T. Parker - Full Measure

Ted pulled out her chair and Jasmine strode across the dining room with a phone to her ear. Smiling, he turned to Mary Gulliver, who quickly looked away. Ted saw the café owner watching him from across the room, a look of disbelief on his face. I know what you’re thinking, thought Ted — I’m thinking the same thing! He sat and finished his glass of wine and ordered another bottle.

A few minutes later Ted was pushing in Jasmine’s chair when Evelyn and Brian Anders came into the dining room behind the hostess. With them was the dean of admissions at the college that had expelled him for his Internet cartoon of the mayor, and the dean’s companion, a large sturdy man with a shaven head and a goatee. Ted nodded curtly to the mayor, then focused all of his attention on Jasmine. She studied his face and glanced at the new arrivals. “Friends?” she asked.

“I haven’t seen them since the war.”

“Maybe we can say hello to them when they’re settled.”

“Maybe. Please tell me about yourself.”

She’d grown up on military installations — Norfolk, Pearl Harbor, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Coronado, Pensacola. Her father was a colonel and her mother a homemaker. Two brothers. When it came time for college she came back to San Diego, her favorite of the cities she’d lived in. She was dead tired of moving every few years. She did two years at UCSD, a business major, but she quickly tired of “retarded college boys and being poor,” so she got a full-time waitress job at an expensive La Jolla restaurant. She said the money was good but the work was “mind-numbing,” so she took a job selling BMWs at a dealership but that didn’t work out because of the sales manager. “Jeez,” she said. “Married guys.” Then a stint dealing blackjack on a cruise ship, where she’d met Edie. They kept in touch and a few months later Jasmine signed on as an escort. She expressed herself with a combination of toughness and femininity that he admired. “I like the escort work okay,” she said. “I really do like meeting new people and helping them feel comfortable in social situations. I’m a good dancer and I speak French and Spanish. But the money is in the, ah... other stuff, if you know what I mean.”

“I understand. This has been a magical night for me. We’re down to our last hour and twenty minutes.”

“I’m up for more if you are.”

Dinner passed dreamlike and euphoric — Jasmine in candlelight, the gay paintings hovering around them, the murmur of conversation and the upbeat music. To Ted, the room tilted slowly and corrected gently, like an ocean liner, and he gave over to the sea of sensation. They talked about childhood. He was surprised to find the second bottle gone and ordered another.

Ted sensed motion and a change in light behind him and when he looked up Brian Anders was at their table. “Hello, Ted. How do you do, miss—”

“Jasmine,” she said.

“Right. Ted, I just want you to know that if you ever post another sick cartoon of my wife, or come into our place of business with a poisonous spider hidden in your pants, I will personally kick you up one side of Main and down the other. In broad daylight, for all to see.” Suddenly, Shaven Head was there, too, hulking, his hand on Brian’s arm. Brian yanked it free. “Go sell hate somewhere else, Norris. We don’t need it here.”

“Come on, Brian.”

“Do you understand, Ted?”

Ted could see the anger in his eyes and the severe clench of his jaw. “I understand that you’re trying to wreck my dinner.”

Shaven Head took one of Brian’s arms again and Evelyn arrived and grabbed the other. Ted had never seen her this flushed and beautiful and in control. “Come on, honey.”

“Let go of me,” he growled, with a hostile wrench of his arm.

“Brian!” called out the owner, waving his hands like a fight ref. Ted saw that the other diners were watching them and the servers had frozen midaction to see what would happen next. Mary Gulliver looked pale. Fire Chief Bruck brusquely pushed in next to Brian. “Enough.”

“Brian, damn it, come with me,” said Evelyn.

“Damn him, not me.”

“Brian, come on,” said Bruck. “Nothing you say is going to change this guy.”

“Whack job,” Brian spit out at Ted. “Why don’t you get out of here and take the whore with you?”

Ted tried to stand but Bruck held him down. He wanted to speak but his thoughts were a knot. His breath was short and he looked up at all of them through the familiar rifled tunnel. What he felt most was shock at his own stupidity: he’d left the Glock in the truck. He looked at Jasmine, who had a fierce expression on her lovely face, still sitting there at the table across from him, but now a thousand miles away. She had not abandoned him. He was aware of Brian taking Evelyn by an arm and turning away, knocking into the owner. The servers resumed motion and heads turned away.

“Okay, people,” the owner said, steadying himself. “We’re all grown-ups, last I checked. Let’s enjoy our dinners now.”

“We should get dessert somewhere else,” Ted managed.

“I’m ready when you are.”

He waved the waitress over.

Ted used the bathroom again and they walked out onto Alvarado in the balmy dark. He felt the Glock calling to him from his truck, just a few blocks away. He looked at Jasmine and weighed her company against the lure of the gun. The stores were closed but the streetlamps cast their steady light. She had the shawl over her shoulders. “I’m sorry for what happened,” she said.

“I am, too. And I apologize. I thought my town would have better manners.”

“People can be like that. Like new schools when you move when you’re a kid. Pow. They want a piece of you before they even know who you are.”

“What happened is, Jasmine, they mixed me up with my brother. We’re twins. He’s the one who put political cartoons of the mayor online. He’s the one who scares people with critters sometimes. So I just bear it, for him. For Patrick.”

She looked at him. “I can feel your arm shaking.”

“I was ready to fight.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t.”

“It infuriated me what he said about you.”

“You want to know something? I’ve heard worse. Lots.”

Ted nodded. “We only got ten minutes.”

“I can’t go over on the time, Ted. Edie will fire me.”

“How much for another hour?”

“One fifty. If you want something special, then there’s different rates for different things.”

“I want you to meet a friend of mine.”

She looked at him with frank suspicion. “A three-way?”

“No. No. Just a friend.”

Ted pulled the wad from his pocket. He saved most of his work money because living at home was free. Regardless, he’d taken out a thousand in cash from the bank earlier in the day and had already paid $750 for company, wine, and dinner. He would owe Jasmine a tip of at least 20 percent of her combined time, according to Edie. Ted had never been good at math, and the wine and methamphetamine were not helping him think any straighter.

“Um, I paid for two hours at one seventy five, and I want to get one more at one hundred fifty. What’s twenty percent of all that?”

“One hundred.”

“Jasmine, you sure put a dent in a thousand-dollar bill!” He handed her the whole roll of $250, which left him with the $15 that had been in his wallet before the bank run. She flipped through the bills, nodding, then slid them into her clutch. “Come on. I hope he’s still at the shop. It’s right around the block.”

“Better be a short block, Ted. These shoes aren’t rated for actual walking.”

Ted could see the red, white, and blue neon sign flashing down Oak Street. Cade’s Bel Air, sleek and gleaming, stood near the entrance of Pride Auto Repair. He took her hand and hurried her across the parking lot. At the front door window he cupped his hands and looked in. Through the open double doors of the repair bay he saw Cade sitting alone on the old paisley sofa, reading from a tablet of some kind open on his lap, the lamp casting a cone of light down onto him. Ted remembered Jed and Ellen Magnus. The front door was unlocked and he held it open for Jasmine to enter.