by Rob Pierce
When he was almost to the car, I walked around the front of it and got in behind the wheel. I unlocked the passenger side and Jeremy got in beside me. I started the engine and he put on his seatbelt. I pulled into traffic, drove slow, kept my mouth shut until we’d made a couple of turns and were on the street we’d stay on most of the way home.
I spoke softly. “You shoulda told me he was meeting you.”
“It’s how—” Jeremy paused and I looked over and he shrugged “—he’s always done it.”
“But your mom never knew.”
Jeremy shook his head. “She always wanted to be a good mom. But Dave—he lets me call him that—he plays Magic, he knows what Yugioh is like.”
“Magic?”
“You know, Magic The Gathering. MTG. It’s a grown-up game.”
Not one of the grown-up games I knew. “It’s like Yugioh?”
“More complicated. Kids play it, but you go to a tournament and it’s mostly grown-ups.”
I drove, absorbing it all, what Jeremy had been told and how much of it was likely to be true. “So Davis talks to you about cards.”
“Uh huh.”
“And he understands your game, and he gives a shit about you, and that’s why he’s your friend.”
“Uh huh.”
And he’s only your friend, not your dad, because he hasn’t done a damned thing for you, so he’s not even a good friend. That’s what I wanted to say, but I kept my mouth shut. If Jeremy liked Davis too much, the truth wouldn’t work. “But he never picked you up when he was with your mom.”
“Nuh uh.”
“So he was never equals with your mom.”
“But he’s a good guy!”
“I bet he is. But he was supposed to do this shit when he was with your mom, and she didn’t trust him with it. He shoulda done it anyway, that’s what men do. You think I fucking ask if I can do things for you? I do em. And if he gets in the way of me taking care of you…” I shrugged. “He better not. That’s all.”
I timed it so my speech ended at a red light. I looked over at Jeremy. He didn’t look pleased. I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid he’d ask what I meant. If Davis came back, I’d think of something.
***
Jeremy walked into the apartment before me. Theresa wasn’t on the couch or in the kitchen, so I walked the boy to the master bedroom.
She sat up in bed, a book in front of her and a glass of red wine on the table beside her. She looked up from the book and smiled at Jeremy. “How’d it go?”
Jeremy looked down.
I stood behind him and stared at the back of his head. “Tell her.”
I waited. He didn’t raise his head. Fuck it, he was only ten.
I stepped beside him and put my hand on his shoulder. “He’s been meeting Davis.”
“What?”
“Every week there’s a tournament. Davis shows up and hangs out with Jeremy. Talks to him about God knows what, leaves before you show up. This week I was early.”
“Jeremy? You’ve been seeing Dave?”
I dropped my hand from his shoulder and glared at her but her eyes were on the boy.
Jeremy looked up. “He’s my friend.”
“And he only meets you at the tournaments?”
Jeremy nodded.
“Even when they’re different places? How does he know your schedule?”
I hadn’t thought about that part. Theresa usually picked him up at the same place on Thurmond Street, but there were times when she got back later because the tournament was farther away.
“He knows where I’ll be,” Jeremy said.
“So you talk to Dave during the week.”
My fingers bent in but I didn’t clench my fists, this wasn’t that bad and if I was wrong about that I’d walk away.
Jeremy ran a hand backward through his stringy hair. “I call him if the tournament’s somewhere different. If I don’t call him it’s at Cardmania.”
“You talk to Dave every week.”
I shook my head but Theresa’s eyes never left her son.
I couldn’t see his eyes, but the way he held his head I was sure his stare matched hers. “You never cared about Yugioh,” Jeremy said. “Dave always cared. Uncle Dust only cares if I do something tough.”
This wasn’t my kind of argument. I didn’t know what to say. I’d tried to care about the cards, thought I’d faked it well enough.
