Incandescent light thrashed against my eyes, and I blinked hard. Amber cut up the aisle, angling toward the vending machine to the left of the glass doors. She fished a handful of crumpled bills from her pocket, smoothed one out, fed it into the machine.
A soda bottle clunked into the tray as I pulled up beside her. She fed another bill into the slot, pressed a second button. She scooped the first bottle out, waited for the second to drop, then grabbed it as well. I slipped a dollar of my own into the machine, made my selection.
On the far side of the vending machine, beside an industrial garbage can housing a colony of horse-flies, stood a replica Wurlitzer jukebox. Before Amber turned to head back to the Blacklight Room, I stepped to the jukebox. Some giddypop anthem drew to a close through the overhead stereo, and I scanned the titles, finding a song worth listening to.
I dug a handful of change out of my pocket, plucked a quarter free, dropped it in the slot. I punched in the digits for my selection – #1021 – and the 98 Degrees single gave way to a heady syncopation of thundering percussion, ragtime piano, and screaming horns. Twenty seconds into the instrumental introduction, a sandy baritone emerged. I couldn't help smiling. I glanced to my right and found Amber waiting, watching my expression, smiling.
"This," I told her, "is music."
She laughed. "Now you're just showing off."
My smile twitched. Dizzy déjà vu flooded through me as I thought of a December evening when Steve Perry had crooned over Neal Schon's nimble guitar riffs, speaking of a girl who loves to laugh and loves to sing.
A girl who does everything.
2.
Neal Schon's nimble guitar riffs rained from the overhead stereo. Steve Perry spoke of a girl who loves to move and loves to groove. A girl who loves the lovin' things.
I leaned over the long rail of a table near the front of the Morris, one foot on the floor. I angled the cue stick behind my back, lined up an awkward corner shot, all in hopes of impressing the first girl who had ever asked me out. I had committed to the shot, after all. I wasn't about to back out now. Not with Helen Regan watching.
She grinned at me. "Now you're just showing off."
I laughed, because she was right. "Mayhap," I said, trying to sound nonchalant. Helen watched me, as if this convoluted play might determine the course of the entire evening. So I took the shot. Better to act than to think.
The tip struck high. The stick rattled in my hand. I watched the cue ball drive the seven ball into the rail half-an-inch to the left of the pocket. Then the cue followed the seven, clipped it on the ricochet, and knocked it into the pocket. I stood away from the table, propped myself up with the pool-stick, grinning at Helen across the table.
"That was exactly how I wanted that to look."
She nodded seriously. "`Course it is."
I laughed again, and surveyed the table. I had gone on a four-shot run. The only ball left me to sink was the eight, which sat tucked into the adjacent corner, flanked by a small battalion of striped balls. I scrutinized my options as Steve Perry gave way to Michael Aday, who remembered every little thing as if it happened only yesterday.
I could use the thirteen-ball in a combo, or jump the cue-ball and hope for a clean strike. Short of that, I could only break up the cluster and take whatever shot I might get next time around. Assuming, of course, that I didn't scratch, and that Helen didn't run the table.
"Don't tell me," she said, grinning, "that you're going to a let a six-ounce chunk of Bakelite get the best of you." She eased toward the corner where the eight-ball rested. "No way one little shot's got Fast Eddie Felson stumped."
I bent down to sight my shot, lining up the cue. "I always imagined I was more of a Vincent Lauria."
"You've got a powerful imagination," she said. Then she added, "But you've got Paul Newman's eyes."
I glanced up from the baize to see her face. I could see that was being sincere, her eyes narrowed as if I mystified her. As if solving me posed some irresistible challenge.
I twitched a grin at her. "Thanks."
"No problem." Then she leaned forward toward the table, bracing herself on the two rails of the corner. Her corseted tank-top accentuated her generous cleavage, and she cocked an eyebrow. "Now take your shot."
My eyes flicked up to that glorious breadth of flesh, then up again to find Helen's eyes. Her grin widened. I snapped my eyes back down to the table, found my shot, willing myself to concentrate on that black sphere. I lined up on the cue, aiming into the angle where the ball met the felt. Ignoring that constellation of freckles below Helen's collarbone that so uncannily resembled Orion.
