The Big Hit

by Jamie Bennett

  I found a parking spot very close to Ginger’s, which made me hopeful that it wouldn’t be crowded. I sat there for a moment in the car, a little scared, but also feeling pretty proud of myself. It was kind of amazing to me that I was even here at all, thinking about going into a bar to hang out with people my own age, at night and alone. Good for you, Daisy, I told myself, and then nodded graciously back. Oh, dear. Talking to myself was probably another bad sign, coming on the heels of conjuring up football players out of thin air in the library. I got out of the car and did my breathing techniques before going in.

  “Daisy! Finally!” Tatum jumped a little to throw her arms around my neck. “I thought you’d been in a fiery accident on the road!”

  “I’m fine,” I said faintly. “I’m here.”

  “Great! Tell me your last name, again?”

  “McKenzie.”

  “Perfect!” Her concern about my possible car wreck totally gone, she grabbed my hand. “I got a table.” And thank goodness, it was right at the front window, giving me a clear view to the outside. “What do you like to drink?”

  I thought. “Cranberry juice.”

  “Vodka cranberry? Sounds good!” She started to hop off toward the bar, but I grabbed a corner of her puffy coat.

  “No, Tatum, no thank you. Just cranberry juice.”

  Her eyebrows went up but she nodded once, the movement sharp and quick. “Hokay! Be right back.”

  There really weren’t very many people, no big after-work crowd tonight. I watched a few couples and some pairs of friends, a larger group of men at one corner of the bar who were themselves watching Tatum. She gave them a big smile as she took the drinks and carried them back over to our table. “Thank you,” I told her, when she put mine down.

  “You owe me five bucks. Just kidding!” She cracked up at her joke and then flicked her head around. “Shit! I thought there’d be more people here.” She sighed unhappily.

  I, on the other hand, was not at all sorry about the paltry crowd. “Maybe it would be better on a weekend,” I consoled her.

  “Are you legal?” she asked me. I must have looked confused, because she pointed at my juice.

  “Oh! Yes, way legal. I’m twenty-six.”

  “Really?” Her eyes were wide. “Wow, you look younger. I think once you hit twenty-five, you’re heading downhill.”

  “I feel like I have a few good years left in me,” I told her.

  She shrugged again, unsure about that. “I thought you were around my age, twenty-three. I’m still in college because I took the gap year to find my purpose. Guess what? I didn’t come across it on the beach in Spain. Then I had some problems freshman year, and they don’t count classes if you fail them.”

  She seemed to be waiting for an answer, so I nodded. “I’ve heard that.”

  “Sophomore year, too. It’s not like I wasn’t there, like, going. I was a lot of the time.” Tatum made a face. “Some of the time. Kind of.” Now she shrugged. “Then after the thing about with the dognapping, and the bank vault and vintage wine, my dad told me I couldn’t stay in East Lansing. I could have, but with no money or job and not going to State anymore, it didn’t seem worth it.”

  “Dognapping?” I managed to ask.

  “Yeah. A shit show. Are you still in college?”

  “Yes. I got a late start,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I—my mom needed me to stay with her, so I did.” That was the shortest and easiest way to say it.

  “Then she didn’t need you, so you started at Emelia Schaub?”

  “She died,” I said softly, because it was still very hard.

  “Oh, fuck. I’m sorry. My mom is dead, too. When I was a little girl. It’s why my dad gives me everything, to compensate. Almost everything,” she corrected herself. “He said I have to finish college within the next two years, otherwise he’ll cut off my allowance. So no more tri-Pi, hello communications major.” She made a terrible face, then sighed. “My sorority house was known as the party palace. We were really slutty,” she said wistfully. “But there’s no chapter up here.”

  “Too bad.”

  “No shit. So what do you do?”

  “I work at the library, and I have an internship in the Art Conservation Department. That’s what I want to do as a career, be a conservator.”

  “Seriously?” Tatum looked like she was going to throw up. “I could never touch a dead body.”

