Don Winslow - Way Down on the High Lonely

“City or state?”

“City!”

So far so good.

“Where are you from?” he asked, realizing that his voice sounded as high and narrow as one of Cat Lady’s strings. She thinks I’m an idiot.

“Here,” she said, “I’m from here.”

“Austin?” Great. Now she knows I’m an idiot.

“I think that’s where we are.”

Duhhh.

“What do you do for a living?”

I was sort of an unlicensed private investigator, a troubleshooter for a secret organization. But right now I think I’m unemployed.

“Nothing much lately. What do you do?”

“I’m a teacher.”

Oh?

That’s when the music stopped, the band took a break, and Peggy and Karen went off to the ladies’ room together, a ritual that is constant throughout the world.

“You’re glued to that chair like you’re paying rent on it,” Steve was saying.

“It’s a nice chair. I like it.”

“You’re scared shitless.”

Steve grinned at him. He almost looked like Joe Graham, who also had a habit of grinning at Neal when he was being nasty.

“Of what?” Neal asked.

Steve roared. Actually sat back in his chair and guffawed. “Of Karen! Nothing to be ashamed of-Karen has scared a lot of good men.”

“Good for Karen.”

“Ask her to dance, moron.”

“I can’t dance,” Neal said.

“War wound?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Nothing to it. You just get up and move,” said Steve.

“That’s what I don’t know how to do.”

“Get up, or move?”

“Both.”

Steve leaned over the table to give Neal one of those soulful cowboy looks. “It’s not like you’re Fred Astaire and she’s Ginger Rogers or anything. You’re not dancing for the artistry of the damn dance. You’re dancing to, you know… move around together. Get close.”

Yeah, right-get close. Getting close isn’t exactly my best thing, Steve. The last woman I got close to did a triple gainer off a big cliff.

Neal worked at finishing his beer. If he could do that fast enough, he’d have an excuse to escape to the bar to buy the next round.

“You ready for another one?” Neal asked as he got up.

“Coward.”

“Well, will you let a coward buy you a drink?”

“I’m not particular. You better hurry, though, I see the women coming back.”

Neal worked his way to the bar, got a pitcher of beer, and bumped right into Cal Strekker.

“Doing a little honky-tonkin’, New York?” Cal sneered.

“Leave your knife at home, Cal?”

“Nope.”

Great. “Where do you have it hidden?” Neal asked. “Up your ass?”

“In my boot.”

“Well, be careful dancing.”

“You want to dance with me, New York? Maybe finish what we started?”

“Gee, I’d love to, Cal, but my beer is getting warm.”

“You’re a chickenshit bastard.”

You’re half right, Cal. Okay, maybe all right.

“Jesus, Cal, I told you I’m busy tonight!” Neal shouted. “I’ll dance with you another time, all right?”

Cal turned a color that would have drawn a charge from a bull as a whole bunch of people turned around and looked. “I’ll be seeing you, New York,” he hissed.

“In your worst dreams, shithead.”

Neal set the pitcher on the table and sat down. Steve, Peggy, and Karen were staring at him.

“Cal Strekker giving you trouble?” Steve asked.

“How much trouble could he give?” Neal answered as he started to fill their empty glasses.

“A lot,” Peggy answered. “He did time in prison for killing a guy in a bar fight in Reno.”

It wasn’t Reno, Neal thought, it was Spokane. But the bottom line is the same.

“Newcomer trash,” Karen said. Then she quickly added, “No offense meant.”

“None taken,” Neal said. “I’m here for the long haul.”

Karen gave him a long look and said, “Then you’d better learn to dance.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him out of his chair just as the band struck up a snappy little number about eighteen wheels rolling down two-lane blacktops.

Karen held Neal by two outstretched hands and did a little hopping step that he did his best to imitate. He could feel his hands getting sweaty in her amazingly cool, soft palms, and he felt as awkward as he knew he looked. Especially in contrast to the beauteous Karen Hawley, with her long legs and wide mouth and big blue eyes.

“Relax!” she shouted to him. Her smile turned his knees to Jell-O, so it looked like he was more relaxed, anyway. He started to let go a little, actually moved his feet more than two inches at a time, and let her swing his arms around in time with Blackie’s drum strokes. He was doing all right when that treacherous cretin New Red switched to a slow song.

Neal and Karen looked at each other for an awkward moment. Jesus, Neal thought, I’m blushing.

He looked at her, laughed a little bit, shrugged, and held his arms out. Scary, tough Karen Hawley settled into his arms as soft and gentle as a cloud, and much, much warmer. She didn’t bother with any of that hand-held-out-like-a-guitar business, just put both hands on the small of his back, and settled her head into his shoulder. He laid his hands just under her shoulder blades, realized that his hands were quivering, then left them there anyway.

What is it, Neal thought, about the smell of a woman’s hair? How it spins around your brain, then rushes straight to your… no, don’t think about it… and the feel of her breasts just grazing your chest… or her thighs just brushing against yours… don’t think about any of that.

The whole thing was an erotic charge, and then she nestled right up against his erotic charge and tightened her hands on his back and let him see the corner of her mouth curl into a little smile and Neal thought he was going to die on the spot. Or get arrested for indecent exposure once the dance was over and they parted hips, even though he was completely dressed.

He looked over her shoulder and saw Steve and Peggy slow dancing, both of them grinning at him. Karen must have seen them too, because the edge of her lips against his neck widened into a chuckle.

“Peggy’s subtle,” she murmured.

“Like a sledgehammer,” Neal agreed.

“I don’t mind. Do you?”

“Yeah, I’m real pissed off.”

She pressed her hips forward a little. “I don’t think you are,” she said.

“Sorry about that.”

“No, no, no, no. And you do know how to dance.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Her head sank a little deeper into the crook of his neck, filling his nostrils and his brain with her scent. Something made him kiss her hair where it fell over her ear.

“Damn hair,” she whispered, “always in the way.”

He started to brush it off her ear, but she lifted her head to look at him and said, “Later.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I want you to do that later.”

She must have seen the doubt in his eyes, because she leaned forward and gave him a quick, soft kiss on the mouth, her tongue lashing between his lips before her head dropped back on his shoulder and her hips made the subtlest possible circle against his groin.

A big hand grabbed bis shoulder and spun him around. Suddenly Neal was looking up into the red, drunken face of one big, angry cowboy.

“What are you doing with my woman?” he yelled.

The dancers around them stopped dancing and backed away. The band kept playing, although they watched the developing altercation with great interest.

“Charlie, get out of here!” Karen yelled.

Neal felt the circle widen around them. Here we go, Neal thought, they’re giving us room for a fight. He saw Cal lean against the bar, smiling his feral smile at the thought of Neal getting pounded into hamburger by this animal. Except that under the red face, the drunkenness, and the fury, Charlie didn’t look like an animal. He looked like kind of a nice guy.