Timothy Hallinan: Skin Deep

"Two," I lied. If you can't lie to a stranger, who can you lie to?

One corner of her mouth lifted, tickling a dimple into revealing itself. "You know," she said, "there's guys you can believe and guys you can't. And who cares, anyway? Half the trouble in this world is caused by believing. Give me more about your blues. Guys with the blues are so, I don't know, nostalgic."

"Hey," I said, warming to the subject, "blues. Did I tell you about my computer?"

"Yeah." She shrugged. "You can't work your computer. So who can work a computer? Dweebs, that's who."

"It cost two thousand bucks. It's the most expensive paperweight I ever owned."

"Paperweight?" she said. "Well, at least that's new." The other corner went up, and she was almost smiling.

"What time do you get off?" I asked.

"Slow down. You also said something about a girlfriend." Jimmy Page was launching into his guitar solo for what seemed like the fortieth time, and I leaned forward to hear. "A girlfriend," she shouted. The man on the stool next to me closed his book and stared accusingly.

"Ex," I said. "Ex-girlfriend." I glared at the guy to my right, and he reopened his book. Sartre, just what I should have expected. Eleanor Chan, my long-standing Significant Other, had wisely decided to take a walk, but if she'd been there, she would have sneered at him. "Ex," I said again, daring the guy to look back up at me.

"You told me about her, even if you don't exactly remember doing it," Roxanne said. "That's a point in your favor, that you told me. Maybe not a very big point, but there it is anyway. And besides, you're cute. So I'll break a rule and ask what's the problem."

"Somebody else," I said, skipping the fact that the breakup had been my fault.

"You don't mean someone she's just going out with."

"No. I mean a boyfriend."

Roxanne looked serious and patted my hand. "I'll bet he's a creep," she said. "I'll bet it lasts a week." She left her hand on mine in a sisterly fashion.

"So there I am," I said, cold-shouldering the attempt at comfort. "I'm in the attractive position of feeling hostile, aggressive, and sorry for myself, everything that fascinates women. So what time do you get off?"

"I'm thinking," she said. Then she took my little finger between her thumb and index finger and rubbed it all the way from the tip to the first knuckle in a manner that wasn't even remotely sisterly. She gave me a lazy smile with something very energetic behind it. "I'll give you a buck if you go away and come back for me at ten-thirty. You can buy me dinner."

"Is that a promise?" My little finger wanted more.

"I told you, I'm thinking." She looked around the room. "I don't see a better offer on the horizon. How about you finish your beer, if you must, and go watch the fireworks? I'll be here when you get back." She gave the hand another pat and turned her back to tend to three nervous underage guys at the other end of the bar. I lost myself in soulful appreciation of the twenty-four-year-old female form in retreat. Roxanne had a mountain climber's haunches and a foot plant that seemed to roll the earth away backward behind her. Then she disappeared behind the furious Felicia, and I twisted around on my stool to look at the Pacific, visible across the highway.

Compared to Roxanne, it wasn't much to look at. I'd seen better surf on the Great Salt Lake, and the sun had finally called it a day and rolled on to give skin cancer to people in Hawaii and Asia. Oh, I was in terrific shape.

If someone hadn't finally yanked the jukebox plug, I wouldn't have heard it. There was a shout, and a chair hit the floor. I turned to see Mr. Buffalo Springfield shove the Korean girl away from him and then pour what was left of his drink over her head. Everything went into freeze frame. I saw Roxanne rigid behind the bar, watching. The Korean girl opened her mouth to say something, and the guy in the leather punched her in the face. It wasn't a slap, it was a punch. She went down as if she'd been sapped.

I think I remember throwing a few people out of my way to get to them. The next thing I'm sure I remember was the guy bending down over the girl, with one of his legs pulled back to kick her, and my hand grabbing his Simonized hair and yanking him upright. He came up faster than I'd figured, with the glass in his right hand, and he swung it in the general direction of my face. I pulled back and he missed, and the glass struck the edge of the bar and exploded in his hand. With the total disinterest of someone in another time zone, I saw blood spurt from his palm. Using my free hand, I did my level best to break one of the small bones in the side of his neck.

Necks are soft, but my knuckles popped as I hit him. He looked cross-eyed for a second and then started to go after me with the broken glass in his bleeding hand. I kissed the Marquis of Queensbury good-bye and kneed him in the nuts. When he folded forward, dropping the shards of glass onto the girl's stomach, I caught him under the chin with my other knee. His neck snapped back, and he let out an agonized little "whuff" and flopped backward into the sawdust on the floor. I put my foot on his throat and pressed down, hard.

"Finished?" I said happily. I was glad to see that he'd bitten his tongue when my knee hit his jaw. Blood flowed from his mouth and collected in the dimple on his chin. He didn't answer. Probably he couldn't.

"You stinkin' alkie cowboy," someone said behind me in an accent that was pure Panhandle. "Get off him, you dickhead." The voice belonged to the Korean girl, and she was crying. She'd pulled herself to a sitting position and she tugged her skirt down over her thighs in an oddly modest gesture, considering the fact that she'd just been decked in front of eighty or ninety people. She wiped a forearm across her eyes and looked at me fiercely. "Don't you dare hurt my baby," she said.

"Hurt him?" I said. I was confused. I was trying to play mix and match with the Korean face and the Texas voice and failing. "Urn, lady," I said, giving up, "I don't want to hurt him. I want to kill him. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't."

" 'Cause," the Korean girl said, sitting back slightly. I must have looked pretty fierce myself. " 'Cause it's not his fault, dammit."

"Then whose fault is it?"

She passed a forefinger over her front teeth, checking to see that they were still there, and then cranked out a smile. A very small smile. "He's not usually like this. He's just drunk."

"So am I," I said. "And I've wanted to kill somebody all day." I ground my foot into his throat. "Yum, yum," I said.

A circle of people had gathered around us, watching as passively as if we were the film at eleven on the evening news. "Hey," the Korean girl called to the room at large, "isn't anybody gonna do anything?" Most everybody in the circle looked away, unwilling to get involved, but one zealous-looking jerk in a frontier-style plaid shirt shouldered through the folks around him and sprinted for the pay phone. "Do something," the Korean girl pleaded. "Jesus, something terrible could happen."

"If something terrible hasn't already happened, I'd like to read your datebook," I said. The bar had hushed except for the sound of the plaid shirt punching buttons on the telephone. I felt some of the adrenaline wane, and I looked down at Mr. Beautiful. His face was very red and the veins on both sides of his forehead were throbbing. With some reluctance, I lifted my foot. He rolled his head from side to side, gasping for breath and trying to spit out the blood in his mouth.

"Toby," the Korean girl was saying in thick Texan, "Toby, honey, I'm sorry." If I live until the third millennium, I'll never understand women.

I bent down. "I can either rearrange the rest of your facial furniture, or not," I said. "It's up to you."