by Wiley Cash
“Come on, now,” he whispered. He rubbed her back. “Come on, now,” he said again.
“You always make me feel better,” she said. She sat up and looked at him. “Thank you for calling me. I wish I were more fun.”
He gasped and widened his eyes as if gravely offended by what she’d just said. “You can beat me, tie me up, and make me write bad checks,” he said. “But don’t you dare bore me. Lord knows nothing about you has ever bored me.”
“Well, thanks for listening to me bitch about my life,” Colleen said.
She picked up her near-empty beer bottle and took the last swig. When she set it down, something caught the corner of her eye, and she turned to see a man looming behind Danny. He was dressed like Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, complete with the dirty hockey mask and tattered black union suit. Danny had no idea that the man was there until he saw the look on Colleen’s face. Then he turned his head and peered over his shoulder. He gave a weak smile, and then he made a face at Colleen and laughed like he didn’t know what else to do. The man wearing the hockey mask groaned and shuffled his feet as if he were trying to go through Danny to get to the bar. Danny tried to laugh it off, but when the man didn’t stop leaning into him, Danny put his forearm against the man’s chest. “All right,” Danny said. “That’s enough. You’re going to spill my beer.”
The man in the hockey mask lifted a machete that had remained hidden until that moment. It all happened so quickly that Colleen realized that the machete was made of plastic only when it grazed Danny’s cheek without drawing blood. Danny slapped the machete away from his face and sprang from his bar stool. Colleen had never seen Danny fight—had never even imagined him in a fight—and she did not know what would happen if one broke out now.
But a fight didn’t break out. The man with the machete laughed and lifted his hockey mask, revealing a handsome face and a blond haircut that reminded Colleen of nearly every guy she’d known in law school.
“Come on, Danny,” the man said. “I’m just messing with you.”
“Jesus, Brad,” Danny said. He collapsed back onto his bar stool as if he were suddenly exhausted by the specter of an altercation. “I didn’t know who the hell you were.”
“I’m Jason Voorhees,” the man said. He looked down at his costume as if checking to make sure he’d worn the right outfit. “Come on, I got the hockey mask and everything.”
“That’s not what I meant, Brad,” Danny said. He shook out another cigarette and lit it.
Brad reached around Danny and set his machete and mask on the bar, and then he put his hands on Danny’s shoulders and made a show of massaging them. “Relax, Danny,” he said. “Relax and tell me what’s up with the sales out in Plantation Cove. I thought you’d be slinging some more home sites for me.”
“Market’s been slow this fall,” Danny said. “It’ll pick up. It always does.”
“Yeah,” Brad said. He stopped his massage and patted Danny’s shoulders with both hands. “Let’s hope it does.” He looked over at Colleen and smiled. “Is this your girlfriend?”
“This is Colleen,” Danny said. He gave Colleen a quick look that was part apology and part cry for help.
“Colleen Barnes?” Brad said. He reached out his hand, and Colleen took it firmly in her own. It was soft and warm.
“Colleen Banks,” she said.
“Shoot,” Brad said. “I know who you are. Your daddy’s a good man. It’s a shame that he’s going to lose next week.”
“Okay,” Colleen said, mostly because she didn’t know what else to say.
Brad turned his attention back to Danny. “Danny’s a good man too.” He smiled, and then he reared back his hand and smacked Danny on the ass as if they were on a football field and Danny had just made a game-winning catch. “But he needs to get this sweet ass in gear and start selling some home sites.” Danny didn’t react, just took a drag from his cigarette and then knocked an ash into the empty bottle sitting in front of him. Brad leaned close to Danny’s ear. “What did you dress as, Danny?”
“Dracula,” Danny said, not turning around.
“What?” Brad asked.
Danny turned his head and spoke louder. “Dracula.”
“Is that right?” Brad said. “You out sucking blood tonight?” He laughed, placed one hand on the back of Danny’s neck, and squeezed.
Danny shrugged off his hand. “Just sucking down beers,” he said.
“I bet you are,” Brad said. He leaned forward again and picked up his mask and machete off the bar. “Well, y’all have a good night.” He winked at Colleen. “Tell your daddy I said hello.”
Brad left them and walked across the dance floor to a table on the other side of the bar where two other men sat. They were about his age, but they wore polo shirts and jeans. They looked like old college buddies who’d just left the golf course and had come to the bar to make a lot of noise and look for women to take home.
“What an asshole,” Colleen said.
“Yep,” Danny said. “Always has been. I hope your dad beats his ass.”
“I thought you were about to try.”
“Shoot,” Danny said. “I should’ve.” He looked at the bartender and raised his empty bottle, and a second later she came by and removed it and set down a fresh beer.
“What’s Plantation Cove?” Colleen asked.
Danny took a long sip of his beer and set it down. “What was Plantation Cove, you mean.”
“What was Plantation Cove?” she repeated.
“It’s sinking,” Danny said. He laughed. “In more ways than one.” He picked up a napkin from the bar and wiped his mouth, and then he wiped the beads of cold sweat from the bottle.
“What do you mean ‘it’s sinking’?”
