King of Hearts

by Stevenson, Jennifer

  His chest swelled. “He’s a good little guy.” Nadine was right. Tammy probably wouldn’t want custody. It would be worth all the hassle to know the kid was happy and wanted.

  They lay still a while. He listened to her breathe and imagined hearing that sound in the morning. It was a very secure feeling. Yet, going over all she’d said, he felt a doubt.

  “So was that a yes?” he said to her hair.

  “Yes.”

  “In that case I have another idea, too.”

  “Mmm?” Her hand closed over his shoulder.

  “How about we move this party to the bed?”

  Once they were under the gold coverlet, he found he couldn’t sleep. She dropped off, snuggled under his arm, but he stared at the ceiling.

  How did I get here?

  The whole thing seemed fuzzy tonight. The kid was in it. He had vivid memories of Davy Junior ralphing on his knees, Davy Junior hugging him, Davy Junior sacked out in his arms on his mother’s sofa while the three of them sang a lullaby.

  Nadine had taught him about being a father. The kicker was, he already knew all that stuff. He just hadn’t known he knew. She reminded him.

  Maybe he shouldn’t mention that. Three weeks of solid work had stopped her coming the heavy preacher’s daughter on him—most of the time. But she was bound to backslide. Could he face a lifetime of that? How much different was it, in fact, from his mother’s endless demands on FX to come home from work, spend time with his son, take her to dinner once in a while, blah blah blah?

  Listening to Mom complain hadn’t given him these fierce convictions about how his own son’s childhood ought to go. He’d come up with those on his own.

  Funny. If he had suffered from a lack of fathering, Nadine had paid too much to get a lot of fathering. Carefully, so as not to wake her, he lifted a long hunk of her hair and let it slide through his fingers. He hoped that in time he could make it up to her for all those hungry, loveless years. For some reason this thought made his eyes sting.

  He swiveled on his hip and slid his arms around her and she snuggled against him in her sleep. That made him think of Davy Junior sleeping in his arms. His eyes stung more. He shut them in the dark, willing sleep to come.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “What’s on the program for today?” he said to her next morning while she clanked around the kitchen.

  “I thought we’d take Davy Junior somewhere new,” she said. She had on a pair of his boxers and a tee-shirt and her hair was scrunched back in a plain ponytail. It did his heart good to see how she stretched his clothes out.

  “Sure. Where to this time?”

  “There’s a show-place farm up I-90. You know how he loves ducks. There ought to be ducklings about this time of year.”

  “Yeah, he’ll love that.”

  She slid a stack of French toast in front of him and sat down across the table with her own stack.

  He dug in. “How did you find anything to cook in this kitchen? Whenever I look in the fridge, all I see is beer.”

  “Well,” she said, twinkling at him, “I knew you’d have margarine.”

  Even that didn’t embarrass him. Tammy and her orange spray paint and her camera seemed a hundred years ago. He smiled back. “Marry me, babe?” He shoveled in a forkful of French toast.

  “You bet.”

  He pointed the fork. “Don’ forgep, we’re ftopping at the yeweler.”

  She stopped eating long enough to meet his eyes. They stared at each other for a powerful moment.

  “Better leave your cell phone home,” she said. “Corky didn’t sound like the type of man who takes No for an answer.”

  “You got that right,” King Dave said, chewing.

  “Could he really have squared it with your father?”

  “Who knows? Probably good enough for his purposes. Not good enough for mine.”

  “What do you mean?” She laid her fork down. Suddenly she looked thundercloudy.

  He bit his lip. “I mean, Dad wouldn’t argue with Corky. He’d only tear a chunk off of me. Maybe suspend me another month.”

  “So,” she said slowly, and he got nervous. “If you hadn’t been suspended last night, you might have taken the call?”

  He stared at her. “No.”

  “No?” She raised her eyebrows. “You’re mighty sure.”

  “I was busy,” he said as patiently as he could. “In case you didn’t notice.”

  “Suppose,” she said, pushing like a waitress, “we weren’t, well, busy. And not suspended. Would you have taken the call?”

