In contrast to Amy’s showy outfit, Jenny was dressed in a slouchy sweater, a frumpy scarf, and loose jeans.
“It’s so good to see you, Tony,” Amy said, turning her back to Charlotte. “God, how long have you been gone for now? We’ve missed you here.”
“It’s good to see you guys too,” he said.
“So Ben says you’re going to Charleston to see your sister? How’s Maria doing anyway? She’s still with the theater?”
“Yup.”
“And Gregg?”
“They broke up.”
“Oh no! He was such a gem. What happened?”
“Guess they just didn’t work.”
“So what show’s she doing now?”
“Young Frankenstein,” Charlotte said.
“She’s fantastic, Tony,” Amy said. “She really is. Remember when we watched her in A Christmas Carol last year? You absolutely must say hi to her for me.”
Charlotte wanted to roll her eyes, or puke. She’d met at least two dozen sorority girls at NYU who could have been Amy’s twin sister.
“Sure,” Tony said. “I’ll give her your best.”
“So what’s the occasion?” Amy asked.
“The occasion?”
“You’re not driving four hours to Charleston just to say hi to Maria, are you?”
“It’s her debut in Young Frankenstein,” Charlotte said.
“If you wanted company, Tony,” Amy said, “you should have asked me. I would have loved to go.”
Charlotte had had enough of the snub. “Hey, nice shoes, Amy,” she said.
Everyone looked at Amy’s pumps.