Tom noticed that the longer this Donnie character talked, the more anger showed in his face. He was scowling at him now, looking like a time bomb ready to blow any second.
Tom needed to keep this in mind, whatever the guy wanted from him.
“My memory is pretty fried, Donnie. Too much booze over the years, I guess,” Tom quipped, attempting to add a little humor to the conversation.
Donnie’s expression didn’t change one iota.
“You’re a goddamn pussy, Tom. You don’t know what drunk is.”
Hmmm, Tom thought. He’s getting downright nasty now.
“Let me throw another name at ya, Tom, and I’m betting that you’re gonna remember it! How about the name Mindy Conkel?”
Mindy Conkel. Tom did recall her name. She was the girl he’d picked up at a bar one night. Really good looking but a little on the sleazy side. He’d taken her to her place and had a pretty good time. And that was about it-he’d never seen her again.
“Yeah, I do remember Mindy. Why do you ask?”
Donnie’s expression went from angry to furious. “Because, motherfucker, she was my wife and you fucked her!”
Tom’s heart skipped two beats and his head felt like a lead weight all of a sudden.
Shit! So that’s what this is all about…
He decided to play it cool. “I what? No way, Donnie! What makes you think I did that?”
Donnie drained the bottle, opened the other one with his yellow buckteeth and spit the cap out onto the table. “Because I just know, fucker! She told me!”
Tom thought back, trying to recall exactly what had happened the night he had picked up Mindy Conkle He’d been at the Short Stop Pub with Mike and Jeff that night. They had all been fairly smashed when all of a sudden these two chicks came over and sat down at their table. One was Mindy and the other was-hell he couldn’t remember what her name was. She was pretty ugly though, which made Mindy look all that much better.
One thing led to another and Mindy began flirting with him big time, rubbing his leg and pressing her tits against him every time she said something into his ear. Before long, she asked him if he wanted to go to her place and he had happily agreed.
They had gone to her downtown apartment, which was a little rough and seemed to fit her personality to a tee. They drank some more and eventually went to bed together. About all he could recall from that point on was that she was a good lay but he couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there the next morning. Mindy Conkel was not exactly the stuff that dreams were made of. But he’d had a very good time, and that was a fact.
Mindy had never said anything about being married or mentioned any boyfriend. And she definitely had not been wearing a wedding band-he would have been keeping an eye out for that no matter how drunk he’d been. In fact, he could recall her mentioning a roommate named Sarah So she had definitely not been married to Donnie Shortridge at the time “Donnie, I swear to you that Mindy was single when I went out with her. And I only went out with her one night. I think you have the facts wrong-”
Crash!
Donnie’s fist came down so hard on the table that the beer bottle jumped an inch or two into the air.
“Don’t tell me I ain’t got my story straight, you fuckin’ shit! Whether or not we was married at that exact time don’t make no difference-you banged her when she was my woman!”
“Donnie, listen. If you were dating Mindy at the time, she never told me, and that’s the truth! Had I known she had a boyfriend, I would never have uh, been with her. I swear!”
“You mean you would have never fucked her, that’s what you mean.”
“Donnie, I did not do that. We just played around a little.”
“Played around a little, my ass! That’s the same goddamn thing she tried to tell me at first. Then she couldn’t deny it anymore because she was knocked up!”
Tom suddenly felt lightheaded-like something buried deep in the muck and the mire for years had risen to the surface. This story was beginning to have a very unpleasant ring to it.
He had in fact gotten a call from Mindy Conkel one day. Not long after he’d moved to New York. And he had put that call so far out of his mind, it wasn’t until now that it came back to him.
Mindy Conkel had called to tell him that she was pregnant with his child.
He had blown her off, telling her that it was next to impossible that he had gotten her pregnant, given the circumstances. They had only slept together once, he had argued. The odds were totally against it.
Besides, he had thought, there was no way he was going to let this chick screw up his new life in the Big Apple!
Mindy continued to insist that the child was his and Tom had finally gotten so angry that he simply hung up on her. As it turned out, he’d never heard from her again.
So he had promptly forgotten all about it Until now.
Tom knew he had to find a way out of this situation. If he didn’t, there was little doubt that Donnie Shortridge was going to kill him.
“Are you trying to say that I got her pregnant?” he said.
“That’s right, I know ya did!”
“How could you know that, Donnie? What makes you think it wasn’t you?”
“Because, asshole, I took a paternity test. I started having my doubts about her when she got knocked up once I found out that she had fucked you, too. And even though the bitch swore up and down that you weren’t the father, I didn’t believe her.
“But the clincher was that the kid had dark brown hair and brown eyes. Mindy and I both have blue eyes and blond hair. This kid didn’t look one goddamn bit like me! So I got tested one day. And sure enough, the kid wasn’t mine.
“I got real mad and real drunk after I found out the results of that test. When Mindy got back from work that night, I beat the crap out of her. Broke her arm, a couple of ribs and smashed her face in pretty good. The cops came and I ended up getting a prison term. All because of you, motherfucker! You messed up my whole goddamn life!”
The man was so roaring angry now that the veins were popping out of his neck. Tom almost shot up and ran but the gun pointed at him made him reconsider.
“Donnie, I’m sorry. But that still doesn’t prove I was the father-it could just as easily have been someone else-”
“You stinkin’ sonofabitch-now you’re makin’ Mindy out for an even bigger whore than she is! No, she may be a bitch but I’m sure you were the only other bastard she’d screwed. So that makes you the daddy and the one that not only screwed up my family but got me sent to the southern Ohio pen for five fucking years!”
“Even if I were the father, which I really doubt, that wouldn’t make it my fault you got sent to prison, Donnie. I mean, it sounds like you could’ve used a few anger management sessions or something-”
Tom knew as soon as it came out that this had not been a wise thing to say.
Whack!
Donnie backhanded him with a beer bottle. It hurt like bloody hell.
“Fuck you, man! Don’t be telling me about needing anger management!”
Tom almost laughed out loud at the irony, but his jaw hurt too much.
It was at that moment that he spotted Erin in the living room-creeping toward the kitchen with the fire poker in her hand. Donnie’s back was toward her so he was unaware of her presence.
Ignoring Erin, Tom touched his aching jaw gingerly and said, “Look Donnie, I’m sorry about all of this-I truly am. But surely you could have just forgiven Mindy’s infidelity and raised the child as your own, right?”
Donnie guffawed heartily. “You gotta be shittin’ me! First of all there was no way I’d do that. I wasn’t gonna live with no whore and rear some other dude’s kid. Wouldn’t have made no difference any way, even if I had been foolish enough to do that. She had a restraining order on me when I got out of the joint and she’d given the little shit up for adoption. Seems she couldn’t afford to raise the kid on her own. Serves her right for pressing charges against me. Nope, screw it all. The only thing that’s gonna make me feel better is to take this out on your ass since it was your goddamn fault.”