Gretchen surged up behind him like a lusty sea nymph, her left hand caressing his chest, her right hand gliding over his hip and down to his groin, her large breasts pressed against his bare back as she began sucking at his left ear lobe.
A moan escaped his lips, and he closed his eyes, his resolve giving way.
When he opened his eyes a moment later he saw, in the distance, a sharp blade of movement slice through the pale spill of light in the walkway: a dark man shape. Carlos.
“Gretchen,” he said urgently, needing to warn her.
“You didn’t think I’d let you leave me, did you, Brad?”
Before he could protest, her right arm flew up and locked with the furious coiling strength of an anaconda around his neck. He fought, but she attacked even harder, bending his left arm behind his back with a sudden, painful twist that would have made him scream, but he could not, for she was crushing his throat with her powerfully muscled right arm, and as he kicked, and she kicked, too, they fell away from the side of the canoe, thrashing, bobbing up and out of the water, up and out again, turning and fighting and bucking and groaning and gasping for breath, swallowing water as she relentlessly squeezed the life from him.
He knew he was dying, and knew too that his soul would not be carried away by a brave Valkyrie on a white horse to the golden halls of Valhalla.
All his dreams died with him.
* * *
—
After she had rested for a while in the water, she began the slow, difficult maneuvers required to get the polyester cable around the corpse’s neck, then threaded through and tied to the hook on the bow so she could paddle back to the dock with the body in tow.
Thunder still rumbled and lightning flashed, but farther away now. The storm was passing through, leaving nothing but rain behind by the time she reached the dock. There, she secured the canoe to one of the wooden piles with a nylon line and detached the polyester cable from the bow hook and anchored the corpse to the opposite pile, to be dealt with later.
But not too much later; she could not risk leaving it where someone might notice. She felt tired just thinking of all there was to do; the murder had not left her as energized as she had expected. Of course, she would not expect the death of any other man to affect her quite so powerfully as her father’s, but she had known David and Alan no longer than she had known Brad, and had assumed from those experiences that the sexual connection was enough to invest the subsequent killing with meaning, to make them the poetic inspiration she needed. She almost dreaded the long, hard night ahead of her. What if, when she was done, she was too tired to write? What if the poems were no good?
At least when she’d killed Wolf there had been no need to hide the body; she had managed to make it look like an accident, and the police had believed what she told them. The only person who was at all suspicious was that little bitch who’d thought she’d be his next bride, the one he’d meant to leave her for, and Gretchen had even managed to convince her. She must have thought no one could fake that sort of grief—but, of course, she hadn’t had to fake it. She would mourn the loss of her father for the rest of her life. She hadn’t meant to kill him; she wished it hadn’t happened, but he had been going to leave her, and she could not allow that.
She had been standing, unmoving, on the dock, lost in her thoughts, while the rain poured down on her, for a good five minutes before a man’s voice saying her name snapped her out of it.
She saw Carlos, in a rain-drenched summer shirt, jeans and sandals, walking toward her.
She remembered Brad saying he had heard the van—she had thought it a jealous fantasy on his part. But here was Carlos, in the flesh, striding toward her.
She frowned, annoyed. “You didn’t wait for my call.”
He stepped on to the dock. “With the storm and all, I had a feeling you might need me,” he said. “Like before.” He reached out and cupped one bare breast in strong brown fingers, then bent and kissed her.
“Yes,” she murmured, her lips still close to his. “Like before.”
She was strong and competent, but it was good to have this man’s help, good to have him close and feel his warmth. Carlos would always obey her. He was the most devoted of worshippers.
The Trendy-Bar Side of Life
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
I tend bar, not in one of those upscale things that serve weird drinks with funny names, where everyone comes after work for a nanosecond while the bar’s the hot spot and then move on when someplace else becomes trendy.
