arms to him the same way she always did when he was a little boy. “Love you like peanut butter loves jelly,” she said.
“Love you too, YaYa.”
The entire drive to the community college reminded Levi how the city used to look.
He couldn’t help but notice how the older neighborhoods were disappearing. He passed the hospital where his mother used to work, which had been closed and consolidated with another one to the west of there. She’d then had to take two buses and a train up to Castle Hill University Teaching Hospital to work. This old hospital was boarded up but was now under construction. “Ecco Construction.” Another sign read, “Riverview Condos, coming soon. Skyline view units leasing now!”
The rest of his drive to class was spent imagining himself living in one of those skyline view units with a wife and kid. A wife who didn’t care about his past. A wife and kids he could be sure were 100 percent safe from the clutches of Girardi and his gang.
The more he fantasized, the more he pictured that girl, Fiona, from last night.
Maybe he’d been too harsh with her. Maybe she hadn’t been slumming it. Maybe she wasn’t anything close to what he thought she was, and maybe she could be really into him after all.
Maybe someday. Maybe.
Chapter Four
Levi
* * *
Levi objected to a knock on the head with a half-full bottle of beer, and he intended on communicating this objection to the fullest in the next second.
Oh, his head could take the impact. Had done, many times over.
The beer bottle flying at Levi’s head wasn’t itself the problem. His objection lay with the beer inside the bottle, and with the drunk throwing it.
“Waste of shitty beer, and you’re making a mess in my house, wise ass.”
Levi ducked just in time, brown glass shattering on impact against the brick wall, sending a spray of amber liquid all over the dartboard and neon liquor sign. A dusting of paint chips fell from the painted brick and littered the pocked wood floor.
Levi lifted the half-drunk pipsqueak by the collar. He didn’t care for drunks, and he especially didn’t care for violent drunks. This one, a biker who thought of Crow Bar as his own personal territory for dealing drugs when he wasn’t shitfaced, Levi especially didn’t care for.
“Put him down or take it outside, Levi. Before Mavis sees you.”
The warning came from Levi’s fellow bouncer, Holden.
“I ain’t seen Mavis all night,” Levi said with a lethal calmness that did nothing to calm the wriggling biker he only knew by the name of Bruise.
On cue, Mavis came around the corner. “Bruise, what did you do now?”
“I didn’t do nothing!”
Mavis crossed her arms. “Bruise. Tell the truth.”
Levi set him down, and Holden filled her in. Bruise had been fucking with the jukebox again. He somehow had mastered a Fonzie-style bump technique that let him skip down the queue. One time was a funny parlor trick. All night every night, and it was a waste of everybody’s money. Not to mention it always led to way too many of Bruise’s favorite songs over and over again. One Mötley Crüe song was fine, but not a hundred, and not at the expense of everyone else who had paid to play music on Mavis’ prized antique machine.
All this was explained to Mavis, who listened with her usual poker face, half amused.
“And then some of the other customers complained, and then the name-calling started,” Holden said. “And then he started swinging and Levi came at him and Bruise threw a bottle at Levi’s head.”
Mavis was remarkably calm, walking up to Bruise and pointing one finger up close to the tip of his nose. She spoke calmly and slowly, but the way her eyes bugged out of her face, everyone knew Bruise was in real trouble now.
“Bruise,” she said. “This is an upstanding establishment. You can take that bullshit elsewhere with the rest of the bottom feeders. Now get out and don’t let me see you back in here tonight.”
When Levi finished sending Bruise on his way out of the bar, he turned and was about to make a beeline back to the college girls at table 12.
He was silently elated that the girl, Fiona, had decided to come back. Elated but also kicking himself. How had he let things get this far? She was there with her friends, and pretty soon Crow Bar was gonna turn into some kind of trendy college bar for the elites of Castle