Deficiency

by Andrew Neiderman

  TWELVE

  Darlene Stone lifted the glass of beer up and swiped under it with her bar-top rag. Jimmy Hummel not only had spilled more than half of his glass, he dropped half his roll-your-own cigarette tobacco into the puddle of foam, and if there was one thing that Darlene couldn't stand, it was a messy bar counter when she was working the Old Hasbrouck Inn. It was her five nights a week job to support herself and her two children and compensate for marrying and divorcing Jack Stone, poster boy for deadbeat dads.

  "Can't you watch what the hell you're doin'?" she snapped at Jimmy. "I don't need extra work."

  The forty-nine-year-old mechanic raised his untrimmed, bushy eyebrows under the heavy folds of rust-spotted skin hanging on his forehead and wiped his thick, bruised lips with the back of his grease-and oil-laden hand. His lower lip was still bruised from the ten-second fight he had with Charlie Weinberg in the parking lot three days ago. The 240-pound hotel chef barely had extended his Popeye-like arm, but it was enough to catch Jimmy in the middle of another insult, driving him back into the front entrance and cracking the window pane with Jimmy's balding head. He shuddered and then slid down to a sitting position. It brought the whole crowd of barflies to the doorway where they teased Jimmy and gave reviews of the short-lived event that at least added some iota of excitement to their otherwise routine existence.

  At least, that was the way Darlene thought of it. The truth was she had little or no respect for any of the inn's regular customers. They were almost all blue collar laborers who alternated unemployment checks with temporary work projects. To Darlene most of them were monotonous, boring, and uninspired people who had almost no ambition. Their sole objective seemed to be to meet the week's basic needs and have money to piss away at a place like the Old Hasbrouck Inn.

  Tonight, a weekend evening, they had a local trio to entertain them, two men and a woman who called themselves the Outlaws. The woman, Paula Gilbert, was only twenty-four. Darlene knew this for a fact because she knew Paula from her high school days at Tri-Valley. She was in the ninth grade when Darlene was a senior. However, Paula looked like a woman in her forties. More than fourteen years of smoking gave her a hard, dark complexion, especially around her eyes. She wasn't really overweight, but her body was already shifting, putting more than it had to into her thighs and around her waist. Her once button nose, soft mouth, and crystal turquoise-green eyes framed in long auburn hair could no longer provide that innocent, sweetness to compensate for her usedfurniture look. Her voice was throaty, hoarse at times, and the whiskey and drugs she used to keep herself going were stapling shadows into her face. However, there was still just enough sexiness about her, most of it hovering in the well-exposed cleavage of her Dolly Parton bosom, to keep the goats and monkeys howling when she turned a shoulder or batted her eyelashes. Someone somewhere taught her how to work the microphone stand in a suggestive manner, too, and that was really what gave the Outlaws its cachet, for the voices of the two men, Jack Dawkins and Tag Counsel, were just a shade more than ordinary, as was their guitar, harmonica, and electric keyboard playing.

  "Who the hell are you to tell me what I should watch and what I shouldn't?" Jimmy snapped back at Darlene. "I pay for everything I spill, don't I?"

  "I doubt she was hired to clean up after you," the new customer, a total stranger, commented as he slid effortlessly onto the bar stool beside Jimmy. How such a handsome, strikingly good-looking man had come into the inn without Darlene noticing immediately confused her for a moment. He seemed to have just materialized. She stood there like a star-struck teenager, her mouth half open, and stared. He smiled in return, friendly, full of sincerity, a diamond sitting in rock salt.

  "Huh? Who the hell are you?" Jimmy said, breaking the magical moment.

  "Shut up," she told him, "or get out."

  "Hey!" he moaned.

  There was enough noise from the music and the chatter around them to keep most people from hearing the exchange.

  "Don't pay him any attention," she said to the stranger. "What can I get for you?"

  With his beautiful blue eyes, he panned the whiskey and hard liquor display behind her. She just continued to stare at him. Someone shouted for a beer down the bar, but she didn't move. He shouted again.

