Fives and Twenty-Fives (18 page)
I tilt my head and see Paige Dufossat, wearing a white, button-down shirt and a blue bow tie. She has her arms folded behind her back, high and stiff, and her long brown hair is piled on top of her head in neat, casual braids.
“Oh. Paige. Hi,” I stammer. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“Wait.” Stall jumps into the conversation. “You guys
know
each other?” He gives another ruling: “Weird.”
“We had a class together this semester,” I say.
“Business Ethics,” Paige adds.
The tall guy, Blond Hair and Red Shirt, snorts the word “Ethics” and laughs.
The girl sitting next to him, Straight Black Hair and Green Dress, pushes him playfully. “Stop it, Chance.”
Paige touches me on the shoulder. “So, what can I bring you guys?”
“Wow—I don’t know,” I say. “Ask them first.”
She starts with the girl on the other end of the booth, Curly Brown Hair and Thin Yellow Shirt, and takes the drink orders in rapid fire.
“Blue Note.”
“Floridian.”
“Pinot noir. I don’t care which.”
“Belgian Trappist. Whichever Kirk suggests.”
“Bandito.”
“Cuvée.”
“Bulleit rye, neat.”
And before I have time to blink she’s back to me. “Pete?”
I throw up my hands.
She smiles. “Alabama, right? Why don’t I just bring you three fingers of Maker’s Mark.”
I exhale. “Perfect. Thanks.”
Paige strides back to the bar with purpose, but still manages to turn around and catch me watching her. I look away before I can take note of whether she’s pleased by that or annoyed.
I look back at Stall, who’s smiling slyly. “What’s all that about, Pete?”
“I know her from class. Like she said.”
“No—three fingers of Maker’s Mark? What’s the significance of that?”
“Bear Bryant’s drink. She’s, uh, having a little fun with me.”
The guy to my left, Tweed Jacket, elbows me again. “You know these girls went to school with her, right?”
“High school,” I say, as much to myself as anyone.
“Sacred Heart,” Green Dress says, and addressing her friend across the table asks, “I even used to crew her dad’s boat for the summer regattas. I mean,
why’s
she working here, anyway?”
“Hold up,” Stall whispers, eyebrows pointedly lifted.
The table goes quiet as Paige places a small glass of water by each of us, nods at Green Dress, and says, “Pete’s into boats. You should ask him about it.” She sneaks a smile in my direction and walks away without waiting for a response.
Once Paige is out of earshot, Green Dress turns to a visibly distressed friend across the table and exclaims, “What the fuck was
that
!”
“What?” I ask. “What’d she do?”
“Marigny was Paige’s sorority sister, and she didn’t even say hello to her.” Then, to her date, Chance: “And meanwhile she’s, like, totally flirting with Pete over here.”
Maybe hoping to ease the tension, Red Polo Shirt says to me, “So, you sail Pete?”
“Sorry?”
“Paige said you’re into boats. You race? I got a buddy who’s always looking for crew.”
“No. She’s just messing with me. I’m just looking for a renovation project. You know, a lark, really.”
“So you don’t race?”
“No, but I’d like to get into cruising. Maybe work up to a solo, open-water passage someday.” I cringe on the inside, hoping no one at the table calls my bluff and asks me a more detailed sailing question.
Red Polo chuckles. “A solo passage? That sounds miserable.”
Stall senses an opportunity to push the conversation in a new direction. “That wouldn’t be an issue for Pete. Like I told you, he’s a war hero. Seriously. You can read about it.”
“Which branch of the service?” Tweed Jacket asks.
“The Marine Corps,” I say.
“What did you do?” Curly Brown Hair asks. “Were you like a Navy SEAL or something?”
“No, I was a combat engineer.”
“So, what’s that?” she asks. “Like, what’d you do all day? Engineer things?”
“Filled potholes, mainly.”
Red Polo chuckles.
Stall jumps in. “But tell them about Ramadi. About the helicopter.”
Just then, Paige comes back with the drink orders and distributes the glasses all around the table. Everyone’s quiet again, and I make a point not to let Paige see my face.
I hear the girls whispering to each other as she walks away and grab for my Maker’s Mark, a wide, low ball full almost to the brim with just a few rough-cut ice cubes submerged. I take a long pull. Three deep swallows that numb my throat, just right. I come back to find Curly Brown Hair still looking at me.
She waves her hand insistently. “So? Why were you bothering with potholes?”
“Bombs. Insurgents planted bombs in the road. Under the asphalt sometimes, but mostly off to the side. You saw this stuff on the news, right? Improvised explosive devices? IEDs?”
Nothing. No response from the table. Another long pull, and my drink’s already half-gone.
“The bad guys would put bombs in the same places all the time,” I continue. “Basically
re
seeding the
old
potholes. So our mission was to get rid of the bombs first, then patch. It was called route clearance, but really it was just road repair.”
“And this was . . . a full-time job?” Chance asks with a perplexed smile.
“Six hundred and forty-seven potholes.” Another big sip. A third of the glass left, now.
“And out of those, how many had a new bomb in the hole?” Chance asks.
“Six hundred forty-seven.”
Chance whistles. “Goddamn, son,” he murmurs, and laughs nervously.
Next to him, Green Dress looks at me with a soft, troubled face. Like she’s somehow concerned for me. “So then, why did you keep doing it like that? It seems—I don’t know—like people would . . . get hurt? Like, did the bombs ever go off?”
“Sometimes. Not often. We were pretty good at staying safe. But, yes. Sometimes people did get hurt.” I finish the drink. “Just how it had to be done.” I push the empty glass away and let the bourbon slosh through my empty stomach, my guts like a cauldron.
