King of Hearts

by Stevenson, Jennifer

  He leaped to his feet and groaned aloud at the pain. “Where’s that kid got to?”

  She came to his side. “Move slower. You have four cracked ribs. Are you taking your pain pills?”

  “Lay off, Florence Nightingale.” His ribs hurt like sin.

  “I’ve got some aspirin.”

  He snarled, “I said, lay off!” He bellowed for the kid.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fifty feet away, Davy Junior was waving and shrieking. “Look, Daddy, it’s a theater! Daddy, look, a theater outside!”

  The kid scampered up to an outdoor stage being erected by four guys, three of whom King Dave knew all too well. He remembered that tomorrow was the north side volleyball tourney. Reluctantly he ambled over, feeling Nadine’s disapproval hot on the back of his neck.

  “Yo, Flaherty!” said Bobby Morton Junior, Bobbyjay’s dad.

  “King Dave, my man,” said Scooby Duhrmeister.

  Weasel paused in the middle of taping speaker cable to the deck. “’Sup, King Dave. This the chip?” He looked at Davy Junior.

  “My name is not Chip,” Davy Junior said.

  “You’re a chip off the old block. H’lo, Nadine.”

  “Hey, guys,” King Dave said uneasily.

  “How come you’re not woikin’, Dave?” said the guy he didn’t know, and King Dave winced.

  “Daddy, Daddy, they’re using duck tape!” Davy Junior danced around the edge of the platform, which was higher than he was, pointing excitedly.

  “Duct, kid,” King Dave said.

  “Duck!” Davy Junior said.

  “Busiest weekend of the year and you’re screwing around in the park,” said the loudmouth, in front of the journeymen.

  “Duct,” Weasel said. “Duck-t.”

  “Duck-t. T-t-t-t. But why?” Davy Junior demanded.

  “They’s plenty of woik today.”

  “Why, Daddy? Why is it?”

  King Dave set his jaw. “Now you’ve set him off on why.”

  Weasel said to Davy Junior, “Why? ’Cause it ain’t duck any more. Past tense of duck.”

  Davy Junior’s face crumpled in incredulous dismay. “It’s made out of ducks?”

  Oh shoot, that’s right, the dumb Smedley duck. “No, no,” King Dave said, glaring at Weasel. “It’s, like, you know, you ducked!” He stooped, and his cracked ribs jabbed him.

  Davy Junior found this hysterically funny. “Duck!” He stooped and jumped up. “Duck!” He stooped again. “Duck tape!”

  “I mean they even got my cousin woikin’ and he’s not even a permit guy,” said the loudmouth who didn’t want to live.

  Bobby Morton Junior said quietly, “Look, shut the fuck up.”

  King Dave heard anyway.

  “How come you’re not woikin’, Dave?” the loudmouth repeated, staring insolently.

  He recognized the loudmouth now. Somebody’s cousin’s sister’s wife’s ex-husband, working on permit, a moron who didn’t know his ass from a crescent wrench.

  King Dave clenched his teeth. “I’m taking the day off.”

  “I thought you woiked every day of the summer, three shifts a day, man,” yapped the loudmouth.

  “Well, I’m not working today.”

  Get me out of here before I punch this guy. Stupid fuck wasn’t connected enough to have heard the story. Just a moron.

  “Shut up, man, he’s on suspension,” said the ever-helpful Bobby Morton Junior.

  The loudmouth jeered, “Whadja do, man, get caught drinkin’ on the job?”

  King Dave’s temper snapped. He put his hand on the stage and leaped onto it in one bound, and mind-blowing pain stabbed him in the side. He panted to keep the pain under control, so he wouldn’t wince in front of the moron.

  The permit guy stepped back. He didn’t look intimidated. Red rage filled King Dave’s head.

  “Hey, man, you screwed up, get over it,” the moron brayed.

  “Do you know who I am?” King Dave demanded. His pulse hammered deafeningly in his ears. His ribs screamed. He felt his fists bunching up, and he leaned into the moron’s face. He yelled, “Do you have any idea who I am?”

  Weasel and Scooby grabbed the moron by the arms.

  “Cut it out,” Bobby Morton Junior said to the moron.

  Weasel stepped between the moron and King Dave, putting his hand on King Dave’s chest. “Take it easy, buddy.”