  “What?” I stared at her, lost again, then turned to watch the two guys who had broken off from their man-gaggle at the end of the bar and were approaching our table.

  “Ladies, can we get you the next round?” one of them asked, smiling.

  “Certainly,” Tatum told them.

  I quickly glanced at her, because…had that been an attempt at a British accent?

  “I am Penelope Roundbush-Tottenham,” she said grandly. She kind of rolled the R of her last name. “And this is my friend, Daisy McKenzie.” Yes, it was definitely a British accent, or at least I thought it was supposed to be. They said hello to me and I nodded back.

  “I’m drinking Pernod and my companion has a lovely Chardonnay,” Tatum/Penelope announced, gesturing at the red liquid that remained in my juice glass. She spoke with her nose high in the air, lips pinched.

  The man who had offered the next round looked at my drink, confused. “Ok,” he said finally. “I can ask for that.”

  Tatum eyed him up and down. “On second thought, don’t bother. We don’t want any more.” She gave him a huge smile, and seeming confused, both men walked away. “Oh, sorry!” she said to me, eyes big. “You weren’t interested in either of them, were you?”

  “Not at all,” I answered honestly. I didn’t know exactly what I was interested in, but two perfectly-coiffed guys with soft, white hands—that wasn’t it, for sure.

  “Phew! I figured you had good taste.” She beamed at me.

  “What’s your real last name?” I asked her.

  “Smith.” She frowned. “Isn’t Roundbush-Tottenham nicer?”

  “It’s definitely longer,” I answered cautiously.

  “For sure!” She talked for a while about names, and about fake identities. For example, during her junior year in high school at her boarding school in southern California, she had kept up the illusion that she was a kidnapped princess from Albania—and this was among girls she had already known for two years. “The hardest part was that some of them had met my dad when he dropped me off and one girl had come to spend Thanksgiving with us in San Francisco when we were sophomores. It took a lot of quick thinking on my feet, but in the end, even some of the teachers believed me. One donated to my cause.”

  “Your cause?”

  “Putting me back on the throne,” she explained.

  “Wow. You said that with a straight face?” I, myself, was terrible at deception. I was the kind of person who couldn’t play cards, or even board games because I gave everything away. I couldn’t have begun to imagine telling teachers and classmates a lie of the Albanian princess size.

  “I’m kind of a liar, sometimes,” Tatum admitted. “It’s fun, mostly.”

  “Except when you get caught?” I asked. “That must have made them mad, when they realized you weren’t really European royalty.”

  “No, that’s not the problem. Because even when I get caught, I just keep going. I make more lies, and more, and more. The not-fun part is when I can’t seem to stop myself.” Her face changed for a moment from eager and attentive to pensive, a little sad. She hopped off her high stool, jumping down to the floor. “I’m going to see if they actually have Pernod. Want?” I shook my head no.

  Tatum’s second trip to the bar gave me a moment to ask myself what in the heck I was doing here, with a woman who had just admitted to being a serial liar and whom I had just met. But even though I didn’t understand what was happening a large part of the time I had spent with her, she was fun. I was having fun. I had already done more tonight than I had in years: I h
ad gone out after work for a drink (of juice, but so what) and talked to two men (well, I hadn’t actually said anything, but they had been near enough to me that I could have, if I could have opened my mouth).

  And on top of that, I had seen Knox Lynch. Maybe.

  Probably not. I bit my lip a little, thinking. I couldn’t have seen him.

  “No Pernod, so I got a beer.” Tatum plopped it down and spilled some as she grabbed the edge of the table to pull herself back into her seat.

  “Are you a Woodsmen fan?” I asked her suddenly. “I saw you watching the video today.”

  “What? Oh, the interview thing. No, I’m not a football fan at all, but my dad is part of the ownership group for the team. I mean, mostly he’s the biggest commercial contractor in northern Michigan, but he also dabbles in football.”

  “Really?” I asked suspiciously. “Is that like you’re an Albanian princess, or is it for real?”

