“Is it going to help in court that, to Junior, the use of that word is less of a slur than a descriptive?”
Underdog hung his head sadly. “You can get out of my car now.”
I opened the door with a sinkhole feeling in my gut, like I was leaving behind a broken piece of our friendship in the car. “If I can figure anything else out…”
“Close the door,” said Brendan Miller.
I did.
He drove off, leaving me with nothing but deepening desperation and a cold and dirty burrito.
Fuck me.
I went in through the back, hoping Luke was done for the night. I quietly opened the metal back door, which screeched on the hinges like an attacking Pteranodon.
Luke poked his head around the corner of the basement stairs. “Who’s there?” His skinny arms held the mop handle aloft.
“It’s me, Luke.”
“Oh, Mr. Boo, you gave me a fright. Weird vibes running through here tonight.”
“What? What’s happening?” Automatically, I went into caveman mode. The Cellar was my cave away from cave. Part of the reason I was good at what I did was that The Cellar really was a home to me, and I was honestly protective of her.
Oh Christ, did I just call The Cellar “her”?
I’d always busted Junior’s balls for naming Miss Kitty as such. I’d driven his car for less than a day, and now I was suffering The Shining-like symptoms of his personality.
“G.G. said there was a lotta people looking for you tonight. Where were you, by the way? Don’t you normally work Sundays?”
“I had errands to run.” I opened my burrito wrapper and flopped my tired ass onto a barstool. What was inside looked more like Tijuana slurry than anything edible, but it was all I had. I tore off a piece of mangled tortilla and did my best to mop up the mess.
Luke’s face scrunched up. “Don’t know that you want to be eating that, Mr. Boo.”
I popped the mess into my mouth. Still tasted good. But at that point, a sewer rat might have tasted like foie gras. Luke winced. I went on. “What else?”
Luke snapped his fingers like he’d remembered something. “The girl, works here…Ginny. Don’t know what’s going on with that young girl, but she was crying something fierce when I came in.”
“Wait, she came here? She was still here when you got here?”
“Thought that was strange too. There was some new girl working her tables, and Ginny came in anyway. Just sat at the bar drinkin’ like she was trying to hurt herself, drinking with a man with a silly-looking moustache who I’d be willing to bet was not the source of her heartbreak,” Luke put a finger under his lower eyelid, “if you catch my drift.”
I caught it. “What time?”
“This was around midnight. Came in early tonight. Audrey gave me a call, said the beer compressor was acting up.”
I guessed Ginny and Dana had come here for the same reason I had. The Cellar represented the safest place we had. I felt a twinge of guilt for cutting them loose like I did, but I had no idea what else I was supposed to do. Were they the reason an APB got put on the car, or was it the cops digging deeper into Byron’s death? Had they cracked? “When did she leave?”
“Dunno. I was working on the compressor. Got back upstairs while Audrey was counting the money. They was gone by then.”
“Who else was looking for me?”
“I dunno. G.G. left messages for you upstairs. I know that Brendan came by twice after the doors shut, asking where you were. Ain’t he a police officer?”
“Yeah.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed at me suspiciously. “Anything I need to know or that you’d like to disclose?”
“I got nothing, Luke.” Really, I didn’t. How I’d managed to make it through this entire day without achieving any knowledge other than a probable motive was beyond me. I’d have to backtrack to Ginny’s in the morning. This had been one losing battle of a day.
“Well, I’m done in about fifteen more minutes, so I’ll leave you to your thoughts. At least until you want to share ’em.” Luke beamed his best grin at me, and I’d be damned if it didn’t make me feel a bit better.
With all of the dirty, nasty, ignorant, mean motherfuckers in my life, some of whom were my best friends, there were still people in it like Luke. To step outside myself sometimes made me ashamed of who I was. What I’d made of my life. Luke’s simple kindness humbled me. And did so nearly on a nightly basis.