  “Hell, I dunno, probably.”

  “So you’re more afraid of your father than Corky.”

  “Shit, yes.” That was a no-brainer. What was her problem?

  “And you’re more afraid of either of them than you are of being out of work.”

  “Work is what I am. It’s what I do.”

  “You’re mad. I can tell because you’re not apologizing for cursing!” Her lip trembled.

  “What’s your point?” he said, laying both palms up on the table. He wasn’t really mad. Not yet. “I’m a stagehand. I work. You know this.”

  “Suppose,” she said. Oh, man, they were gonna play this game. “Suppose it was a time when only you could take Davy Junior to the doctor? What then? Would you lock him in the basement and say, ‘Stay healthy until I get back from work, kid?’”

  Okay, now he was mad. “Now you’re getting sarcastic.”

  Nadine slapped her fork on the table. “You aren’t going to have the same kind of marriage with me that you had with Tammy. Or let’s say, I won’t have it with you. Because I won’t marry you if this is how you’re going to live.”

  “But, Nadine—”

  “How much do you plan to work when we’re married?”

  Christ, was the whole thing going to fall apart before he even got the ring on her finger? Apparently so.

  “I dunno,” he said, feeling helpless and angry. “As much as I can, I guess.”

  “Half right. You’ll work as much as you can, but you won’t be married. Not to me.” She leaned forward, dipping her long blonde hair in the pancake syrup. “I will not be another stagehand wife.”

  He swallowed. “That shoots us to shit, doesn’t it?”

  “Quit cursing.”

  “Well, I’m sorry!” His voice rose as his heart sank. “What am I supposed to do? Stay home and collect unemployment?”

  “You say that like it’s a crime.”

  “In my business you better have two broken legs before you file,” he said flatly.

  Now she was shouting. “I’m not asking you to collect unemployment! I’m asking you to be with your wife and child!”

  “Jesus H. fucking Christ on a bicycle, you sound like a stagehand’s wife already!” Talk about a crash and burn.

  “Will you quit cursing?!” she shrieked.

  “There aren’t any options!” he yelled and bit back his temper. He lowered his voice. “I don’t have any choice.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Not true. You could get a house job.”

  He exploded. “What house job?”

  “Someday, sometime, a house job will come up. You could have it for the asking. Your father could probably help.”

  He clenched his teeth. “I thought you don’t like how I am about my Dad? For somebody with fucked up relations with both her parents, I think you should watch the criticism, princess.”

  She winced when he called her that in that voice. He winced too. But god dammit, she should lay off him. He would ask FX to get him a house job the day hell froze. Not that she saw that.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to ask,” she said, proving his point.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to take your Mom to lunch,” he flashed. “You really came here to find her, right?”

  “I did not!” she cried hotly. “I had no idea she was here!”

  He ignored that. “Because you say you came for adventure but you dragged your feet on that.”
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  “That’s not true! I hate my mother! She abandoned me and Daddy!”

  That stung him. Was she needling him for not being there for Davy Junior? “What, like you abandoned your father?” he said unforgivably. “Take it from me. I am the fourth son in a direct line from Year One who got abandoned because his father was abandoned. You stopped me from doing it to my son,” he said, panting but calming down. “Don’t do it to your mother.” She flushed. “Start the healing, Nadine,” he pleaded.

  She took it wrong. “You’re not putting down any roots, buster.”

  “I am so,” he said feebly. It was too soon to say so, but he was hoping to get a job on his own merits. Not because he was the old man’s kid. He hoped he could earn it himself. Prudence, or a bald fear of failure, held him back from admitting that.

  She said in a steely voice, “You do not settle down by working the street. You want a real job, King Dave. You know you do. And don’t give me any—any bull about how you aren’t trained or there aren’t any jobs. Go get the training, and then when the job comes up, you’ll be ready.”

  This argument was going in circles. He swallowed down a hard, cold lump. He stood up. “Are you telling me you won’t marry me unless I have a house job?”

  She stood too. She glared into his eyes, fierce and strong and honest and decent and fed up with him. Already. “Yes. I guess I am.”