  “For real. My great-grandfather was one of the original owners, one the guys who brought professional football to northern Michigan. My dad likes it a lot because he gets to be up close and personal with the cheerleaders. Why?” she asked, eyes blinking and eager again.

  “Do you know anything about the players?”

  “No, but I could find out stuff, probably. Why?” she repeated.

  Because as eventful as the rest of the day had been for me, in meeting a person who could possibly become a friend (even if she was a little odd) and going to a bar with her, my mind couldn’t stop returning to Knox Lynch, or his ghost, hanging out in the library stacks. “No reason. It’s nothing,” I told Tatum, and she circled back to telling me about the things she had done which had resulted in her permanent move back in with her father. It was certainly interesting, but my thoughts kept drifting to a pair of light eyes looking back at me out of the depths of the bookshelves.

  Chapter 2

  “Here, kitty.” I looked around in the half-darkness. “Kitty?” I thought that I really should give him a name. Or maybe it was her, not him. I had spent most of the past winter trying to make a connection with the cat that sometimes ventured into my yard, a big grey guy who was more skittish than even the squirrels and birds. I made kissing noises into the dusk and strained my eyes, looking.

  I saw a flash of movement under the white pine tree that dominated both the yard and the whole cottage. I waited, making more kissing sounds with my lips, but he (she) didn’t come forward any more than that. I left the bowl on the porch, at the very edge, before I backed up and stood next to my little house, waiting.

  My phone had messages from both my brother and his wife, down in Ann Arbor where they lived while Dylan went to graduate school. Dylan liked to pretend that he was just writing to say hello, but I knew he wanted to check in that I had made it home all right to my cottage after work. After my mom had died, I had insisted on selling the big house that he had bought for us to live in on the shore of the lake. It was way too much for only one person; I had been just drifting around in it, alone, and I wanted him and Julia to have the money from the sale to help start their new life together. I was seriously hoping that new life included some babies in the near future.

  My brother had worried a lot about me when we sold our old house, because I had never lived by myself and because I didn’t do particularly well with new stuff, like moving. Mostly he worried because that was his normal way of thinking about me. But it had all worked out perfectly. Julia’s mom had built my current house as a summer cottage, but with her new husband, and her work, and Julia and my brother downstate, she spent less and less time there. She had offered the cottage to me and now I was a permanent resident, sending her rent checks that she often claimed to lose or to forget to cash. She was a generous, wonderful person.

  There he was! The big grey body crept closer to the food bowl and froze. Then closer, closer…

  A car door slammed, and the grey shadow streaked away from my porch, leaving the untouched food bowl behind him. Darn it. I shook my head and listened to the faint voices in Shelby’s driveway next door. It sounded like the pair of women was there again to finish cleaning and prepping the cottage to get it ready for Shelby’s return from Florida, where she spent the winters to escape the cold. I could hear them talking about their sons’ baseball games as they unloaded supplies. Because even though it had snowed yesterday, spring was actually here, and then summer would be close behind. I was seriously looking forward to going outside without my nose and fingers freezing, and to the long northern days when the sun didn’t set until you were ready to go to sleep, too. I was even looking forward to Shelby coming back, as loud and intrusive as she was. It was quiet on my street in the winter, a little too quiet.

  It had been also quiet at school and work for the rest of the week, with no signs of any football players around the library. I hadn’t heard from Tatum again, either, after we had left Ginger’s. She had decided to meet up with some other women she knew, the yoga people, but I hadn’t wanted to push my luck. Successfully getting through one bar experience had been enough for a night out for me. But later, on my way home, I had realized that although Tatum had taken my number, I hadn’t gotten hers back. She had added me to the group text but I didn’t know which of the numbers was hers so that I could have gotten in touch, if I’d had the nerve to do it.

  I had been reading that group text just like it was one of the books I raced through at night while tucked in my bed. The yoga girls, as Tatum had called them, wrote to each other constantly. I had no idea who they actually were, but I was assigning names based on the personalities that came out in their messages to each other.