As he went down to finish his cleaning, I poured myself a thick finger and a half of Jim Beam and downed it. The bottle had a finger’s worth left in it, so I popped that back too. There was a backup bottle under the bar. I cracked that one open and took a long pull. I wasn’t drinking for any reason other than I wanted to get good and ripping drunk.
Things Ginny said had hit me. Without putting words to it, Junior and I, from the time we were at The Home right up until today, we’d fashioned ourselves the anti-bullies. We bullied the bullies without allowing the irony of that existence to seep into our consciousness. Any man should be able to handle his shit—to a degree. If you stepped to one of our friends? If anybody tried to lord themselves physically over someone else on our watch? There were fewer things we found more enjoyable than being a counterweight on the Darwinist scale.
But, somehow, someway, all of that unspoken philosophy had gone out the window over the last couple of days. And it all came down to dick. Ginny made me realize that we’d abandon our protective stance if somebody was gay. Simple as that. And her assumption that this would be the case pissed me off.
Because her assumption was straight-up right on the nose.
I wished I could explain why that was.
I couldn’t even discern where my natural alpha male protect-the-tribe instinct stopped kicking in and ran screaming in the other direction. It just did.
Maybe my open mind wasn’t quite as open as I’d deluded myself into thinking it was.
Maybe we weren’t the knights in shining armor we liked to envision ourselves as. Shit, we were barely serfs in dirty underwear.
By the time I came to the end of my deep, dark musings on the number of things that made me an asshole—new things, anyway—I’d polished off another third of the new bottle.
I heard Luke say good night. I responded, noticing a slur creeping into my pronunciations. I headed toward the back stairs, legs a little wobbly, and made my way up to the office. I would take a few hours sleeping on the desk, and then hit tomorrow fresh. Junior… Where was Junior? Was he still being questioned? How long could they question somebody?
The whiskey sloshed around the burrito in my stomach as my entire body cried out for sleep. I unlocked the office door and threw my jacket on the floor. Flopping into the threadbare desk chair, I saw my burner phone next to Junior’s phone—Byron’s phone—which he’d left when Underdog walked him out.
I had to stop being so hard on Dog. Simply allowing me to hang on to the phone wasn’t the action of a cop. It was the action of a friend.
Both phones’ batteries were dead. I fumbled through the lost and found drawer until I found the right chargers amongst the tangle of wires.
I crossed my arms on the desk and lay my head down. I felt every muscle give in to inertia. Before I exhaled, my eyelids slowly drifted down…
Something thumped loudly in the stairwell.
My eyes popped open as I inhaled sharply through my nose.
Blood immediately began surging in my ears as all the old anger flared.
Enough was enough.
I was suddenly and actively murderous.
Enough.
This whole time, I’d been running against a tide, backpedaling. Trying to advance while maintaining a steady retreat.
I wasn’t a runner. Fuck that. it went against every natural instinct I had to fight.
Fight or flight, and flight was for pussies.
Boo Malone was going to show whoever was in that stairwell just what a fucking fighter was.
&n
bsp; It was time to move this shit forward, fists first.
I pulled the door open hard, screaming my best blue-face-paint-balls-hanging-out-in-a-kilt Highlander war cry. Whoever was coming up those stairs was getting themselves one hell of a surprise along with a face full of whiskey bottle.
Except I was the one who wound up surprised when my war cry was met with a very high-pitched terrified shriek.
I was even more surprised when Ginny stabbed me in the stomach.
My war cry ended with just a loud, “Ow!”
The “ow” was more for the shrill tone emanating from Ginny than the knife, which didn’t hurt yet.
But it would. Boy howdy, I was willing to bet my ass on that.
Ginny’s mouth fell open as she realized precisely who she’d perforated. “Oh God, Boo! What are you doing here?”
I looked down at my belly.
Yup.
That was a knife handle sticking out of me about three inches to the left of my bellybutton. “The fuck are you doing? Did you just stab me?”
