Peter Heller - Celine

“Not so fast, girl. I said: Did you have salsa ?”

The girl spun around. She was flushed under her freckles. “I didn’t hear you, sorry. There’s hot sauce on the table, sir.”

Spiderwebs cracked a grin. Two gold teeth flashed. He looked her up and down, sheathed in her twisted dress. He held the hem up between his fingers as if he were pinching a butterfly. Her leg was now exposed to the upper thigh. Celine could see the flower pattern on her underwear. “Sir,” he growled. “That makes me feel almost old. Hot sauce ain’t salsa.” He didn’t let go and the girl panicked. Celine could see it in her eyes. She muttered, “Sorry. I think we have some in the kitchen.” Celine could read her lips, and the girl’s hands went nervously to her hips where she tried to smooth down her tangled dress.

Pete saw his wife’s breathing become labored. She pursed her lips. He had carried in the oxygen condenser over his shoulder just in case, and now he turned it on and handed her the tubing. She was annoyed, but her eyes were big the way they were when they were looking for oxygen, and reluctantly she took the cannula and hooked it over her ears. She took two breaths, unhooked the tube, and stood up. Pete did not entreat her to sit back down. Nope, not in his job description. He simply turned the condenser off.

Spiderwebs had balled the hem of the girl’s dress into his fist, and she made to twist away. His free hand darted to her open button-collar in a fluid, practiced gesture. He hooked two fingers, covered the little gold crucifix that hung on a thin chain in the notch between her breasts, and he pulled just enough so that she had to take a stumbling half step to him. She looked wild, like a horse in a burning barn.

“Where we going? I ain’t in no hurry. Let’s talk about condiments. Sauce and the like. You got sauce, I bet. Hot, too.”

Celine took one last deep breath and slipped between two wooden chairs. She reached up and tapped Spiderwebs on his shoulder. He jumped. “Fuck!” He let go of the girl and wheeled around, fists up, and didn’t see anything until he looked down.

“ Fuck was that ?” he said. Across the fingers of one fist, one letter to a digit, was a big blue “FUCK”; across the other “OFF.”

“That’s very clever,” Celine said. “Fingers that make words. Remind me to tell you my tattooed-penis joke.”

The waitress took a second to register that she was free, and she gaped at Celine and shot across the floor to the swinging doors that led to the kitchen. Pete saw heads turn now. The Sons at the bar swiveled on their stools. The dancing girl on the table frowned. She had unbuttoned her vest and she was naked underneath.

Without breaking the man’s stare, Celine reached for a plastic bottle on the table beside her and held it up. “Salsa,” she said. “I guess no one noticed.” Spiderwebs unclenched a fist and took the bottle. He blinked. He had zero idea of what to make of this little old lady. Celine could see he was trying to summon his warrior’s rage but it had fled him in his confusion. Well, she could bring it back.

“That wasn’t very polite,” she said. “Do you always grab young women by the dress? Or hair, maybe? Maybe the only way you can ever get them to pay attention?”

The man’s mouth closed and his face hardened. His black eyes went opaque. Just like shutters clapping shut, she thought. He was a very tough customer. One of his buddies unplugged the jukebox.

“Granny,” he said. “I strongly suggest you sit the fuck back down. That’s me being merciful. Big-time.” Celine took three steps back. The 26 lay beneath her jacket under her ribs. If she had to draw down on the man, she didn’t want to be within his reach. She gauged the distance. She looked around the strange Montana crab shack. Half of the bikers were grinning.

“That’s right,” said Spiderwebs. “Back off. Be a good granny.” And he grinned, flashing the awful gold teeth.

“I think you should apologize,” she said. “To the girl. You can do it to me. I will represent my gender.” Celine straightened. She looked straight at the man, her eyes very serious, completely devoid of fear. She was very regal.

The space in the bar went taut. Pete heard a faucet behind the bar turn off, heard water dribble in a metal sink. He smelled now the full brew of sweat, unwashed clothes, beer, a lit cigar.

Spiderwebs licked his dry lips. Slowly, as if in a trance, he slipped something out of his leathers pocket—a clip knife, five-inch blade—and he thumbed it open. No hurry, almost savoring the practiced movements. Celine understood that the man was very dangerous.

“Granny,” he murmured, “do you want to die? I can help you with that.”

The faces of the men watching went to stone. No more big smiles. It was the anticipation of serious blood, or the fact that in three minutes they might all be running from a murder beef in Montana. That would take some fast tactical maneuvering. They were watching and listening with an intensity that was as ferocious as their death’s-heads.

Celine did not break his gaze. She licked her own dry lips. Everyone in the bar saw the gesture, tried to read it. “Young man,” she said finally, very clear, “I am already dead.”

The words hit the assembled watchers like a gust. It was the Samurai creed. The Legionnaires’. Their own. It hit them with a force of recognition: It was uttered with conviction, with simplicity, and with a total lack of fear. In every warrior’s heart is an absolute respect for simple courage, and every Son saw it in the woman, and it cut through even Spiderwebs’s trance. The knife no longer looked at home in his hand. Celine thought he could go either way.

“Just a minute,” she said. Her high cheeks had gone hollow and her eyes were shiny. She held to the back of a chair and breathed. Nobody moved. She nodded to Pete. He switched on the little condenser and handed her the cannula, which she pressed to her nose. She breathed for a full minute, handed it back.

She looked around the room. “I strongly suggest you boys quit smoking while you still have the best of life ahead of you.”

It was like letting air from an overinflated tire. Bikers all around the room let out a breath, shook their shaggy heads, murmured “Fuck was that ?” One or two laughed, awkwardly, but nobody was having fun anymore. The bearded elder touched Spiderwebs on the shoulder and he folded his knife and jerked his head like he was clearing it from a dream. Pete heard somebody say they better saddle up if they were going to make it to Big Timber for happy hour. A giant man with a chevron patch, the sergeant at arms, paid the tab. One by one the Sons of Silence filed out. The jukebox was mute. In the suspended stillness left by their absence Celine and Pa heard the cough and roar of fourteen Harleys thundering to life.

The Red Lodge public library was a new building with a deep porch looking over the river and a bronze grizzly bear looking over the parking lot. Where a young hippie couple was openly smoking pot. The cars parked there seemed to be an even mix of beat-up Subarus and pickups with gun racks—hippies and rednecks, the oil-and-water demographic of many small Western towns.

Pete set up their laptop in a carrel and Celine asked the librarian at the front desk where she might find thirty-year-old National Geographic s. The woman wore a turtleneck and turquoise earrings and rimless hexagonal reading glasses. Her long gray hair was in a ponytail. Her blue eyes came up and settled on Celine with a certain recognition, the way one blue heron might look at another in a marsh. She was probably raised in Connecticut. “You know,” she said, “I’m old enough to remember when young boys would ask the same question. And they weren’t at all interested in tectonic plates or cave paintings.”