King of Hearts

by Stevenson, Jennifer

  Then a sparkling notion occurred to her.

  Why, King Dave wouldn’t be working for the next month.

  He could go see Davy Junior.

  Her spirits lifted. What a wonderful gift for the boy! She couldn’t wait to see his little face light up.

  She found herself approaching her destination. Randolph Street ran under the train station here. Trains rumbled overhead. As she peered around for the Hole in the Wall, whatever that was, she realized there was no reason in the world why King Dave should bring her along with him to see his son.

  But why not? Didn’t he appreciate who she was? Pastor Fisher’s daughter was welcome anywhere.

  Right, Nadine. In Goreville. Goreville, Texas. Nine hundred and fifty miles away, remember?

  She slowed to a stop outside a doorway in the blackened, lime-and-slime-covered wall of the underpass. The sidewalk smelled yucky. ‘Dock of the Bay’ blared through the torn screen door. A single blue lightbulb winked over the stoop.

  Suddenly this seemed like a stupid idea.

  A flyspecked tin sign advertising Hamms beer, with the old Hamms bear grinning on it, was screwed onto the screen door. Overhead, another train rumbled by. A drop of some unsavory liquid spattered down on her arm.

  Well, she would go in, see if King Dave was there. If he was, she’d visit with him a while, same as if he was any other sick person in her home town and she’d come by with some flowers or a Tupperware quart full of soup. If he wasn’t, she’d leave.

  If he was surly...King Dave was good at surly....

  She took a deep breath. She’d dealt with surly before. When Jory Lee Simpson broke both his legs trying to drive his pickup straight up a cliff face, he’d been in a pretty poor humor the next day, and she’d done her duty then.

  She squared her shoulders and went inside.

  A single line of green neon ran across the back of the bar, casting a sickly glow on large, quiet animals that stirred in the gloom. A teevy muttered in the corner, showing a football game.

  She waited for her eyes to adjust and her heartbeat to calm.

  Why, it really was a hole in the wall. She could walk across it in four giant steps.

  Every man in the bar was looking at her.

  King Dave wasn’t visible near the door. Back in the corner, underneath the snowy teevy, she saw a familiar tousle of dark curls bent over a beer bottle, familiar strong shoulders hunched.

  With another fortifying deep breath, she marched to the end of the room. All the men turned to watch.

  “King Dave,” she said in a clear voice.

  His head jerked up. In the dark she could barely make out his face. “What are you doing here?” he said thickly.

  She took another deep breath. “I’m your conscience tonight, King Dave. Come on out of this place.”

  Insolently he tipped the beer bottle to his mouth, his eyes appearing black with a stripe of neon green reflected in them, like eerie devil eyes.

  She snatched the bottle from him. “I mean it, King Dave.”

  Suddenly he was on his feet, squeezing her by the shoulders with his hands. “What are you doing here!” he shouted.

  Lord, was he that drunk? Maybe she’d wasted her time. Her heart hammered, but she looked him right in the eye. “I’m here to take you home.”

  “I thought you—” he muttered. Roughly he turned her to face the door. “Come on.” He hustled them out into the dank noise of the underpass. When the screen door had slammed behind them, he shouted, “Are you out of your mind?”

  He seemed a lot bigger out on the street. He smelled beery, but not as bad as she’d feared.

  She thought it must be the relief of getting out of that bar that made her lean into him.

  King Dave had a grievance. “How did you find me? What do you think you’re doing in a joint like this? Do you have any idea what kind of—those guys are—” he sputtered.

  “Come on,” she said. While he was confused, she could get him into a cab. She lifted her free arm. A cab screeched up.

  “What—what—”

  She made him climb inside first and let him pull her after him. “You mustn’t drink and take pain pills at the same time.”

  “Where to?” said the cabbie.

  King Dave’s tone changed. “You’re going home. I’m grounding you!” He slid his arm around her and she pushed him away. Through her uniform, her skin sizzled with the aftershock of his touch.

  “Put your seat belt on, King Dave.” She scooted away and buckled on her own.