Her face blanched. “I didn’t know it was you. You scared the piss out of me!” She quickly pulled the blade out of my abdomen. She’d got me right above the hip. I felt the blade skip off the bone as she removed it.
I clamped my hand over my newest wound. Blood quickly seeped between my knuckles. “I don’t think you’re supposed to pull—”
Oh yeah. There was the pain that had been missing. My abdomen cramped immediately and a white flash exploded before my eyes. The ol’ knees buckled and I slumped into the stairwell. “Ow,” I reiterated for good measure.
“I’m so sorry!” Ginny’s fingertips flittered around my general area, as though unsure whether touching me would make things worse somehow. Or maybe she was just grossed out.
I took a deep breath and pulled myself up by the handrail. “Can I please have that knife?”
She clutched the knife to her chest, my blood running down the blade. “Are you going to stab me?”
“Not right now.” I held my hand out. She placed the fruit knife with the green handle into my hand. Small blessing, the knife only had a two-inch blade that the bartenders used to cut limes. Hurt like a bitch, but it probably hadn’t filleted anything too important. Thank God the kitchen was locked at night, or she might have cut me in half with a real one off the butcher’s block.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go, you prick. Remember the body you left on my floor? What are you doing here?”
“Same answer. Minus the body.” I went back into the office and tried to lift my shirt up, but I couldn’t lift my arms without another flare of bright pain. I handed her the knife back. “Would you mind cutting the shirt off of me?”
Ginny grabbed the hem at the bottom of my T-shirt and sawed through the material. Even through my whiskey haze, I could smell the rum coming off her. Once she cut through the thick base, the sharp knife zipped up the first six inches of material.
“Please don’t slice me open any more than I already am.”
“You want me to help or not?”
“Where’s Dana?”
“He’s passed out in the equipment room. Which is where we both were sleeping when we heard you clomping around up here. We heard Luke leave and thought...”
Which would explain why Luke didn’t know they were still in the building. Since the equipment room was off limits to anyone who wasn’t staff, he wouldn’t have to clean it as regularly as the high-traffic areas that usually ended up painted with spilled beer and vomit.
She slowly worked the knife up to the neck. “Oh…” she said. “Oh, wow.”
I was so wrapped up in my current predicament—what with having been stabbed and all—that I hadn’t been thinking about the slasher-movie assortment of scars on my torso. The self-consciousness was bad enough when Blanc got a look at them. Call it whatever the fuck you want, but my body-consciousness skyrocketed when a woman got a look at them. I normally kept them well-hidden, even during intimate moments with the odd young ladies who every now and then chose to fiddle my diddle.
I was a lights-off guy, to put it simply.
I felt myself blushing, me cheecks and neck going hot. “Guess the good news is that my new scar will hardly be noticed amongst the general mess, huh?”
“Dude. What happened to you?”
“Porcupine,” I said. “Porcupine with a butterfly knife. Attacked me at a camp site when I was twelve.”
Ginny glared at me. “I don’t have to help you, you know.”
“And I don’t need to tell you my fucking life story right now. You stabbed me. I would hope that alone might be enough reason for you to help me.”
I took a bottle of vodka off the liquor shelf and cracked the cap.
“At least this is going to hurt you,” she said. Adding, “Dick.”
She had that right.
This was going to hurt.
And I was a dick.
I poured the vodka directly onto the wound.
And screamed my head off in a tone oddly reminiscent of Whitney Houston after stepping in a bear trap.
Boy howdy.
When the dancing pain-lights fled my vision, I took two clean bar rags from the linens, soaked one in the vodka, covered it with a dry one, and pressed them against the hole. “Duct tape is in the upper right hand drawer.”
“Seriously?”
“Just do it.”
With a noticeable blear in her eyes, she tore off a long strip of the gray tape and wrapped it around me at an angle. I gritted my teeth as she pulled a second strip tight. That tiny hole hurt more than I wanted to let on.
What little chauvinistic manliness I had remaining didn’t want Ginny to feel guilty for the pain I was in.
The pain.
