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Revenge didn’t solve problems. It didn’t fix what was broken. However, the idea of it gave me something else to think about, something to focus on, and you know what, when the moment came, it actually felt rather good.
Not as good as I’d hoped. Still, it beat listening to Dr Sigmund Fraud explain how my nightmares were rooted in my Oedipus desire to fuck my foster mother.
I wonder if she’d been thinking about it too. Just driving around, hoping I might cross the road in front of her so she could run me down like Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction.
I stepped forward, trying to put a comforting hand around her. It always worked in the movies, right? “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise, I was just trying to-”
She prodded a finger into my chest. “What? You think I can’t handle myself? All you had to do was stay out of it. They would have got bored and left, but now? What am I going to do?”
She just stared at me. The tears still coming, but past them, her eyes burned with a mix of naked fury and outrage and just a simple need for an answer. An answer I didn’t have. I didn’t know what to say. What could I say to make it all make sense?
‘Suck it up’, or, ‘that’s life?’ Somehow, I got the feeling that wouldn’t help very much.
Of course, it wasn’t right or fair, but that was the way of the world. The strong prey on the weak. The powerful prosper, while the helpless and vulnerable get fucked over. I’d seen it every day. It was the law of the jungle. Sometimes I was a powerful hunter, and sometimes I was prey. You took the knocks as they came, dealt with them, then moved on. You had to be practical about these things, though that never made them any easier to bear.
But this was different.
Guilt tore at my insides, wrapping around me like the coils of a great ice serpent intent on devouring me from the inside out.
This wasn’t one of life’s sadistic chance cards. This was my fault. I’d done this to her, and that idea grounded me. I wanted to help, to make it right. And I could. So I would.
I shook my head and dropped my basket on the floor. “Nothing, you’re not fired. Don’t worry.”
She blinked. “What-what do you mean?”
“You lost your job on my account. Nope, sorry, I can’t live with that. You just go home, have your sweets, and in the morning, your boss will call you and everything will be right with the world. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything,” I promised, turning my back on her.
“Oh yeah, and how are you going to do that?” she shouted after me.
Yeah, Sherlock, just how are you going to do it? I didn’t really have an answer for her.
“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Guess it could have been worse. At least I didn’t say something cliché, like ‘Don’t ask me about my business.’
That might have given her the wrong idea.
There is an old expression in prizefighting- everyone’s got a plan until they’re hit. It’s why I had always preferred to make it up as I go. A lot of wise and learned men have excelled in the virtues of planning from behind their desks, but never really took into account what to do when the opposition did something that wasn’t in the script. Better just to know where you want to go, and not worry about every fork in the road.
That’s why, when I slid the 911 back into the Beached Whale’s car park and saw it empty for all but the old Ford pickup and a black Suburban with tinted windows pulled up outside the door, I didn’t start flapping. Though the big guy standing outside the door did little to improve my prospects.
Was he here because of the fight? Had the owner decided to pony up the cash to hire a doorman to keep undesirables, namely me, out?
I kind of doubted that. If every bar started hiring that sort of muscle whenever there was a fight, muscle work would be one of the country’s top growth industries, but you never know.
Or, of course, there was the other option, and my friends were back.
Cliché car out front. Big brick shithouse almost as big as the door he was guarding, with a buzz cut and more ink on his skin than in a tattoo shop window, dressed in a cheap overcoat that didn’t quite hide the bulk over the holster under his arm. Put all that together and it meant only one thing in my experience.
Still, only one way to find out.
The big guy watched with undisguised hostility as I pulled the Porsche into a space a few spots down from the Suburban. Killing the engine, I was halfway out of the door, then thought better of it and reached down to the side compartment and pulled out the knife. Careful to keep it out of sight of the gorilla by the door, I strapped it to my belt, gave it a shake to make sure the blade wouldn’t get caught on the draw, then pulled my jacket back on, hiding the blade from sight.
I wouldn’t walk in there looking for a fight, but if shit hits the fan, it would be better to have a blade and not need it than to need it and not have one.
Much like a condom.
“Bar’s closed,” the big guy grunted as I approached, and I could have sworn on the spot. Great, fucking Russians again. I knew it.