Nope. I tend bar in one of the old dives that still exist in neighborhoods, the kind that no sane person would enter without an invitation, and that invitation comes only from the universe. You know, you lose your job, your wife walks out, your friends tell you to stop whining, so you pass the dive bar you’d never think of entering when you’re on the trendy-bar side of life.
You walk in, see the decrepit unshaven guy sitting at the edge of the bar, a woman nursing a piss-colored beer at a table that hasn’t balanced since 1970, and one of those lighted bubbling beer signs for a brand that got discontinued when you were a kid. You doubt the bar’s been cleaned since then, either, although none of the surfaces you touch are sticky or dirty or dust-covered. The place is just so old that the dirt and the now-banned cigarette smoke are embedded into the walls.
I’ve worked in that kind of bar since the night Ronald Reagan got reelected, the night I decided to chuck it all and walk into one of those bars myself. Only I walked in, wearing a suit with a lace collar, bow-tie untied, and heels so high they looked like fuck-me shoes instead of what they really were, which was the required business attire of the day.
Yeah, I’m a woman. Yeah, you’re excused if you have no idea. Most people don’t know until I open my mouth, and some aren’t sure even then. They see the shaved head, the muscular fat, the T-shirt with ripped sleeves, and the biceps tattoos, and think “man.” They ignore the studs outlining the rim of my ears, the delicate chain around my neck that ends in a teardrop diamond, and the breasts that, granted, are a bit underwhelming, even with the extra fifty pounds I’ve gained since that horrid night.
This isn’t my bar, even though folks think it’s my bar. They never see Bancroft, the owner, who, let’s be honest, hasn’t crossed the threshold since his first AA meeting in 1991. He calls me on the landline when he’s coming by (he doesn’t have a cell), stops his Hog in the alley near the garbage cans so he can’t smell the piss and stale beer from the back door, and makes me hand him the books (on paper), the cash, and the hard-drive backup, which, in theory, he takes to the accountant, because Lord knows a man who doesn’t like cellphones doesn’t like computers, either.
Bancroft tells me I can do what I want with the place. I can redecorate. I can expand to the empty storefront next door (which he also owns). I can start making trendy drinks.
He doesn’t care, so long as the bar makes money.
I’m afraid if I alter a damn thing, the money will vanish, and if the money vanishes, then I actually have to confront a few things, like why I work in a dive bar in a redneck neighborhood, why I have the same conversations that I’ve had weekly for thirty years with the same people, and why even I’ve started to look at strangers with suspicion because, y’know, they don’t belong in this bar.
Which is how I look at the new guy when he staggers in. Maybe twenty-five, pretty in a sexually ambiguous kinda way, collar open, shirt askew, tie completely gone. He’s walking like something hurts, like a woman does when the high heels she’s worn all day hurt not just her feet, but her back as well. Only he’s not wearing high heels. His dress shoes are stained on top, but the sides shine.
He gingerly climbs onto a bar stool in the very center of the horseshoe bar, and if I weren’t paying attention to him, I’d assume he was being prissy—worrying that the seat wasn
’t clean enough for the black silk pants that matched the shiny black silk suit coat.
I slap a bar napkin in front of him, and he jumps. Then he looks at my hand, resting on that bar napkin, as if he’s never seen a hand before.
I frown. And, for once, I modulate my tone so I don’t sound actively hostile.
“You want something?”
He raises his head, but his eyes don’t meet mine. “I don’t know. Jesus. A drink.”
Normally, I’d say, You are in a bar, buddy, but I don’t. Instead, I look closer at him. His hair’s spiky, and I don’t think that’s style. Either a bruise is forming along his chin or something has smudged there.
“Ah…beer,” he says, then shakes his head. “Um, no. Whiskey. Brandy. Something that burns.”
“Beer, whiskey, or brandy,” I say. “Which do you want?”
“Jack,” he says. “Just give me some Jack.”
I pour him a Jack Daniel’s, and set the glass in front of him. He’s already torn up the bar napkin. There’s dirt under his fingernails.