  He flung away from the table. “Fine,” he growled over his shoulder, and slammed out the back door.

  It was in his mind to go for a long bike ride, come back, yell some more, have makeup sex, and then, once she was pacified, put his energies into giving her what she wanted. In secret. Until he had results, he could not afford to let news get out that King Dave Flaherty was looking for a job he might not get.

  But that was not how it happened.

  After ten minutes fiddling in the garage he went back inside. “I came in for my gloves,” he announced stiffly as he entered the kitchen. But she wasn’t there.

  She’d left. Wearing, he guessed, his shorts and tee-shirt, because every stitch she’d had on last night was still there, including a four-thousand-dollar diamond and pearl choker.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  At noon, when Bobbyjay called his cell, King Dave was fixing his Mom’s screen door, trying not to think about waitresses.

  “Yo, bro, you hear about the Galaxy flyman spot?”

  “No,” he said numbly. This put the tin hat on it. The only job in town that was open, one he wanted, one he wasn’t even sure he qualified for, and it was already taken. He stuck the screwdriver in his back pocket and stood up, dread in his heart, pinching the phone to his ear with his shoulder. “Who got it?”

  “Nobody yet. I just heard, Corky tried to put the arm on management to get his dumb drunk of a nephew in, and they hung up on him. Corky’s in a state.”

  “That I believe. He wasn’t too happy last night when he tried to get me to break suspension for a put-in at the Arena.”

  “You didn’t go?”

  King Dave laughed humorlessly. “Would you?”

  “Fuck no,” Bobbyjay said. “Your Pop would kill you.”

  “But tell me about the Galaxy thing,” King Dave said, full of turmoil. What if he did qualify? He couldn’t tell Nadine. He couldn’t tell anybody, not until he knew he had it sewed up. “How come they wouldn’t listen to Corky?”

  “Aw, the city hired some collitch boy from out of town for production manager. He’s taking interviews!” Bobbyjay laughed. King Dave remembered that Bobbyjay himself had four years of college and a degree, though he kept this fact real quiet around town. “You gotta fill out an application. Get references. Like that’s how we do it in Chicago.”

  “References.”

  “Yay, like, letters from smart people and department heads and that.” Bobbyjay was really putting on the stagehand today. “Bunch of bullshit.”

  Bobbyjay knew he wanted this job. He knew King Dave was too fucking proud to ask. He was practically spoon-feeding him the lowdown. They love you, Nadine had said.

  To his horror, King Dave felt his eyes fill with tears. “Well, shit,” he said roughly, “ain’t that a kick in the pants.” He took a whirlwind mental tour around the city. Who did he know who would recommend him for flyman at the Galaxy?

  As if he’d heard this thought, Bobbyjay said casually, “Didja hear Newman is out to da Skyline with Ballet Canada?”

  Newman. King Dave had rigged twenty-four dancers to fly for Ballet Canada last year. Newman liked his work.

  “You were tight with him when they came last year,” Bobbyjay said, still noodging.

  Enough. “I gotta go,” King Dave said. “My kid’s waking up from his nap.” He paused, his heart full, feeling like a man on a tightwire with a vat of burning oil under him and snakes crawling up from behind. “Thanks, Bobbyjay.”

  “You’re the best, King Dave,” Bobbyjay said, pushing barefacedly. “Keep me posted.”

  He rang off and King Dave turned and leaned on the doorframe, still holding his phone, panting with the effort of not crying. Fuck. Shit. Fuck shit sonofabitchin’ motherfucking hell and a ball of christly crap. Could he do it?

  He swiveled and folded his arms across his chest, head bowed, trying to squeeze shut the big hole he felt inside. The risk. It wasn’t only that word would get out. King Dave Flaherty applied for flyman at the Galaxy and got turned down. There was his old man to consider. Shit, he’d be in dutch with the old man’til the day he died.

  But Nadine would marry him if he got the job.

  He could come to fucking little league games if he got the job. Sometimes, anyway.

