SIX
Closing Time
"So reshoot," Ashley says, eyes twinkling.
"Can't do that," Fat Dude says, as if Ashley just suggested he fuck his own mother. "Rules are rules, asshole."
The old biker with the curtain of hair – who Miriam can't help but think of as Gray Pubes – steps up behind Ashley. The other one, Hot Dog, comes in from the side, like one of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park.
Paleface disappears behind the bar and doesn't emerge.
Miriam takes that as another bad sign.
"I'm sure your two friends here are happy to let you take the shot over," Ashley says.
Gray Pubes shakes his head. Hot Dog mumbles something.
"My friends don't fuck with the rules," Fat Dude says.
Ashley just shrugs and says, "Okay. Fuck you."
Fat Dude moves faster than Miriam would have thought possible. Gray Pubes twirls Ashley around like a top, and Fat Dude pulls the pool cue, horizontally, up under Ashley's chin. It's drawn tight against his windpipe.
He hoists Ashley into the air like the Beanstalk Giant with Little Jack.
"I'ma squeeze the dogshit outta you," Fat Dude thunders.
Ashley's jaw works around a mouthful of gurgles and burbles as the back of his head is pressed into Fat Dude's copious muscle-tits. His legs start to kick. His lips go blue, and Miriam can't help but think back to Del Amico.
Miriam knows she shouldn't get involved. Best thing would be to slink out of the bar with the antifreeze bourbon under her arm, never give a look back. Of course, she's never been the Queen of Good Decisions.
She meanders over. She takes her time, and when she finally gets there, Ashley's lips have gone full purple, like two earthworms wrestling or making love.
Miriam tugs on the hem of Fat Dude's leather jacket.
"Excuse me," she says, mustering girlish politeness. "Giant man? May we speak?"
He turns his tremendous skull toward her. She can practically hear the grinding of stone as the mountain pivots to regard the buzzing gnat at his side.
"What's up?" he asks, like not much else is going on.
Ashley's legs start to go limp.
"That guy you're choking to death?"
"Uh-huh."
"He's my brother. He's… got problems. One, he's got bad manners. Two, his name is Ashley, and with a name like that, he might as well have a couple vaginas in his pocket, am I right? Three, he's at least half-retarded. Though I'm willing to put money on two-thirds retarded, if you're up for a friendly wager. Mom used to feed him lawn fertilizer when he was a kid, I think as some kind of retroactive abortion attempt."
Ashley's eyes roll back in his head.
"Now," she continues, "if you'd be so kind as to stop choking him and let me know what it is that you fine gentlemen are drinking, I think I have just enough cash to buy you another round before they close up shop for the night."
"Oh yeah?" Fat Dude asks.
Miriam offers up two fingers: a scout's honor, though it also looks like a proctologist's silent threat.
Miriam can see the tectonic plates beneath the man's rubbery skin start to shift. The cue pulls away from Ashley's neck, and Ashley drops to his knees hard, gasping, wheezing, rubbing his throat.
"Thanks so much," Miriam says.
Fat Dude grunts in reply. "You should leash your brother. Get him a tard helmet."
"I will consider that."
"We're drinking beer. Coors Light. But I think we'd like some shots. Tequila."
"Tequila, it is."
"The good stuff, too. Not that cheap-ass cactus juice."
Miriam gives him a thumbs-up, then offers her hand to Ashley. The gasps have stopped for the most part. He coughs once more. But he doesn't take her hand.
He looks up at her and smiles. She sees it coming, but like with a car-wreck, she's powerless to stop it.
Ashley punches Fat Dude in the groin.
It doesn't do anything, of course, because Fat Dude's got balls made of basalt. Fat Dude doesn't even flinch. He does look a bit surprised, though.
"Not cool," Fat Dude says.
Then he swings a roundhouse fist at Ashley's face, which remains at crotch-level.
Ashley, though, he's ready for it. He pulls his head back, and Fat Dude's boulder-fist whiffs through open air to connect with the corner of a two-seater bar table. Miriam sees the table break the first two fingers on Fat Dude's hand; they spring out like clothespins. She hears the break. Like someone splitting a branch over his knee.
Fat Dude, to his credit, doesn't cry out. He just slowly brings his busted hand to his face, examining it the way a gorilla might regard a stapler, or an iPod.
Chaos erupts.
Gray Pubes wraps his hands around Ashley's neck, but Miriam's fast: She gives a nearby high-back chair a good kick, so the tippy-top of it drives right into the guy's gut. He doubles over. Ashley, meanwhile, shoulders into Hot Dog's stubby knees, and the guy goes down.
Then: crack. A pool cue over Ashley's head. Fat Dude's left holding the broken half in his good hand. He laughs. This is fun for him.
Before she means to be, Miriam's in the middle of it. A fist is thrown; she's not sure by whom. She feels the air current pass by her chin – a narrow miss. Ashley's up, eyes crossed, and then he's back down again as Fat Dude throws him, his shoulder against the two-seater, the table flipping up like a see-saw.
