by AnonYMous
No, he didn’t want me to ask because he wanted to talk about Zack. Stupid Zack.
He didn’t want me to ask because it was Sunday and he napped on Sunday. We didn’t talk issues on Sunday.
By the time the chili was done, I almost believed it.
Chapter 3
Brad
I sprayed the last corner of the window with cleaning solution and rapidly wiped it with the sports section from last Saturday’s paper. A summary of the week’s best six-man football games made my window spotless.
My gig at Masters took up two, maybe three, mornings a week. The rest of the time I spent in this little storefront on Central Avenue. I’d taken this place over the many other choices available because it had once housed Games and More, an establishment I had thought was magic until later than I’d care to admit. All through my childhood, the owner had stocked games and puzzles they didn’t carry at the closest Wal-Mart: unusual imports with instructions in Finnish, double-sided puzzles with thousands of pieces, vaguely obscene and wildly funny postcards, vintage wind-up robots, and elaborate model trains. He’d had an uncanny ability to look at you and know exactly what you wanted but couldn’t articulate.
“You should really try this,” he’d say. And he had always been right.
The place had a distinct scent, a mix of cardboard and rosewater; even now I’d sometimes step on a spot in the carpet and it would come back to me. The smell of wonder.
Games and More had closed, of course. The owner had died of cancer and several subsequent proprietors had failed to make anything of it—because he had been the miraculous piece.
I wasn’t him; tax prep wasn’t magic of any kind. But my doomed quest to revive downtown Fallow might as well start in the last place the town had had that was unique and unusual. Everything was downhill from here.
I opened one of my desk drawers and stared at the travel guides and real estate listings crammed inside. I’d begun to wonder—to do more than wonder really—about leaving. My dad was going to retire soon, and then there’d be nothing to hold me here.
Except Wren.
But that was a terrible, terrible reason to stay.
I closed the drawer and began thumbing through the materials Mrs. Martindale had dropped off this morning. It would take me an hour, maybe seventy-five minutes, to put together their quarterly filing. Or I could eat my lunch and tackle this later.
The bell jingled, and Wren stood in the doorway.
“Interested in bookkeeping services? I hear the guy you’ve got is shit,” I said by way of a greeting.
She watched me with her hands clenched into fists. She was pissed as hell.
I remembered the exact moment when I’d fallen for her. It had been second grade, and she’d been reaming a boy out on the playground for playing rough with some of the girls. The haughty self-confidence she was even now trying to fry me with was part of it, but mostly, it was that she only used it to get justice. She was smart, but no snob. She had no ambition for herself, but enough compassion to make you believe in humanity again.
That she was gorgeous didn’t hurt. Short with curves a racetrack would envy and long hair that couldn’t decide if it was gold or brown. Her cheeks and lips were probably too full and her smile too squinty, but she was so filled with life it didn’t matter.
“You made me so nervous I couldn’t enjoy my chili,” she spat out. “You ruined fuckin’ chili.”
And she had a mouth a sailor would envy.
“Pretty sure that’s because you pollute yours with beans.”
She bit her lower lip and examined the ceiling. It appeared she was wrestling her temper into submission. When she finally looked back at me, it was clear it hadn’t worked. “Take it back.”
“I won’t. Beans are roughage, and they don’t belong in chili.”
“You’re an idiot. There aren’t any drugs. Or at least Lone Gun isn’t selling them.”
“I won’t. I can’t.”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Then tell me why you think so.”
I could understand why Mike would have kept it from her: this was going to change how she saw him, how she saw the club. It was going to turn her inside out and make her livid. It already had.
I knew why I’d told her. Pretty much everything I told her was a mixture of true and false. I’d lie by telling the truth and I’d say what was real and let her misunderstand. Even the conversation we’d had, which she thought had been friendly, I knew had been flirting. I’d told her I was interested in her ten thousand and fifty times, sometimes in those precise words.
It wasn’t thoughtlessness that kept her from seeing it, because she wasn’t thoughtless. She wasn’t stupid either. She had me in a box, and I was so grateful she saw me, thought of me, at all that I never made her realize I didn’t want to be there. I’d given her my heart, and she thought it was a joke.
Which would all be funny if it were happening to someone else.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“To get you to take it back.”
“But if you’re so sure I’m wrong, why would you bother?”
She started to pace. If I liked her still, I liked her moving more. She had so much energy. It spun out of her fingers, lit her eyes, played in her hair. It was too much for her body to contain.
“There are drugs in Fallow,” she said. “I mean, I know that. There always have been.”
“Sure.”
“I saw some kids who were high yesterday. And then I asked my dad—”
“You what?” I snapped at her, which I hadn’t meant to do, but of all the people she could have gone to, Mike was the worst. He, like Wren, wasn’t stupid. If he hadn’t told her, he didn’t want her to know.
If she were going to ask questions, someone like Larry might have been better. Larry couldn’t have put it all together if she explained it to him using flash cards and a pointer. Hell, Larry was my main source.
“It’s your fault,” she countered. “You spooked me.”
I should have known this would happen and, well, I had. But Wren with a tablespoon of the story was dangerous. I had to pour it all out for her. “I will tell you what I know, but you have to promise you won’t do anything else about it unless we agree.”
