The Trouble with Bliss

by Douglas Light

It’s over in three minutes, Jetski reduced to a weeping heap. Morris helps him to his feet. “Steven,” he says, “I really—”

  Jetski slaps him. “Shut up,” he yells, and lurches off. He jags down the street, howling like an injured cat. At the intersection, he turns back. “Stay away from me and my family, Bliss,” he yells. “I’ll kill you. I swear, I’ll kill you.”

  Morris watches him round the corner, then studies his hands, his thin fingers, and wonders what they're meant for. Wonders what he’s meant for.

  Reentering the bar, he’s met with cheers. Four beers now rested before him, drinks bought in congratulations by the other patrons. “Waltzing Matilda,” a withered man of twenty-two calls Morris. “The most beautiful dancing I’ve ever seen.” He, too, is a veteran of fights. His two front teeth are missing. He smiles a smile that looks like a broken door. “Waltzing Matilda kicked some ass!”

  The entire scene leaves Morris humbled, embarrassed. He feels terrible, like he’s gained something at another’s expense.

  Morris takes Stefani’s note from his pocket, smoothes it out on the bar. He slides onto a barstool. What’s happened these past days? He tries to trace his actions back, to find out how it first all went wrong. But the cause, the root, is a culmination of factors. They run too far back, run too deep.

  “That was weird, man,” N.J. says to Morris, not having moved from his stool. “You got something on your face.” He touches his own cheek, indicating where.

  Morris takes a cocktail napkin and wipes.

  “No, man, the other side,” N.J. says.

  Morris wipes the other cheek. The napkin comes away stained with blood.

  “Jesus,” he says, seeing his own blood. It sets him off balance. He’s confused, feels a need to cry, to be alone. “I’m heading home,” he tells N.J., wanting to crawl into bed, to hide. Four days prior, his life was monotonous but safe; he had his map pinned to his wall, his travel plans, and his delusions. Now he has over eight hundred dollars cash, a bleeding face, and no idea of himself. Half the evil in the world...

  N.J. rises from his stool in what Morris thinks is an offer to walk with him home. It’s not. “Hattie,” N.J. says, looking to the door.

  A woman in wraparound sunglasses and a Yankees ball cap confidentially strides toward N.J.

  She smiles a businesslike smile, her teeth straight and large. “Let’s go,” she says to him, ignoring Morris.

  N.J. gives her a display kiss, one for others to see. “You just missed the excitement, man,” he tells her. “My boy Morris here just served some serious beating a la carte.”

  N.J. introduces them.

  Morris holds out his hand. She doesn’t take it. “Your face is bleeding,” Hattie says, then she turns to N.J. “Time to go.”

  Morris studies her in profile. She seems familiar. He knows her somehow. They’ve met her before. “I think we’ve met before,” Morris says, wiping his face again. “You live in my building, right?”

  “It’s her building, man,” N.J. says.

  “N.J.,” she says, “we don’t—”

  “She owns the building, man.”

  “You own the building?” Morris asks her. He can sense her irritation.

  Pausing, she states: “I own some things.” She hasn’t taken her sunglasses off. Morris can’t see her eyes, can’t tell if she’s looking at him. “My family owns other things,” she informs him.

  “Hattie’s family, man, owns a big chunk—”

  “N.J.,” Hattie says, stopping him. People with money don’t speak of money. “We don’t speak like that. That’s something we don’t speak about.”

  “I know you,” Morris says, trying to place her. It’s her voice, her attitude.

  “No you don’t,” she tells him, then, “Your face is still bleeding.” She takes N.J. by the hand. “Let’s leave.”

  Then it hits Morris. It’s her. The woman from the precinct, the one who’d opened a fusillade of flares on him and Jetski. The one who got pounded in return by Jetski’s paintball gun. “The precinct,” Morris says. It’s like playing charades; he guessed correctly. “Saturday. That’s how I know you.”

  Once the words are spoken, he wishes he’d held them. He’d worn a ski mask to hide his identity. Now she knows who attacked her.

  Hattie halts mid-motion, looking taxidermied.

  N.J. turns to Morris, then to Hattie. “What happened Saturday, man?” N.J. asks.

  In a burst of action, Hattie snatches an empty beer glass from the bar, points it at Morris like it’s a knife. “Don’t move,” she yells, then grasps N.J. like he’s a hostage at a failed bank robbery. “Don’t anyone move.” She waves the glass like it’s threatening. It’s not. Everyone in the bar turns, looks at her, curiously. N.J. serves as a shield as she crab-walks the both of them backward toward the door.

  “Guess we’re heading out, man,” N.J. says to Morris, being pulled.

  Morris nods, watching the both of them.

  “Tomorrow, man,” N.J. says at the door. “Before we leave.”

  “Yeah,” Morris says. “Tomorrow.”

  Then they’re gone, out into the cool night.

  The jukebox randomly fires a song, some friendless melody about a dead brother. Mrs. Cruxo’s behind the bar, silent and guarding. Morris’s face is already bruising from the fight. The bleeding’s slowed. He looks about the Old Homeplate. He’s been coming here for years, knows this place, the people in it, the songs on the jukebox, the worn stools and scarred bar. All is familiar. It all seems so foreign.

  Chapter 36