  "Hold your water!" she screamed back. "I have another customer here."

  "Well, what's he doin', givin' birth?"

  There was some laughter.

  Darlene smirked.

  "Sorry," she said in as soft a voice as she could manage. "What did you want?"

  "I'll take that Jack Daniel's on the rocks, thanks," he said nodding.

  "And I'll have another beer," Jimmy said belligerently. Darlene scowled at him, turned, and got the Jack Daniel's.

  "I'm dying of thirst down here," the man at the end of the counter cried.

  "You're dying of more than thirst," Darlene yelled back and there was more laughter.

  She found the cleanest, nicest glass and dropped in some ice cubes. Then she poured a good shot of Jack Daniel's and, with a coaster under it, she put it on the bar in front of the stranger.

  "How come I don't get no coaster with my beer?" Jimmy whined when she put the bottle down hard in front of him. "I spend a lot more money here than this guy's gonna spend."

  "Why would a man your age be such a pussy?" the stranger asked him. He turned, leaned toward him, and considered him the way someone might consider a contradiction.

  Jimmy's eyes nearly bulged with rage. He swung his arm around to push the stranger back threateningly, but the stranger caught his hand in midair and held it there with such little effort, Jimmy felt a surge of absolute terror shoot up his spine. Even Charlie Weinberg didn't have this sort of power. He relaxed, expecting the man to release his hand, but he didn't. He squeezed it harder, the pain surging down his wrist and into his elbow.

  He groaned.

  "Why don't you go to the bathroom and wash your face? You're turning my stomach, and you're surely bothering our bartender," the stranger told him, his eyes not shifting, the intensity of them burning a hole in Jimmy's head. Then he released Jimmy's hand.

  He looked at his reddened palm, up at the stranger, and slipped off his stool.

  "Thanks," Darlene said. "I wanted to do something like that all night. Actually, all year."

  "No problem."

  "Hey, already!" the man at the end screamed. He held out his hands, palms up. Darlene excused herself, poured a new draft beer, and brought it down to the end of the bar. She collected the money and hurried back as if she was afraid the stranger would get up and go before she had returned.

  He sat there, comfortably, smiling at her and then turning to look at Paula. Darlene saw the way he concentrated on the singer and inexplicably, she felt a wave of jealousy roll through her.

  "She used to be good," she said.

  "Oh?" he turned and smiled again.

  "Drugs, alcohol, you know. She might have gone somewhere. Who knows?"

  "She got here," he said.

  Darlene laughed.

  "Here? Here is nowhere."

  "Is that what you think?" he asked, sounding surprised. He looked around the old tavern. The building was nearly two hundred years old. Sections had been added on over the years until it had the dance floor, the modernized kitchen, the upstairs apartments, and the expanded storage and refrigeration room in the rear. It had a fieldstone foundation and had been built at what was once the crossroads of two old pioneer trails that had been turned into county highways. Behind it ran a creek that trailed off the Neversink river, now controlled by a dam that provided drinking water to New York City.

  "Why not?" she replied.

  "I was told this was practically a historical site," the stranger said. "Wasn't there some kind of famous murder in here in the early 1800s?" Darlene laughed.

  "Who told you that?"

  "This elderly lady who runs the tourist house I'm at. She's old enough to remember, I think," he said and Darlene laughed.

 
"That's a legend the owners and previous owners of this property have used to boost up its value for as long as I can remember," she said.

  "Sometimes legends are more valuable than facts," he replied. There were more demands for service now that the Outlaws paused to take a break and reluctantly, Darlene had to get back to work. Every once in a while, she glanced back at the handsome stranger and caught him watching her, smiling softly with those perfect, strong lips. The slight cleft in his chin reminded her of a young Kirk Douglas. His eyes followed her every move. Sensing his full attention on her, she moved faster than usual so she could return to him as soon as possible.

  "So," she said catching her breath. "You're not researching local history or something, are you?"

  "No," he said laughing lightly, "hardly."