"Corner," I called, and took the shot. Better to act than to think. The tip struck off-center. The cue ball hopped off the table and over the thirteen ball, touched down on the far side with a thick smack, bounced clear of the eight without making contact, rebounded off the rail, chipped off the eleven and sent it and the fourteen skittering to the far end of the felt. The cue ricocheted off the thirteen and drove it into the nine, which banked off the short rail and rolled halfway up the table.
The eight-ball remained untouched. I stood back from the rail, propped myself up on the cue stick, and let go of a long breath. Helen stood as well, folding her arms across her ultramarine top as she surveyed the aftermath. "Exactly how you wanted it to look?"
She flashed a grin somehow both patronizing and curiously alluring. "`Course it is," I said.
"I oughta call foul," she said, rounding the table and setting to work. "You hit the cue with the ferrule." She sank the eleven, the nine, and the thirteen in quick succession. "Of course, it did you absolutely no good," she added, lining up the fourteen from across the table, snapping off a sharp catercorner shot that dropped the ball into the corner pocket. "So calling you on it would just be vindictive."
She stepped to the head of the table and eyed the measure of the eight ball. The game-winner. It sat six inches from the side pocket in an awkward position that made the shot on the corner and the shot on the side equally ungainly. "Rules are rules," I told her. "Without them, we're barely more but dressed-up barbarians."
"Rules are made for breaking," she said without looking up. She did not think too precisely on the event, pointing out the side pocket with her stick, and bending low over the rail. It really was amazing how much that collection of freckles resembled Orion.
Helen jerked back the cue, drove it forward. She might have tried to put running-side on the ball, or it might have just been an unfortunate strike. The cue ball nicked the eight at what looked like the right angle, but the ball caught the inner face of the cushion at the edge of the pocket and caromed back out onto the table.
The cue ball shot across the baize toward the corner, slowed as it neared the pocket, and seemed to be out of energy. And then it tipped forward and fell.
Helen swore hotly under her breath, sighed, and stood. "Good game," she offered through gritted teeth, still fuming over the scratch. She started around the table toward the rack of cues on the wall. I disagreed, so I rounded the table as well, and caught Helen before she could return her cue-stick to the rack.
"One more," I countered. I grabbed the triangle off the peg beside the rack, laid it on the baize, shot her my best grin. "No one should win on a technicality." I bent to the table's undercarriage, reracked the billiard balls, and glanced up to Helen as she watched me.
She stared at me for a moment, then said, "Fine."
I just smiled, laughed, and lifted the frame away.
I broke. The balls scattered magnificently. The fifteen spun off, got hit by the four, and dropped into the corner pocket. It was my only bit of luck during that game. We traded control of the table for another twenty minutes. In the end, Helen sank the eight-ball with a flawless bank-shot while I had four stripes left. It was a proper win.
She had the decency not to gloat. We stacked our cue sticks to their racks along the wall, collected up the billiard balls, and started across the thin carpet. At the table
beside ours, I spotted a girl through the smoke standing by the far rail, propped up on her stick as she surveyed her table.
I saw a flash of gentle russet curls and pastel lips, and a sharp glimmer of blue jasper in the darkness, and then the kid at the opposite end of the table bent over the rail, drew back his cue. The butt of his stick nearly caught Helen in the hip as she passed, and he stood again. He wore rimless eyeglasses, with an untidy nest of hair that fell across his forehead, and a shaggy soul patch under his lower lip.
"Sorry," he said, and then his eyes fell to that glorious breadth of flesh accentuated by Helen's ultramarine tank-top, to that constellation of freckles below her collarbone that looked so much like Orion. His eyes lingered there for a short moment before he looked back up to her face.
"Not a problem," Helen told him. She glanced down to the billiard cue in his hand. "I'm used to bigger."
The kid barked out a loud laugh. Helen flashed him a thin smile, and he glanced to me as we continued by. He shot me a small grin and nodded, and I nodded back as I fell into step beside Helen. I dug my wallet out of the pocket of my jeans as we reached the front counter, and Helen sighed as I pulled out a twenty dollar bill. "Don't start thinking you did some noble thing back there."
