The People Next Door Page 8

  Ben scowled. ‘Because I feel like it, faggot.’

  ‘What time is that thing at Shaheen’s house tomorrow night?’ Lucas asked, bending to retie his shoes.

  ‘“Because I feel like it, faggot,”’ Kyle echoed. ‘That’s brilliant, Ben. You’re an asshole, you know that?’

  Ben shoved Kyle and Will walked between them. ‘Cut the shit, guys.’

  ‘Do you think he’s gonna have any booze?’ Lucas continued. ‘I want like six Captain and Cokes. I’m gonna get red-assed. That’s what my dad calls it. What do you think about that, Nash? You ready to get red-assed?’

  Kyle shrugged, hoping to appear coolly detached. Ever since spring break, when he’d drunk eleven shots of peach Schnapps and vomited all over Ben’s dad’s walk-in closet, alcohol made his mouth water for the wrong reasons. Maybe he was allergic to the stuff. When he woke up after that little swing dance with the sauce, he had black magic marker drawings all over his face. One of them – he never found out which – had drawn a big veined penis aimed at the corner of his mouth and a set of hairy balls on his chin. The drawing made him feel worse than the hangover, and suddenly going to Shaheen’s party seemed like more trouble than it could possibly be worth.

  ‘Who’s gonna be there?’ Kyle said.

  This caused Will to perk up. ‘Why, you finally gonna try for some wool, Nash?’

  ‘He likes Michelle Harper,’ Lucas said. ‘Talk about wool. That girl’s got a patch like Bigfoot.’

  ‘Yeah, like you know,’ Kyle said. Though now that he thought about it, Michelle did have dark hair, and her arms were a bit fuzzier than the other girls’. Kyle had never gotten further than frenching Rachel Simms last summer (and that was for all of about twenty seconds, because dumbass Lucas was spying on them and Rachel got spooked), so he was in no position to be picky. But the thought of Lucas being with Michelle Harper, in any way, ruined something.

  ‘Strong stable,’ Lucas said. ‘My girls be willin’ and able.’

  ‘Let’s hit the Cornucopia,’ Will said. ‘If that Daryl guy’s working, he’ll sell me some forties.’

  The others fell into a heated discussion about beer-purchasing strategies, but Kyle tuned them out. Standing about twenty yards down the bike path, at the edge of the tree line on the north bank of Boulder Creek, was a girl, maybe the girl, the most beautiful he had ever seen.

  19

  She was maybe a year or two older than him, sixteen or seventeen, but in another way newly born, as if fallen from the sky fully formed. Her long brown hair was plainly styled or not styled at all, but radiant against her creamy skin. Dressed in white sneakers, a simple denim mini-skirt, and a red T-shirt, she was standing in profile, facing the creek. She wasn’t flashy or vamping, she just seemed the very model of unblemished, wholesome girl.

  He felt guilty for staring, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She studied him a moment and turned, letting him look. She wore a red T-shirt featuring a strange silk screen, a kind of negative space of a woman with dark flowing hair, white nurse’s cap and surgical mask. The mask spelled something in distorted letters, but Kyle couldn’t read the message. Her lips moved as if she were whispering, and then she stepped out of her white sneakers one at a time. She set her bare feet down as if she had never walked on grass, savoring the texture of moist blades and cool soil. She was still smiling as she picked up her shoes and walked down the bank into Boulder Creek.

  ‘Nash, you coming?’ Ben said.

  He imagined touching her leg, just the back of her calf, oh so delicately, and maybe that perfect milk chocolate hair …

  ‘Nash! Yo, assface!’

  Kyle turned, blinking. ‘What?’

  ‘I need five bucks for a High Life,’ Ben said.

  ‘You just bought a slice of pizza.’ And your parents have more money than mine. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Nah, I stole that shit. I’m tapped. Come on, help a brother out.’

  Kyle looked back toward the creek. The girl wasn’t in the small section of burbling water that he could see, or on the banks, or the bike path. What the hell? She couldn’t have gone far. Boulder Creek was only a few feet deep here, not really any kind of swimming hole. This was cruel, her sudden disappearance from his life.

  He walked up to the moist bank. The soil at the water’s edge was matted with dead grass raked smooth by the current. The water was clear, the stream bed pebbles golden in patches of sunlight filtering through the trees. A downed branch of green leaves fluttered in the small rapids. A thick stick, rubbed smooth of its bark, was trapped in the eddy beneath the branch, along with a stray soda can bleached pink.