“Well, it’s literally sinking,” Danny said. “It’s a new development off Long Beach Road. Brad came in and cleared swampland and decided to build huge houses on tiny lots. Some of the most expensive waterfront lots are literally under a foot of water, depending on the tide. And he can’t sell the lots and build fast enough to keep it in the black.” He looked over at Colleen, turned his head farther as if making sure Brad wasn’t still looming behind him. “So,” he said, “it is all, therefore, underwater.”
“I thought he was some rich kid,” Colleen said.
“He is,” Danny said. “At least he was, anyway. He’s still an asshole.”
“I’m sorry that he was mean to you,” she said.
Danny waved his hand. “Please,” he said. “I can handle guys like Bradley Frye.”
“I hope my father can handle him.”
“Hell, the only reason Bradley Frye wants to be sheriff is so he can get a piece of whatever’s out there.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“He’s going around telling everybody that that airplane was part of a drug-smuggling operation and that Rodney Bellamy was the ringleader.” He took a drag off his cigarette. “Shit, if that’s true, I bet Brad’s jealous as hell. I bet he wishes he’d thought of it.”
“You think that’s why he wants to be sheriff?” she asked. “To make money illegally?”
“Aside from your daddy, I’d argue that’s the only reason anybody in this damn county would want that job.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and Colleen looked at Danny out of the corner of her eye. For some reason, at that moment, she saw him as the older man he would become, still handsome, still pretending to be as happy and reckless as he was before Bradley Frye had arrived and stolen whatever joy their evening together had conjured. Colleen knew that even as an older man Danny would be alone, at least alone in the way of those who live full lives while never sharing the breadth of their lives with certain people. And Colleen knew that she was one of those certain people with whom Danny had never shared his life. When she was younger, she’d had questions she wanted to ask Danny, but she didn’t have the vocabulary to frame them. Now she had the vocabulary, but she no longer had the questions.
As they danced, Colleen couldn’t help catching glimpses of Bradley Frye where he sat with his friends at a table in the corner. He wore his hockey mask pushed back on his forehead now, and she could feel his eyes on her, and that, along with his treatment of Danny and the things he’d said about her father, unnerved her. He was the kind of man who scared her, a man who acted like he had nothing to lose because he lived in a world without consequences.
Even though it was Halloween night, it was still a Wednesday, and at midnight the house lights had been brought up in the near-empty bar. Danny cupped his hands around his mouth and booed, and then he smacked his palms on top of the bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention. She looked at him and rolled her eyes as if she were used to seeing him behave this way. “Fix your makeup, Danny,” she said.
The streaks of blood he’d painted at the corners of his mouth were now nothing more than pink smears. Colleen laughed and reached for him, gently trying to get him to drop his hands. Unable to convince him to stop, she tried to get ahold of his hands to keep them off the bar.
“Stop it,” she said. “She’s going to call the police.”
Danny stopped booing for a moment.
“Call the police, Becky!” Danny said. “Call them! And bring Sting! We need to dance.”
“Night’s over,” Becky said.
“Not for the undead,” Danny said. He swooped from his bar stool in a dramatic spin, swishing his arm upward as if lifting a cape to cover his face. Becky laughed and threw a bar towel at him. Colleen climbed off her bar stool, and she and Danny staggered across the now-lit dance floor toward the door. Colleen looked at the corner where Bradley Frye and the two men had been sitting, but while the two men were still there, Brad was gone. She looked around, hoping he wasn’t outside, and then she spotted him on a pay phone, leaning against the wall in the hallway that led to the restrooms.
Outside, Colleen and Danny weaved through the parking lot on the way to his red Camaro T-top.
“Are you okay to drive?” she asked, already knowing what his answer would be.
“Are you okay to ride?” he asked. He had a cigarette in his mouth and was trying to line it up with his lighter’s flame while he walked. He lit it and slipped the lighter into his pocket. He smiled, took a drag. “What a silly question,” he said. “Colleen Barnes was born to ride.”
She held up her ring finger, suddenly remembered that she had left her ring in her top drawer back at her parents’ house along with the framed wedding photo.
“Colleen Banks,” she said.
“Shit,” Danny said. He unlocked his door and swung it open. “You’ll always be Colleen Barnes to me.” He climbed inside and reached across to unlock Colleen’s door. She heard the click of the door unlocking and closed her hand around the door handle. She stared out toward the ocean that was apparent yet invisible in the dark night. She knew that she would always know herself as Colleen Barnes too.
They drove up the street to a convenience store that was still open and selling beer. Danny parked by the gas pumps and went inside. Colleen settled back in the seat and allowed her head to drop against the headrest. The world spun when she closed her eyes. She opened them slowly, and she saw what looked like her mother’s car parked across the street outside the closed Carolina Motel. The business was darkened, and there was little light, but Colleen could swear that she was staring at her mother’s burgundy Regal.
