by Jeff Johnson
I walked back out and ducked under the police tape. No one was watching, so I casually headed down the street and took a left toward my car. When the Lucky was out of view, I ducked in under the awning of a new coffee shop and lit a cigarette. My hands weren’t even shaking. Somehow, I knew, that was a very bad thing.
Portland bars can be sympathetic to moods, as I’ve pointed out. But they never really cure anything. It’s more like you could find a shitty place to blend if you were feeling shitty, et cetera. There were thankfully other kinds of places to use as mood alteration staging platforms, places to go when you want to feel anything like what you did, and after kicking Dane Bane’s thieving ass in the wreckage of my tattoo shop I needed a vibe swap. I’ll never know why, but that was my rock bottom. If I hit one more person in the near future, it was going to change me forever. It was time to start using whatever kind of brain I had left in my scarred head. And I was going to start with a stop at my favorite grocery store, the City Market.
I felt better almost as soon as I pulled into the cramped parking lot. I was going to make something good, something big, and I was going to eat the entire thing. I was going to make dessert, too. And I was going to eat that, too. All of it. And I was going to buy some decent wine, which I didn’t even like, and I was going to drink every last drop. And I was going to buy flowers. Unusual ones, and I was going to draw them while I drank the wine. I got out and took a deep breath. It was still raining, but the rain made the air seem clean.
The inside of the City Market was just as I remembered, like I hadn’t been gone for a day. No one looked at me like I’d been a bombing suspect, recently in the papers. No one looked at me at all. They were busy doing what I was itching to do: buying good ingredients. I nodded at the clerk, a frisky-looking young goth/hippie hybrid, picked up my hand basket, and mingled with the yuppies.
Meat first. I looked over the rabbit, then moved on to steak, then the pork. The pork tenderloin looked good, so I ordered one. The guy in the apron behind the meat counter offered me a roasted sample of the French garlic sausage, made in-house, and it was so good I got two packages. In order to round things out in the right direction, I picked up a hunk of tasso pork, a cured, spicy thing used for Cajun food in general. Meats in basket, I ambled over to the produce.
The green beans looked good, so I got a few big handfuls. The heirloom tomatoes were huge and brainlike, so I got a couple of those. They had blueberries, so I added them to the basket. Then I just stood there for a minute and considered. It took the entire minute, but an idea formed. I went down past the seafood to the freezers and got some frozen beef stock, then went back up to the breads, where I got four rosemary rolls, and then I ambled with meditative tranquility past the mustards and anchovies to cheese, where I waited behind an intense, extremely good-smelling power legal-type woman who was waiting on a fist-sized hunk of real Greek feta. Everyone was flashing smiles on and off and consulting lists and iPhones. It was a good vibe, almost like early holiday shopping, when everyone was still in a good mood.
The cheese gal I knew already, in the way you know some people you don’t know a single thing about. She liked her job. She always seemed happy. She smiled at me with no recognition and didn’t give my scar a second glance, just a cheery tree-hugger gal ready to deal out some dairy.
“What’ll it be?” she asked pleasantly.
“I’m making pork medallions, sort of vaguely Cajun, and I’m looking for something sort of mild, on the grassy, nutty end.”
“Fan of the goat?” One of her favorite lines.
“Who isn’t?”
She nodded. “Try this.” She took a quarter wheel of something out of the display case, shaved off a sliver and held it out. I took it and popped it in my mouth, arched my good eyebrow.
“Yumpery. How about a half pound, single chunk format is fine.”
She got to work cutting and weighing and I wandered a little further down while I waited. Nothing really caught my eye, except for the Pilates-sculpted ass of another woman in a power suit, this one a blonde in black. I didn’t look too closely, but I did look. The rest of the dairy section was right there, so I got a dozen duck eggs, whole milk, and Norwegian butter, then picked up my cheese with a nod and plucked a bottle of white wine out of a random display on my way to the register.