  “Where you want to go?” said the cabbie, as if trying out his English another way.

  King Dave scooted closer to her. His hands fumbled at her seat belt. She slapped them. “Sit! And put your seatbelt on!”

  “Grounded,” he repeated. He found a seatbelt in the middle of the seat, right up against her. He leaned over her, muttering against the back of her neck, “Grounded for a month. No jumping out of cakes.”

  “King Dave,” she said in a different voice. “You’re not drunk at all.” She shoved him away again and told the cabbie, “Grant Park, please. Buckingham Fountain.”

  “Oooh, romantic.” King Dave reached for her thigh.

  The cab lurched into motion.

  She slapped his hand, hard. “The pain pills, King Dave. You can’t take them and drink.”

  “Good thing I’m not taking ’em.” His eyes glittered in the yellow streetlights.

  “How many beers have you had?”

  He swooped for her mouth, puffing beer-breath on her face. “Guess.” She boxed his ears. “Ow! What did you do that for?”

  “You. Don’t. Fool. Me. We’re going to have a talk, King Dave. Or have you forgotten why you wanted me to leave town?”

  “Grounded out of town,” he said mournfully. “Grounded out of town with orange cake.”

  “All right, be that way,” she said, serene in her power. “And I hope you paid your bar bill back there, because otherwise you’ve just stiffed the bartender in the creepiest bar I’ve ever been in. And keep your hands to yourself!” she snapped.

  He stuck his hands between his knees like a little boy and leaned against her, nuzzling her neck.

  Nadine suffered five more minutes of this nonsense before they pulled up in front of Buckingham Fountain, and she could pay the cab and get out.

  Colored lights, blue and pink and yellow, splashed up through the soaring fountain waters. Cool spray showered them. Grant Park seemed enormous and empty, and the city skyline, west of them, looked grand and remote through the colored plumes.

  She dug a penny out of her purse and held it up. “Make a wish?”

  When she tried to drop it in his hand, he grabbed her wrist. “Throw penny in the fountain,” he mumbled. “Make a wish with me.”

  Docilely she let him lead her up to the fountain. She ducked under the single pipe railing. He bent, grunted, winced, and bent deeper. She remembered his cracked ribs.

  At the lip of the fountain, she said, “Here’s your penny.” He took the penny from her.

  She shifted her grip to his wrist.

  One swift sure twist, and she yanked his arm up behind his back, leaning into him so that he had to drop one knee on the parapet of the fountain. Then a fast shove, and she had him lying on his belly on the parapet, dangling over the basin.

  “Hey!”

  She stuffed him headfirst into the water.

  It was while she was holding his head underwater that Nadine wondered if she had what she needed in her purse. Without it, she suspected she was in for a dunking herself.

  She let him up to breathe. “Are you still drunk?”

  “Hey!” he yelled. Bad words followed.

  “Guess so,” she said, and dunked him again. This time she gave a second good hard shove. While he floundered, she backed away, stooped under the railing, and ran, rummaging frantically in her purse.

  When King Dave squished up to her, his fists at his sides, water running out of his hair into his eyes, sh
e was wearing the big bright Day-Glo orange beads and matching earrings.

  He stopped as if he’d been punched in the nose.

  She sat on a bench. “Sit down. Let’s talk.”

  Gingerly, at the end of the bench farthest from her, he sat.

  “King Dave, why are you afraid of me in these beads?”

  He glowered. “You know. Blabbermouth.”

  “I am not a blabbermouth. I’ve never blabbed anything. But,” she said, “people blab to me. I hear everything.”

  “Wait’til I find out who sent you to The Hole in the Wall.”

  “Well, it was Bobbyjay Morton, so nyah,” she said. “You can’t punch Bobbyjay. He’s about your best friend in the world.” She thought of how the guys in Liz Otter’s had gloated over his fall into a cake. “Maybe your only friend.”

  That shut him up.