Theresa leaned forward and pulled her knees up. Her book fell off her lap and shut on the bed. She looked angry then she let it go. Her brow unfurrowed and she spoke slow and soft. “You know I care about you. My business—I’m worn out by the weekend. I’m glad you have friends, but, Jeremy—your real friends are your own age. I’m sure Dave likes you, but he’s using you to get to me. You understand that, don’t you?”
“You’re wrong, mom. Dave didn’t want to, but he gave up on you. He’s friends with me.”
Her face went slack. She pulled it back together, but I’d seen it, she’d been hurt. They could finish this up on their own. I walked out of the room.
***
I shut the apartment door behind me and called Rico. He was usually available for a drink, and that was what I wanted. I didn’t go to Rico for sympathy or advice. He was someone to drink with while I got it together, someone who knew how complicated our lives were and that women weren’t supposed to add to that.
We met at The Big Wheel. It had been around forever, must have been a country place at some point, but the name was the only remaining clue. It was a bar with a little kitchen and some tables, nothing fancy but not dingy either, not in this neighborhood. Rico was already at the bottom of a beer and an empty tequila shot when I got there. I ordered the same.
Olivia was our bartender, a pretty Italian-American with small breasts. We called her Big Olives—Olive to her face. She mixed drinks right across the bar from where I sat with Rico. She wore a tank top and leaned forward. I caught a quick glimpse of cleavage and looked away. Her skin was smooth and brown and she was thinner than I usually liked. Another skinny one, Jesus. I threw back my tequila and she looked perfect.
“Olive,” I said, as she turned, “another round. Please.”
She tossed her head over her shoulder and smiled at my last second attempt at politeness. We liked each other at the bar but I’d never seen her anywhere else, although she’d made it clear I could if I wanted. She walked off with a little extra shake.
“That’s for you,” Rico said, “so make a move. Or I will.”
We’d been coming to this bar for years. Olive had started a few months back. It always seemed like I clicked with her, but part of that could be her making tips. Like sometimes I had to hurt people for money, sometimes she had to be extra nice. Still, I’d never seen her in a tank top before, and it was winter. California winter, but cool enough that I kept my leather jacket on.
Rico was a good man on a job, no one you’d want near your sister. I looked at him. “Not until we’re leaving. My play.”
Rico wagged his eyebrows. “I’m not on a clock. Sometimes I just move.”
He was wider than me. I hoped I never had to fight him. “Don’t.”
“If you’re with Big Olives, I don’t touch her. You ain’t? Well…”
The problem here was Rico’s weaknesses: women and macho. Where both were involved, he might have to be hurt. “Rico, you remember that time—”
“You gonna tell that fucking bank guard story—”
“Fuck that. You think you coulda dropped him if I didn’t. You woulda been dead, but fuck that. You remember Peach?”
“Peach?” Rico looked confused a second. “That fat boy at Quentin?”
Peach was a redneck who’d killed a couple of heavily armed Feds with his bare hands. When he walked the prison yard no one got near him. He was huge, and the kind of crazy strong you don’t usually see unless a guy’s on angel dust.
Olive brought our drinks, tequila shots and beers, and I downed my shot. I
waited until she walked away. “Remember how the fat boy died?”
Rico took his shot, I switched to beer. Rico set down his glass. “Hell yeah. That was ugly. Even for Peach.”
Peach had been walking the yard, alone. Everyone else waited to walk until he was done. The man filled the yard, and he liked it that way. He took his time, strolled like the king he was. I had a cell perch, a window view. I watched.
In the middle of his walk Peach pitched forward but his knees dropped straight down and his belly landed first. He hit the ground dry heaving. He retched, and fell on his side so his face almost touched dirt. His tongue shot out and he retched some more. His face was green and he pulled his neck back and coughed, turned sideways and retched again. His mouth plummeted to the dirt and his nose followed. All of him was down there then his head jerked back up. It went on like that for minutes. Eventually he screamed.
There wasn’t exactly a rush for prison medical personnel to reach a guy who’d killed a couple of Feds. Peach twitched on the ground screaming for a helluva long time. When the doctors finally got there he was still. They didn’t do anything but throw a body-length cover over him. They started by draping it across the middle of him but that left his face and feet showing. They dragged the top over his head, left him uncovered from the shins down.