From her stabbing me in the fucking stomach.
MANLINESS!
Ain’t that some shit?
I closed my eyes against the hurt and tried to think of England. Except I’d never been to England. I’d never been anywhere. So I found the next best thing and inhaled the pleasant smell of Ginny’s perfume and shampoo mingling with the spicy rum wafting off her.
It took a couple seconds after the fourth strip was applied before I realized nothing more was happening. I opened my eyes, and saw Ginny’s alcohol-wobbly gaze looking up at me.
It was equal parts terror, apology, and a dash of plain old sexy-time.
I hadn’t seen that last look in a while.
As her fingertips pressed against my ribs, where she held the duct tape, I was suddenly aware of the heat coming off of me, coming off of her as she straddled my leg in order to get the tape on me.
Before I could say or do anything about it, she pressed her mouth to mine and kissed me deeply.
Stabbing as foreplay?
Why not?
I wasn’t even sure she was particularly attracted to me, but in that moment, all things considered, the act was a “fuck you” to death. Two stabbings and beatings and all of the bad things that had rained down on our heads like so much bird shit pouring from the anus of an angry avian god.
That, and we were hammered.
It was an acceptance of drunken release and animal want. It was a damned good kiss, despite the overwhelming taste of Captain Morgan on her tongue. I pushed all thoughts of pirates out of my head and leaned into her kiss.
She broke off the smooching, grabbed my face and said, “I so fucking hate you, Boo Malone.”
Fair enough. She wasn’t the first woman to express the sentiment. Kelly had expressed similar vitriol less than twenty-four hours ago. I reached for my sweatshirt. Guess we were done here.
She reached for my belt.
Maybe we weren’t done here.
It was the angriest unbuckling of my belt I’d ever experienced. Then I realized that I was angry too. I grabbed her hair hard and planted my own solid whiskey kiss on her mouth. I grabbed Ginny under the ass with my other hand and spun her around, seat
ing her on the edge of my desk, hands reaching for the buttons on her jeans.
She got her hand inside my boxers and gave my junk a good, possessive squeeze. It hurt, but man oh man, it hurt real good.
I got her pants to her ankles, then tore her damn panties off.
It was a ferocious fucking. I think she punched me in the face once in the middle there, but it might have been a drunken flail on her part. We fucked the death, the fear, and the fear of death off of us. We fucked because, goddammit, we were alive. And nothing says you were alive like a good, stinky, bruising, sweaty, hair-pulling, ass-slapping, thigh-pounding, possible-face-punching toss in the hay.
Once or twice, my mind flashed to Kelly. And the anger kicked in harder, so I laid into Ginny a little harder as a result.
Okay, maybe three times.
In all fairness, when Ginny wasn’t snarling at me, her eyes would wander off on their own, no doubt imagining who she would rather have been with at that moment. But we both made do with the available drunken genitalia in the room.
We finished up and Ginny lifted a leg and pushed me off with a heel under my hip. I was just thankful it wasn’t the side she’d stabbed.
The exertion had made the wound bleed though the bar rags, and pink sweat dribbled from under the duct tape.
Then it dawned on me that the last time I’d had sex, which was with Kelly, I’d had a traumatic knee injury. I hoped there wasn’t any kind of karmic balance at play. Because Lord knows, I enjoy sex, but I didn’t know how much trauma my body could manage in order to facilitate the exchange.
Then the mood got awkward right quick.
Ginny slipped her bra back on, not looking at me, then gave her head a small, almost imperceptible “I can’t believe I did that” shake.
If I’d had any self-esteem left, that might have bruised it.
“Uhhh…” I said. “Where’s Dana?”
“He’s still passed out in the equipment room.”
“Oh. Okay, listen…”
She held her hand up and winced, angrily putting her top back on. “No. Please don’t make this any weirder than it already is. I don’t need platitudes and Hallmark liners right now. I just needed…” She paused, trying to find more elegant words for to get laid.
Rough Trade Page 18