  "What are you doing here then?" she asked. She asked it with such forcefulness and surprise in her voice, he stared at her a moment, his smile frozen. She realized how she sounded. "I mean, the Old Hasbrouck Inn isn't exactly on the tourist tour these days."

  "Oh, I'm just passing through and wanted to get out for a while. The old lady said there was music here so I thought, why not? It's always more interesting to see what the locals do anyplace, anyway. At least, it is to me."

  "What are you, a salesman or something?"

  "I'm into computers, networking. What I do is set up systems for mid-to-large companies. I'm on my way to Ohio, actually, after completing a job nearby. You live here all your life?"

  "All my twenty-eight years, yes," she said.

  "You're kidding me. You're twenty-eight? I had you pegged for twenty at the most."

  "Thanks, but that's just the poor lighting," she said and went to serve two other customers, thinking to herself, what would he think if he knew I had a threeyear-old boy and a two-year-old girl back home with my mother? Would he be more impressed or would he make like the wind and blow? He could be full of what makes the grass grow, too, she mused. It had been so long since she was in a conversation with anyone more sophisticated than a chimpanzee. Jimmy Hummel walked by, eying the stranger but keeping his distance. He finished his Jack Daniel's.

  "You want another?" Darlene asked quickly, the note of hope hardly unrecognized.

  "Yes, please," he said. "I think I'd like to hear another round of that music. The singer has a flash or two of something, but you're right," he added quickly,

  "she's gone about as far as she will."

  Darlene nodded.

  "Local kid, too," she said reaching for the Jack Daniel's. "Back about four years behind me in high school."

  "She is?" He looked at Paula sitting at a table with two men, the smoke pouring out of her nostrils like a dragon as she downed a beer. "I would have thought it the other way around: she was four years ahead of you."

  "Like I said, booze and drugs and cigarettes."

  "You don't drink or smoke?"

  "When you work behind a bar, you get a first-hand look of what it does, so no, I don't drink much. I hate smoke and wouldn't be working here if I didn't have to, and as far as drugs...."

  "Yes?" he said smiling.

  "I won't even take an aspirin unless I'm force-fed." He laughed.

  "I thought you looked too healthy for this sort of life," he told her. She blushed.

  "I do what I can to take care of myself."

  "It's paid off," he said.

  She glanced at him quickly, her neck warming with a blush, and then she went down the bar again. A little more than ten minutes later, the Outlaws began to perform. More people came into the Inn, and it became a great deal noisier, at times the laughter and the loud conversations really competing with the singing. None of the three members of the group seemed to care or even realize. Darlene was working constantly, barely having a moment to say a word to the stranger who ordered another drink and immediately turned away this time to face the trio.

  She was disappointed. For whatever reason, he was losing interest in her, and despite the negative comments they had both made about Paula, he was fixated on her. As she sang, Paula's eyes seemed to gaze above the crowd and not at it, but finally, her attention was drawn to the handsome man at the bar, dressed in a nearly electric black tank top and blue sports jacket. She could feel his eyes were on her and her alone and without realizing it, she began to direct all her energy and her singing at him.

  It wasn't lost on Darlene, who slammed glasses down harder on the counter and whipped insults at any of the customers who so much as breathed too heavily in her direction.

  "I've only got two hands!" she screamed at one poor young man who had asked twice for a beer only because he thought she hadn't heard him the first time.

  "Well, use them then," Jimmy Hummel shouted from behind the young man.

  "Go fuck yourself, Jimmy," she shouted back at him over the din.

  "If I did, you'd be jealous," he replied with unusual quick wit. It brought a wave of laughter that seemed to wash over the bar and drown Darlene in her sudden sense of misery.

  She glanced at the stranger to see if he had heard the exchange, but he hadn't turned from his concentration on Paula.

  "I hate this job," she muttered when she was close to him. She was looking for any way possible to restart what to her was the most interesting conversation of the night with the most interesting person. However, if he had heard her, he didn't care to acknowledge. His continued interest in Paula Gilbert convinced her he was just another dickhead, just one better dressed and with better manners.