"Absolutely not," I agreed, grinning at her.
"You should've taken the win when you had it."
"Probably never happen again," I said.
"Shut up," she said, shoving me, laughing. "You take all the fun out of picking on you."
"I could whine like a sore loser if you'd rather."
She shook her head. "Doesn't seem your style."
"That's just because—" I started, but whatever I meant to say vanished behind a burst of violent voices. We both spun back to find the kid with the soul patch at the center of a dense scuffle. A knot of teenagers stood between him and a lanky kid who wore a length of chain attached to a studded belt. His hair stood at jagged spikes and angles.
The kid with the soul patch stood impassively at the foot of his table, the brunette gripping her cue stick to one side. The lanky kid tried to duck past his friends, yelling and pointing over them. "This is the fuckin nurse?"
"I'm an EMT—" the kid with the soul patch started.
The lanky kid cut him off. "This pretty little faggot?"
"Jesus fucking Christ, Roy!" the brunette erupted, her voice cutting across the rest of the commotion like a divine ultimatum. "What the fuck is wrong with you!"
"It's alright, babe," her date told her, though the whole situation looked pretty far from alright from my angle. He gestured over the crowd at the lanky kid. "He just wants to run his fuckin mouth for a little bit. Don't you, boy?"
The lanky kid tried to lunge past his friends. Two of them intercepted him, while a third rushed for the doors, digging keys out of his pocket. Helen watched him dart past us, then turned to me with a lopsided smirk. "I think it's time for you to take me home and put me to bed."
"I think you're right," I said. I grabbed a red pen off the countertop, scribbled the words TABLE 7 onto the back of my twenty-dollar bill. Then I reached across the counter and tucked the cash under the keyboard of the ancient computer next to the register. The commotion across the room grew, and I heard Helen laughing from beside me. I turned to her and laughed once myself, then stepped to the door and pushed it open for her to pass through.
We climbed the five concrete steps up to the asphalt. A dark BMW with a vanity plate reading DUKE419 idled next to the dumpster against the brick wall. We passed it, and slipped between a silver 1980 Porsche and a black Shelby Dakota, crossing to the far end of the lot.
Helen climbed into the passenger's side of the Jeep. I dug out the keys, piled into the driver's seat, started the SUV. The stereo issued a heady syncopation of thundering percussion, ragtime piano, and screaming horns.
I felt perfectly content with the course of the evening.
3.
Amber snapped her fingers in front of my face.
My eyes snapped back into focus as she lowered her hand. She watched me for a long moment, and I saw my own twin reflections in her caramel eyes.
The sandy baritone had barely gotten through half of the first verse. I flashed a grin that felt twitchy and a little too wide. Amber cocked an eyebrow for a moment, then smiled. Beauteous; genuine; setting me to rights.
"Looked like the screensaver popped on in there."
My grin felt more relaxed. "Maybe a little."
I started to say more, sure that I had more to say, and was interrupted as the door banged open. Four teenagers piled through the entrance: two guys, and two girls. I saw Dawn Hillard first. I recognized her garniture of curly gold through the grey haze and the bad lighting. Then I saw the other blonde, Gale Knox, who played midfield on the varsity lacrosse squad with Dawn.
The two guys hung close to Dawn and Gale. They rambled spiritedly, their conversation lost in the noise and the music as they reached the night manager's counter. One weaved his arm around Gale's waist, and she leaned into him absently. The other rifled through his wallet, attached to his studded belt by a length of chain. That one wore baggy black cargo pants held up by suspenders, and a black-and-white checkered button-down shirt. His hair stood at jagged spikes and angles.
I watched Dawn, not meaning to. I wanted Amber to snap her fingers in my face again, but she didn't. I wanted her to tell me that Lucas was waiting for his drink, but she didn't. I wanted to walk away from the replica Wurlitzer and the industrial garbage can and the colony of horse-flies and go back to the darkness of a psychedelic dreamscape.