  The one girl who complained all the time, mostly about how she would never meet anyone, I called “Eeyore,” and the one who had made plans to go out with them on Wednesday night but then bagged to head out with another crew was my “Benedict Arnold.” There were about 10 women participating and the conversation was 100% about men, where to find them, and what to do with them. The most fascinating parts for me were when one would send out a name, and sometimes a picture of a guy, and ask for opinions. The latest had been about Clay, who looked pretty good in the picture that started the conversation:

  Barbie [because she was always talking about her awesome vacation house]: This is the guy from my Interpersonal Communication class, Clay. Would you get interpersonal with him? I was thinking of bringing him to my parents’ summer place in Charlevoix this weekend. Have to get out of the dorm and our hot tub is soooo great.

  Eeyore: I know Clay. Tongue skills TERRIBLE.

  Cinderella [was currently grounded by her parents]: I agree. Really weird belly button, too. Gross!!! Not that I wouldn’t take him right now, I’m so fucking bored!

  Guru [she seemed to look at things from the spiritual viewpoint]: His tongue may be wrong, but his heart may be right. What about his cock?

  Cinderella: Meh.

  Eeyore: I’ve had better. I’ve had worse.

  Dory [always the optimist]: You guys! He’s a hottie! Tongue can be coached!

  Whips & Chains [this woman was seriously dirty]: She’s right. Last week I put his head down right where I wanted him and told him…

  And she said a lot more about what she had made this Clay do with his tongue between her legs, which I read with my own mouth gaping open. None of them held back, and it was the filthiest thing I’d ever read.

  It didn’t feel like any of the people writing was Tatum, but I wasn’t really sure. I didn’t know her very well after just one night of hanging out, but I had liked her, and I had hoped we might become friends. I wanted to hang out again, but I was different from these other women. Forget different—I wasn’t in the same universe as the “yoga girls.” Maybe Tatum wasn’t interested in hanging out with me, discussing school and other non-sex topics while I drank a cranberry juice straight up and then went home to crawl into bed with a book instead of a Clay. But I was glad we’d gone out, in any case, because it showed me another thing that I could do which I
hadn’t thought I could. That was something to be happy about, no matter if I heard from Tatum again or not.

  I listened to the swishing white pine a little, and to the faint noise of the vacuum coming from Shelby’s cottage next door, before I went inside. I put on a movie on my laptop and also music softly, and I sang along as I moved around the kitchen making dinner. I liked to have a lot of sound after so many years of living in silence. It made me feel alive and free. I could make all the noise that I wanted to.

  My phone rang as I ate, from one of the numbers I recognized from the group text. Whips & Chains was calling me?

  “Hello?” I answered cautiously.

  “Daisy! Daisy McKenzie!”

  “Tatum?”

  “Of course,” she answered, and started in immediately on what had happened to her that day, how her friend hadn’t shown up for their lunch date. “Tressa is a bitch. She’s definitely disinvited for this weekend. But you’re coming, right?”

  “Coming?” I asked. “Did you invite me to something?”

  “My dad has to go to London for business so everyone’s coming to my house to hang out. Right? Aren’t you on that text with the spin girls?”

  “No, I’m yoga. I don’t do yoga, I mean…I mean, I didn’t know about people coming to your house.”

  I managed to tease more information out of her, like when she meant for me to come, and how many people would be there. I did want to go, but I didn’t know if it was a good idea. “Thank you for inviting me,” I told her.

  “Will you come?” Tatum demanded. “That made it sound like you aren’t.”

  “I don’t know.” I hesitated, not sure of how much I should say. “I sometimes get uncomfortable in, um, crowds, or in places I don’t know.”

  “Can you fix it with drugs?”

  “I take a prescription medication, for anxiety, and that helps a lot,” I said carefully. “Other drugs, no.”

  “Ooooohhh,” she said, long and drawn out. “That’s why you didn’t drink, then!”