Chuck Logan - Vapor Trail

“Well, well, well,” Harry said. He sat behind an ashtray, a whiskey tumbler, and a big pile of chips.

Same old Harry. He went five eleven, weighed around 175, and was fifty years old. As Broker came across the room he recalled that Harry always looked slightly smaller than he actually was. The illusion was created by the fact that Harry’s clothes always fit him so well.

Today he wore gray stonewashed jeans and a green golf shirt. But even dressed in a white bedsheet Harry would still evoke a man-in-black persona. It was the thick dark curly hair, the sideburns, and the promise of dangerous excitement cocked in the slouch of his hips. His face was slightly flat, with Cherokee cheekbones and a chin that matched his brawny bone-prominent hands. The three red 7s were engraved on his tanned right forearm.

Harry had a Lucky Strike dangling at a sporty angle between lightly clenched teeth. But his eyes betrayed his jaunty smile, looking about as easy as two chunks of indigo dye melting in tomato juice. A clip of toilet tissue was nailed to his chin by a rusty dot. He blinked and raised a hand to knuckle at a runny nose. He was busted inside. Stuff was leaking.

“Is this guy here to play or what?” someone said.

Harry’s eyes were fever brilliant but so very empty as he said, “Nah, he don’t gamble with money, but he’ll sure as fuck gamble with your life.”

“Cash me in,” Harry said, pushing back his chair. One of the guys came over from the side table, began counting chips and entering numbers in a small notebook.

Harry stood up, studied Broker, blinked several times, and tried to stand erect, but gravity was toying with his internal bearings. Harry was listing to port in Ole’s Boat Repair.

He smiled. “So John gave you a badge and a gun and everything, huh? My own official escort to the booby hatch.”

One of the guys said, “Aw, it ain’t so bad; I been to St. Joseph’s.”

“I been there twice,” someone said.

“The groups are fucked, though. They don’t let you smoke anymore. Gotta go outside,” someone else added.

Broker gauged the patter, which was along the lines of a reluctant but firm farewell. He shifted his weight, kept his hands at his sides. Waited.

Harry put his right hand behind his head and massaged his neck, stretched, turned, and looked at Broker.

“Look at you. Nothing ever gets to you, does it? You just keep going like the fuckin’ Energizer Bunny. Why is that?”

“This isn’t the time,” Broker said.

“I mean, don’t it ever bother you?” Harry said. Then he raised his hands in mock surrender. “I know, I know, it’s not the time.” He waved a hand in a cavalier farewell, turning toward his poker buddies, who came forward to gather in a group. Then he stopped, snuck a quick look at Broker, and said defiantly, “I want to finish my drink.”

Broker shrugged. “Sure, what the hell.”

Harry leaned over the table, picked up the glass, and raised it to his lips. But instead of downing it, he left half an inch in the bottom and hoisted the glass as if to say, See, I’m in control. He placed the glass down on the table with an emphatic thump and called out, “Well, guys; this is it.”

A chorus of send-offs ensued, handshakes, a few hugs even though Harry was definitely not the hugs type.

As he started for the back door, Harry paused and grimaced. “Christ, kidneys are shot. I gotta take a leak.”

Broker made a stymied spontaneous gesture with his hand which someone in the crowd captioned accurately: “You gotta go, you gotta go.”

Harry walked quickly toward a door inside of the room. As he pulled it shut, the gang of guys moved forward.

“Is he gonna lose his job over this?” one asked.

Broker shrugged. “Nah, it’s not exactly routine, but in-patient is covered by insurance.”

“Can he still, you know, hang out and play cards?”

“I suppose he could drink Sprite,” someone speculated.

It suddenly occurred to Broker in the course of this amiable little chat how the card players were forming a circle around him, a cordon as it were. Surrounding him shoulder to shoulder.

“Wait a minute,” Broker said, starting toward the door through which Harry had disappeared. The group, amoebalike, oozed along with him and separated him from the door.

Broker feinted left, shouldered hard right, burst through, and yanked open the door. Shit. It led to a hallway running the length of the building with an exit door going out the side.

He sprinted for the exit door as a scornful voice sang out, “Ha, you sucker. He’s gonna get his whole two weeks before you pry the bottle from his cold dead hand.”

Out the door fast. Then not so fast as his adrenaline floundered, the heat sapping his energy like quicksand. C’mon. Move.

Harry? There he is, crouched behind the wheel of the Forester, swearing and banging his shoulder at the door. Running toward him, Broker saw what he was swearing about. In his haste, Harry must have slammed the seat belt and buckle into the door well. Now the door was jammed shut and he couldn’t start the car because the door wasn’t all the way closed. And he couldn’t get the door open.

Seeing him coming, Harry yanked and banged harder on the door, and, as Broker came within arm’s reach, Harry broke the door free. As he disentangled the belt and leaned to turn the key, Broker thrust his arm into the half-open window and grabbed at the wheel.

Harry was giggling like a boy playing a game. “Let go, motherfucker.” The engine quietly purred on, and the car started to move in a fitful circle because Broker was cranking on the wheel with his right hand as he ran alongside.

“Stop the car, Harry!” Broker yelled.

“Anybody but you; shit. I’d make the trip with Lymon Greene before you. John should have known. .”

“HAIR REEEE!” Broker yelled, seeing the side of the building loom up and letting go of the wheel just before the front bumper, headlights, and grille crumpled into the cinder block.

The Forester did a quick steel-crunching rhumba motion, the air bag engulfed Harry, and then the car settled. Almost the second it stopped moving, Harry scrambled out from behind the air bag and pushed out the door. He staggered over to where Broker was in a pushup position, getting up from the boiling asphalt. From the corner of his eye Broker saw the poker players coming out the back door. And something else. During the shock of hitting the pavement, his pistol had jerked from the holster and was lying about three feet from his head.

Harry stopped and shook his head. He had a crazy bewildered grin on his face. He said, “Shit, man. That’s twice in twenty-four hours I been kissed by a fucking air bag.” Then he saw the pistol lying on the asphalt. His grin broadened to show wolfish canines, and he said, “Gee, and I thought you didn’t like handguns? I thought killing people one at a time bored you. What was it you racked up in Quang Tri City back in seventy-two-something like six or seven confirmed kills? Course, by then they were scraping the bottom of the barrel, sending down half-trained fifteen-, sixteen-year-old kids. .”

“Harry, back off,” Broker said, getting up.

“More like child abuse than a war. Hell, I mean, we wasted all their real soldiers by seventy-one when I was there,” Harry said.

Limping slightly, Broker retrieved the pistol, secured it back in the holster, and pulled the shirt over it.

“You all right?” Harry said.

“No thanks to you, asshole,” Broker said.

“C’mon. It was fun,” Harry said.

The poker guys were now assembled around the Forester.

“You saw the fucking squirrel, right?” Harry said.