His manicured fingernails.
He leans over the drink like he doesn’t recognize it. I get another glass, and fill it with ice water, and set that in front of him, on a coaster this time, with a bar napkin beside it.
He doesn’t even look up. I’m not sure he notices.
My own mouth is dry. I look around the bar, to see who’s here. The same crowd is here day to day, so sometimes I don’t really notice who’s in the bar and who’s not. And I haven’t noticed until now.
Ma Kettle sits in her favorite booth, her gray wig askew, and her sweatshirt food-stained. Her real name is Cora Kattleman, but I think I’m the only one who knows that, and only because she opened her tab with a credit card fifteen years ago. Everyone calls her Ma Kettle at her insistence, and most folks don’t even know the reference, a clichéd but popular hillbilly movie character from the forties and fifties.
But then no one thinks about the nicknames. Most of us in this place have one, and we use it instead of our real names. It’s easier that way.
Ma Kettle comes in at noon, every day, and sits in her booth. I set the first vodka tonic in front of her, and maybe by the fifth, she’ll say hello. She doesn’t talk much, mostly watches the TV, which I have on mute, and stares at nothing.
She hasn’t seen the guy.
And no one else is here, although Rick Winters should come in at any moment. His shift ends at three-thirty, and he usually rolls in here by three-thirty-five.
Just me, Ma Kettle, and the new guy, who hovers over his drink like he’s about to puke.
The sleeve of his suit is split at the shoulder, and the silk in the back looks smudged, like silk does when it has encountered liquid it doesn’t like.
I’m shaking, just a little. I’ve been there. I’ve literally been there, right here, at this bar, in ripped clothes, aching all over, staring at a drink I don’t want, but not sure what else I can do.
Turning point: Last night of my professional life. Last night of my all-important career. Last night of ain’t-she-cute.
That’s how I know he wasn’t in a fight. Oh, he might’ve fought. But one of those knock-’em-down, drag-’em-out fights? Naw. Right now, everything’s scraped and raw and coming in images. He’s not thinking clear, and I don’t blame him.
I also don’t lean toward him to talk.
Bancroft leaned in that night, thirty-two years ago, and probably scared a decade off me. I still have nightmares about that moment, and I jump whenever Bancroft leans toward me. Not his fault, but he got roped into those images, those memories.
So this afternoon I slide the ice water toward the new guy and say, “Did you know him?”
The new guy’s hand shakes as he grabs the whiskey glass. His knuckles are scraped and his thumb is swollen and it hangs funny. It might be broken.
“Whatever you think you know,” he starts in a tone that puts me, a bartender, back into my lower-class place, “it’s wrong.”
His voice wobbles on the word wrong, and he swallows hard.
Naw. I’m not wrong. He wants me to be wrong. He doesn’t want me to see him at all, and I see too clearly.
Like Bancroft had with me. I’d said to Bancroft, Piss off, asshole. Let me drink in peace.
And he’d said, I don’t think you’re going to find peace tonight.
I don’t know what to say now. I know what not to say. So I go for short and succinct, flat tone, as if I don’t care. And I do care, even though I don’t want to.
“You want that thumb to keep working, you’ll need to see a doctor,” I say. I don’t say anything about his private parts, which’ve got to be just as bruised. Maybe more bruised. Maybe more than bruised.
I don’t want to scare him away.
Now his eyes meet mine. They’re brown, two shades darker than his skin. They’re also watery, and his lower lip is trembling.
“No,” he says in a tone that adds, Back off.
I shrug, grab the bar rag, and toss it over my shoulder. It smells of the vinegar solution we use to wipe down the back area. I walk away, keeping my eye on the guy in the gigantic mirror behind the expensive alcohol.
He starts to pick up the whiskey, grimaces, and keeps the glass on the bar. That thumb is the size of a dying balloon. With his other hand, he grabs the ice water. The glass shakes as he raises it to his lips. Some of the water drips onto his expensive suit.
