Tim Green - Exact Revenge

Allen says, “You’re buying the Jets?”

“It’s not official, yet,” I say, sipping a Heineken.

“He’s buying the Jets,” Allen says to Martin.

“Allen plays at SU,” Martin says, pointing at his friend with a bottle of beer. “He wants to be Chad Pennington.”

“I love the Jets,” Allen says, his eyes shining.

“To the Jets,” I say, raising my glass and touching it to their bottles of beer. I have to force myself not to stare at Allen’s face. The nose, the shape of the eyes. All Lexis.

Santana croons from the stage and the crowd hoots and cheers. Music and smoke swirl together, soaking up the beams of flashing colored lights. Red. Blue. Yellow. Green. We talk in shouts above the music.

“You really play?” I say, looking into his eyes and not at his face.

“Quarterback,” Allen says, looking right back at me.

“He’s got a chance to be the starter this year,” Martin says, raising his bottle and clinking it against his friend’s.

“What are you studying?” I ask.

“Well, I’m gonna go to law school,” he says, “but right now I’m actually studying painting.”

“Painting to law school?” I say. “That’s different.”

“My dad wanted me to study finance,” he says. “Finance and football. He was pissed when he heard, but my mom calmed him down. Anyway, I get to paint for four years. Then I either make it in the NFL or it’s law school. Something useful.”

“There are plenty of useless lawyers,” I say. “Not enough good painters, though.”

Allen cocks his head to one side and says, “You sound like my mom.”

I keep the drinks coming fast, and after an hour we’re all best friends. The boys are going to join me for the game tomorrow in my box on the fifty-yard line. The drinking becomes a small unspoken contest with me the loser. Finally, Allen is swaying. Martin’s eyes go in and out of focus and he looks at his bottle and mouths the words on the Budweiser label to himself.

I look at my watch. Midnight. When I look up, I see her. A woman moving through the crowd attracting the attention of every man within twenty feet. Her hair is long and straight. Brassy blonde. It’s hard to decide which is more impressive, her figure or her golden face with its powder blue eyes and red lips. She isn’t tall, but wears a pair of white pumps that match her snug satin dress. She stops when she sees Allen, and stares. A smile pulls back her delicate lips to show perfect white teeth.

When the girl turns and disappears into the crowd, Allen grins at me. I nod and he staggers after her. Another girl sits down next to Martin. He raises his head and dives in. Bert appears and I tell him to take Martin and his new friend back to the hotel. I leave by the back, my shoes clanging softly on the wrought iron stair that takes me down into the brick alley. I jog for two blocks before I spot the white dress. Allen is right there with her, stumbling to keep up. His head bobs and his hands dance in the space between them. She laughs at him in a high-pitched chirp, then touches his cheek. He takes her arm and they keep walking. I follow, staying on the other side of the street and half a block back.

They plunge into the mob on Bourbon Street, but the girl’s dress is like a beacon. They go up one block then leave the throng, turning down St. Peter. By the time I reach the turn, they are at the dark end of the street, a bad and dangerous place where the blight of the battered Creole cottages is disguised by the starlight. The din of Bourbon Street is almost distant now and what was only a moment ago the sound of celebration has taken on a fiendish quality. Mad laughter. Breaking glass. Trumpets and grating shrieks.

A dull breeze rattles the leaves overhead. Shadows stir and begin to spill from the porches and out into the street. Dark shapes of men materialize and close in a loose ring around Allen and the girl in the white dress. Perfectly orchestrated.

I stop in my tracks to watch.

THE HALL ON THE TOP FLOOR is long with red carpet and gold trim around the doors. Laughter floats out from behind a door. A tray of chicken wing bones and an empty beer bottle rests outside another. Allen has a suite of rooms down the hall from me. Debray is passed out in his own room, the girl already gone. Allen lets his arm slip from my shoulder and he falls onto his own bed, rolling face up. He smells like alcohol and his eyes shine up at me.

“My father says, ‘I always have to bail you out,’” Allen says in a slurred voice. “But you bailed me out this time.”

“Happy to do it,” I say, grunting as I pull off his shoes.

“That was some stuff,” he says, his hands chopping at the air, sound effects squirting through his lips until they roll into a merry chuckle. “Bruce Lee stuff, right?”

“Something like it,” I say, backing away from him, feeling for the door.

“And now I owe you a life,” he says, holding a fingertip up in the air, his eyes directed toward the crystal fixture over the bed and losing their focus. “That’s how they do it over there in Japan or whatever, you know. A life.”

I tell him I know, and then say good night. His eyes are already closed when I let myself out into the hall.

Bert is standing at the bar in my suite with a beer in his hand.

“Everything go well?” he asks.

“Clockwork,” I say.

When I ask him what he’s doing, he looks across the broad living room at my bedroom door. It’s closed and I left it open. Bert shrugs, but he’s smiling.

“What?” I say.

“Not telling,” he says. “Can’t.”

I cross through the overstuffed furniture and grab the brass lion head handle, turning it. Inside it’s dark, but as my eyes adjust, I see the shape of a woman in front of the open tall glass doors that lead out onto the balcony. I feel my heart tighten. Moonlight spills through and a breeze moves the ghostly curtains, making me think for an instant that it’s my imagination. Helena has been in L.A. finishing up another video and wasn’t supposed to have arrived until tomorrow. Her first single went to number one in its second week and never came down, so it wasn’t a huge surprise when she was asked to sing at halftime of the big game.

I step softly and feel the breeze on my face as I reach out for her bare shoulders. She’s straight-backed in a white silk slip. Her hair is different now, wavy and glowing with highlights, even more beautiful than before. Since I’ve only seen her occasionally over the past few months I’ve been able to marvel at her rapid evolution since our talk on the beach.

Frilly lace borders the swell of her breasts and the soft upper regions of her legs. I moisten my lips and put them to the groove between her collarbone and neck. The tangy scent of a perfume I told her I liked sends a charge from my nose down through the center of my chest.

Without looking, she finds my fingers and laces her own tight between them. When she sighs, I feel her shudder.

“What’s wrong?” I say in a whisper, dragging my lips up her long neck to the bottom of her ear. “Nervous about tomorrow?”

She shakes her head no and says, “You kiss me and you hold me and then it always stops. Don’t you want me?”

She even speaks differently now. Her words are soft but clearly enunciated with the timbre of a flute. My hands feel a sudden chill. My muscles tighten. That ache in my chest.

“Is it because of what they did to me?” she asks quietly. “Or is there someone else?”

“What they did is done,” I say. “That’s another life. A bad dream.”

“Someone else?”

“It’s not like that.”

“But there is someone,” she says, turning to me now and clasping her hands around my neck. “Something. It’s in New York. I can feel it, but I don’t care.”