  His chest heaved with wanting to fight, and his ribs throbbed, hurting too much to fight. Something touched his ankle. King Dave flinched and looked down.

  Nadine looked up at him with her hand on his shoe. She whispered, “You’re scaring the little boy.”

  Guiltily he looked over her shoulder. Davy Junior stood a few feet away, his eyes bugging out, clutching his stuffed duck to his skinny chest. His face was white.

  King Dave turned back to the moron. He lowered his voice. “You’re lucky. I don’t break faces in front of my kid.”

  Weasel helped Bobby Morton Junior drag the moron across the stage. King Dave hesitated. He wanted to walk down the stairs, but honor demanded that he jump down as he had jumped up. Clenching his teeth, he dropped the three feet to the ground. The pain on impact made him sick to his stomach.

  “Sorry about this,” Weasel said behind him.

  King Dave cringed. So Weasel was apologizing for him to the moron? That was the last straw.

  He heard a scuffling sound.

  The moron wailed.

  King Dave turned and looked. The moron was holding one hand over his eye and looking aggrievedly at Weasel out of the other.

  “Whadja do that for?”

  “So he won’t kill you when he finds you alone next time,” Weasel said, sounding calm.

  “Really. Thanks a lot.” The permit guy clutched his eye.

  Weasel looked worriedly at King Dave. “Don’t mention it.”

  Helpless rage filled King Dave. They had to protect the ignorant fucker. Speechless, he nodded to Weasel and sent the moron a long look that he hoped would terrify him.

  He looked at Davy Junior again. Fuck, I can scare a little kid. Big hero.

  “C’mere, kid.” He reached for his hand. “Let’s go,” he muttered to Nadine.

  Then he saw her expression. She didn’t look horrified. She wasn’t furious, the way a stagehand’s wife would be. Not even kill the bastard for me, honey, as some pro-wrestling-fan waitresses had been known to say to their warring menfolk.

  She looked thoughtful. Even a little bit ah-hah.

  Shame caught up with him. He hadn’t been in a fight since he was an apprentice. He didn’t want Nadine thinking ah-hah about this. He was not a violent guy. He wanted to tell her so, but he couldn’t think of the words.

  Then he realized he needed to explain to the kid.

  Though it sent cold daggers through his side to do it, he picked up the kid and carried him away.

  Davy Junior threw his arms around his neck and clung tight.

  “Take it easy, kid, you’re choking me.”

  Nadine slipped her hand into his free hand.

  He was full of adrenaline. He wished he’d punched that guy. Nobody talks to King Dave Flaherty like that. In front of his kid. In front of the guys. Mocking him for being drunk on the job, suspended, out of work for the first time in his entire fucking life.

  Do you know that? he wanted to go back and yell in his face, Do you know I’ve never been out of work before, not sick, not drunk, not fucked up on drugs, not on suspension? This is the first time! So shut the fuck up before I cream you!

  Making the speech in his head did not calm him down.

  The kid said, “Daddy?” in a scared voice. “You’re squeezing kind of hard.”

  With a huge effort, King Dave relaxed his hold.

  Nadine squeezed his other hand and kind of bumped up against him as they walked. He got a flood of that other feeling, the one that made the anger go away.

  The kid weighed a ton. Breathing shallowly against pain, King Dave
led them out of sight of the stage, to a bench in front of the swing sets, and set Davy Junior on his feet on the bench. Then he sat, trying not to grunt.

  The kid threw himself into his lap, ouch. King Dave guessed he needed more hugs. Cautiously he put his arms around him.

  He could use a hug himself. Nadine settled beside him. Across the empty space, her warmth radiated from her body to his.

  He didn’t want to look at her. She’d seen him blowing his stack and making a jerk of himself and she’d thought, Ah-hah. She might as well have said it out loud.

  What awful thing does she think she knows about me now?

  His throat was hot. His ribs ached. Gingerly he snuggled the kid. His head spun with the effort of refusing the pain.

  My life is falling apart.

  His body was broken. He felt pain and anger and humiliation, and love for his kid, and lust for this woman beside him who wouldn’t put out. It’s over, I’m only twenty-four and my life is a disaster, what’s happening to me? He tried to tell himself it was just a few cracked ribs. He’d been spoiled and lucky. Just a little reality check, you can’t fall fifteen feet into a cake without consequences. Not the end of the world.