I put my beer on the bar, looked at Rico long enough I was sure he remembered. “Right before he got locked up, Peach raped a girl I knew.”
“Knew?”
“I still know her.” I took a drink. “She ain’t the same girl.”
Rico looked at me. He wasn’t a badass right now. “Lotta people had to hate Peach. But he had friends. How the hell you kill him?”
“Fuck.” I laughed. “You don’t really wanna know that, do ya?”
It was a line that probably would have worked even if it was a bluff. I had a feeling Rico could tell it wasn’t.
Rico took a drink and looked at me over his glass. “Who’s the girl?”
“A friend. You don’t need to know.” This was the part that hurt. Knowing she had been touched by that fat piece of shit. I was glad Peach was dead, but I could never take her pain away. I could never stop him from haunting her.
Rico nodded. He’d needed the tone in my voice, maybe the look in my eyes, to know my story was true. He didn’t care who the girl was. He cared whether I could go crazy enough to kill someone like that. Planned and slow.
Rapists pissed me off. You could take things from people without taking part of them. Scaring someone enough to get their money, I understood that. Money was a thing, it wasn’t real like your body is real. It was like a tool, and if someone ripped off my tools I’d get pissed off, but I’d get more tools.
Peach was an animal, and I put him down like one. Everything Peach did was a thing he had to do. If Peach knew he’d be poisoned for the rape he’d still have done it. And he would have tried to kill anyone who might poison him for it.
Rico was dangerous but he wasn’t an animal, he weighed things. He liked women, he liked the excitement of short-term romance, but it wasn’t worth a fight where he might get killed. Hell, he didn’t mind paying for it when he had the money. And tonight he had at least drinking money. But this wasn’t a bar for hookers, and right now there were no women alone. We’d drink awhile and I’d try to pick up Olive—knowing pretty bartenders get hit on all the time—and Rico might try to pick up any woman who walked in. He wasn’t good looking, and he always wore jeans and a t-shirt, but he did pretty well in bars. It’s funny what a total disregard for rules can get you.
***
I wanted Olive, was doubly motivated because I didn’t want Rico to have her. I didn’t want her to be the type of woman Rico could have, and it bothered me that she might be. She was better than that, I was better than that. Anything Rico touched was stained.
It was getting late, but I’d stopped drinking tequila a while back, and the beer didn’t have me too fucked up. “Olive,” I said, and Rico got up. She was down the bar a little but the crowd was gone. She turned our way.
“I got this,” I said, and I stood and hugged Rico. He hugged me back and pulled back a little and nodded. It was a thanks but it wasn’t. We could both afford the drinks and we both wanted more. He took a couple steps back, made sure Olive saw him and smiled at her.
“Night, hon,” she said, and he turned away, walked out the door.
She walked to the register to print out my tab, put it in an empty beer glass and set it in front of me. I sipped from my beer and looked up. “How long’s it take you to get out of here after you close?”
“Depends.”
“Okay,” I smiled. “On a night when there’s me, him and him,” I looked down the bar at two skinny young guys with their chins falling into their work shirts, “and you close at twelve, and I’m going to Big Joan’s to buy you a drink, when will you be there?”
Olive gave me a tight smile, stepped over to the other drinkers. “Alright boys, finish em up, time to close.”
They both sat still, like she hadn’t said a word.
“Drink em or I dump em. Let’s move.”
They threw back their glasses and Olive walked back, leaned toward me. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
I looked at my bill, put money on the bar and finished my beer. “I’ll wait for you out front.”
***
I waited on the sidewalk, watched the other drinkers leave. They hesitated when they saw me, like maybe we could all go back in, but I stood still and they walked away. It was cold out, but I zipped up my leather jacket and stuffed my hands in my pockets and I knew I’d be with Olive soon so I was fine. The bar windows were too dark to see through. I backed up to the bar door and looked out onto the street. Occasional cars drove slow and people walked fast: nothing, really.
