The bartender returned with Nikki’s drink. He set it down with the air of one doing his duty in the face of adversity. “It’s going to be wedges after all,” he said. “Those guys ordered the last of the curly fries.” He jerked his head at the occupied table, with an expression that said he’d take the fries back if he could.
“Wedges are fine,” she said, with a shrug.
The bartender shrugged back, as if to say that he couldn’t be bothered with people who didn’t understand the important things in life.
Her burger and wedges arrived a few moments later and both were surprisingly tasty. Fattening as hell, but not the greasy bomb of disgustingness that she was expecting. In fact, the burger was downright good, bordering on awesome. Perhaps cuisine was how the Kessel Run stayed in business. If that was the case, they should double the cook’s salary.
She was savoring the crisp snap of the pickle on her fifth bite of burger when it happened. The hairs on the back of her arms stood up as the discussion at the back table rose in acrimony. The volume didn’t go up, just the intensity of the whispering. Nikki shifted her eyes to the mirror and saw that the body language on the girl had moved from hunched to cowering.
“It’s not my fault,” said the girl, her voice wavering. She stood up to go, but Carhartt snaked out a hand and grabbed her by the upper arm.
“Let me go,” pleaded the girl, sounding on the verge of tears. “It’s not my fault.” She tugged ineffectually at his hand.
Nikki took a deep breath and let it out again slowly. She’d really been enjoying the burger. Reaching into her purse, she dropped some cash on the bar.
Back at the table, Carhartt forcefully shoved the girl back into her chair and stood up, towering over her.
“I just want to go home,” said the girl, tears sliding down her cheek.
“You’ll go when I’m damn good and ready for you to go,” snapped Carhartt.
Nikki stood up, blotted her mouth with the napkin, and turned to face the three at the table.
“Gentlemen, I think you should let the girl go.” She used a loud, calm voice, so there would be no mistaking her intentions. The bartender, coming out of the kitchen, froze in the doorway, his eyes flicking between the table and Nikki, his expression akin to a deer in the proverbial headlights.
“Nobody asked you what you think, bitch,” said the man in the button-up. Carhartt blinked at her.
“Let me rephrase that,” said Nikki. “You’re going to let the girl go.”
“Or what?” asked Carhartt smirking.
“That wasn’t an either or statement,” said Nikki. “That was a fact.”
“It’s OK,” said the girl, looking panicked. “It’s OK. I don’t want to start any trouble.” She licked her lips and stood up. “Everything’s fine, really.”
Carhartt released the girl’s arm and shoved her back into her chair. “This is none of your business,” he said, trying to loom over Nikki. “Go away.”
“I’m making it my business,” said Nikki. “Now I suggest you sit down while she and I leave.”
“Ain’t going to happen,” he said. “Go away.” And then he pushed her, a one-handed shove on the shoulder, meant to send her toward the door.
Instead, Nikki side-stepped, seized his arm, pivoted and, with a quick twist of the hips, flipped him over her back and onto the floor. He landed with a hard crack, but promptly tried to sit up. She dropped her body weight through her knee onto his head and then bounced back to her feet. His head made a double clunk as it smacked into her knee and into the floor a split second later. Button-up was rounding the table at this point, aiming to tackle her, but instead she spun and drove her fist into his gut. He doubled over, gaping like a fish, and she seized his head and drove her knee up into his face. He staggered back, blood streaming from his face, and collapsed into a table, which tipped over on top of him. The fight was over.
“Clyde,” said someone from the entrance of the bar, “you should probably call the sheriff.”
“Yeah,” said the bartender, his hand fumbling for the phone on the wall, his eyes still stuck on Nikki.
“It’s OK,” said Nikki to the girl who was still sitting where Carhartt had left her. “What’s your name?”
“Ylina,” said the girl.
“Hey, Merv,” said the bartender into the phone. “It’s Clyde over at the Kessel Run. Yeah, I’ve got a couple of drunks here who picked on the wrong girl. Can you send someone around to collect them?” He peered over the bar at unconscious Carhartt’s body. “No, no rush. It’s under control. I’ll put them on the porch for you. Thanks.” Clyde hung up and stared around the room at those who were still conscious. “Okay,” he said clapping his hands together and drawing out the word to multiple syllables. “The sheriff will be here shortly. In the meantime, can I interest any of you in another drink or dessert?”
“The sheriff?” squeaked Ylina.
“It’ll be fine,” said Nikki.
“No, it won’t!” Ylina edged around Button-Up’s legs and started to fumble in Carhartt’s pockets. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
“It will be fine,” said Nikki. “The sheriff will handle it.”
But Ylina shook her head, ignoring them, and pulled out a set of car keys.
“Ylina,” said Nikki. “Calm down. It’s going to be fine.”
“No, not fine,” said Ylina, backing toward the door as if Nikki might try and stop her. “The sheriff’s coming. Not fine!” Then she turned and sprinted out into the parking lot. A few moments later, the roar of a car engine could be heard, and tires on gravel as Ylina floored it.
“Some people got no gratitude,” said Clyde, picking up Carhartt’s legs. “Jackson, you want to give me a hand?”
