King of Hearts

by Stevenson, Jennifer

  “My, my, my. When you say everything, you really mean it, don’t you?” She shrugged. “Oh well. Die young, stay pretty.”

  She opened her mouth and steered in the end of the double dog and chomped down. King Dave suffered a circus of physical reactions. Her eyes closed while she chewed.

  “Mmmmm. Mmm! Mm-mm! Mm!” Her eyes opened and she stared down at the dog. She bolted the last of her bite and said, “What on earth are those little green things?”

  “Sport peppers? Think of ’em as jalapeños, Italian-style. They taste fresher and sharper than jalapeños. Want another bite?” It was worth sacrificing another bite of his first loaded double dog in two years to see her stick that thing in her mouth.

  She handed the dog back. “Thanks, but I’ll have to brand myself a chicken this time. You he-man!” She smiled on him. He felt the heat rise up his neck to his ears.

  To cover, he bit some more hot dog and smiled back with mustard and piccalilli all over his chin.

  Rodrigo appeared at their booth. “You like the dog?”

  “Yeah, gimme another, Rodrigo,” King Dave said.

  “Make that two, please,” Nadine said, “but hold the sport peppers on one of them?” She looked like a Greek goddess having a great day at the beach.

  Rodrigo grinned down at her cleavage. “Comin’ up, señorita.” He disappeared.

  Nadine patted King Dave’s hand. “Thanks for coming with me. I thought maybe you were too depressed to see Davy Junior today.”

  He belched, then winced. It hurt his ribs to belch. “Hell, no, I’m not depressed. I’m only suspended for the busiest month of the year. I’ll probably lose ten grand in income,” he grieved. The thought that all those cream jobs would go to a lesser guy made him crazy. Hell, they might give those jobs to permit guys. College boys from three-digit locals in the cornfields.

  She opened her eyes. “Goodness! Do you really earn over a hundred thousand dollars a year?”

  “Well, no. It slows way down come the first quarter.” He thought again of the work coming up this month. Blues Fest. Taste of Chicago. Hell, if the old man still felt vindictive in four weeks, he might be sitting at home on Fourth of July. “All those jobs,” he fretted.

  “And you usually get the best.”

  “I certainly do.” He sighed. “Usually.” He sucked his teeth. It didn’t bear thinking of.

  “Cheer up,” she said.

  He sent her a look of loathing.

  Rodrigo showed up with two more double dogs. “Here you go, lady,” he said, standing back and beaming with his hands behind his dirty apron. “No sport peppers. You like?”

  Nadine gave him a gushingly grateful look, like he’d given her diamonds or something. “I’ll let you know.”

  “Eat, eat,” Rodrigo said, bobbing his stomach at her.

  She picked up the double dog and did the routine again. King Dave was irritated. This performance should be for him alone. It was indecent, letting Rodrigo watch.

  She steered the end of the bun into her mouth, bared her white teeth, and chomped down on two big long red loaded hot dogs. Her eyes closed. She chewed. A little moan escaped her.

  Rodrigo sighed sentimentally.

  After she’d swallowed that bite down, she opened her eyes. “Nice work, Rodrigo.”

  Rodrigo bounced happily on his heels. King Dave wanted to nut him. Lucky for Rodrigo’s future children, a customer dinged at the walk-up counter. Nadine started another bite and King Dave forgot his troubles for another forty seconds.

  “So,” she said when she had that bite down the hatch. “How come you didn’t show up to get me this morning?”

  The woman really should marry a stagehand. She had all the moves—tracking him to his favorite hideouts, busting his chops. “No point in it,” he said shortly.

  “But we’ll do it anyway,” she said.

  He paused in the act of raising his second double dog. “Why? She won’t let me take Davy Junior out. She’s like Tammy. Only make a fool of myself,” he said, and chomped his dog.

  “So what? Do it anyway.”

  King Dave eyed her, chewing. What part of doomed to failure did this waitress not understand? If there was one thing King Dave Flaherty didn’t do, it was fail.

  “You’ve already made a fool of yourself,” she said unnecessarily. “You have nothing to lose. You want to see your son.”

