I put on a big smile as I approached John, even though the stretch hurt my lip. Most of it was for him, but partly it was for the customers with the narrow eyes and narrower minds. I wanted them to know there was one person in Pomo who didn’t believe all the crap she read in the newspaper.
“Hi there,” I said. “Cold night, huh?”
“Not so warm in here, either.”
“You shouldn’t let ’em get to you.”
He shrugged. “Coffee. Black.”
“Nothing to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.”
I poured a cup and set it in front of him. He took a couple of sips, and when I kept on standing there he said, “World’d be a hell of a lot better place if people quit hurting people and left each other alone.”
“Is that a hint for me to go away?”
“No. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Editorial’s bothering you, huh?”
“Editorial?”
“I wouldn’t take it too personally. Doug Kent’s a drunk and a jerk and he likes to stir things up.”
“... What’re we talking about here?”
“The editorial in this week’s Advocate. Didn’t you see it?”
“No. Something about me?”
“Well, he didn’t mention you by name. I think there’s a copy around somewhere if you want to read it.”
“Pomo, the friendly town that just keeps on giving. No, I don’t want to read it. I can imagine what it says.”
“So if it wasn’t the editorial, what’d you mean about—” I got it then, from the way he was looking at me, and without meaning to I lifted a finger to touch my sore lip. “Oh, this.”
“Pretty swollen.”
“Not so bad. It just needs some more ice on it.”
“That kind of thing happen very often?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just asking.”
“Well, it’s none of your business, John. And anyway, maybe I walked into a door.”
“Sure. And maybe you ought to see somebody about it.”
“A doctor? For a fat lip?”
“I didn’t mean a doctor.”
“I know what you meant,” I said. “I guess you think I’m pretty dumb, huh? Just another dumb coffee-shop waitress.”
“I don’t think you’re dumb, Lori.”
“Well, you’re right, I’m not. I didn’t have to take this kind of job, you know. I could’ve been a nurse. That’s what I wanted to be — a registered nurse. I almost was, too, and I’d’ve been a good one. I had nearly all the training.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened. I quit the program.”
“Why?”
I met Earle, that’s why. He didn’t want me to be a nurse; he didn’t like the hours, he said, or the smell of hospitals and medicine, or women in starched, white uniforms. I loved him so much in those days, before the hitting started. I’d have done anything for him in those days, anything he wanted.
“I just quit, that’s all.” A guy in one of my booths called my name; I pretended I didn’t hear. I asked John, “You want a warm-up on your coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
I went halfway down the counter and then turned around and came back. “You know something, John?”
“What’s that?”
“You were right, what you said before. People ought to stop hurting each other and everybody leave everybody else alone.”
“It’ll never happen,” he said.
“Some of us can make it happen.”
“And some of us can’t. Not in this lifetime.”
I really saw him then, for the first time. How sad he was inside. Big overgrown hunk like him, and inside he was as sad and unhappy as a lost little boy.
Brian Marx
I shouldn’t’ve gone after him the way I did, I guess. But Jesus, Trisha is just a kid. And she had her bedroom door locked and wouldn’t open it, wouldn’t tell me how she came to be in that bastard’s car or where Anthony Munoz was or why he hadn’t been the one to bring her home — none of it. Too upset; I could hear her bawling in there. I’m no good with girls, I never know how to handle them when they get emotional. Damn Grace for running out on me the way she did. To hell and gone in Kansas City now, married to that union jerk she met down at Kahbel Shores, living the good life, and me stuck here with all the responsibility.
All I knew was what Zenna Wilson told me on the phone, and that had me half nuts, imagining the worst. So finally I ran out and jumped in the pickup and started driving. Lucky for me I didn’t think to take my pistol along. Shape I was in, I might’ve started waving it around when I found Faith and shot him or somebody else by accident, the way it can happen when a man’s armed and mad as hell and not thinking straight. Then what’d’ve happened to Trisha?
It didn’t take me long to run him down. I barreled up Main and out along the highway, no reason for going that way except I’d heard he was staying up at Lakeside Resort, and as I was passing the Northlake Cafe I spotted his car in the lot. Parked there big as life — you couldn’t mistake a low-slung job like that, in such a beat-up condition. I slammed on the brakes, skidded into the lot, and bulled inside the cafe.
I saw him right off. Sitting alone at the counter, hunched over a cup of coffee. Lori Banner was hovering around near him, saying something as I rushed up, but she quit talking and backed off a step when she saw my face. I’d heard Faith was a big mother, and he was. Hard-looking. But I didn’t care right then.
I caught his shoulder and pulled him around on the stool and got down in his face, so close I could’ve spit on the scar like a dead white worm across his chin. And I said, loud, “What’s the idea messing with my daughter?”
It got real quiet in there after that. That sudden quiet like when you mute the volume on the TV. Faith didn’t flinch or jerk away. He just scowled up at me. Man, he had eyes like the guy used to play for the Bears, Mike Singletary. Linebacker eyes.
We stayed like that, eye-wrestling, for maybe five seconds. Then he said, “Who the hell’re you?”
“Brian Marx. I asked you a question, mister.”
“Marx. Right. Trisha’s father.”
“Yeah. What were you doing with her tonight?”
“Bringing her home. She needed a ride, and I gave her one.”
“Ride from where?”
“Across the lake. High ground over there.”
“The Bluffs? You and her... that’s a friggin’ lover’s lane! She’s a kid, for Chrissake!”
Everybody in the place was gawking at us. Muttering now, too. A guy behind me said something that sounded like, “Kent was right... worse than anybody figured.”
Lori said, “Don’t make trouble in here, Brian,” and I gave her a quick glance. She was one to talk about trouble. Her lower lip was puffed up; Earle had belted her again.
“She’s right,” Faith said. “Suppose we take this outside.”
Before I could say anything he shoved off the stool and brushed past me and walked out. Ignoring me and walking fast, so I had to trail after him like a goddamn dog. That was what made me lose it. I wanted to hit him, bad, and as soon as we were in the parking lot and he turned around, I went ahead and let him have it. Nailed him under the eye with my right and knocked him on his ass. Some of the others were out there, too, by then, and a guy I didn’t know said, “Yeah! Serves the bastard right.”