Chuck Logan - After the Rain

“What kind of stories?” Ace said.

“He used to say the government had no business interfering with people’s rights to smoke a little grass and own a few guns.”

Gordy pounded his palm on the bar. “Hear, hear. For the grass part.”

Ace stared at Gordy, then turned to Nina. “Gordy here thinks the Canucks are going to legalize marijuana. He thinks when that happens it’s going to be like Prohibition again up here.”

“How’s that?” Nina played into their talk.

Gordy grinned. “During Prohibition there was stills lined up along all four thousand miles of the border on the Canadian side. This time it’s going to be one long field of hydroponic weed from Maine to Washington State. Box-loaders kicking out hundred-pound bails of the stuff, whole hay wagons chock-full coming through Mulberry Crossing…”

Nina shrugged, curled her lips a tad, nodded her head back and forth. Gave a knowing smile. The two men leaned forward, almost like dogs sniffing for some common ground. “Phil would dig that. You might say he dabbled in the grass business,” she said.

“He still peddling a little on the side?” Ace asked.

Nina went sour, irritable. “Nah, that was years ago. Christ, I guess what happened was all these heavily armed… black …guys showed up in Minnesota and took over the drug trade on the streets…He decided to head north and reinvent himself.”

Gordy smiled. “Don’t need to mind your language around us. We got nothing against niggers. Ain’t any up here. What we got is Indians. Like that Pinto Joe Reed; now, there’s one ugly son of a bitch.”

Ace smiled. “But you’d take him back in a minute working for you if you could get him away from my brother.”

Gordy shrugged. They dropped the subject.

“So…Phil,” Ace said. “That’s his name, your husband?”

“Yeah. Phil Broker.”

“So Phil got out of organic pharmaceuticals?”

Nina nodded. “He made a little money and bought some shore-front up north on Lake Superior, fixed up these old cabins, and now we’ve got the resort.”

Ace and Gordy looked at each other. Ace gave this nodding gesture, something like permission. Gordy shrugged. Then Ace turned his attention back to Nina, pointed at the travel bag Broker had left, and said, “You’re still in your pajamas. Think maybe it’s time to put on some clothes.”

“Got a point,” Nina said, feeling the tension thicken in the room. She started to slide off the stool.

Then Gordy reached for her purse that was sitting on the counter, tipped it over, and slid out her wallet. Flipped it open-“Your last name is Pryce on your driver’s license. How come his name is different?”

“He could have changed his name to Pryce if he wanted,” Nina said, poised, hands on the bar.

“Uh-huh.” Gordy continued to stare at her as she pushed off the bar, picked up her bag. As she started toward the stairs he snaked out a hairy arm and flattened his palm against her stomach, feeling around there. As she recoiled, he said. “Not upstairs. Pick some clothes out of your bag and put them on, right here.”

“Strip for you? Over my dead body,” Nina said in a steady voice.

“It could be arranged,” Gordy said softly, coming up off his stool. Nina saw Gordy was serious, and Ace was letting it happen. A ripple of goose bumps raised on her bare arms. She instinctively reached over and gripped her glass off the bar, holding it like a hand hatchet as her eyes measured the distance to the door.

“Slow down,” Ace said. “It’s just that Gordy has a suspicious mind.”

“You see, we got a bet,” Gordy said.

Nina narrowed her eyes.

Ace smiled. “Gordy bet me a hundred bucks you’re a cop. He thinks maybe you’re wired.”

“You mean wearing a tape recorder under this ?” She plucked at the flimsy shirt.

“Ah, yeah.”

“You’re joking, right?” Nina said.

“ ’Fraid not,” Ace said.

“Show and tell time, honey,” Gordy said.

Nina set the glass down, eased back two steps, lowered the bag, zipped it open, and searched around. She found a pair of shorts and a tank top.

“Okay, I’ll play your silly game.” She walked up to Gordy, dropped the shorts and top on the floor, reached down, crossed her arms, grabbed the hem of the shirt and peeled it up and off as she executed a pirouette. With her back to them, wearing nothing but the low-cut panties from Victoria’s Secret-thank you, Janey-she tossed the shirt accurately over her shoulder. It draped Gordy’s face as she stepped into the shorts, pulled on the tank top, and turned to face them.

Clearly pissed, she said, “Just what makes you guys think you rate a cop, anyway?”

Ace clapped and started to laugh. Gordy removed the shirt and folded his arms, scowling. “You think it’s funny. Well, it ain’t funny.”

“C’mon, man, it is funny,” Ace said.

Gordy slid off his stool, stooped, and emptied the contents of Nina’s bag, immediately retreating as if propelled by a natural aversion to the volume of strange items a woman could stuff into a bag. He returned to poke through the mess for a few seconds, then stepped back once more.

“Gordy,” Ace said firmly.

Grunting, Gordy squatted and pushed the clothes back in. He planted his hands on his knees, stood up, and, far less hostile now, faced Nina. “Um, is Phil the kind of guy who’s going to go brood about what happened out there? And come back on us with a 12-gauge at one in the morning?”

Nina shook her head. “He just turned forty-eight. He don’t bounce so good anymore. I suspect what he’ll do is take Kit back home. His parents are there to help out.”

Gordy threw up his hands in mild disgust, spun on his heel and stomped across the barren barroom, threw open the front door, and continued across the highway. Ace and Nina craned their necks and watched Gordy enter the barnlike Quonset with the rusted Bobcat and windmill out front.

Nina turned to Ace. “He don’t like women. I could tell the way he looked at me.”

Ace shook his head. “He don’t like women like you . Taller than him, lean, smart. He likes ’em about seventeen, no neck, big in front, and stoned.” He made a gesture with both hands cupped before his chest. Then he pointed to his head. “And small up here.”

“So you think I’m a cop?” Nina asked, pretending to be flattered. And confident, because she could cross her heart and hope to die and swear she was not a cop .

“Don’t know what you are,” Ace said, Then he ran his hand along the bar and felt the leather grain and distinctive scale pattern of her wallet. “Don’t know for sure what this is either.”

“Ostrich. Phil’s got a buddy who raises them for the meat and makes leather goods from the hides.”

“Really.” Ace kneaded the leather. “Tell me something.”

Nina threw a wary glance out the front window toward the corrugated tin building where Gordy had disappeared. “Depends.”

“You think ostriches could run with buffalo? After the bar’s gone I was thinking of going out further west, maybe try to raise some buffalo.”

Nina got stuck, once again blindsided by this easygoing, mostly sad, but definitely hard-to-read man. It wasn’t easy to locate the danger in him. But it was there. She had to catch her breath and restart her act.

“It’s okay,” he said.

“What’s okay?” Nina said, letting herself drift, letting the color come into her cheeks.

Ace winked. “That you like me. C’mon, let’s take a ride. I want to show you something.”

In the Tahoe, heading west. “So why would I be a cop?” Nina asked.

“One reason is whiskey. Most of the bars up around the border backdoor a little extra inventory into Canada. Bottle of booze costs fourteen bucks here, sells for thirty-eight up there. Hell of a markup. So there’s money to be made. Same’s true for cigarettes.”