Miriam sees a glint: Gray Pubes, clutching his nuts with one hand, draws a knife.
Hot Dog's hands shove her forward.
Fat Dude's raising the busted pool cue above Ashley's skull.
It's all happening so fast and, yet, so slow. She's dull at her edges. Half-drunk, frankly.
Time to end it. Time for Momma's Little Life Saver.
Miriam reaches in her pocket as Gray Pubes advances on her. She sidesteps Hot Dog. Fat Dude bellows something, and his fingers – even the broken, crooked ones – curl tight around his weapon. Miriam's hand finds what she's looking for. She has it out. And she's using it.
It's pepper spray. Fine grain. Shoots in a stream, not in a fog. Good for dogs, bears, and Fat Dudes.
She whips it around wildly. The stream hits Fat Dude's eyes, and he howls, swatting at the stream like somehow that'll help. A blade swishes through air and she blasts Gray Pubes, too. Hot Dog makes a play, grabbing her wrist with his hand –
A baby deer on wobbly legs runs out into the middle of the road and stops there, standing in the darkness, framed by the bright circle of a motorcycle headlight. Hot Dog's too busy kissing some old tattooed chick with a volcanic archipelago of cold sores around her mouth to see, and by the time he extracts his tongue from her snaggletoothed maw, it's too late. He turns the bike, just missing the deer's little white flicking tail. Tire catches gravel. The bike skids, then flips. Hot Dog isn't wearing a helmet. Face meets road. Gravel and asphalt form a belt sander. It takes half his face off like it wasn't more than ground beef. Eye tumbles from shattered socket. Rag-doll body folds end over end, his spine bowing, then snapping. The chick flies overhead like some confused superhero, her arms pinwheeling. She cries out. The baby deer runs into the brush.
– and Miriam sidesteps, thrusts the pepper spray into his mouth, and fills his throat with the stuff. It only takes two seconds before he falls backward, throwing up onto the bar's cold concrete floor, face red, eyes like blisters, snot and sweat in a steady stream.
Miriam pulls Ashley up.
"We have to run," she says.
Fat Dude claws at his eyes with a broken hand.
Ashley grabs the other half of the broken pool cue and smashes it over Fat Dude's head. Miriam shoves him.
"I said, run!"
Ashley bolts, laughing.
On the way out, Miriam hurls a twenty dollar origami boulder behind the bar, where Paleface is hiding. Her shoulders hit the door, knocking it open. The outside air hits her, along with the smell of wet asphalt and spilled beer. It's almost dizzying. She damn near trips on a hunk of broken parking lot. The piss-yellow street lights are otherworldly. The distant sound of cars on the highway fills her head. She feels lost. Where to go? Where to run?
Ashley's hand finds the small of her back.
"This way," he says.
She follows. He fumbles in his pocket for a set of keys, and before Miriam knows it, he's popping the driver's side door of a white late-1980s Ford Mustang.
"Get in!" he yells.
Like the cockroach from Del Amico's motel room, she does as told.
The car's interior is dark, cluttered, dingy. Vinyl is torn in places. Coffee cups and plastic soda bottles form a sticky trash pile at her feet. A pair of playing card deodorizers dangle from the mirror, but they've long lost their ability to conceal the cigarettes-and-feet funk.
Ashley twists the key in the ignition, but the engine gutters. It turns over again and again – guh-guh-guh-guh, a stuttering asthmatic – but never starts.
"What the fuck?" she asks. "C'mon!"
"I know," he barks back at her. His foot taps the gas pedal.
Guh-guh-guh-grrrrr-guh.
The bar doors – a hundred feet away, maybe less – explode open.
Fat Dude tumbles out. Even in the ruined-liver light of the parking lot, Miriam can see the white ring of spit spackling his rage-howl mouth, the mucus swinging from his nostrils and eye corners like he's some frothing bull.
She can also see the shotgun in his hand. She has no idea where it came from – behind the bar? – but it doesn't matter, because it exists, and he has it, and he's pissed.
"Go, go, go!" Miriam screams. "Gun!"
The car heeds her panic and rumbles to life. The engine pops and shudders, but it's up-and-at-'em-time. Ashley throws it into reverse, and guns it backward – unfortunately, toward the angry mountain with the pump-action shotgun.
The gun goes off.
The back windshield explodes against the seats. A rattle and patter of glass bits.
The Mustang, like the wild horse for which it is named, bucks when Ashley slams it into drive. The car kicks back a cloud of stone and exhaust. It gallops forward like someone's trying to stick a riding crop up its ass. Another booming roar from the shotgun, and Miriam hears pellets punch little holes in the back end of the car, but it's too late for Fat Dude.
The car busts out of the parking lot, tires squealing. Ashley laughs.