Chuck Logan - After the Rain

Gordy put the Cokes in the refrigerator, all but one can. He popped the top, took a sip, and opened the bakery box. “Want one?” he asked. As he held the pastries up he stepped closer, too close, so his arm grazed her arm.

Nina threw a warning glance. Gordy just smiled and selected a jelly doughnut, took a bite, then leered at her, with a gob of goo caught in his mustache. His tongue darted out, snapped up the goo. Then he started to make his move. “So, where did he sleep last night. On the couch or on you?”

Nina extended the middle finger of her right hand.

“You give it up yet?” Gordy said, staring at her hips. “You satisfy his curiosity ?” The leer accelerated and his breath came faster, working up to something ugly, and his eyes started to go fast, like two little caged rats.

“Back off, Gordy. I mean it.” Nina started for the door.

Gordy blocked her path, looming. Almost touching her as he whispered in her ear with his sugar breath, “It’s like this-you could leave under your own power, or you could disappear. It’d be easy…”

Nina, an inch taller, dropped her eyes to focus on the lump of Adam’s apple nestled in Gordy’s hairy throat. Go on, asshole, touch me. Crush his larnyx in about two seconds …

She moved past him and then the knife came out.

He drew it from his back pocket: a standard folding Buck Hunter with a fat, almost four-inch, stainless-steel blade. Gordy whipped it open with a smooth practiced flick of his thumb. He raised the knife in his right hand, menacing the blade back and forth. Catching the light. Not exactly threatening her directly with it, more like showing off and working up to something…

Broker had always told her how a lot of the assholes out there weren’t that smart. How sometimes they just did things before they thought…Okay, so, a knife-she prepared herself to fight. Gordy puckered his lips, blew a kiss, took a half-step toward her, still swinging the blade off to the side.

Instinctively Nina’s hands came up and she stepped back. What happened next was so strange and fast that she found herself in the middle, missing the beginning:

The voice rasped: “Leave her alone, Gordy. I mean it.”

Nina watched, stunned. Where’d he come from? A swarthy man about five-ten, in jeans, a gray T-shirt, and boots. He had jet-black hair and the corded arms of a circus roustabout. His face was all wrong, rippled with uneven pigment. Scars showed even through his short hair. He approached silently, moving with a graceful limp, favoring his left leg. He carried his left hand protectively close to his hip, not swinging naturally and Nina immediately saw the nubs of the two missing fingers. She’d seen his kind of face before, in VA hospital burn wards; guys who’d been blown up, their skin grafted. But this guy was very focused, his quiet eyes checking the blind angles, the back doorway by the stairs.

Her response was visceral. One player sensing another player coming onto the field.

Gordy immediately put the knife away, stepped back. “Hey-just kidding, Joe,” he said.

If push came to shove, Ace and Gordy were country tough. Basically they were muddling along in a local tradition of smuggling whiskey and petty crime. Not this guy. Nina was sure. He was a trained man. For the first time since this project got under way, Nina knew she was close to something scary.

The guy stopped and probed Nina fast with cold brown eyes so intense she could almost feel her bones glow. Then he turned to Gordy and said, “We got nothing else to talk about, you and me. You understand?”

“Sure, Joe.”

“Where’s Ace?”

“He ain’t here,” Gordy said.

“Tell him George says it’s tonight, at the old remote missile bunker east of town.”

“Jesus, Joe.” Gordy rolled his eyes at Nina, alarmed.

Joe’s eyes stayed fixed on Gordy but his voice turned contemptuous. “Since when are we scared of women?” He inclined his damaged face toward Gordy for emphasis, then, “You tell Ace.”

Gordy stepped back, eyes wide; trying to make the best of things. “Yeah, sure, Joe.”

Then Joe continued on past the stairs and went out through the storeroom. Gordy, minus most of the color in his face, grinned nervously at Nina. “Just joking around, right?”

“Yeah, sure, Gordy. Ha ha. Who was that?”

“Joe Reed,” Gordy said, clearly agitated. He shook his head. “I don’t get what’s going on anymore. It wasn’t like this when Ace’s dad ran things.”

Nina folded her arms across her chest and watched him go into the office. Then she went to the table, where Ace’s morning newspaper was spread out. As she sat down she released a delayed shudder.

The Indian’s presence lingered in the room like a cool shadow. Tonight, he said. George, he said. She was with Gordy, thinking, Why was this guy putting it on front street? What the hell’s going on?

Gordy reinvented himself fast, coming out of the office, smiling, bringing her a cup of coffee, and holding up two fingers in a V peace signal. Ace came in a few minutes later and set a still-warm Dairy Queen breakfast bag next to her.

“You’re still here,” he said with a wry smile.

Gordy watched her carefully from the bar to see if she’d let on about their confrontation. She didn’t and he occupied himself with his clipboard.

Ace said, “I had to leave early to go to court. Overslept, didn’t even have time to make coffee.”

“No problem,” Nina said airily. “Good old Gordy whipped up a pot.”

“Anywhere, anytime,” Gordy said.

Ace observed the touchy back-and-forth, filed it away. Gordy joined him, walked him to the stairs, and lowered his voice. “Joe was by, playing hard-ass. George sent him. George says it’s on for tonight. He’ll meet you at the old RLS site east on 5. Didn’t give a time.”

Ace nodded, stared at Nina’s back for a long moment, then went upstairs. The phone on the bar rang, Gordy crossed the room and picked it up. Nina opened the Dairy Queen bag. It contained an egg muffin.

Gordy talked for a moment, put down the phone, then said to her, “That was Dale across the road. Your husband was over there this morning. Thought you should know.”

Nina lowered her eyes, picked up her coffee cup in both hands, and took a sip.

Dale really wanted to get a closer look at this woman who had come to spy on his brother. He wanted to so bad he kept putting it off just to build up the anticipation. He had Gordy’s request to intervene with Ace as an excuse to mask his curiosity.

Woman comes all this way just to see Ace. Well, isn’t she in for a surprise.

It was an accepted fact that some new floosy blowing into town would be attracted to his brother. This had always been the case, all his life. And that’s why he found this woman so tantalizing.

Just showing up, kind of mysterious.

So he puttered around in the office, brooding, periodically glancing across the road. He’d glimpsed her twice now. First in that clingy tank top, then wearing one of Ace’s T-shirts. Tallish, lean. Short red hair. His eyes drifted up to the windows over the bar. He remembered playing there as a child, when his dad had an office there. Now Ace was probably sticking it to the woman up there-maybe right where he’d put his Tinker Toys together.

He peered out the window and finally he saw Ace’s Tahoe pull in and park in back. He picked up the phone and called. Gordy answered.

“Is he there?” Dale asked.

“Yeah. He just got back.”

“That guy you hit was here this morning with a little kid. He pretended he wanted to look at machinery.”

“I’ll pass it on.”

“Okay. Maybe I’ll come over in a little while,” Dale said. He hung up, then stuck his head out the door. “Give me about five minutes to clean up,” he said to Joe. “Then we’ll go across.”