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I couldn’t get drunk. Drugs didn’t work on me anymore. Even cigarettes did nothing but burn my brains up and make me feel dead. And for that matter, even feeling dead wasn’t an escape since it always came with a hunger that wouldn’t go away until it was satisfied.
In other words, being bummed and depressed as a zombie sucked complete ass.
I finally stopped driving and pulled into the parking lot of Lou-Ann’s Café. That was one thing the morgue job had been good for—after so many months of working odd hours I knew where all the good greasy spoons were. Not to mention which ones had bathrooms that were fairly clean.
Lou-Ann’s had decent bathrooms, and more importantly, a really good key lime pie that would have to be my substitute for drugs and alcohol. I sat at the counter and ignored everyone else around me while I focused on enjoying every bite of the damn pie. I was vaguely aware that someone sat next to me and did his best to hit on me, but I ignored him and kept eating and eventually he got the message and slunk off.
The waitress didn’t make any attempt to engage me in conversation, which I appreciated more than she could possibly know. I made sure to give her an insanely large tip, and when I headed out I was somewhat calmer. And fuller. And at least I didn’t have to worry about diabetes.
I was nearly to my car when I heard an aggravatingly familiar voice from behind me. “Look who it is—the cunt from the newspaper.”
Looking back, I saw Clive’s sneering face. I was pretty sure he hadn’t been in the café while I was there, so I figured he was on his way in. “Get it right, Clive,” I said. “It’s ‘fucking bitch.’”
He snorted. “I’ll just go with fucking loser. It’s only a matter of time before you end up back in jail, y’know.”
I rolled my eyes and continued to my car. I’d just opened the door when he spoke again.
“Maybe you can share a cell with that fuckup loser of a dad you got.”
Goddammit, but I was getting really sick of people shitting on me and my dad. I stopped, turned, made a quick scan of the parking lot then took two steps toward him. “What did you say?”
Clive’s mouth spread into a sneering grin. He straightened his shoulders as he closed the distance between us, deliberately flexing and pushing his chest out a bit—which almost made me laugh. I weighed barely a hundred pounds. He was bowing up to me?
“I said your dad’s a fucking loser—”
That was all he got out before my fist connected with his face as hard as I could manage. I wasn’t full up on brains, but I was pretty damn close, and I was able to hit him hard enough to send him reeling back, clutching at his nose.
“You fucking bitch!” he screeched as blood began to fountain through his fingers. “You broke my fucking nose!”
I grimaced and looked down at my right hand. I’d never really learned how to punch, and it showed. Two of the bones in my hand were clearly bent at angles that weren’t supposed to be there, and blood seeped from a wide cut across my knuckles. It hurt like fuck-all but even as I peered at it, the pain began to fade to a dull background ache.
Clive let out a wheezing noise that I suddenly realized was him laughing. “You stupid bitch,” he gurgled through his bloody fingers. “I’m calling the cops. I’m pressing charges. And your loser ass will be going back to jail.”
I lifted my eyes to his. “Okay. Call them,” I said, absolutely loving how calm I sounded. “I’ll wait right here.”
Clive fumbled his phone out of his pocket. I watched him thumb nine-one-one on the keypad, listened to him tell the dispatcher that he’d been attacked and was holding the perpetrator—me—and needed the cops to come so that I could be properly arrested. While he did this, I casually reached into my car and pulled my bottle of brain smoothie out of the cup holder. I took several long gulps, resisting the urge to grin as I felt the bones pulling back together.
“Don’t you fucking try and run from me, bitch,” Clive told me after he disconnected. “They said they have a unit right around the corner.”
I shrugged and took another pull from the bottle. Might as well finish it off just in case he decided he didn’t want to wait for the cops and would rather take his fury out on me in person. I was careful to hold the bottle in my left hand, and deliberately kept my right cradled against me to make it look as if it was still hurt.
He fumbled his car open and snagged a towel out of the backseat, held it to his face. “Then again,” he said, “maybe you should run.” He let out a nasty laugh. “Y’ever been tasered? I’d fucking pay money to see that.”
I set the empty bottle back in the cup holder. A quick glance told me that there was still a smear of blood on my knuckle, which I left there for now. But when the two sheriff’s cars pulled into the parking lot, and Clive took his eyes from me, I took that chance to quickly lick the blood off. Gross, I know, but I didn’t want to wipe the blood on my clothes anywhere it might show.
I vaguely recognized the deputies who stepped out, but I doubted that they could do the same with me since I wasn’t dressed in my coroner’s office gear anymore. I didn’t say anything while Clive indignantly told them the story of how I’d hauled off and slugged him. He actually stayed pretty close to the truth, probably because it really didn’t need any sort of elaboration. He knew perfectly well that even a misdemeanor battery arrest would violate my probation. And, with the damage to his nose, it could possibly even be considered a felony.
The two deputies listened to his account with the occasional glance toward me, clearly thinking something on the order of, “this tiny thing broke your nose?” But they let him finish before turning to me.
“He made the whole thing up,” I said before they could speak. “I was out here making a phone call when he came stumbling around the corner with a bloody nose, then he started babbling about how I’d hit him.”
Clive puffed up. “Oh yeah? Check her hand! She broke her fucking hand on my nose!”
I locked eyes with Clive and extended both my hands to the deputies. I didn’t say a word while they carefully examined my knuckles, fingers, and the condition of the various bones.
They exchanged a look, then turned back to Clive. “Not a damn thing wrong with her hands, sir,” one said. “There’s no possible way she punched you—and certainly not hard enough to break your nose. Why don’t you tell us what really happened?”
Things really went downhill for Clive after that, though for me it was a truly beautiful thing. I watched in serene glee as he argued, then frothed, then, when they attempted to cite him for disturbing the peace, he fought, which earned him the tasering he’d taunted me about.