The door bangs open. The new guy jumps and spills more water. Rick Winters stomps in and slams the door behind himself. That takes some doing, because I got the door on one of those slow swings, just so no one can slam it.
Rick looks older than he should—balding, a growing beer belly, and a whole lotta attitude. He’s staving off burnout by spending the afternoons here, but he doesn’t have much longer. Every day for the last six months, he’s come in mad.
I open a Heineken and set it at his usual spot on the bar, on the left side of the horseshoe, back to the door. He looks at the new guy.
“What’s the story?” Rick asks, with an edge.
I shrug. I don’t ask for stories. Rick should know that. It’s one reason he comes here. The relief bartender, who usually works weekend days, came in for me one afternoon, asked Rick what had him so pissed off, and got to hear the entire story about a five-car pileup on the expressway, which started with the sentence Fucking drunk drivers and ended with And of course, the asshole drunk walked away.
Rick might be a drunk himself, but the minute his fingertips touch a green longneck, he doesn’t go near a vehicle. He says ninety percent of the shit he deals with as an EMT occurs because someone who had too much to drink gets behind a wheel or punches the wife or plays with a gun. Rick says he needs to haul his ass to AA, but he’s not ready.
He’ll be ready when he quits the job. He’s not suited. It’s not the drunks he objects to. It’s all the blood.
Rick’s fingers haven’t touched the bottle. He’s still looking at the new guy. “Pretty messed up.”
“Yeah,” I say, not willing to add that I’d mentioned a doctor already.
“It’s probably none of our damn business,” Rick says.
“It usually isn’t,” I say, and wipe off an imaginary spot on the bar near that Heineken. Ma Kettle pounds her glass on the table—a sign that I haven’t been doing my job: I usually anticipate her drinking needs—and then there’s a large clatter and bang behind me.
I whirl in time to see the new guy’s head slide off the bar. He’d knocked over his water and his whiskey when he passed out. He would’ve fallen all the way to the floor, but somehow Rick levitates from his place at the end of the bar and runs to the new guy’s side, catching him before he bangs his head again on the nearby stool.
“Shit,” Rick mutters.
“Shit.”
At first I think he’s commenting on working after-hours, at dealing with some drunk. We’d done it a hundred times, dragging some idiot to a chair where we throw water in his face, pick his pocket for his wallet and address, and call him a ride home.
Then I realize that Rick isn’t look at the guy or where he’s dragging the guy to. He’s looking at the bar stool.
He picks up the guy as if he weighs nothing, and swings him toward the door. Liquid drips—I’m thinking whiskey, when my brain registers the viscosity.
Blood.
The guy surfaces, looks up, sees Rick holding him, and screams. I’ve never heard a sound like that, raw and pain-filled, and completely anguished.
“Call Mercy General,” Rick says. “Tell them I’m bringing in a guy. I’ll radio.”
The guy claws at him, moaning now, kicking, trying to get free.
“You got your rig?” I ask. I’ve only seen it once, that ambulance he drives like it’s a tank.
“No, not that it matters. I got a radio in my truck.” Then Rick backs him out the door, and the guy screams again.
The sound fades as the door bangs closed.
“Jesus,” Ma Kettle says. “High drama.”
Then she holds up her glass.
I pour her another vodka tonic, just because it’s easier than fighting with her. I carry the vodka tonic around the bar and head toward her, careful to step over the blood trail.
In one move, I take the old glass and set the new one down on the wet bar napkin. It’s a sign of how distraught I am that I haven’t brought a new napkin. Automatic movements and all that.
I turn, look at my bar from the customer’s point of view. A thin line of blood drips off the new guy’s stool. How had I missed that?
I look at the door, see only a blood trail leading out. Either he hadn’t been bleeding that bad when he came in or the blood disappears in the general ambience of the place.
Volume Ten Page 17