“So it’s true, then. What you did. To your stepfather.”
It’s her turn to tense up. She shouldn’t be surprised that this is where the conversation was headed, but even still, here it is and now she’s having trouble finding the words.
Again, the man in the corner—the cop—is smiling.
Finally, she says, “He wasn’t my stepfather.”
“Wasn’t he?”
“Just a boyfriend. Of my mother’s.”
“She have lots of boyfriends?”
Atlanta says nothing.
“It’s a shame what he did to you. I don’t blame you. He’s still alive, as I understand it?”
When the cop chimes in, it startles her. If only because he’d been sitting there quiet as a wart on a frog’s ass. He says, “Alive as any man can be after having his nuts shot off by some teen cooze.”
“He’s in jail,” Atlanta says through her teeth. “That’s where kid-touchers go. There, and then Hell.” Not that she believes in Hell, but for things like this, she’s willing to hope for an exception.
Orly holds up his hands. Massive palms, each looking able to crush a coconut with but a clap. Mea culpa. “I don’t blame you. I salute you. You took matters into your own hands. Somebody was giving you trouble and you handled it yourself. I admire that attitude and try to do the same. This man, this boyfriend of your mother’s, was… broken. Deviant. Probably in how he was raised, but maybe even at the genetic level. So many deviants are. It’s why I’m surprised a bit at the company you keep.”
And there it is.
“Don’t tie who you are to who I am,” she seethes, lifting herself forward in the chair, hands planted so hard on the chair rails she thinks she might break them off. “Don’t tie my friends to him. I didn’t shoot him because he was gay. Because he was a different color. I shot him because he was a bad person who did bad things, and the only recourse for evil is a firm hand.”
Orly acts like he’s chewing on that, like it’s a piece of food that he freed from his teeth and now he’s trying to figure out what it is inside the confines of his mouth. Finally he nods and shrugs.
“Well. All right, then. It was nice to meet you, Miss Burns. By now your mother should be here.”
“My mother?”
“Indeed. I called your parents to come collect their wayward children. I handle mine. They handle theirs. It’s the way the world works. Or should, at least.” He stands up. “That will conclude our business, then, young miss.”
* * *
When she goes back into the main room of the gun club, sure enough, there stands her mother, fretting over the cuts on Chris’ face. Behind her paces Chris’ father, the flats of his hands shoved under his armpits. When Bill Coyne sees Atlanta come out of that room, ushered by Orly Erickson and his cop crony, he hurries over, scowling.
“Orly. Pete.” That name, he says to the cop. “What the hell’s going on here? I thought this business was—“ He scowls at Atlanta, and she feels a gentle urge forward by one of Orly’s big hands. Then the words of Chris’ father are lost to her as her own mother steps in and sweeps her up in a big hug. She doesn’t return it.
“Baby,” her mother says, “c’mon now, let’s just go, let’s just leave this place.”
The cold glaring eyes of the other three watch from the sidelines. Mitchell. The Skank. John Elvis. All three of them watch this unfold with grim, gravestone faces.
Atlanta returns the look. She tries burying in there a not-so-secret psychic message: This ain’t over, motherfuckers. Seems like it might’ve worked because the Skank scowls and Mitchell just shakes his head as if to agree. John Elvis just seems lost. Unfocused. Not surprising.
She pulls away from her mother, turns to Chris—Chris, who watches his father standing off to the side with those other two men, murmuring, arguing in whisper, maybe even conspiring.
“Chris, c’mon,” Atlanta says. “We’ll take you home.”
He doesn’t look at her. Instead, he calls to his father. “Dad?”
The man doesn’t look back.
“Chris—“
“Dad.”
His father turns, mouth a cocked line, and waves him on. “Just go on, get out of here. The girl’s mother can take you home.” Chris pleads with his eyes, but his father isn’t having any of it. Instead he just points to the door. “I said go on, goddamnit!”
The look on Chris’ face says it all. Like he just got slapped. Like someone reached in and gave his heart a