  “Daddy? I’m awake now.”

  He bent on weakened knees to pick up the kid and pack him over his shoulder. “Hey, sport.”

  Dammit over at the Shubert would give him a reference. And what’sisname who worked for Jam, the guy who took Peter Gabriel into the Arena that time Ned Saakvitne was his ground-rigger.

  “I’m thirsty.”

  He carried Davy Junior into the kitchen and poured milk one-handed for him, holding the dead weight of the sleepy kid on his shoulder with the other hand.

  Saakvitne could be competition. Another college boy. College guys hired each other. They didn’t take hereditary stagehands seriously. King Dave could have kicked himself for giving the kid a reference to Dammit. Now he’d have more experience. Saakvitne could even get a ref from Dammit himself.

  Yeah, but Dammit wouldn’t give him a better ref than he gave King Dave. This was still old man Flaherty’s local.

  “Let’s sit down and drink it, buddy. I don’t want it down the back of my neck.” He put Davy Junior in a chair.

  Wait a minute, didn’t Weasel used to work for a circus? That made him a smart guy. It also qualified him for rigger.

  Sweating, King Dave sat and watched his boy drink milk. Now he wished he hadn’t been too embarrassed to ask Bobbyjay more questions. Who else wanted the job in this Local?

  Hell, a job this good, there could be applicants from out of town. Bound to be.

  Only one thing to do. And that was to do it fast.

  “Mom?” he yelled, getting up from the table so fast Davy Junior looked up at him open-mouthed. “I gotta go. Be back later to finish that door.”

  His mother came into the kitchen. “Is Nadine coming today?”

  “Gotta go.” He smooched her on the cheek, bent over to smooch Davy Junior’s sticky face, and stuffed his phone in his pocket. “Wish me luck.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Flyman at the Galaxy? I thought that theater wasn’t built yet,” Nadine said, pouring coffee into two big styrofoam cups.

  “It’s almost done,” Bobbyjay said. “They’re hiring now.”

  “Huh.” She added cream to both cups and fitted their lids.

  “I called King Dave,” Bobbyjay said. “He knows about it.”

  She raised her eyes to Bobbyjay’s earnest, watchful face. “Can he get the job?”


  “Sure. I think. If he gets the references.”

  She nodded slowly. “Will he apply for it?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  She nodded again. “Where do you suppose he is right now?”

  “Right now,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “probably running around town chasing down references.”

  She knew how King Dave’s Daddy intimidated him. “Or not.”

  Bobbyjay nodded. “Or not,” he conceded.

  Nadine wiped her hands. “Two-seventy-three for two coffees.” She took his money and made change out of her apron. “Bobbyjay, can I borrow your car?”

  But before she started driving all over town, she went next door to the Auditorium. Maybe the guys would try to hide King Dave from her, like last time.

  Or maybe not.

  King Dave spent the morning driving from one theater to another. It felt weird to go to guys he’d known all his life, with his hat in his hand, saying, Do you think I’m good enough that you’ll recommend me for this job? Guys who had come hat-in-hand to his father ten and twenty years ago.

  Part of him hated it. He was FX Flaherty’s kid. People called him for a reference. People wanted to be seen having a beer with him. It meant something.

  Part of him said, These guys came to Dad hat-in-hand because they wanted something. And for the first time in my life, I want something. Is that weird, or what?

  He’d thought he wanted this Camaro. He’d thought once upon a time that he wanted Tammy, and then, that he wanted out.

  Now he wanted Nadine. He wanted to take his kid fishing. He wanted a real job.

  So he went after references.

  That was the world. Not FX’s world, of course. But everybody else’s. He took the ramp onto Congress and headed toward the Auditorium.

  His cell phone rang. He checked the ID: it was the office. King Dave’s guts did the loop-the-loop.

  It was a lot worse than he’d expected.

  “You stupid motherfucking pus bucket! Jesus H. Christ in a barrel! You know what I have on my desk?” his father screamed.

  “Uh, no?” King Dave’s guts did an Immelman flip and then headed for his shoes. Make that Yes.