  But there was no girl.

  All at once he was standing in a pocket of cold, almost frigid air. The sun glinted off the water and his insides turned liquid. Kyle’s teeth clacked and he stepped back, heart tripping as a kind of déjà vu of the body told him he had been here before and something bad had happened. He stepped back on weak legs, slipped and almost fell on the moist grass.

  He reset his feet, turned – and almost walked into the pudgy guy who had crept up behind him. Kyle jolted and tried to step back, but the guy reached out with the speed of a boxer and balled Kyle’s T-shirt in his fist. ‘I didn’t do any—’ Kyle started, and Doug’s hamsteak of a right hook slammed into his mouth.

  ‘Think that’s funny? Hurling your lunch at my gal?’ Doug shook Kyle back and forth inside his shirt, eyes murderous. ‘Fucking little cocksucker, show you funny.’

  On the second punch Kyle’s feet went out from under him and he slapped down into the mud, face numb, the copper taste of blood threading back over his tongue. His teeth seemed to be floating and involuntary tears spilled freely. Doug waded in for another blow.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kyle cried, raising one arm in defense as he dragged himself closer to the water’s edge. ‘Jesus, don’t!’

  Doug hesitated, fist cocked. ‘Where’d your weenie dick friends run off to?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kyle blubbered. ‘It wasn’t me, I swear.’

  Perhaps Doug realized it hadn’t been Kyle who’d thrown the pizza, or that if he pushed this any further he could very easily tumble head-first into Boulder Creek or, if there were any witnesses, into Boulder County Jail. Whatever the reason, he took pity and dropped his fighter’s pose. He sniffed, his thick face draining of color.

  ‘Find yourself some new friends, shit for brains.’

  When he was certain Doug wasn’t coming back to kick him in the gut, Kyle crawled up the bank and got to his feet. He wiped blood from his lips and spat. The entire lower half of his face felt puffy but his teeth weren’t loose, so that was something. He glanced around, wondering if the girl had seen him get KO’d, but no one in the park was watching him and the girl was still missing, or vanished, whatever she had done, and that was another small relief. Once he was on the bike path, his friends emerged from a thicket of bushes, their eyes wide with a kind of awe they had never applied to him.

  ‘Dude!’ Will yelled up to him. ‘You all right?’

  Ben and Lucas stared slack-jawed. Kyle nodded and wiped his face with his muddy shirt.

  ‘That was fucking awesome!’ Lucas said. ‘Strong stable, Nash. Tough little fuck, aren’t you?’

  Ben smirked, and Kyle knew he was somehow jealous.

  ‘You dicks are buying the beer tonight,’ Kyle said, because it sounded like the right thing to say after you’d been in a fight, though he couldn’t fool himself that was what it had been. ‘Especially you, Benjamin. I took one for you, you asshole.’

  Ben nodded miserably as Will and Lucas seized upon his weakness. ‘Your fail, bro,’ Will said, batting Ben across the noggin. ‘Yeah, Ben, way to go, fuckin’ pussy,’ Lucas added, kicking him in the ass.

  Kyle walked after them, smiling despite it all. His friends were already moving down the path, jumping on and off each other like they were running on some electrical current he had not learned how to plug into yet. Though this thing here
today, maybe it was some kind of a start.

  He glanced back at the creek once more, wondering if she was real or something conjured in his waking dreams, and either way when he might see her again.

  20

  The proprietor plunged beer glasses into scalding basins of sterilizing water, hopping them onto motorized brushes until his fingertips were raw and numb. He’d only been here since one, but already Mick’s forty-four-year-old body felt like a sack of hot hammered coins. Steam clung to his face like a fever. Glasses clinked, people laughed, silverware crashed in a tub. He zoned in and out of the dining room’s warbling early bird din. He went through decades-learned motions until the last of the twenty-two ounce pins porpoised out and landed trophy upright on the rubber-webbed beach to dry. An hour after entering the restaurant, he wanted to dig a hole in the ground and bury himself. For a moment he imagined refilling the sinks and climbing atop the bar’s worn cherry veneer to soak his feet in the sink, but there were health codes to observe.

  Even here, in The Last Straw, his dying sports bar.