She opened her door and stepped out, and then she walked across the dark, quiet street to the parking lot of the Carolina Motel. Her mother’s car—at least the car that she thought was her mother’s—was parked alongside the motel as if it had been left there, which didn’t make sense to her. Her mother’s car had been in the driveway when she’d left home, and there was no good reason for it to be parked here this late at night. She walked toward it to peer inside its windows, and then she heard a man’s voice. Colleen turned to see a man on a pay phone at the other end of the lot. It was dark, and she was too far away to be certain, but perhaps it was her father. “Dad?” she called.
The man on the phone stopped speaking, and he turned to face her. She knew she had never seen his face before, and something about seeing it now in this dark parking lot after assuming he would be her father chilled her to her core. She stepped backward until she was in the middle of the street, and then she turned and walked to Danny’s car. The man who’d been on the pay phone hung up and walked toward the burgundy Regal. He climbed inside, started the engine, and, with the lights off, pulled out and headed toward the west end of the island. She’d been mistaken. It wasn’t her mother’s car. The man hadn’t been her father. She was drunk, and when Danny came back out with a six-pack of beer and set it down in her lap before climbing behind the wheel, she knew for certain that he was drunk too.
For Colleen, the night had changed, and along with feeling drunk she also felt the heavy regret of drinking too much and the acute knowledge that her regret would have grown by the time she woke up in the morning. She could feel Danny’s eyes on her.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “You’re not going to throw up again, are you?”
“No,” she said. “But I think it’s time I get home.”
Night on the island was pitch black, but as Danny drove her home, the Camaro’s windows down, the cool, humid midnight air wafting into the car’s interior, Colleen looked to her right where the waterway rolled along on the other side of the trees, intermittently visible where the forest had been cut away for land to be claimed and squat houses stamped out or two-story vacation homes built.
Seated this way, her eyes fixed outside the passenger’s window as the car hurtled forward, her head swimming with beer while the sound of the wind poured into the car, Colleen felt herself becoming dislocated, outside of time as if the car ride were carrying her somewhere mystical or spiritual instead of geographical. She wanted to explain this to Danny, but when she turned her head to look at him—her eyes sweeping across the glowing dash with its green numbers and buttons and dials—she saw that Danny’s eyes were locked on the road, his index finger tapping out a silent beat on the steering wheel. He looked over at her and smiled. “You sure you’re not going to throw up, Colleen Barnes?”
She smiled and shook her head, Danny’s face blurring as she did. “No,” she said, “Colleen Banks will not throw up in this car or any other vehicle this evening.”
Danny slowed and clicked on his blinker, the ticking sound filling the night like a clock that had suddenly been wound, the orange glow of its signal tossing light ahead and behind the Camaro in a way that illuminated the night with an unimpeded glow. Danny had turned off his headlights, just as he had done when dropping Colleen off late at night—both of them similarly wasted—when they were in high school and, later, when she was home from college.
As they slowed, darkness enveloped the car, folding over them as a solid thing. Danny’s car crept into her parents’ driveway, the soft light from the half-moon floating down in a way that seemed less like light and more like something physical that drifted on the air. Colleen could make out the dark lean of her parents’ house, the soft edges of her mother’s car parked in the driveway, her father’s cruiser parked by the road, the clean slashes of trees.
Danny put the car into park and took his foot off the brake. “How long are you staying?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. She let her head sag against the seat. “I haven’t thought much about it. My mom needs my help, and my dad’s got the election coming up, so—”
“Bullshit,” Danny said.
Colleen lifted her head and looked over at Danny. She waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t. “It’s not bullshit,” she finally said.
“It’s bullshit if you think your mom needs you
r help,” he said. “Your mom needs your help as much as your dad does, and I don’t think your dad has ever needed anybody’s help.”
“He’s probably going to lose this election, Danny.”
“And you hanging campaign posters with your mom is going to change that? Please.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“I’m not trying to tell you anything,” he said. “But they don’t need your help, Colleen. And you don’t need their help either.”
“I didn’t say I needed their help.”
He put his hand over hers. It felt warm and familiar. Colleen looked down at their hands. She turned hers over, palm up, and their fingers interlocked. “Look, honey,” he said, “I’m about the worst and last person to be giving advice on relationships, but I think the only person who can help you and the only person who needs your help is back in Texas.”
She let go of his hand and brought hers back into her lap. Out of nervous habit, she reached for her wedding ring to spin it on her finger, and again she remembered that she wasn’t wearing it. She looked out at her parents’ house. “Remember when we were in high school,” she said, “and you’d drop me off late and wait for me to get to the front door, and then you’d lay on the horn?”
Danny laughed. “I do,” he said. “I do remember that.”
“Please don’t do that tonight,” Colleen said.
Danny put both palms on the center of the steering wheel as if preparing to honk the horn. He smiled.
“You bastard,” Colleen whispered, trying not to smile herself. “Don’t you dare.”
“You’d better get back to Texas before my hands get heavy.”
She gave him a playful slap. “I needed this tonight,” she said.
“I know,” Danny said. “Me too.”
“I should’ve married you,” she whispered. She smiled.
“Oh, honey,” he said. He cocked his head and looked at her with mock sympathy. “There would’ve been a lot less screwing and a lot more drinking.”