  Despondently, she returned to the end of the bar where her sometimes boyfriend Dave Taylor and two of his fellow carpenters sat. Every once in a while, she looked toward the stranger. He nursed his drink and avoided conversing with anyone around him. When the Outlaws took another break, he slipped off his stool and walked over to Paula, who seemed to be expecting it. Darlene watched them converse and saw Paula's eyes light up with interest as she laughed at something he had said.

  The break in music produced another run at the bar, so she didn't have much time to watch the stranger in action, but when she looked at Paula a while later, she was surprised to see her sitting with the other members of the trio and the stranger gone. She stopped and looked around the Inn. He wasn't anywhere to be seen. Maybe he had gone to the bathroom, she thought and watched for him, but he didn't appear and the Outlaws began their final set for the evening.

  "What the hell? I knew he was too good to be true," she muttered to herself, smiled, shook her head, and returned to heed the call of another customer.

  Terri pulled into her driveway slowly, her eyes more on her rearview mirror than her garage door. Since she had made a turn off Highway 17, she no longer saw Clark Kent's car behind her. Maybe, she thought, I just imagined it was that man. She decided to stop at a 7-Eleven to get some fresh milk for the morning. After she emerged from the store and started for home again, she watched for him, studying every vehicle behind her or coming toward her. Although she didn't see him and kept telling herself it had really only been her imagination after all, her anxiety level didn't diminish.

  Still concentrating on the rearview mirror, she studied the road in front of her home carefully as the garage door rose. Remembering a documentary on selfprotection she had seen recently, she did not get out of her automobile when she had driven into the garage, and kept the car locked until the garage door was fully descended and locked in place.

  She could hear her phone ringing inside and hurried out of the car and into the house, seizing the receiver in the kitchen so forcefully and quickly, she nearly ripped the phone off the wall.

  "Doctor Barnard," she said.

  "Terri, Will Dennis. I got your message and I have a sheriff's patrol car on the way to your home. Are you all right?"

  "Yes. I thought he was following me for a while back there, but..."

  "But what?"

  "But I'm not positive it was the same man."

  "Someone was following you, though?"

  "No, I don't know. No," sh
e concluded. "I'm not thinking like a rational person at the moment."

  "Just sit tight anyway. Keep every door and window closed until the officer arrives. Did this man threaten you in any way at the hospital?"

  "I felt he was trying to intimidate me. He was certainly more demanding than he was the first time we met at my office."

  "What did he want from you exactly?"

  "He was very interested in whatever I might have learned from Kristin Martin. He seemed so positive I had something. I didn't let on that I knew he wasn't really a law enforcement officer, but he said one strange thing, I thought. Among many, I guess."

  "What was that?"

  "He said he was the only one who could prevent this from happening to someone else. When I asked him why, weren't there other police officers on it, he said he was most familiar with the M.O."

  "That might be very true, but not for the reasons he's implying." The light from the headlights of a car turning into her driveway washed over the wall.

  "Someone's here!" she said.

  "Check to see if it's the sheriff's car. I'll hold on," Will Dennis said. She went to the front window and breathed relief when she saw the sheriff's logo and the bubble light on the roof. Then she returned to the phone.

  "It's the sheriff's car."

  "Good. Tell him what happened and let him look around. He'll check everything for you and help you feel more comfortable. I'll call again in twenty minutes."

  "Okay," she said and hung up.

  The door bell rang, and she went to greet the officer.

  "Dr. Barnard?"

  "Yes," she said, "please come in."

  "The district attorney contacted our dispatcher, who got to me just a while ago. Someone threatened you at the hospital parking lot?"

  "He didn't exactly threaten me, but, well, didn't they give you any more information?"

  "I was just told to get here quickly and make sure you were all right, Doctor," he replied dryly.

  This police officer has a really robotic military demeanor about him, she thought. He stood firm, straight at six feet two and looked at her with a stern face of granite, his features sharp. Normally, she would not appreciate him, but at the moment, he gave her a sense of security, and that she did appreciate. Combining her spat with Curt with her terrifying moments, she felt drained of any energy and resistance. It was good to have someone else upon whom she could lean.