  He fountained seltzer into a highball glass, swirled the fizz and swallowed it warm. He glanced at his rubber watch, wiping a little sperm of soap foam pooled in the cup of the digital face – 6:22. Shit. Amy was going to be irate. He had to get the hell out of here, pronto, and yet something was nagging him, urging him to stay. Something was in the air. Something’s going to happen in here tonight. Something the others can’t handle. What, or who, is it?

  He surveyed the dining room. Reggie was off-loading a plate of wings to the young couple in the corner at table 6. Reggie was a nice guy, always well groomed. He dressed loud, a white kid from Greeley who drove a heap of a Cadillac he called The Lac and fancied himself a playa. He seemed to be on top of his game, his patrons content with their food.

  Jamie had been circling a businessman hiding behind a wall of newspaper, the untouched mountain of nachos at table 9, slick blond hair, the guy’s sleeve appearing like a puppet every few minutes to hoist another free refill on his Arnold Palmer. Good kid, Jamie – earnest, motivated. Never needed a push, her pixie hair and peasant thighs and that firm little runner’s butt in perpetual motion, and she always earned a decent tip. If there was trouble here, it wasn’t with her tables.

  A head of wavy blond hair high up on a golden brown neck bobbed by and Mick did a double-take. Oh, you gotta be shittin’ me. Brett was supposed to have been cut over an hour ago, but there he goes with another pitcher of Buff Gold, nowhere better to be. Yukking it up with the rugby studs at 14, the ones getting loud in their grass-stained elbow pads. Brett was a semi-pro sand volleyball player with a volleyball for a head and a penchant for milking the time-clock. In an industry where even strong profit margins were eight to twelve per cent, mismanaging payroll was the lethal serpent in the garden.

  ‘You’re long overdue, Brett.’ Mick snapped his fingers. ‘Time to clock out.’

  Brett didn’t hear him. Goddamn Alt Rock satellite channel cranked, Chris Cornell caterwauling off the window panes another brain-numbing and unnecessary expense.

  Expenses, payroll, money, accountant – where was Eugene Sapphire, anyway? Boom, that was it. Maybe that was why Mick’s gut was full of acid. Wasn’t their monthly meeting today? Mick retrieved the new Droid Amy had bought him, poked, scrolled, scoped his calendar: nothing about the accountant, but then maybe the new phone hadn’t synced his calendar. Maybe the meeting was next week. Good. Next week was always better than this week. Mick didn’t want to hear about money.

  He holstered the device. ‘You’re bleeding me dry, Brett!’

  ‘You need something, Mick?’ Jamie dipped behind the bar with a round corked tray piled with glasses and a half-eaten burger the size of a car tire, it’s center flesh bleeding over a wasteland of fries. Pig portions, fat customers, more wasted overhead. Time to design a new menu, start interviewing chefs.

  ‘The hell’s Brett still doing here?’ The edge in his voice sent Jamie back a step, so he softened the follow-up. ‘I told you to cut him loose at five. We’re dead.’

  Jamie paled. ‘I thought maybe … Amy wanted to make sure we were covered.’

  ‘I know, I know. You didn’t know I was going to be here.’ Mick smiled, realizing he had slung his wrath in the wrong direction. He shot more club soda, slugged it back, stifled a burp. ‘Thanks, Jamie. You’re the one holding the entire trapeze show together these days. Another Arnold for the newspaper man?’

  ‘The news – oh, no, he’s fine.’ Jamie was blushing, pulling her lip. The customer had gotten under her skin in some way.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Mick said.

  Jamie glanced toward the hovering Daily Camera. ‘He’s a little strange.’

  ‘He hit on you? You want me to take care of him?’

  ‘Oh, no, not like that. Though he is kind of handsome. He just looks sorta not there? He keeps smiling but his eyes … They’re, like, dry.’

  Mick panned the room, got distracted by the rugby team. They seemed to have multiplied, their scrum erupting. Two combatants lining up plastic cups, the teams swinging pitchers like steins in a mead hall. A ping-pong ball thwocked wetly on the table and the jeers of six college boys scraped the rafters. ‘Drink, mother-fucker, drink!’

  Tuesday happy hour beer pong special: Brett’s idea. The goal was to prop up their slowest night of the week. The result was ogre clientele, bad news for the carpets, absolute zero net increase in the nightly take.

