Chuck Logan - After the Rain

It was not out of the question. So…

Onward.

Dutifully, he drove down Highway 5, spotted the bar, which was a wreck, and parked the Explorer next to a tan Tahoe that had a dented left-front fender. He got out and hefted Nina’s bag. The Missile Park had seen better times: the porch sagged, bricks were falling out of its facade. Unlike the monument in the park, the badly proportioned missile painted over the door had faded almost to invisible. It was partially obscured by a FOR SALE sign.

Broker walked up the steps, opened the door, and commanded his heart to start manufacturing ice cubes. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and stepped inside.

The direct approach. An exercise any kung fu master worth his chi would know as Fool Walks Into Lion’s Den With Pocket Full Of Lamb Chops.

Musty, dark, layers of slowly rising cigarette smoke. Lots of mirror showing behind the bar. No bottles.

To announce his entrance he raised the bag to above his waist, opened his hand in a stylized gesture, and let it drop.

Ka-thunk!

Three sets of eyes jerked up. Broker ignored a flash of thigh and calf and bare shoulder, the red hair. The flimsy cotton dress. No, goddammit, it wasn’t even a dress. It was a T-shirt with the arms cut out down to her hips almost. He scowled.

His T-shirt. Then-

Nina.

She sat at a table in the back of the room. And he paid no attention to the languid blond guy kinda poured into a chair next to her. That would be Ace. He did take a half-second to register the second guy in the room. He stood behind the bar. Shorter, wide in the shoulders, wearing suspenders-no, not suspenders, a wraparound Velcro back brace. Obviously the guy who did the heavy lifting. Lots of bushy hair. Kept his shirt open three buttons down his chest so the mat of chest hair climbed up like a ratty vine, connecting up with his mustache and his unshaven chin and his sideburns.

Like a freakin’ badger. He’d probably be the other one the sheriff mentioned. Forgot his name.

Okay. Broker scanned the room. The bar was in the shape of an L. To Broker’s right, the short leg of the L formed an alcove off the main room. A solitary chair sat in the space with a cardboard box on it. Crumbled newsprint was creeping out of the top of the box.

Aware that the three of them were fixed on his every move, Broker casually started down the bar, his own attention focused on Nina, who was working through a Method acting exercise about smoking a cigarette. Ace Shuster sat across from her. A newspaper section lay on the table under his elbows. The crossword puzzle. Great. The thinking man’s smuggler. Their heads were bent forward, like comparing notes. Shuster’s hand gestures and body language suggested someone wrestling with the dimensions of an obvious question. Is this gonna be trouble? And if so, how much?

Broker’s eyes clicked back on Nina. He hadn’t seen her in six months.

A complex scurry of emotions formed a knot in his stomach. Concern edged out anger; but not by much.

Nina looked right at him and rose to a half-crouch when their eyes met. Ka-pow.

Make it real. No problem.

It had always been there.

Not a planned marriage.

A pregnancy, a marriage to sanctify it. A daughter.

Other people found an equilibrium, hand and glove, yin and yang-complementary energy. Even darker partnerships found a balance-the enabler, the drunk.

They had never agreed.

They had always fought.

They never gave in. Rather than compromise, they had separated.

All his friends agreed. A match more suited to the boxing ring than the marriage bed.

And not real good for the kid.

Auntie Jane and that Hollywood character wanted a domestic? No problemo.

Broker wasn’t used to seeing her show so much skin. Wasn’t used to seeing her wear makeup. Wasn’t used to seeing her with a glass of whiskey in front of her in the early afternoon.

She’d relaxed her martial precision into honky-tonk ripeness. No, more than that-a rawness. Palpably, from the set of her hips and her jaw and her eyes, she hungered after something, and this dumb shit Shuster probably thought it was some combination of booze and himself.

How’d she do that? Was it the funky shirt, the way she held herself? She’d never gone to any trouble to make herself attractive for him. But she was sure laying it on for this pretty-boy asshole.

Nina lowered her eyes and her fingers touched Ace’s forearm; like just a little scared. So she had added vulnerability to her repertoire. Some mix of catch me, fuck me, I can’t help myself.

He looked at Shuster’s chiseled jaw and cheekbones, his touseled blond hair, his thick forearms. At exactly the wrong moment an old line he must have used a dozen times when he was younger jumped into his brain. You ever notice how you have the best sex with the worst people?

As if on cue, Shuster stood up. “My place, my rules,” he said. “Talking is fine. So’s yelling. But no hitting.”

Broker tried, but failed, to ignore Shuster-because all of a sudden there was real anger, jealousy, and possessiveness churning in his chest. The kind of kid’s stuff that could get a forty-eight-year-old man killed in a North Dakota bar.

Gordy did a fast eye exchange with Shuster. Shuster cooly warned him off as Broker took a few more steps. Now Broker had Gordy at his back. He stopped three feet from the table and aimed a casual snarl at Nina. “Brought your stuff, hon. Sorry, but Jane wouldn’t part with the motorized dildos, or the whips and chains.”

Nina just said, “Aw shit. You.”

He stared at her. “So you dumped Jane already.” Then he shifted his attention pointedly to Shuster. “At least she didn’t have cowshit between her toes.”

Shuster stood up a little straighter, loosened his shoulders, and shook out his hands. Not much, just enough. Broker heard Gordy’s boots scrap the floor, coming around the bar.

Nina shrugged, definitely raw. “So much for trusting a fuckin’ dike.”

“Whatever. Look, I came to take Kit home before she’s totally damaged by all this. Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Nina’s voice clotted, she showed her teeth and her knuckles.

“I’m not doing anything you haven’t done, you asshole.” The challenge in her voice conveyed a pretty convincing picture of a woman who might like to see two men fight on a hot humid afternoon.

“I want to talk to you-outside,” Broker said.

Shuster nodded. “Like I said, talk is fine.”

Broker shot him a look. “Is there a fucking echo in here?”

Shuster cooly stepped back. “So talk,” he said.

Broker took a second look at Shuster, sensed Gordy at his back. He had been sizing up men for thirty years, and Ace Shuster looked like amiable trouble. Not dumb, or mean, just low-key dangerous. And Broker’s quick study detected none of the overpressurized compulsion he associated with the true out-of-control asshole or psycho. This Shuster was trickier than that. He had some irony. Some of Holly’s steel behind silk. He’d be full of surprises.

While Broker was pumping out the ice, Nina was going equal and opposite; fighting off a major meltdown behind her sternum, in the neighborhood of her heart.

Look at you, you sassy son of a bitch. Been a drag all year and now you’re gonna make your one redeeming move. Like some major-league egomaniac pitcher who thinks he can go the distance, high on bottom-of-the-ninth, bases-loaded, full-count cool-twenty-four hours and here you are, standing in the same room with me.

“So talk,” Ace said, stepping back to give them room. He made the briefest of eye contact with Broker, saw the bandaged hand, then looked back to Nina. A fast once-over that gave nothing.