Dawn glanced back. It was nothing but a slight twist of the neck, but she caught my eye, smiled, turned away. Amber saw the exchange, and flashed me a curious look. I started to explain, then realized that there was nothing to explain. Then I heard a harsh laugh. "That's him?"
The kid in the checkered shirt was looking back at me. Dawn was not, and I saw that Gale had pointed me out. Her boyfriend had the decency to wear an embarrassed grin, looking at the fliers staple-gunned to the front of the counter. Roy McCleary, I remembered, in full ska-punk regalia. Fresh from a concert. I recalled the promotional posters from school. The other guy was Wayne Johnson. I was sure of that. The bass guitarist for Chorduroy.
"This kid?" McCleary asked, annoyed, mocking. He flashed a crooked grin. The night manager handed back the kid's credit card, and he stuffed it into his wallet, jamming the wallet back into his pocket. Then he turned, took two strides, stepped within a foot of my face.
He was closer than Amber, whose smile had fallen away. "Roy," she said so tonelessly that I couldn't tell if it was a greeting or a warning. He glanced to her without turning his head, looked her up and down, and laughed. Then he looked back to me, and his lips peeled back.
"This is the fuckin snitch?" McCleary seethed, turning the last word into a slur. He never lost the grin, but it twitched a little. He was a good-looking kid. I would have admitted that much under other circumstances. That lip-twitch reminded me of a young Elvis Presley.
McCleary sized me up, and I wanted to put some space between us. At least enough that I didn't have to smell his sweat and his breath and his designer fucking hair gel. But my body refused to move, which was just as well.
I wanted to say something back, something brilliant and intimidating. Something that would impress Amber. I caught the thought, hating the melodrama of it. My brain buzzed; my stomach felt full of ice. I trembled deep in my gut, hated that worse, and hoped that McCleary couldn't see it through the grey haze and the bad lighting.
Amber eased toward me. She approached from my side, came as close as McCleary, and set a hand on my arm. McCleary glanced down to see Amber's hand at my elbow. His grin flashed with malicious glee, then settled again. I felt a dark flutter of unease at the way his gaze passed over Amber before turning back to me.
"Pathetic," he spat. "Fuckin hack." Under all of his arrogance and hostility, there was a disappointment I didn't understand. It surprised me.
Somehow, I'd failed to meet his expectations. He'd been anticipating a formidable adversary. An archrival. He'd ended up with the kid who stayed late to fix typos in the student newspaper.
He looked halfway disgusted.
The base of my skull prickled. The hairs down the back of my neck stood out. That sweltering scarlet veil churned around me, and I felt a trembling deep in my gut that had never been fear. It had been rage. Always rage. Rage at this fuckin degenerate, and his baggy cargo pants and his suspenders and his designer fucking hair gel.
I drew in a hot breath. I looked to McClearly, and felt brimstone and cordite burning the back of my throat. I felt fury flash in my brushed-chrome eyes like heat-lightning. I tasted the words in the back of my throat, intimidating and madly brilliant. I started to say them, and then I felt Amber's hand on my arm. She squeezed my elbow.
That was all it took. My eyes snapped to hers, and whatever it was that she saw in my face horrified her. Her reaction was instantaneous and terrible. And though it didn't even last a full second, it was enough to release all of that scarlet energy in a single hoarse breath.
Amber looked at me, watching my face. Searching, perhaps, for whatever horror she had seen a moment ago. I just looked back, and a bouquet of spearmint and lime flooding my lungs. I didn't quite smile, but something must have shifted in my expression, because Amber blew out a long breath that I didn't realize she'd been holding.
McCleary laughed once, almost to himself. He looked me over again, and made his decision. But just before he stepped back toward Dawn, his expression eased. Just slightly, and just for a moment. And I thought in that one brief moment that maybe I had met his expectations. Satisfied that he had put me in my place, he moved with his group, heading into the repurposed warehouse.
"Careful with that one," McCleary called. He paused as Gale, Wayne and Dawn turned a corner, flashing one last malicious grin. He pointed toward Amber and I, his finger wavering between the two of us. "Something better comes along, you might get tossed aside."
The Danger of Being Me Page 12