“Nikki did it,” said the man by the door. “Make her lift them.”
Nikki looked up from Clyde to the man by the door and for the first time realized who it was. Jackson Tyrell. She felt her heart skip a beat and suddenly the juke box music seemed far away. This evening had definitely taken a turn and gone right off the rails.
“I only wanted a burger,” she said.
“It is a tasty burger,” agreed Jackson.
August V
The Wounds Have Almost Healed
Clyde looked from Nikki’s frozen expression back to Jackson. “Well, Nikki did all the hard work,” he said, picking up her name from Jackson. “So grab his feet. I don’t like having bodies cluttering up the place.”
“Statements like that make me worry about you, Clyde,” said Jackson and walked forward to pick up Carhartt’s feet.
“You go back to your burger, Miss,” said Clyde.
Nikki sat down on the barstool and stared at her burger. She took a bite because it wouldn’t do to have Jackson think she was upset. She chewed mechanically while they moved Button-Up to the porch as well. She took a gulp of her drink as Jackson sat down next to her.
“The usual,” said Jackson to Clyde, who nodded and went back into the kitchen.
He was bigger than she remembered. Or maybe he wasn’t. In high school, he had been small, only a few inches taller than Nikki—just enough so that when she wore heels for a dance he was still an inch or two taller. Everyone knew that he was small. They had been the cute little couple. No one could change his height, so why did he look bigger? Nikki squinted at him, trying to place the difference.
Dark blue T-shirt, naturally faded jeans, shit-kicker working cowboy boots, and dark hair that stood up at the cowlick in back. Same as forever. He hadn’t changed the uniform much since they were twelve. The scar on his face was new. It started below his left ear and cut to the mid-point on his jawbone. It looked like someone had taken a razor blade and sliced it down his face. He was tan and his hazel eyes had a few early wrinkles around them from squinting into the sun. Always strong for his size, his forearms now looked as if they had been carved from oak. His hands, large and callused, curled loosely around a glass of beer. He was leaner than she remembered. He ha
d taken on the compact, wiry look of a Thai boxer. There was nothing but muscle to the man. All the excess had been trimmed away. And at last, Nikki nodded. This was what the difference was. She was seeing Jackson for the first time with nothing in the way.
“Were you planning on just sitting there?” she asked.
“You had it under control,” said Jackson, looking around the room, as if surveying her work.
“I meant, were you going to sit there, without saying hello or anything?”
“Oh.” He looked sheepish. “Hi.”
There was a silence after that and Nikki stared at Jackson. Jackson stared back. For years, she’d been carrying around a speech in her head, a litany of the pain he had caused, and now faced with the chance to speak, she found the words wouldn’t come. The person she was sitting next to wasn’t the same person who had hurt her. The Jackson she remembered could never sit still. He had been a chair swiveling, toe-tapping, paper tearing, bundle of energy. This Jackson never twitched. He didn’t even twist the bar stool back and forth.
“So what have you been doing with yourself?” asked Nikki. “You broke up with me, dropped out of college, then what?”
Jackson blinked. Whatever he had been expecting her to say, it hadn’t been that.
“Short story or long?”
“Short,” answered Nikki decidedly. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to torture herself. If he turned out to be happily married to a blonde with tits the size of pumpkins and three doe-eyed children she might have to go back home and slit her wrists.
“I ran away and joined the rodeo.”
Nikki nodded. That fit.
“I won a few things, but it got to the point where I could see I wasn’t going to be the best.”
“And that would never do for you,” said Nikki.
He grinned. “But I was hard-headed and I found I’d developed a taste for blood and bullshit, so I became a rodeo clown.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“Not too bad,” he said in his old, understated way.
“Are you the best at it?” prodded Nikki.
“I do all right,” he said and took a sip of his beer.
“Meaning you are or close enough to the best,” said Nikki. Jackson shrugged again, which Nikki took to be an agreement with her statement.
“How about you?” asked Jackson, setting down his beer. “I talked to Donny earlier this week. Said he ran into you down in LA and that you looked good.” Nikki kept her body language relaxed, but she felt a nervous tingle in the base of her spine, and wondered what else Donny had told Jackson. And if any of the things he had mentioned were Z’ev.
“He didn’t say much more than that,” said Jackson, “but I got the impression that he was worried about you.”
“About me?” said Nikki with a disarming smile. “Can’t think why.”
Jackson looked pointedly at the table that Button-Up had crashed through. It was still laying on its side. the chairs pushed away at awkward angles.
“Neither can I,” he answered. There was a glimmer in his eye that Nikki remembered, and it occurred to her to wonder what he was seeing in her for the first time.
Nikki took a quick stock of herself. Red hair, grey eyes, maybe a few more muscles. There reached a point in a girl’s life where the metabolism of high school turns to the ass of college and she must either hit the gym or buy larger pants. Nikki had gone for the workout and although her pants size had remained virtually unchanged, the soft quality that characterized Nikki’s appearance in high school and college had disappeared. Nothing else had changed. Had it?