  He did. It had been three months. Three long months while Tammy refused to let him drop in and he refused to buy her a Porsche. The kid had got a haircut during those three months, a stupid, sissy-looking haircut that would make his life miserable when he got to school. He had to teach the kid to catch before he started school. Prepare him.

  Shit, he’d settle for one good hug.

  His eyes stung, and he addressed the double dog with a vengeance. When he came up for air, she was still watching him.

  “All you can do is try,” she argued gently, like water dripping on a stone.

  He whooshed out a sigh. “All right. All right! But don’t give me one of your looks if Mom tells me to pi—to forget it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  When they got to his momma’s house King Dave turned out to be right. Nadine watched her last twenty-four hours’ work go down in flames.

  “Forget it,” his mother said, her eyes hard. “You pull this on Tammy. You can’t be bothered to show up for regular visitation—”

  “I was working!” King Dave howled.

  “Then you drop by and want the kid for just two hours. No.”

  “But I’m free all day.”

  “No.”

  Nadine thought, I can’t let this happen to him.

  “Perhaps we ought to make an appointment,” she said as King Dave started to turn away. “I understand how inconvenient this is. You’ve got your day planned. Can you tell us when will be a good time to pick up Davy Junior?”

  His mother looked at her resentfully. “He’ll stand me up. He’ll get a call from the office and poof, no visit.”

  “Well, I won’t,” he said. “I’m suspended for thirty days.”

  Her eyes widened. “Does FX know?”

  “The bastard suspended me himself,” King Dave said, making no apology for his language. “So I got time on my hands. I want to see my son.”

  Perfect, beautiful, now shut up! Nadine prayed.

  But he grumbled, “You can’t keep him from me. It’s not like you have any plans,” he added. “You watch soaps all day.”

  “King Dave, be polite,” Nadine said quickly. She said to Linda Flaherty, “What time’s convenient to you?”

  King Dave’s mother measured them with her eyes. “He’s asleep now. I need to go to the podiatrist in an hour. One o’clock. Think you can stick around for a whole hour?”

  “Yeah,” King Dave said, glaring.

  “You can have him’til seven. I want him back on time.”

  “We will be,” Nadine said, relieved that Linda hadn’t named a day when she had to wait table.

  Linda Flaherty turned to Nadine. “You look like you have half a brain. Will you take care of the boys? See to it David doesn’t do something stupid?”

  Crossing her fingers behind her back, Nadine said, “I don’t think he’ll do anything stupid.”

  “Whose side are you on anyway?” King Dave said savagely.

  Linda Flaherty parked them on the living room couch and stumped down to the basement with her laundry.

  King Dave groused in an undervoice, “What burns my shorts, she won’t even give me a chance. Just ‘no.’ Just like that. ‘No.’”

  “It’s a trust thing, King Dave,” Nadine said quietly. “You can’t walk in and say, ‘I can be trusted now.’”

  “Look, you,” he said, rounding on her so angrily that she recoiled. “I’m trustworthy. I show up to work on time with my tools every single fucking day.” Nadine shushed him and he lowered his voice. “I get the job done. I never blow off a call. I never roll in drunk. You want to see unreliable? L
ook at some guys I work with, coked up higher’n a kite so they can work twenty hours a day, boozing so they can sleep the other four. You will never see me fucked up with booze or drugs.”

  “How much did you drink, to make you fall off a light bridge into a cake?” she retorted.

  “Six talls. Last time I got that drunk I was off work and it was five years ago.”

  “The time you and Anvilhead Arnie and the guys darn near electrocuted yourselves on a transformer vault?”

  “You know,” he said in a pained voice, “you listen to way too much gossip.”

  “Six talls isn’t much.”

  “Oh, great.” He threw his hands in the air. “Now I’m a sissy because I don’t booze!”

  “So you do all those dumb things when you’re sober?”

  His shoulder hunched. “Why am I talking to you?”

  Nadine bit her lip. She whispered, “All I’m saying is that your momma has a reason to mistrust you about visitation. You’re super reliable at work.”

  “Damn right.”

  “You could extend that reliability into your personal life.”