The line was three deep, which gave me time to look at all the chocolates. I took a big bar of something dark and added it to my basket. The flowers started at the end of the checkout and flowed all the way to the door, so when it was my time to set my basket down I picked out a selection of asters, giant stargazer lilies, and some unusual scarlet unknowns and brought them back. When she was done ringing me up, the clerk banded all the flower stems together and put them in my grocery bag with the heads picturesquely jutting from the top. She was momentarily dismayed when I paid with one of the nasty hundreds, but it was brief and didn’t cramp my style. When I strode out into the fresh-smelling rain with lilies under my nose, I almost felt like busting loose with a Sinatra tune. Almost.
On the drive home, I hit scan on the radio and let it roll through the stations as I considered, with the fresh and uplifting vibe of the City Market still kissing my mood. First thing was to get the rice going. Then call Delia and get her to deal with Gomez, also see if she wanted to help me make dinner and draw flowers. And then try to find Suzanne after I took a nap. There was a ton of shit to do, but the very first thing on the list was to relax, eat, and be the good Darby Holland for a day, spend an afternoon like I used to before any of the last three months had ever happened. I was sure that version of myself was still inside me somewhere. It was time to let him back out into the air and light and wind.
I should have known it wasn’t possible. As soon as I turned the corner on to my street, I knew something was wrong. I pulled to a stop in front of my house and looked up through the rain at my front porch. Then I almost bit off the tip of my tongue.
Suzanne was sitting in one of my chairs, wearing most of a tracksuit, her bare, corded arms tanned and tattoo-free, a beer in one hand, laughing beautifully. Dessel was sitting next to her, slapping his knee and lost in mirth, wiping beer foam out from under his nose.
It was Dessel’s lucky day. Not only was he enjoying the company of a beautiful woman in the homey environs of my front porch, but after beating on Dane Bane and my subsequent feeling of cresting inner filth, followed by my lame transformation at the grocery store, I didn’t feel like tossing my future down the toilet and breaking his beer bottle over his Poindexter haircut. In fact, I held on to my good mood as I walked up the steps.
“Hey stranger,” Suzanne purred as I reached the top of the stairs. “Your note was priceless, so I thought I’d come by with a six-pack and try to hair-of-the-dog you back to life, but you look OK. Better than OK. Plus I found your other sock.”
“That’s our boy,” Dessel said, raising his IPA in salutation. “Darby Holland, the only guy I know who smiles as much as I do.” He turned his smile back at Suzanne. “S’why we’re buds.”
“Jacob was telling me about the time you guys used gypsy salami from the Russian market for shark bait. You two idiots should be glad I came by with some common sense.”
I took a seat across from them and set my grocery bag down, then took the flowers out and handed them to Suzanne.
“Common sense has never been our strong point,” Dessel continued. He took a beer out of the bag at Suzanne’s feet and handed it to me. “Quick one before I hit the road? I was on my way to Andy and Bax to get those tent stakes for our trip to Idaho. Thought I’d stop by to see what you were doing and I run into this!” He gestured at Suzanne. “What the hell is it about you? You always get the good ones.”
Suzanne laughed and slapped Dessel on the forearm. His high beam smile flickered for an instant at her touch. Maybe it was the size of her hand.
“I keep telling you, Jacob,” I said, grinning myself, “if you spent less time at your mom’s house playing video games a
nd touching yourself, you’d be so buried in poon you wouldn’t need me to pal around with. Which would be sad for everyone, of course.” I took the beer and twisted the cap off, looked at Suzanne, who was smiling. “Jacob tell you about our new game?”
“Game?” Suzanne took a sip of her beer and looked back and forth between us.
“Our new game,” Dessel said, perfectly in sync, our dynamic as a theatrical routine born in the moment. “It’s great. Really, really great. Darby’s the creative type, so I usually just follow in his wandering footsteps. See, he’s doing this Easter Egg type thing where he leaves, like, clues. All over town. If I find them all, then I can prove once and for all that I’m smart enough to be his boss. Then he comes to work for me.”
“I see,” Suzanne said, amused. “And what is it you do, Jacob?”
Dessel stretched and draped an arm over the back of her chair. “I sell golf clubs, baby, and I am the best.”