  “Here’s the deal, King Dave. I’ve been thinking about you a lot. You’re a mess. Here’s this great guy with brains, talent, opportunities, a beautiful kid, and what’s he doing with his life?” She erected fingers. “Work. Eat. Sleep occasionally.” She stuck out a fourth finger and gave him a stern look. “And use up condoms. That is no life for an adult with your gifts.”

  He stood up. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

  This was it. Now or never. Was she strong enough to blackmail King Dave Flaherty, or was she going to wimp out?

  She stuck two fingers into the orange bead necklace and wiggled them. “Yes. You do. Or, by golly, I will blab.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Now it starts, King Dave thought, feeling doomed. His life had gone steadily downhill since the moment he saw her across that alley, watching from the window. He was under Tammy’s thumb, and he was—as always—under the old man’s thumb. And now this waitress was putting the screws to him.

  It remained only for fate to crush him like a bug.

  She looked sharply at him. “How drunk are you, really?”

  “Not drunk enough.” When she kept looking at him in that Sister Mary Buttkicker way, he said, “Look, I only had two beers. What, are you gonna follow me into bars and count?”

  “I’m coming with you to the beach, when you take your little boy.” Her eyes were big and round, commanding yet scared. Like she was casting out demons who might be too much for her.

  What could he say? Fuck you wouldn’t cover the ground. A description of his early childhood could take all night.

  He sighed. “Tammy told me not to go near him.” The sound of Davy Junior saying Daddy? had haunted him for days.

  Nadine gasped. “She can’t do that.”

  “Tell her. She says, So take her to court. She knows I don’t dare.” The waitress’s eyes were still big, so he spelled it out for her. “She has photographs of what she did to me in the alley. I got one in the mail already. My old man could get one. And every guy in the Local could get one. I do not,” he said, enunciating clearly, “want to spend the rest of my working life answering to ‘Day-Glo Dick.’”

  She tittered.

  He shut his eyes. She didn’t get it. He’d never thought he could bring himself to say those words, and she thought it was funny.

  Miss Snippety said, “Do you want to see your little boy?”

  “Of course I do,” he said roughly.

  “Why doesn’t your mother want you to see him?”

  He opened his eyes. “Because she thinks I’m contagious. I’m a stagehand,” he said to her startled look. “I caught it from my old man, who caught it from his old man, who caught it from my great grandfather, who was the son of the first deckhand in the city of fucking Chicago,” he said, finishing the litany with a surprising burst of pride. “I ran around the Opera House since I was ten. She divorced FX when I was fifteen, but by then it was too late. I was doing extra work around town, big rock show put-ins where nobody looks too close at who’s humping boxes. Apprenticed at eighteen. Never looked back.”

  A trail of tears leading directly—no passing Go or collecting two hundred dollars—to sitting soaking wet on a park bench with four cracked ribs and a dick that still glowed orange.

  Maybe he should have been an accountant.

  Oh, yeah, that meant going to school. Oh, well.

  “I get visitation rights,” he said, to take his mind off school. “I just can’t be there half the time. More than half,” he added honestly. “Once in a while I get a free morning or afternoon and I go over there, but Tammy won’t let me have him for the lousy hour I’m available,” he grumbled. “I got fed up with that, so I guess I forgot about her car down payment.”

  “She’s a single mother,” Nadine said.

  Trust women to stick together. He hunched, carefully because of all the wet tape around his ribcage, to put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

  She said, “It’s hard for a single mom to schedule her life, even without unplanned visitations.”

  “All right, all right! She’s got the money now,” he said to his knees. Now his leverage was gone, and Tammy had skipped town, and even his mother wouldn’t give him time with the kid.

  “I’ll go to court with you,” Nadine said. “To make your mother let you see Davy Junior.”

  He turned his head and scowled. “I can see him if I want. I just have to let her cry at me first.”

  “No,” Nadine said, as if talking to a child. “You say, ‘I’m taking my son to the beach,’ and she can’t say anything.”

  “Why not? I can’t Mace her,” he said regretfully.

  “Because you have me with you.”

  Nadine looked like Joan of Arc in one of the dioramas on his high school gymnasium ceiling. The thought of all those blonde inches going to bat for him with his mother made him almost as nervous as the prospect of being blackmailed.