  He turned his head, and she saw she was pushing him too far. “You know, I can dump you and take the kid by myself.”

  “I don’t think so.” Linda Flaherty was relying on Nadine to snitch on her son. “Look, I’m sorry if I’m pushy. I—I hate to see you miss out on your little boy’s growing up over—over dumb stuff. I think you’re a great guy.”

  Now she’d done it. The last thing this man needed was to hear yet another waitress say he was perfect.

  But he only looked at her with a question in his eyes.

  When his Mom handed Davy Junior over, King Dave realized his chest had been tight for a solid hour.

  The kid had a stuffed toy with him, a stupid duck-thing. King Dave suggested they should leave it behind, but the women gave him a look, so he let it go.

  Davy Junior seemed hyper.

  “Is this your new car, Daddy? Can I drive your car? Where are we going? Are you Daddy’s new girlfriend? I like you! I have cookies. Smedley doesn’t eat very much but I bring him to look at things.” And on and on and on.

  Nadine talked to the kid, craning her neck into the back seat until her bosom squished out the top of her white blouse, so King Dave wasn’t too dissatisfied.

  “Is Smedley your goose? Pleased to meet you, Smedley, I’m Nadine.” They went through some nonsense where Nadine tried to high-five the goose. It seemed to amuse the kid.

  “Where we going, Daddy? Are we going to the Opera House? You said last time you’ll show me how to wee in a paint bucket.”

  King Dave rolled an eye at Nadine. “Today it’s the beach.”

  Davy Junior whined, “But I want to wee in a paint bucket!”

  Nadine was biting her upper lip.

  “Don’t say wee in front of girls,” King Dave said, feeling odd inside. He wanted to laugh and he was impatient with the kid and Nadine thought his kid was funny and she was laughing at him. He felt odd. Sort of good.

  There was brief silence in the back seat. “Are you a girl?”

  “A very, very big girl,” Nadine said seriously.

  “Amen,” King Dave said, and she shot him a look.

  “Yes,” Davy Junior said. “A very, very, very, very, very—”

  “How very?” Nadine said, egging him on.

  “Very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very—”

  “Okay, kid, we get the message,” King Dave growled.

  “Very, very, very, very, very, very,” the kid chanted.

  Nadine turned around to face front. “Don’t be grumpy. He’s learning to love words. They all go through this stage.”

  “Very, very, very, very, very, VERY, very, very!”

  “That’s enough!” King Dave yelled over his shoulder.

  “There’s no need to shout,” Nadine said in a severe tone, but he caught her smiling.

  A small voice in the back seat muttered, “Very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very.”

  The stoplight went red. His ribs hurt. The woman he wanted to sleep with was laughing at him. He was trapped in a car with a small boy who loved one word at a time. Pretty soon they would go out in public. For hours. King Dave shut his eyes.

  “You could be more patient with him,” she said.

  King Dave sucked in air as far as the tape around his ribs would allow. “My old man yelled and it didn’t hurt me none.”

  “You’re nicer than your Daddy,” she said. As if she knew. She looked at him through her lashes. “I think you’re a big softy.”

  “Nnuh-uh,” he said, feeling definitely hard. He put his hand over hers and she swayed into him. “I’m trying to impress you,” he blurted.

  With a smile in her voice, she said, “I know.” But she didn’t let go of his hand.

  They broke for lunch at one of those kid-oriented McDonalds. Davy Junior woofed his hot dog with energy.

  “So tell me about Goreville,” King Dave said, absorbed in the endlessly fascinating sight of Nadine chomping a hot dog.

  “Boring. Small. Nobody has any privacy.”

  “You got a boyfriend waiting for you back there?”

  “No.” That sounded short.

  “Bull—” He met her eyes. “—loney. A looker like you?”

  Pinkness crept into her face. “I wasn’t brought up to think of myself that way,” she said. “I was six foot high in the sixth grade. I filled out early. I was clumsy and ashamed of my looks and Daddy worked real hard to dress me like a lady and make me behave right.”

  “I bet the other girls were catty,” he said.

