Chuck Logan - After the Rain

“Bullshit. You didn’t get any. You’d be in a better mood and you’d’ve sent her on her way. Look, I gotta go gas up my truck, be right back,” Gordy said. “Almost forgot, George called.”

“George, great. Lemme guess,” Ace said.

“Where is she?” Gordy lowered his voice.

“Aw c’mon. Cut the shit. Upstairs putting on her face.”

“Man, you are one pussy brain.”

“Yeah, yeah. So? George?”

“Sounds like one of his moonlight packing specials.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Ace said.

Nina squirmed to get more comfortable and pressed her ear closer to the floor. She heard Gordy leave, heard the door slam, then a moment later heard a muted truck engine start up and drive away.

Then Ace was on the phone talking.

“Hey, George, you old bootlegger. What’s up?…Aw, man, I don’t know, at this late date. Why don’t you get Gordy to pick it up?…Okay. You got a point. I don’t trust him on something serious, either. Just let me know. Bye.”

Nina waited another five minutes. She spent the time putting on eyeliner and lipstick. Then she took her cell phone from her purse and went downstairs.

Ace was standing in the empty alcove to the right of the bar. He’d brought a chair and set a cardboard box on it. He was taking a picture off the wall. It was the framed yellowed front page of a newspaper. The headline read: LANGDON-MISSILE CITY, USA.

“Hey. You could help me take these down and wrap them. I promised them to the county library.”

“Can I see?” she asked as she left her phone on the bar and came forward. He handed over the frame. Nina scanned the page. A picture of the town’s main street. A map showing Sprint, Spartan, and Safeguard sites.

“See?” said Ace. “They put in the Minutemen in the late sixties, so then they started building the ABMs to protect the Minuteman silos. That’s how the bar came about. They built this big trailer park for the construction crews right across the road. This place used to really jump back in ’71, ’72.”

Nina noticed that he was unguarded, remembering-there was a softness to the depths of his eyes that was at odds with his physical persona.

“Yeah,” he went on, “the population of the town doubled. The work crews brought their kids, and we had students in our schools from every state in the union.” He took the framed page back and wrapped it in newsprint and put it on the box. “Mom used to joke how we had a rush hour when the crews changed shifts. Just like in a big city.”

It started as a tightness in her chest and traveled up into her throat, her chin, and tugged on the corner of her lips. A feeling of…what? Was it sadness? No, more like trespass.

I wouldn’t feel like this, goddammit, if he was more…bad.

But he wasn’t.

Or was he? Who was George?

She remembered seeing him earlier with the pistol. Casual, charming, putting it away, never mentioning it.

“Dad brought in the equipment dealership, thought he was going to really cash in on all the construction contracts. But then, like a lot of things around here, it all sorta dried up and blew away.”

He pointed to another picture, a massive snarl of interlaced steel reinforcing rods. “Nixon’s pyramid. Government put out close to two hundred million bucks for that pile of concrete. Just south of town at Nekoma. I’ll show it to you if you’re still around. Was supposed to house the radar for the ABM system. Never used it. Jimmy Carter. SALT II.”

Nina looked away, saw another newspaper page under glass. A quote in the center of the page: “If North Dakota seceded from the Union it would be the world’s third-largest nuclear power.” She turned and studied him, wrapping faded mementos in newsprint. What was he doing? Dallying with her? Pretending to accept her and her sad little personal story?

If he was who they thought he was, he had to be suspicious.

“Is there any coffee left?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, not even looking up from his wrapping. “Gordy keeps a Mr. Coffee in the office.”

She walked directly to the office, went in; there was a desk, computer, fax machines, printer…and wouldn’t you know it? — next to the phone: a caller-ID unit.

A second later she pushed the review button. The data materialized on the tiny gray screen, a time, today’s date, the number, and a name: Khari George. She grabbed a pen off the desk, removed a Post-it note from the pad beside the phone, scribbled the number, then slipped it under her shirt and into the waistband of her panties. The coffeepot sat on the edge of the desk, half-full of black tarry liquid. She selected the cleanest-looking one from a lineup of several mismatched mugs, filled it, and went back into the bar.

As she came out, Ace was reaching up with both hands, his back to her. He was taking down a faded military pennant that showed a wedge of stars and the wreathed heading: 321 ST MISSILE WING.

Seeing him like that, back turned, vulnerable, she had the impression that he was dismantling and packing away pieces of his own life, not just picture frames. She remembered his blithe bar chatter about depression. And how Gordy sounded suspicious of her. Yet Ace was casual to the point of folly. She remembered a suggestion from his dossier; that his charming drinker’s act was likely an attempt at self-medication.

What if she were stalking a cripple?

And if so, was it an advantage or a disadvantage? What would Broker say?

Ace turned, saw her watching him, and asked, “Are you all right?” Just then she heard Gordy’s truck pull up in front. A second after that, her cell phone rang.

Broker did not enjoy the smile on Jane’s face, or the way she relished each word she spoke: “You know all about domestics, right? What we have in mind is the domestic from hell. You’re pissed, hurt, and dead tired. You’re the perfect estranged husband.”

“The bar is called the Missile Park,” Holly said. “Shuster’s got a pad on the second floor. It’s just west of town on the highway, on the left. Go in there and read her the riot act.”

“Yeah, make it real, take it to the edge.” Jane chanted her encouragement like a cheerleader as she punched numbers into her cell.

“I get the impression you and Nina can come across as pretty authentic. Like, real pissed at each other,” Holly said.

“We’re counting on it,” Jane said, cell to her ear, and as her call went through she sneered into the phone, “Hey, bitch, where are you?” Pause. “Why am I not surprised. Yeah, well, your old man is here to take Kit back. He’s coming down to drop off your things.” She turned to Broker, winked. “She says go fuck yourself.”

Jane ended the call, then released Kit from captivity in the bathroom. Holding up pruned hands like fulfilled prophecy, Kit hopped on the bed, captured the TV remote, worked into the cable menu, and found the cartoons. Almost immediately the Road Runner honked his signature beep-beep on the TV.

Broker went over and kissed his daughter. She half-responded; brows knit, wrapped up in her cartoon, she said, “This is where the boulder falls on Wile E. Coyote.”

“Great,” Broker said without enthusiasm.

Holly clapped him on the shoulder and handed him a worn leather travel bag. “Some of her stuff. Go.”

Swearing under his breath, Broker plodded out into the strange town, the immense hovering sky, the almost liquid humidity.

He was a realist, he told himself. He was attuned to ruthless practicalities. He didn’t court notions like karma. Or destiny. He certainly didn’t believe in poetic justice.

But this sure as hell felt like payback.

And he could imagine Nina smiling as she pictured him acknowledging the uneasy sensation of being swept up in someone else’s undercover cliff-hanger. He shifted from foot to foot and stared north, toward Canada; imagined Wahhabi soldiers tiptoeing through the endless wheat with suitcases strapped to their chests.