“It’s my family.”
“It’s my life.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
I got up and looked out the window. No one was around—which I wished I could say was suspicious. Sadly, the withering of downtown was normal. And if by chance someone did decide to do some window-shopping and saw Wren here, there could be a dozen explanations for why that was.
I didn’t know what exactly Lone Gun was up to, but I knew I didn’t want them to know I suspected any of it was wrong. It was probably just drugs—but drugs were connected to an entire shit show I wanted no part of for myself, my parents, or Wren.
To be safe, I went to my desk and Wren followed me. She cast herself into an ancient swivel chair across from me.
“It’s because of the car sales,” I started. “They’re up. A lot.”
“Masters’ success worries you?” She was unconvinced and offended at once.
“Sales have doubled while the town shrinks. And most of the buyers are from out of town.”
“So?”
“Doesn’t that seem odd? Someone—lots of someones—coming to Fallow, Montana, to buy used cars?”
She twisted her mouth up. It was odd; she couldn’t deny it. So she didn’t try to. “But how do you get from there to drugs?”
“It was something Larry said about how the cars were coming over the border.”
Everyone who’d grown up where we had knew of small, unpatrolled roads you could use to cross into Canada. I paused to let her remember the stories of kids’ international joy rides in high school.
“I checked it out. At least some of the origin stuff on the paperwork is wonky. Their official reports don’t hold up to scrutiny—except the people buying them susp
iciously never ask to check the reports. And—” here was my biggest red flag “—Larry was joking about how the cars came loaded.”
“Larry’s an idiot.”
“Maybe enough of an idiot to tell the truth.”
She wasn’t looking at me. She was playing with the bottom corner of her jacket. It was fraying a bit and she was picking at the threads with her nails to tease the strands apart, one fiber at a time. Suddenly she tugged one and it came off with an audible snap.
She speared me with a sharp look. “What do you think it means? Cars maybe coming from Canada, maybe coming with something in them?”
“And then being sold to a horde of out-of-town buyers.” I let the story sit between us for a minute.
Wren’s face was now blank but set. She was uncomfortable, and I was uncomfortable for her.
More gently, I said, “I think it smells like crap and it’s illegal even if it’s not the worst-case scenario. But if it is, maybe some of the, uh, stuff stays here too. I’ve seen high kids as well. More than normal.”
“It’s flimsy.” She didn’t sound skeptical anymore.
I’d showed her all my cards. “You know I’m right. Masters is making a killing, but they don’t seem that busy to me.”
She shook her head in a gesture that could be either denial or assent. I couldn’t tell.
But the truth was it hardly mattered. I cracked a knuckle. “I don’t know what do about it. Even if I’m correct, what then? My sense is nothing.” This was why I hadn’t tried to learn more about it and why I’d let it go, even when I’d thought she might be involved.
“Nothing?”
“If I’m right, they’re making a lot of money from this, whatever it is. I don’t think they’d appreciate us messing with it. And if I’m wrong . . .”
“Let’s find out.” Her brows had pulled together and her lips thinned. I was convincing her but she didn’t want me to.
She wanted to believe her dad to be incapable of this. Herself too, because Masters was her legacy—such as it was. She knew all the men in Lone Gun and felt loyal to them. Hell, she’d been almost married to Zack. Of course she wouldn’t want to believe what I was telling her.
“How?”
“You said it yourself: Larry. We’re going to talk to Larry.”
“Where? When?”
“Well, if you wanted to catch Larry on a Sunday night, where would you look?”
“Cups.” It was a bar located in the only hotel in town. It wasn’t seedy precisely, but I didn’t hang out there.
“Then I guess that’s where we’ll be.” She nodded firmly and stood to go.
With me or without me, I knew she would pursue this, and there was no way I was going to let her do it alone.
Chapter 4
Brad
Time travel was a myth—at least that was what anyone who’d never been to Cups believed. But based on pictures I’d seen of my parents hanging out there two decades ago, I wasn’t so sure. To enter Cups was to step into the past. Not the Wild West saloon the décor aped, but the 1930s when it had been decorated. This was the West by way of Roy Rogers. It approximated the outlaw spirit and danger quotient of the Lone Ranger—unlike the unofficial bar behind Masters or the seedier roadhouses in Dodson with grit to spare.
If you looked closely, there were signs of age. The autographs of singing cowboy ringing the room were cracked and faded. Duct tape held together the vinyl on more than one of the booths. Everything needed a new coat of paint. But unlike most of Fallow, Cups had endured and seemed likely to forever.
I opened the door for Wren and let her enter ahead of me. I didn’t expect any trouble—this really wasn’t that kind of place—but I also knew her presence would attract less attention than mine. She went everywhere and did everything.
I wasn’t really a hang-at-the-bar kind of guy. The people who had been like me, to the extent Fallow had them, had left for college without a backward glance. I did my drinking in front of the TV with my parents or alone in my own home.
Larry was at a booth in the corner with Dustin, a rancher he’d been friendly with since grade school. A nearly empty pitcher of beer sat between them. Their feet were kicked out in front of them, their heads back against the wall. They’d had a few. Perfect.