  But it felt like it.

  Help. Help me, he thought, not knowing who to ask.

  After a while he felt Nadine’s warm hand slide over and rub the kid on the back. Then she moved the hand to his own back. She let it lie there, and a feeling spread through him that was like cool yellow light, goofy but good, and it made him horny, and it sent the hot, frightening pain away.

  Davy Junior put his knee on King Dave’s erection. “You’re lumpy, Daddy,” he grumbled.

  King Dave cleared his throat. “You’re squirmy. Go play on the swings.”

  Davy Junior scrambled out of his lap, only lightly maiming him in the process, and ran to the swings.

  Nadine took her hand off his back. “Did I ever tell you why I left Goreville?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  King Dave knew better than to try to pump her.

  She stared at Davy Junior, who was climbing the monkey bars.

  “I was dating Bub Smith, the most popular boy in school. He proposed. I turned him down, and he—” She stopped.

  “He got to the grapevine first with his story.”

  “Yes.” Her fists tightened. “He told everyone I was a slut. I found out my friends weren’t my friends. They wanted to believe him. I’d been too high and mighty.” She paused. Her big blue eyes were anxious. “You don’t think I’m a slut, do you?”

  “Princess,” he said sincerely, “I only wish. How’d you end up in Chicago?” Davy Junior waved from the ladder. He waved back.

  “It was all the stagehands’ fault.” She gave a little smile. “You know they go to the Q-Drive school in Goreville.”

  “Motion control equipment.” King Dave nodded. “They’re putting that stuff in all the new theaters. Riggers love it.”

  “Well I got a flat tire and they changed it for me, these two guys with earrings and ponytails and tattoos and their wallets on chains and rips in their jeans and tee-shirts that said Lyric Opera of Chicago.”

  Wonder which two guys it was, King Dave thought.

  “I was too shy to talk to them, so they talked to each other. One, his name was Badger, he was sooo in love with this waitress at Liz Otter’s. The other one, Scooby he called him, said Liz Otter’s hires only the best-looking waitresses, ’cause they draw the stagehands.”

  Scooby Duhrmeister and Badger Kenack! Foxes in the henhouse. “Did they behave themselves?”

  “Oh, yes. They just talked about their work. It was fascinating.” Her coral lips parted and her tongue peeped out. “Chicago sounded like—like I could be somebody different here.”

  And you got the hots for them. He felt a flash of jealousy. So I have Scooby and Badger to thank for this mess. At least now he knew he could get into her pants. “So what’s this got to do with the Bubjerk lying about you?”

  Thirty feet away, Davy Junior crawled cautiously across the top of the monkey bars.

  She looked into her lap. “Daddy believed him. He said I couldn’t go to Bible College because I couldn’t conduct myself like a lady. When I’d been so good. It’s awful having to be an example all the time. There’s so much pressure. I’d made everyone hate me by preaching at them for Daddy, and then he trusted slander over my word! I was never so mad at him in my life.”

  “No shit,” he murmured.

  “When I got home from getting that flat tire, I decided I’d go a long way away and—and have a real life, and adventures, and talk to—to stagehands if I wanted.”

  She was leaving something out. “You wild thing,” he prompted.

  “I ran upstairs and packed some things. My hands shook and shook. I just drove away. The car died halfway and I had to take a bus into Chicago. It took me another day to find the restaurant because I wasn’t spelling it right. But I found a theater. I walked straight up to the back door and asked the first man I saw wearing an earring how to find Liz Otter’s.”

  She said with awe, “They hired me on the spot. It was fate. I got me a couple uniforms to go with the Stride-Rites and I was in business. A waitress at Liz Otter’s. Ready for stagehands to fall in love with me,” she said, laughing and dabbing at her eyes with her knuckle. “Do you think I’m a durn fool?”

  Their eyes met. King Dave had her number now. “Babe.” What the heck, go for it. He leaned toward her flushed face, her eyes sparkling with tears, and that big juicy mouth, and—

  He heard a thump. “Waaaah!”

  He turned to see Davy Junior lying on his stomach under the monkey bars, wheezing, his face red. King Dave limped over to inspect the damage. “Knocked the wind out of himself.” Together he and Nadine carried the kid back to the bench.