“So…” said Nikki.
“So,” agreed Jackson and that annoyed her.
“That’s all you have to say to me?” she asked, feeling a flare of the old anger. “That really is it?”
“It?” repeated Jackson warily, and Nikki rolled her eyes.
“I think your last words to me were, let me see if I can get this right… Oh yeah… ‘I can’t see you anymore. I just can’t talk to you.’ End quote. I begged to see you and you said no. And then I went over to your apartment and you had moved out the night before. You broke up with me over the phone and said we could no longer speak. And now we’re just gonna sit here and shoot the breeze?”
“And another country. Not only did I break up with you over the phone, I was calling from Canada. They had an open call for bronc riders at a rodeo up there.” She could see by his smile that he was hoping she’d laugh, but Nikki didn’t laugh.
“But we can talk now? Or should I move to the other end of the bar?”
“It’s been nine years, Nikki.” She continued to stare, not sure what to say. “Come on, I can’t change my mind in nine years?”
She remembered a far-away day. It had been sunny with a sky like an upturned blue bowl over their heads. Jackson and Donny had found two oversized sets of boxing gloves in the shed and were wailing away at each other.
“It’s my turn!” Nikki yelled.
“Girls don’t box,” said Donny, the enormous gloves dangling at the end of his skinny arms.
“You let me play or I’m telling your mom!” she said, hands on her hips.
“Better let her,” said Jackson.
Nikki pulled the gloves off Donny and started jamming her fists into them. He helped her with the second one. “Now tell me what to do,” she said to Donny, squaring off with Jackson.
“You just try and hit Jackson in the face,” said Donny with a shrug.
“I’m the bell,” said Jackson. “When you hear me yell ‘ding’, that’s the start or end of the round. Ding!” Then he swung for her head. Nikki felt the entire glove along the side of her face, and automatically kicked Jackson in the shin.”
“You’re supposed to punch!” yelled Donny.
Nikki swung her left and then her right. It was hard to land the gloves where she wanted. Especially with Jackson swinging back. She finally started making progress—first her left glove hit him in the eye and then her right hit him in the mouth. She was lining up for another punch when –
“Ding!”
“Ding,” she said. “You always were the bell.”
“What?”
“When we were ten, you and Donny were boxing in the backyard, but we didn’t have a bell or anything to signal the end of rounds, so you would yell ding. Took me years to realize that every time I started to win, you’d yell ding.”
He laughed. “I don’t remember that, but it makes sense. If I’d beat you up, your mother would have beat me senseless and you were probably too good.”
“But you’re doing it again. You always do. You don’t like the game, so you cheat.”
“You’re going to hold me to something I said when I was twenty? And be mad at me for something I did when I was ten?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Nikki. “It’s not what you said or when. It’s you and me. I know you, Jackson. Everyone gets a fair deal from you. Everyone but me. I loved you. And beyond that, we were friends and I want to know why the hell some stranger gets better from you than me?”
“You only hurt the ones you love?” he asked with his idiot grin.
Nikki growled. She’d been aiming for a Marge Simpson murmur, but it came out more like a pissed off Z’ev.
“Because I couldn’t ever win,” he said at last.
“What?”
“Nikki, I hated college. I hated the pretentious neo-hippies living off daddy’s money and thinking they were so much better than the blue-collar slob working in the paper mill. I hated the professors. I hated all of that and I didn’t fit in. You, on the other hand, fit like a glove. You knew what the teachers wanted to hear. You could have dated any guy on campus. You were where you belonged and I wasn’t.”
“You could have told me that!”
“No, I couldn’t. I could barely explain it to myself. I’ve barely got it figured out now. But even if I’d been able to put it into words, it wouldn’t have mattered. If I’d stayed to talk to y
ou, you would have talked me into staying. You always got your way with me, and I needed things to be my way for a while. There was too much you and not enough me. I didn’t even talk to Donny for a couple of years. I only came home at Christmas for three years in a row. My mom kept asking what she’d done wrong. And there wasn’t anything. I just needed to be on my own.”
Nikki opened her mouth to say something hurtful and then closed it again.
“Yeah, OK,” she said. She drank the last of her gin and tonic and stared at the neon signs above the bar for a while. Alison Krauss was playing on the jukebox. The bartender came back in followed by the Sheriff.
“Jackson,” said the sheriff with a sigh, “I thought you’d given up picking on things that didn’t outweigh you by at least a ton.”
“Wasn’t me,” said Jackson.
“It was the girl,” said the bartender.
The sheriff looked speculatively at Nikki.
“Hello. I’m Sheriff Mervin Smalls. Is there a reason you took such a violent dislike to our friends Milt and Pedro, young lady?”
“I felt threatened,” said Nikki. It probably would have sounded more convincing if she had actually looked scared.
“Right,” said Merv.
“They were drunk,” said the bartender.
“Thank you, Clyde. I would never have guessed.”
“They came in with a girl and when she got up to leave, one of them grabbed her, so then Nikki said they should let the girl go, but they didn’t want to and one of them took a swing at Nikki, so she defended herself.”
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