Wren ignored them and bee-lined for the bar.
“Howie!” she called to the bartender.
She’d commenced small talk with him before she’d even taken a barstool. I sat down next her and tried to look inconspicuous. I mostly failed. I knocked over the appetizer menu, crashed my knee into the bar, and dropped some change on the floor.
None of the regulars so much as blinked at me. Howie did regard me suspiciously while telling Wren about how his wife Lorraine was recovering from an operation to remove her gallbladder. I didn’t catch the entire thing with the spectacle I was making of myself, but it didn’t sound like it was going well.
“I can bring by another lasagna,” Wren offered.
Wren was an excellent cook, and Howie had two adolescent sons.
His eyes grew wide. He clearly wanted the lasagna, but he didn’t want to bother her and he didn’t want to seem too eager. He edged out carefully, wiping the bar and looking directly at us. “Not if it’s any trouble.”
“No trouble.” Wren patted his arm to take the edge off his discomfort. “Can I swing by tomorrow afternoon? Before you open here?”
“That’d be great.” He was staring now, all worshipful and earnest. It wasn’t that I didn’t get the impulse, but still, he ought to try to hide it better.
Howie and I were, however, in good company. Everyone in Fallow suffered from the same disorder: Wren Masters worship. Hell, if Lone Gun wanted to take over the town, it would probably go over as long as Wren handled public relations.
Having taken care of Howie’s family, she linked her arm through mine and gave the bartender a smile. “Give us a second to look over the menu.”
I wasn’t used to her touching me. She was fast and loose with physical contact most of the time. Pats for Howie; hugs for most of the guys in Lone Gun; hell, Zack was still pretty handsy with her and she insisted they’d broken up.
Our relationship had never been like that. I guess I was a bit formal. Or maybe I tried so hard not to stare, not to let my attraction show, that I’d frozen her out. Except that didn’t seem very much like Wren. Being standoffish with her was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
Whatever the reason, she didn’t touch me often.
Once, in Driver’s Ed, they’d brought in a semi for us to look inside. I’m not certain why or what the tie-in was, but she’d gone in ahead of me. I’d been braced in the doorway, her back to my front. If you’d asked me—on pain of death—to tell you what the cab of a semi looked like, I couldn’t. I could have told you what her hair smelled like (flowers), or that she had three little moles grouped like a triangle at the base of her neck on the left-hand side. I could have told you she’d started to slip a little and I’d shepherded her with my elbows, except I didn’t want to draw her too close because I didn’t want her to be aware of my erection. I could have told you I would happily have spent the entire day inside a semi cab with Wren Masters.
Ten years later, I might have been in better control of myself, but when she leaned against me and smiled, I felt fifteen again.
Fucking Cups, man. It was a time machine.
“What are you doing?” I hissed. I didn’t mean to sound so prissy and I wanted her to touch every inch of me, but first we had to get Larry to confess.
She didn’t respond to my tone and she didn’t move away. “I’m telling you my plan.”
“Isn’t the plan to order drinks and go say hey to Larry?”
“I’m changin’ it. Follow my lead.”
I’d only agreed to any of this because it had seemed so low risk. And because it meant I got to spend more time with Wren. I’d forgotten to factor in the variables, mostly her. “Your spontaneity isn’t cute.”
It was a dumb move, a parody of seduction, but it worked on me. My brain’s submarine-dive alarm blared, but I couldn’t bring myself to heed it. Despite the fact my hands felt swollen and dumb, I raised one to her elbow and got a better grip on her. I eased her closer.
“I didn’t say you weren’t cute.”
“That’s a relief. I broke out new lip gloss for this.”
I didn’t need to look at her lips. I could practically taste them. But before I could explore the borderland around practically a bit more, we were interrupted.
“Uh.” The voice came from behind us. Close behind us.
We turned like guilty teenagers into the chest of Larry Nasmith—Wren’s cousin and the man we were here to interrogate. He didn’t look too inclined to spill any secrets. Blood, on the other hand . . .
“Zebra won’t like this,” he said to Wren.
“Zack can fuck himself. Except that would probably infuriate Jessica and Angel—not that he’d care.”
“You’re his—”
“I’m not.”
Larry wasn’t deterred. Now he started on me. “But you two work together. She’s, like, your boss.”
For the thousandth time, I told a lie by telling the truth. “Wren, it is totally okay with me if you pursue me and reward me for a job well done with sexual favors.” I glanced at Larry. “It’s only sexual harassment if it’s unwanted.”
Wren giggled. “I’m going to hostile environment you all night, baby.”
Only if the gods were just—which of course they weren’t.
A few beats passed. Larry looked back and forth between us, his frown growing. “I’m going to tell your dad.” He sounded suddenly both drunk and petulant. But as fun as all of this was, it wasn’t getting us what we wanted. We wanted him to tell us things, not scold us.
Before I could decide how to fix it, Wren said, “Do.” She rolled her eyes and shook out of my grasp. She picked up the appetizer menu. I thought she was going to leave it at that, but then she added, “Maybe I’ll tell him a few things too.”