  Once his wind came back, the kid started screaming.

  “I know a good song for this,” Nadine said, as King Dave went deaf and thought about the penalties for infanticide. “You listen once. Then we’ll sing it together.”

  Over the squalling, she sang, “Boom, boom, baby boom boom, baby goes boom boom down. You might cry, but everybody does it, everybody goes boom down.”

  Davy Junior lowered his screaming a notch.

  Nadine sang it again and King Dave joined in. Then she made King Dave start by himself and she came in halfway through. It was a round! He hadn’t sung a round since grade school. They sounded pretty good together, he and Nadine.

  The kid shut up to listen. Until the song came to an end. Then he opened his mouth again.

  “It’s okay, Davy Junior,” Nadine said. “You don’t have to cry to get the song. Just ask. We’ll sing it for you anytime.”

  The kid looked up at King Dave, all trusting, as if to say, Is that true? Like his Dad would give him the straight dope.

  “Sure, kid,” he said. He felt big.

  Nadine started the song again.

  The kid snuggled up against King Dave. Nadine put her arms around the pair of them. As he sang, King Dave felt the tension seeping out of himself, as if the song were for him.

  The kid went very still in his arms.

  “You asleep, champ?” Davy Junior looked comatose. “Is this normal?” he said to Nadine. “I’d have thought you couldn’t put him down with a shovel.”

  “Emotional exhaustion. He’ll be a ball of fire after a nap.”

  King Dave felt guilty. From years of watching his parents scream at each other, he knew it was his rage at the permit guy that had worn Davy Junior out. “Let’s get him home quick, then.”

  Mom actually acted pleasant when King Dave carried the kid inside, still out cold. “Was he good? Did he eat?” Mom said.

  Nadine didn’t say anything. King Dave realized she was looking at him, waiting for him to speak.

  “Yeah. We had McDonald’s and ice cream. Uh, one. One ice cream.”

  Mom nodded. She had a funny expression on her face.

  “Okay, it was two ice cr
eams. But we taught him a song.”

  Mom looked at Davy Junior, zonked out in his arms.

  “It’s a clean song,” King Dave said, sweating.

  “Maybe your mom would like to hear the song. In case Davy Junior asks for it sometime,” Nadine said.

  He looked at Mom. Her funny look intensified. King Dave winced as his cracked ribs logged a grievance. He collapsed on the sofa with Davy Junior in his lap.

  “It’s really a round and you need two people,” he said. “But he’ll probably settle down if you do one part.” He started the baby-go-boom song, singing softly, watching Davy Junior to make sure he didn’t wake up from the noise.

  Mom stood over the sofa with her hands on her hips. King Dave sang the song, feeling self-conscious. After a minute Nadine joined in from behind Mom, and they sounded so good together that he felt like less of an idiot. Davy Junior turned over in his sleep, shoving his slobbery cheek against King Dave’s stomach.

  “—Everybody goes boom down. So, uh, that’s how it goes,” he said, breaking off. “You want to try it?” He looked up at Mom and surprised a tear in her eye. His mouth fell open. “Mom?”

  She lifted her chin in her old tough-waitress style. Then she sniffled. “Do it again.”

  They did it again. Mom joined in. King Dave felt an old tight place inside loosen up. By the end of the song he was ready to fall asleep himself.

  “Better put him to bed,” Mom said.

  He gathered Davy Junior into his arms, tried to stand, and grunted as pain stabbed him in the ribcage. Davy Junior flopped like a corpse in his arms. “Can’t,” he gasped, feeling lame.

  Mom bent to take Davy Junior from him and slung him over her shoulder. “Did it go okay?” she said to Nadine, woman-to-woman, as if King Dave was painted on the backdrop. He held his breath, trapped into agreeing to their female spy network and pissed about it.

  “It went great, Mrs. Flaherty. Give him a chance?”

  Mom looked directly at him. “Come back for him tomorrow?”

  “Uh, can’t,” he said. “Nadine has to work.” Then he wondered, Why not come alone? For the first time in years, he didn’t feel uncomfortable around Mom. Thanks to Nadine. Sometime when he didn’t feel like shit, he should thank her. “Maybe.”