Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

They shook; Troy with a sneer, looking like he was going to spit, and the stranger with eyes that floated in their sockets, reflecting the bar lights back at Troy in a glare of dead calm. They backed away from each other, Troy sitting down with his brothers, muttering, “Ain’t worth it.”

Dinah could tell he was spooked.

The stranger put his hands in his pockets and turned his back on the brothers. He stepped quietly over to the bar, his chain jingling, and took a seat next to Dinah.

She blew a thick ring of smoke at him. “Have I seen you before?”

The stranger shrugged, then nodded at her half-empty glass. “What are you drinking?”

“Bourbon.”

He jerked his chin at Ben. “Two bourbons.”

When Ben set the drinks down in front of him, the stranger laid a fifty on the bar. “Sorry about the pool cue. Didn’t mean to break it.”

Ben pushed the fifty back at the stranger. “Forget it. First drink, first broken cue is on the house.” He nodded toward the brothers. “Just watch your back when you leave tonight. Ain’t a bigger buncha assholes ever walked this planet.”

“Thanks.” The stranger lifted his glass to Ben in salute.

Dinah did the same. “Thank you, Ben. “ He nodded and turned to pour drinks for a couple of farmers at the other end of the bar. Dinah swiveled toward the stranger. “Ben’s nice enough. Just don’t get on his bad side. Where you from?”

“Out west. Name’s Billy.”

“You ride a bike?”

He looked at his drink. Nodded.

Dinah shoved the remains of her cigarette into the ashtray and pulled out two more. “Aren’t you going to ask me my name?”

Billy produced a match from somewhere below the bar and lit it with the nail of his thumb. He held it to the two cigarettes in Dinah’s glossy red lips. “I figured you’d get around to telling me sooner or later.”

Dinah sucked in. Handed one over to Billy. Winked. “Smoking’s bad for you.”

“Smoking don’t affect me.”

Dinah smiled. Tilted her head back and blew a mist at the idle ceiling fan above. “What brings you here?”

“Just passing through.”

“What about tonight?”

Billy laughed. “You get right to the point, don’t you?”

Dinah shook her head slowly, in rhythm to the jukebox. “I’m no slut. Just being kind to a stranger is all.”

Billy drained the rest of his glass, chewed on a chunk of ice. Turned to the empty stage. His face seemed to flicker through the smoke she blew at him. And when the moving colored lights of the dance floor hit the exposed skin of his neck, it looked for a moment like it was melting, like a piece of film stuck in a movie projector.

Damn, he’s cute, Dinah thought.

He stood from his stool. “I have to go.”

“Hey, wait. I didn’t mean—”

“I know what women like you want.”

Dinah blinked. “And what’s that?”

“You want a knight in shining armor. Someone to walk through that door and sweep you off your feet. A fantasy man. A movie star. But all you ever meet are drunk assholes and losers.”

She stared at him. Her drink was empty and goddamn, did she want another one. Her fingers shook as she tapped the ash off her cigarette.

“I have to go,” Billy said. “It was nice meeting you.”

But he didn’t move.

Dinah finally looked up at him and his eyes made the pit of her stomach ache. His pupils were depthless, black, the irises bright blue, and she could see the surprise in her face reflected in them. A sadness swept over her. She wanted to hug him. Slide her hand up under his leather jacket. Take him to her apartment and tuck him into bed. There was a hollowness deep in his eyes that enveloped her and she wanted to caress it away from him.

“Please,” she whispered, not knowing if she could be heard over the jukebox. “Let me take you home.”

Maybe the hollowness she saw in his eyes was her own hollowness staring back at her, a longing she’d felt for years, dreamed of since she was a teenager. Everything was possible back then, and now — nothing.

That was what she saw in those eyes, reflected back at her a hundred times over, making her want to crumple on the floor in a heap, crumple and let the night pass, wait for the day to come and warm her, wait in a heap of wrinkling skin and graying hair on the chilled dusty wood of the roadhouse floor.

Billy turned from her and walked away. The three brothers shoved their chairs back and followed him out the door.

Part of Dinah suddenly wanted them to beat the shit out of him. Shred him to bits, because he was an impossibility, nothing more than a dream she’d had a million times over. But the bigger part of her wanted to run to him, wrap her arms around him, yell out to him. But she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Her neck craned back to the bar. She stared at her drink. It glowed golden in the bar’s yellow lights. She lifted it to her lips. Let it fill her throat. Again and again.

“Just one more, Ben,” she said five more times until finally he shook his head gently.

“Come back tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow you can have some more.”

The next night was another slow middle of the week night. A couple pool games going on. The house band playing to an empty dance floor. Spaces left up at the bar. Dinah sat in her usual spot.

“Have you seen him?” she asked Ben.

“Who’s that, sweetheart?”

“That biker. Billy. That bad-ass biker.”

Ben shook his head. “Nope. But the Hanson brothers were here earlier. Looked like they’d seen better days.”

“Think they hurt him?”

Ben shrugged. Poured her another drink.

The cigarette smoke, the odor of beer and whiskey hung in a stubborn cloud around her head. Had he taken off already? Was he holed up in a ditch somewhere, bleeding to death? Everyone knew the Hansons never played fair.

Why should I care, she thought. He’s nothing. A phantom.

Something she could never have, save for maybe just a taste, brief as a Sunday matinee.

She looked at her watch. “Shoot,” she said. Almost closing time. She turned to Ben. “One for the road? No ice this time?”

“I don’t know about you, Dinah.” But he poured her half a glass. Knocked on the bar with his thick knuckles. “On the house.”

She closed her eyes and let it slide down her throat all at once. She shivered at the burn that erupted in her gut and flowed to the ends of her limbs. Shook her head. Rose carefully from the stool and gathered her purse, her jacket, her cigarettes.

Ben nodded. “You take it easy.”

Billy waited for her out in the gravel of the parking lot, a silhouette with eyes reflecting the flickering neon of the Slaughterville Roadhouse sign. He stamped his cigarette out on the ground, the sparks not wanting to go out just yet, and with a tilt of his chin, motioned her onto his bike, a big old Harley — every mother’s nightmare and every kid’s dream.

Dinah got on, wrapped her arms around his belly, waiting for her warmth to heat the leather of his jacket. But it stayed cold. She shivered.

“Loneliness is cold,” Billy said, as he kicked the Harley into life. It roared with a fierceness that vibrated through Dinah’s heart, forcing it to pound and pump blood with the same ferocity as gas through the cycle’s chambers. Billy revved the engine and bolted forward.

Shadows flew by. Dinah leaned to the side to catch the wind in her hair and on her face. The wind never tasted so good. And the sound of that bike, the feel — the vibrations tore through her clothes like a hundred pairs of frantic hands.

He slowed to a stop, Dinah’s arms still wrapped tightly around his chest. She recognized this place. The old Starlite. She looked up at the remnants of the movie screen. Bare branches poked through what was left of it, yellowed panels, the edges splintered, the right corner with a nasty burn mark running down it from a lightning strike. Thistle, poison ivy, oak and birch saplings crumbled the lot’s asphalt in its own glacially determined way. Weeds clutched at the cracked and rusting speaker-posts as if keeping them from sinking into the earth.