  “King Dave, I was a preacher’s daughter for nineteen years. I stood in for my Momma since I was eleven.”

  “Bossing people around,” he said with a stare.

  “Bossing people around,” she agreed. “And I guarantee you, when you show up at your momma’s door with me, your momma will be as nice as pie.”

  He squinted doubtfully.

  She said, “Trust me.”

  Grunting in pain, he sat up and sighed. As blackmail went it was pretty weird. “Couldn’t you ask me for money? Money I got.”

  “What have you got to lose? You can’t work for a month.”

  “Bobbyjay tell you that too, did he?”

  She patted him on the shoulder. “C’mon. It’ll be fun.”

  Brooding, he stared at the foaming colors of the fountain. “Until Tammy hears about it and busts me wide open.”

  “I don’t think she will,” Nadine said positively. “If she tells on you, her power over you is gone. You might never pay again. Until she takes you to court and garnishes your wages.”

  “I’ll pay, dammit, I’ll pay! I already paid.” He was far from confident that Tammy, who was no rocket scientist, would refrain from wasting her blackmail ammo out of common sense.

  “We’ll go tomorrow,” the waitress said. “I’m off all day.”

  And I’ll be hard to find all day, King Dave thought. If Nadine thought Tammy was too soft-hearted to use blackmail ammo, then obviously she was too soft-hearted herself.

  Next morning Nadine waited twenty-five minutes for King Dave to pick her up and take her to his momma’s house. No King Dave. So she put her chin on her hands and thought. Did she know anyone who knew King Dave well enough to know where he was hiding, and yet willing to rat him out to her?

  Well, yes. She knew about fifty someones. The only question was, where were they? The only guarantee about any stagehand on a summer morning was that he’d be working.

  Okay, who was working in the same spot every morning?

  She smiled.

  King Dave skulked in the back of Herm’s over a double dog with onions, piccalilli, ketchup, hot mustard, sport peppers, kraut, celery seed, squeeze cheese, and chili. He hadn’t had time to
eat one of these in two years. Every time Rodrigo started piling on the extras, King Dave would realize he only had four minutes to eat the dog, get across the river to the Opera House, and get behind his follow-spot, so the masterpiece always got cut short.

  Not today. There were some advantages to being suspended. He lifted the bun and opened wide.

  “Ain’t seen him, honest,” said the voice of Weasel Rooney, near the front door, whining.

  Trouble for some deckhand, King Dave thought. Not for me.

  “Don’t know where he is,” said Mikey Ray Ditorelli.

  “Honest, Nadine,” chimed in Dydee Grant.

  King Dave put the double dog down.

  “Thanks, boys,” Nadine’s voice said cheerfully, as if they’d squealed on him after all.

  King Dave looked at his double dog with everything.

  It was a clear choice.

  Stay, eat it, get caught.

  Sneak out the back door and abandon the dog.

  He sucked in a sigh through his nose. He could smell the squeeze cheese and the chili. If he ran, his ribs would hurt.

  He took a huge, angry bite.

  “Hi,” she said, sitting in the booth across from him with a smile. She had on a pair of sensible black stretch bike shorts that made his eyes pop, and her floaty white blouse had an orange smiley-face button pinned right where it would draw his gaze into her cleavage. “My, that looks good. Can I have a bite?”

  He chewed, swallowed, licked mustard off the side of his mouth, and stared into the Grand Canyon between her Tetons. Did she even know she was doing that? Black and white, even when off-duty. She set off his waitress fetish, but good.

  She pouted. “Greedy! All right, I’ll get my own.” She looked at her watch. “We have time to pick up Davy Junior after Sesame Street ends.”

  “Nadine,” he said, as she stood, peering toward Rodrigo.

  “Hm?” She was all bright attention.

  He sighed. “Here.” He offered her the double dog with everything.

  A glorious smile rewarded him. She sat down again and accepted the hot dog with both hands, touching his fingers as she took it. Mesmerized, he watched her examine it from one end to the other, peering and sniffing and clucking.