round of longneck beers to Harrelson’s table. He sipped from the bottle, hunching his shoulders forward as he told a story to his friends. Each time they laughed, he glanced at me, smiling. I heard a sound inside my head like someone tightening a treble string on a guitar. Harrelson got up and walked toward me. He wore black drapes and a thin crimson suede belt and tasseled loafers and a Hawaiian shirt with blue birds on it, the top of his shirt unbuttoned, a gold chain and cross around his neck. He fingered a pimple on his chest.
“What do you want, Grady?” I said.
“She eighty-sixed you?” he said.
“Who eighty-sixed me?”
“Valerie.”
“Where’d you get that?” I said, my heart turning to gelatin.
“She called me. She didn’t put it in those terms, but that was her drift.”
“You talked to Valerie?”
“What did I just say?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“So how do I know she gave you the gate? Want the rest of the story?”
“Not interested.”
“I bet. I motored on over and calmed her down.” He took a swig from his bottle. “She hadn’t been long-dicked in a while.”
I saw the look on Saber’s face, and felt his hand grab my forearm and hold it tight against the table. “You’re a lying bastard, Harrelson,” he said. “Go back with your greaseball friends.”
“What did you say?”
“Look at your threads,” Saber said. “You couldn’t cut it in the Corps, so you wear drapes and Mexican stomps and pretend you’re a hood. When did you start hanging with Mickey Mouse, Jr.? It’s a drop even to be seen with that guy. By the way, I got some pix of you getting it on with that broad, what’s-her-name. That’s sick stuff, man.”
“You asked for it,” Grady said. He crooked his finger at his friends. “You got to hear this, y’all. Tell Vick to come, too. This guy here wants to repeat something he just said about Italians.”
Saber knew how to do it.
“Your beef is with me, Grady,” I said.
“No, it isn’t. You’re out of the picture and out of the saddle, Broussard. Got it? Anything you had going with Valerie is over.”
“I don’t believe you were at her house. I don’t believe she would let you in.”
“You need a blow-by-blow? She puts her tongue in your mouth when she comes. She likes to get on top. She can have three climaxes in one session. Sound familiar? Or did you get that far?”
I stood up from the chair, knocking it backward, and hit him across the face with the flat of my hand, hard, snapping his chin on his shoulder. He stepped back, a smear like ketchup on his mouth. I had never seen anyone’s eyes look at me the way his did at that moment, as though I had awakened a darkness in him that no one else knew about.
Vick Atlas stepped in front of him. He was short and thick-bodied and looked full of contradictions. He had a damaged lip and whiskers like a patina of steel filings etched with a razor, as though he cultivated an unshaved look; he wore elevator shoes and a pressed suit without a tie and a rumpled white shirt with a belt and suspenders. He was probably in his early twenties but could have passed for forty. “That’s my friend you hit,” he said to me.
“He asked for it,” I said.
“Wrong thing to say, kid.”
“Who are you to call anybody kid?” I said.
“You know who you’re wising off to?” he said. “You just get in town from the South Pole? You got a penguin stuck up your ass?” A drop of his spittle struck my chin.
“I’ll take care of this later, Vick,” Grady said.
“You made a crack about Italians?”
“His friend called you Mickey Mouse, Jr.,” Grady said. “Believe me, Vick, this guy is going to be walking on stumps.”
“I think y’all came in here to make your bones,” Vick said.
I wanted to believe he was a caricature, that his black satinlike hair was a wig, that the mindless ferocity in his glare was a reflection of the light and not an indicator of bottomless rage because of his father’s abuse or a plastic surgeon’s failure. Minutes earlier we had been worried about dealing with a collection of spoiled rich kids; now we were a few feet away from men who fixed prizefights and trafficked in narcotics and prostitution and committed murder for no other reason than greed.
“Grady slandered my girlfriend,” I said. “What would you do in my situation?”
“I wouldn’t ever be