“Golf clubs?” Suzanne thought he might be joking. “Really?”
“Sure,” Dessel said, breezy about it. “Sporting goods of all kinds. Even guns and exotic stuff. I’m a regional hotshot. Just ask Darby.”
“It’s true,” I admitted, “but don’t let him brag too much. Jacob is a rising star in a field of guys with severely limited career options, if you catch my drift.”
“Hence the game?” Suzanne asked. “He needs a smartypants?”
“Oh yeah,” Dessel said, pointing his beer at me. “I’m going to lock you down on this, Darby. Don’t you forget it.”
“Best of luck with that,” I said, raising my beer. Suzanne raised hers, too.
“To the game,” she said. The three of us drank.
“I better get,” Dessel said, rising to his feet. He looked down at Suzanne. “Milady, it was a pleasure. I hope I’ll be seeing more of you.”
Suzanne rose to her feet as well. She was over a foot taller than Dessel, who seemed both astonished and delighted by it. He did a little jig and giggled. She smiled down at him and held out her hand. They shook, Dessel beaming boyishly.
“Awesome,” he exclaimed sincerely, almost breathless. He gave her one last sigh of admiration and started toward the stairs. As he passed her, his eyes met mine and his face spasmed into a mask of wild hatred. And then he was gone, down the stairs and moving at a peppy gait, a spring in his step and a song in his heart, almost skipping. We watched him go.
“He seems nice,” Suzanne said. I turned and looked up at her and she looked down at me, shy all of a sudden.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “I’m making something good.”
“Starving,” she said. She rubbed her lean stomach with one hand and batted her eyelashes. “Can I help?”
“I need a helper in the worst possible way,” I replied honestly. Suzanne picked up the flowers and my grocery bag and I got the rest of her beer and dug my keys out of my pocket. I unlocked the door and looked at her.
“Prepare yourself,” I said.
“I’m ready for any kind of bachelor mess,” she said. “You should have seen my place this morning.”
“That’s not really what I meant.”
It always pleased me to see my place with someone else for the very first time. People generally expected something far different from the reality. I opened the door and motioned for Suzanne to enter. She paused in the doorway. I watched her slow grin spread from the side as she entered and paused again.
“You live here by … yourself?”
“With those two obnoxious cats.”
“Ah.”
Her eyes went from the two bristling, wide-eyed Chops and Buttons in the center of the small living room up to the walls and the four strange paintings I’d bought from a Mongolian painter a few years before, an unlikely little man who had been in San Francisco for some reason and decided to skip his two-week visa and hitchhike around, paying his way by making art. They were all studies of American life that were just as odd as he had been: a skinny dog eating from some drifter woman’s hand, a fire hydrant with some weeds growing around it, an old Tibetan-looking woman wearing a severe raincoat in an anonymous downtown, a streetlamp with pigeons roosting against a stormy sky. Her eyes lingered on the antique sofa I’d sanded and refinished and had one of Flaco’s nephews reupholster. My old Navajo wall hanging. The bookshelves. The cats never moved while she took it all in.
“Don’t touch those fucking cats,” I cautioned.
“I wasn’t going to.”
I walked around her and gently pushed the cats aside with one boot. They broke formation and regrouped on the couch. Suzanne paused to peek into my office and then stopped again at the antique dining room table and ran her hand along it. She inspected her index finger and raised an eyebrow.
“You dust,” she observed.
“The cats roll on the table when I’m not around. Same thing.”
She moved on to the big antique AM radio and the walnut and glass curio cabinet next to it with all my sketch porcelain. She opened one of the glass doors and took out an old tin rocket I’d picked up at the Salvation Army, back before Antiques Roadshow had made that kind of score impossible. I’d drawn that little rocket dozens of times. It was one of my favorites. The cats liked it, too.
“OK,” I said gently, “you can play with all my toys later. You said you wanted to help, so you get the rice going and I’ll do the rest.”
“What are we having?”
“Surprise.”
We went into the kitchen and she set the bag and the flowers down on the counter.