I heard a key turn behind the door and I took a couple steps toward the sidewalk. Olive stepped out in a long heavy coat that hid almost all of her, smiled at me fast then turned around and locked the door from outside.
She turned back around. “You must be freezing. You could’ve met me at Big Joan’s. I’d only be a few minutes.”
“I didn’t want to wait.”
I stepped forward and leaned down and kissed her, kept my eyes open to watch hers as they shut. We held the kiss a moment and I stepped back. “Now we can walk down the street together.” I put my arm around her waist and she put hers around mine and we walked.
***
It was a weeknight so there were seats at the bar. We took two and I waved at the bartender. I turned to Olive. “I’d like to buy you a scotch, but what do you want?”
“Maker’s Mark.”
“Okay then, I’ll buy me a scotch.”
The bartender showed up, but not as quick as I wanted. I didn’t have much in the way of words for Olive. I looked at her then impatiently back at the bartender. I ordered her bourbon and my scotch without a hint of irritation in my voice, because it was gone the moment I looked at her. I wasn’t stupid enough to think this was love, this was just the way I felt my first time with a woman I liked. It was the closest thing to love I knew, but it didn’t have that permanence I heard about in songs or saw in movies. I raised my glass to hers and we drank and it was a moment that wouldn’t occur again, not as good as a bank robbery or a fuck, but a moment nonetheless.
Even with the door shut the bar wasn’t warm and Olive kept her coat on. I missed the bare shoulders I’d seen minutes earlier. The rest of her was also covered, everything but her hands and face, yet I marveled at the smoothness of what I saw. I knew she was born in Italy but had moved to the U.S. as an infant, had no memory of where she was born. I was born a few hundred miles from here, and I wished I had no memory of my dad.
“So, Olive—you okay with being called Olive? It’s a stupid thing me and Rico started…”
“It’s fine, yeah. The world calls me one thing, you call me something close like you don’t quite get it, yeah, I can deal.”
Her li
ps stayed straight like she was serious but there was a glint in her eyes. She was smart, I knew that and liked it. She was also smartass; I liked that too. “Good, cuz, you know, you remind me of a martini. And there’s lots of pretty Italian girls, but Olivia sounds Greek.”
The lips turned up. “My mom was Greek. She went to Rome with some college friends. She met my dad. Her friends went back to Greece without her.”
We’d barely talked and were past how much talk I wanted. I put a hand on her thigh. “Let’s get out of here.”
***
Olive didn’t have to get up in the morning, and it was hard to get out of bed with her in it, but I wasn’t going to make Rico wait, not on business.
Rico sat at our usual table with a coffee.
I looked down at my clothes, pressed my shirt flat. “You need another cup?”
“Nah, I just got here.”
I nodded and walked inside to order. The line was short, the guy behind the counter the same friendly Mexican guy who was usually there. I probably should have showered this morning but hadn’t, I liked whatever part of Olive was still with me. It would’ve been nice to change my clothes, but these weren’t bad. I’d go back to the apartment after work and take care of that. Take care of whatever else came up while I was there.
I got my coffee and sat outside with Rico.
He spoke as I sat. “You did alright last night, huh?” Rico talked subtle for an ex-con.
I sipped at my coffee and smiled. “Yeah, it was good.”
“Someone hadda get some of that. Now we gotta find another bar, find somethin for me.”
I nodded again. The world was better off with Rico happy, and if he needed a woman The Wheel wasn’t the best place to find one. A little bit restaurant, a little bit sports bar, it didn’t pull in a lot of single women. “Yeah, I’m good with that.”
Rico reached inside his coat, handed me my list for the day. “Tenny likes your work. There’s side jobs if you want. Extra work, extra pay.”
“I’ll let you know. Right now I’m good with what I got.”
“Right now, yeah. But your new girl—maybe your expenses go up.”