  ‘Was it the nachos?’ Mick bent to straighten the foul rubber mat between them. ‘Swear to God I’m going to fire Carlos. I mean, it’s nachos, right? I’m no longer asking him to do au poivre—’

  ‘He didn’t eat the nachos,’ Jamie said. ‘I offered, like you said, always push the apps. And he said okay, but he’s just been sitting there. Every time I check in, he like just stares at me.’

  Mick thought the girl was controlling some kind of weird shiver. ‘That’s it?’

  Jamie frowned. ‘And I don’t think he blinked. At all. He just—’

  ‘I’ll handle Brett,’ Mick said. ‘Let me know if the guy keels over. I gotta get out of here anyway. Can you handle the closing tonight?’

  Jamie tensed again, but nodded. ‘I’m getting used to it.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah, no problem.’

  ‘Okay. I owe you one.’

  Jamie scurried off to the kitchen. Mick turned and pulled his daily wage from the bar register. He hadn’t cut himself a paycheck in fourteen months and the two hundo he removed tonight just about cleaned out the till. As he was pocketing the wad, he caught movement in the bar mirror: Eugene Sapphire entering, black wind-breaker trailing like a cape, thwarting Mick’s escape. Sapphire’s eyes were bloodshot, his mouth set in a crooked snarl, and Mick thought, So this is what the grim reaper looks like. A fucking accountant dressed in a KMart suit.

  21

  ‘So that’s it,’ he said. A small miner with a pickax seemed to be standing behind Mick’s forehead, digging for gold. ‘Thirty days. Fourth of July weekend plus, what, a week?’

  The accountant’s neck turtled up from the shell of his starched collar. ‘Forty-five or sixty if you can renegotiate some of the invoices with your suppliers—’

  ‘I won’t stiff my partners,’ Mick said, upending his whiskey sour. ‘They’ve already gone above and beyond.’

  ‘—and run a skeleton crew, pull double shifts, and go into a liquidation mode with half a menu, maybe ninety, but—’

  ‘I was already pulling double shifts and I’m not keeping it a secret until the last day. Not happening, Gene.’

  Eugene Sapphire had been the Straw’s numbers man since the doors opened. He had roomed with Mick’s father, Bernard Nash, in college, and remained bright-eyed, sharp in his calculations and sage in his advice, with a nice head of gray hair Mick associated with members of the Senior PGA Tour. He hadn’t apologized for being late and Mick guessed that Sapphire now regarded Nash Jr as a lost cause. />
  ‘If it comes to that,’ Mick said, ‘we’re going to maintain our dignity, go out with a bang. I’ll throw a party for one of the local charities, put a full-page ad in the Camera, a sort of farewell to the community that’s been so good to us, some bullshit like that. But I’m conceding nothing at this point. Let’s be clear.’

  ‘All well and noble, Mick,’ Sapphire said. ‘But my job is to give you your options. Realistically. Have you heard from your strong man in Denver lately? The police apprehend your Bonnie and Clyde?’

  ‘The police are useless and Jim Butler is no one’s strong man. He’s the new breed. Cyber crime, corporate espionage, ID theft. Says he’s working on a last-known address, but I think he views this whole mess as a waste of his time. And maybe it is. I mean, what’s the point, Gene. Principle? Pride?’ He laughed.

  The accountant did not laugh. ‘One hundred and eighty-two thousand of your hard-earned dollars. That’s your principle.’

  Mick finished his drink. ‘You know what kills me? These fucks, Greg and that dingbat Leslie, they weren’t kids or addicts. It’s not like I hired some ex-con for a bartender and his dime-store grifter girlfriend for a hostess. They’re fifty years old, for Christ’s sake. Leslie has two kids in Wyoming. Greg used to own a car wash. Here, in my town, right down on Valmont. Known Amy since she was in braces. They knew what this would do to me. I thought I was doing a good thing giving regular people some responsibility, a living wage. But these leeches …’

  Mick held his hands out over the table like ram’s horns, his face reddening.

  ‘I saw them now, I’d choke the fucking life out of both of them myself. I’m serious, Gene. My father would be proud. Proud. It’d be worth this place going down the tubes if I could wrap my hands around their fucking throats, just for a minute. That’s all it would take. One minute.’

  Something in his neck fluttered and he wished Jamie would bring him another double. His device purred against his tired dick, setting off Pavlovian dread. It was after nine and he had a new text. From Amy.