“You like old stuff,” she observed, nodding at the brass rack with my cast iron cookware hanging from it, more pre-Roadshow loot.
“We in the trade call them antiques,” I replied. I turned the oven on. Even the stove was old, mostly because my landlord was a retired trust fund bum who spent most of his time in a whitey colony in Mexico. I opened the cupboard and took down two glasses and a vase. There was a small collection of booze bottles on the counter; Delia’s vodka, my Jameson’s, some kind of scotch, and a forever-to-remain-unopened bottle of extreme emergency sambuca.
“Whiskey?” I asked. Suzanne shook her head. She took the vase and added some water from the tap.
“I might puke,” she replied. She put the flowers in the vase. “We should have never started drinking wine at that place. I still can’t believe … I mean, the restroom. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that’s where we lost our underwear.”
I poured myself a shot and downed it. “Mnn. Probably shouldn’t go back until we change our hair.” I patted my stomach.
“Darby,” she said, shy again. “I was wondering. I mean, you can be honest. Is it OK that I just showed up like this? I mean there was your note, but after a night like that. If you were just being polite. What we did, it was, you know. Insane. I’m still sore. I never, ever really behave like …”
I closed the one step between us and looked up into her eyes. She was blushing, I was sure of it. I was, too. I reached out and touched her sternum, right between her small, hard tits with the flat of my hand. Her skin was warm. We stood like that for three heartbeats and then I reached around and cupped one incredibly firm ass cheek. She jumped slightly and her eyes widened. Then I rocked up on tiptoe and she knelt in the same motion and our lips met. Her tongue was hot and as hard as the rest of her. I pulled her in and she wrapped her arms around me and lifted. We stayed like that until the crush of her embrace made the bruise on my sternum ache and my sore ribs screamed, and then I arched my back and my breath exploded. She dropped me back on my feet and took a small, staggering step back.
“Now that,” I breathed. But I couldn’t think of anything else. She smelled like shampoo and something else, a whiff of sporty chick deodorant. Intoxicating.
“Was good,” she finished for me. She took a deep breath and stepped back. “So, rice.”
I snapped out of my trance. “Right. Two big cups should do it.” I opened the cabinet and took out two pots with lids; a
small one for her and the big copper bottom for me. I put mine on the stove and cranked the burner. Suzanne took the smaller pot over to the sink.
“Rice is in that mason jar,” I said.
“Got it.” She scooped out two coffee cups and started rinsing the rice to make it sticky. Good girl, I thought, turning back.
I dumped all my ingredients out on the counter, took the cutting board down, got my knife out of the drawer, and went to it. First I cut a quarter of a stick of butter, peeled the paper off, and tossed it into the pot. It immediately began to sizzle and smoke, so I picked up the pace. I quickly took the cellophane off the tasso and cubed it, then threw it in and shook the pot, then turned back and diced the green bell pepper and added that, shook the pot around again.
“Need help?” Suzanne asked, appearing at my side with the rice. She put it on the stove and fired the burner.
“Onion from the fridge,” I replied. “Quickly! It’s a race against time!” Tasso smoke began to fill the kitchen.
I cut the plastic off the tenderloin while she rummaged through the refrigerator, then started cutting it into one-inch-thick medallions.
“Red or white?” she asked.
“White.”
She plunked an onion down and I skinned and diced it fast. Suzanne shook the pot to scatter the ingredients.
“Get those two little French garlic sausages and drop ’em in there,” I said. She did, quickly.
“Incoming,” I said behind her. As neat as a ballroom dancer, she stepped to the side and I instantly filled the gap and tossed in the onion. There was a flash of steam and I backed up. She stepped in instantly and shook the pot. I took the lid off the bottle of Jameson’s.
“Green beans or pork next?” she asked.
“Fire first,” I replied. “Stand back.”
She stepped aside with a grin and I reached into the empty space and dumped a half a cup of whiskey into the pot. A four-foot column of flame erupted and died, and then I added four big handfuls of pork while she shook the pot around. Then we both leaned close to the rising steam and smelled it. My mouth watered.