  She chewed, avoiding his eye. “There’s one lady. Ella Mae Amory. First lady deacon of Goreville. She watched me like a hawk. I hated her. She came to Sunday dinner at least once a month, oftener if she could work it. Dinner wasn’t cooked right, my clothes were too tight, my hair was coming down, I set the table wrong. I hated her,” Nadine said fiercely, which amazed King Dave. Nadine never said anything nasty about anybody.

  “Just figured that out, huh?” He looked over at Davy Junior drawing ketchup pictures on the table. “What are you doing, kid? Look at this mess!”

  “Don’t scold so.” Nadine wiped the kid’s hand with a wet napkin. “They all watched me.” She sounded tight and injured.

  “Suspended thirty days for falling into a cake,” King Dave said, looking real hard at Davy Junior’s face. The kid looked back puzzledly. King Dave pretend-bopped him on the nose with a fist. “Beat it, kid. Go run in the habitrail.”

  Davy Junior whooped and ran off.

  “So Ellybelly watched you all the time.”

  Nadine bowed her head. “I never did anything wrong.”

  “See, that’s where being bad gives me an edge.” He sprawled back on his plastic seat and his cracked ribs stabbed him. “I know what I did wrong.”

  She drawled, “You did something wrong? What?”

  “Roughly, everything. My old man thought I was a sissy. My mom was scared I’d turn into a stagehand. The nuns flunked me whenever they could. I didn’t have much choice about joining the Local.” He paused, and confessed, “I wouldn’t have picked anything else. For those of us in it, it’s a noble calling. Show business doesn’t happen without us. We’re the guts, the dirty underbelly, the grease on the transmission under all the chrome and shiny headlights.”

  “Why, King Dave, that’s poetry!” She licked her tasty-looking lips. “I respect what you do. I—I like stagehands.”

  A laugh cracked out of him. “You’re doomed, girl. Stagehands marry waitresses. And divorce ’em. And marry ’em again. Bobbyjay calls us serial monogamists. Now there,” he said, shifting carefully in his seat, “is a guy with a brain.”

  She looked up from gathering hot dog wrappers. “You’re kidding. Bobbyjay was born to be your sidekick.”

  “He works hard at that ‘mope from the office’ act. But he went to college. He got a degree.” King Dave tri
ed not to sound envious. “’Course he’s got to watch it, now he’s back home. His old man won’t stand for any uppity stuff.”

  She frowned. “Would your old man be the same way if you got a college degree?”

  “He’d think aliens kidnapped me and replaced my brain.”

  “But, King Dave, you’re way smarter than Bobbyjay Morton.”

  “Uh-uh. That’s Bobbyjay’s act. You gotta work from the neck down in this man’s Local.”

  “And you don’t?”

  He said tightly, “Look, there’s no comparison.” She made a protesting noise in her throat. Their eyes met. “If I was dating you, I’d try to shit you what a genius I am. But since it’s blackmail,” he said, “aw, h—eck. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t blown off high school.”

  “You don’t try if you think you’re going to fail,” she said in a voice of discovery.

  “Well, duh.” How had this turned into a conversation about his faults?

  She put her chin on her hand and studied him. “What would you do,” she said slowly, “if you had a degree?”

  Dammit, hadn’t he told her he couldn’t get into college? “I couldn’t just go away to school and then sail back into town and get all the best jobs.”

  “But Bobbyjay went to college and he gets good jobs.”

  “Bobbyjay has brains. There’s a limit,” King Dave said, and winced at recent memory, “to what my old man can do for me.”

  “Well,” she said, “is there a stagehand job you want that you can’t do without more education?”

  “Nope. Not a one.” He didn’t meet her eyes. Hell, now she thought he had no ambition. Nothing was good enough for her.

  “What about that crazy job where you’re so high in the air?”

  “Look, quit pushing, willya?” he said roughly. “Let it alone.”

  “You love that stuff,” she said, pushing more of course. Leave it to a woman to ruin a nice date. “You said yourself that that piece of scenery wouldn’t have fallen on top of Norsky if you had been the ragger that day.”

  “Rigger,” he said with an involuntary smile.

  “I bet you’d make a great rigger,” she said warmly.