me if there’s anybody else around.
No one came.
She had her keys in her right hand. She was within three feet of her car when Cowboy Boots grunted and lurched forward, pushing off against the side of the red truck. He was coming after her. Startled, Carla dropped her keys. She looked down, but the ground between the parked cars was a shadowy no-man’s-land. The keys must have bounced and landed—where? She didn’t know.
Her last weapon was gone.
Panic overwhelmed her. Cowboy Boots was mumbling as he barreled forward, and while she couldn’t understand his words, she didn’t have to: the tone was enough of a tip-off to his mood and his intentions. He might have been fat and old, but he was big, and she was small.
She would make a run for it. Yes. That was what she would do. Dark snowy fields surrounded the lot. No trees to provide cover, but the snow was deep enough to give her an advantage in a foot race: She was much lighter than he was. But if he caught up to her, the advantage would be reversed. His bulk would work in his favor.
“Hey.”
Another voice. Where had it come from? Carla’s head whipped around.
It was New Guy. A cigarette was slung in his mouth, which explained why he was out here. He came at Cowboy Boots from the other end of the row.
“Help you with something?” New Guy said.
Cowboy Boots sized him up. New Guy was slender, but he was wiry, and wiriness can possess the strength of steel. Cowboy Boots seemed to understand this.
“Don’t need no help from the likes of you.”
“In that case,” New Guy said, “why don’t you get the hell out of here? Like, right now?”
Cowboys Boots offered up a sneer. “Shit, mister, she’s all yours. I’d check her for crabs, though. Looks pretty skanky to me.” He laughed a manufactured laugh and left. His mutterings blended with the scrape and chop of his heels against the stiff mini-drifts of snow.
Carla looked at New Guy. She didn’t know what to say. “Thanks” seemed lame. And it occurred to her, as she searched for a proper way to acknowledge his help, that at no point in his two exchanges with Cowboy Boots had New Guy’s voice risen above a conversational tone, or acquired even the beginning of an angry edge. There was a gentleness about him, almost a courtliness, that Carla could not quite fathom; it wasn’t weakness—his presence alone had intimidated Cowboy Boots—but it also wasn’t the sort of dumb machismo that generally won the day in these parts. She decided that she would not be surprised to find out that he was from somewhere else.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
He was older than she’d thought. Maybe even older than Cowboy Boots. He wore a thick plaid parka, cargo pants, work boots. He had a hard, angular face that had once been handsome. She liked a memory of lost handsomeness, she decided, even better than the kind that was still there. His hair was hidden under a watch cap.
“You really helped me out,” she said. She had to say it, lame or not: “Thanks.”
“No problem.” When he drew on the cigarette, his cheeks caved in. The red tip of the cigarette glowed. She could not take her eyes off it. He blew out the smoke, lifting his chin as he did so.
She waited for him to say something else. A wisecrack, maybe, about Cowboy Boots. A funny insult. A joke. Hell—she’d settle for anything.
She was freezing her ass off. Why was she still standing here?
Because there was something compelling about this man. Something very different from the men she’d known. A kind of quiet integrity or calm strength or—whatever. She could not put her finger on it.
“Guys like that,” she said, “give dive bars a bad name.”
He smiled. Okay, so he had a sense of humor.
But then he ruined everything. He peered at her and said, “You’re kind of young to be hanging out in bars, aren’t you? Dive or otherwise?”
“Yeah, right,” she said. She was disappointed. Crap. Was everybody a narc these days? She’d make him pay. “Thanks, Grandpa. Thanks a lot. Appreciate you looking out for me. Oh—isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“Forget it.” He flipped the cigarette into the snow. “See you around.”
“Wait.” She did not want him to go. She really, really did not want him to go.
What was she doing? What was she playing at? She had a boyfriend, right? Greg Balcerzak. Well, a sort-of boyfriend. Things weren’t