“But
why
!?” the girl pleads, like a teenager who’s just been grounded.
Something about her nasal, childish insistence activates the bourbon seeping into my tissues, and my mood abruptly shifts.
“Because, Stall,” I say, snapping my eyes onto him, for some reason, and ignoring the girl, “it wasn’t always the hole that you had to worry about. Sometimes, see, they’d leave a fake bomb to make you stop. Then, while you were looking at it, all scared, they’d come at you with machine guns and rockets. Then sometimes they’d put an artillery shell inside a dead dog. Because who wants to mess around with a dog carcass, stewing all day in the hot sun? Then, just as you’re getting used to
that
, they’d leave a bunch of headless bodies in the desert for you to deal with. And sometimes those were bombs, too.”
I reach out and take another sip. No competition for the floor at this point.
“One time, after one of our platoons filled this Iraqi family’s cistern with clean water, the local Al Qaeda crew rolled up after dark, locked all twenty of them in the house. And I’m talking about three generations here. Grandmothers and grandfathers. Little kids. And they blew up the house. Everyone inside.”
I notice that my drink is warm and tastes sweeter than Maker’s Mark. It’s Tweed Jacket’s Bulleit rye neat, and I’ve grabbed it by mistake. I wonder why he’s not saying anything to stop me, shrug, and continue.
“Yeah, that house bomb was nasty. Blast hole cut all the way into the street. While they were recovering the bodies, I took my platoon out to patch the hole. And believe it or not, there was a second bomb in that hole, too.” I laugh to myself. No one joins me. “Pardon me for a minute.”
I pull away from the table, stand, and walk away.
Behind me, I hear Stall pleading with his friends, “Look, I know. But seriously, do a search for
Profane Twenty-four
.”
Paige notices me on my way to the outside smoking patio. She’s working with savage concentration behind the bar, constructing three different drinks with the precision of a heart surgeon. She motions for me with her chin.
I stride over, placing a foot on the bottom rail.
“You know those assholes?” she asks curtly, rubbing a lime around the rim of a glass.
“No. Just that guy Stall. He’s my boss for this internship. They’re his friends.”
“I know. Used to be my friends, too.”
“Small town that way, huh?” I scratch the back of my neck and take a deep breath. “Guess your sorority sisters took offense at the deeply counterculture motives that led you to business school?”
Her smile is a fault line in granite. “I happen to be concentrating in nonprofits, or didn’t you notice in ethics class?”
“Yeah, I didn’t notice much in that class, honestly.” I start searching the bottles behind her for something I might recognize.
Paige notices. “What? You already finish the first one? Christ, I poured you a triple.”
“You sure did. Thanks. And, uh, yes, I did.”
“Here.” She turns for a glass and pours me another.
I take a sip and enjoy it so much I have to pause before setting the glass back down. I sneak another quick tug while Paige is looking at those busy hands of hers, letting the liquor touch every corner of my mouth before it slips down into my throat.
“So you’re working down at One Shell Square?” she asks. “Figures. We’ve been wondering about you.”
“Who?”
“Your classmates. We meet every Thursday at Molly’s, or didn’t you get my note? Everyone’s been asking about you. They seem to think I should be the one who knows.”
“Yeah? Well . . . tell everyone I say hello.”
“You won’t come and say hello yourself?”
“I’m not real social.”
“Except with douche bags like Stall?” She motions another bartender over to grab the tray of completed drinks. Little works of art, all of them.
“It’s not exactly a social occasion. Stall’s trying to introduce me to, you know, potential clients.”
Paige laughs. “You mean suckers?”
“Sorry?”
“Derivatives? Securitized debt obligations? Euro bonds? Ponzi schemes, all. It’s a sinking ship, Donovan. Even with the bailouts.” She opens a bottle of water and takes a sip.
“Professor Cole seems to think the market’s found its footing.”
She shrugs. “We’ll see. It’s all just paper, anyway.”
A memory suddenly takes hold in my mind, and I chuckle to myself. The smell of burning paper. The glow, the aggressive heat, the gnawing flames. I hear a chorus of laughter in my head, steeped in crazy, manic relief. How funny it was to live.
I close my eyes and rest my head on my hand.
Paige pokes me in the shoulder. “Donovan,” she says, a bit of concern in her voice now, “are you . . .
laughing
?”
I look up at her, my goofy smile its own answer, as I trace with my eyes from her trim, little lips to the worry lines on her cheeks, all the way up to her button nose. Then I allow myself to take the rest in, too. Her slender neck, her narrow, defined shoulders, her fierce, lovely little frame—not caring anymore if she catches me.
“Smiley Pete Donovan,” she says, smiling herself now. “What’s so funny?”
“I ever tell you about the time I watched a million dollars burn?”
“No. But you can tell me now.” She smiles and takes back my drink.
Hey, you. Lester.
There’s yogurt in the fridge. (Yogurt! So girly, right?) No coffee, but you did get to fuck me so I suggest you deal with it, son. I have a few slices of
bread. Make toast? It would be dry toast, though, as I have literally nothing else. I’ll be home from work in a few hours. Stick around?
Smells like soccer practice in her little bedroom. Her sheets and pillows, I mean. Like fresh-cut grass in the afternoon. She roll around on the lawn before crawling into this bed, or what?
That’s right. I remember now. We did roll around on the lawn for a little bit. Just after she grabbed me by the collar and pulled me out the truck. I was thinking I’d just drop her off and head over to Landry’s place, but then out of nowhere we end up flopped all over the lawn like a couple damn teenagers.
Wait. Could this girl
be
a teenager? With parents in this house somewhere? And if not, whose house is this really? Is nobody paying the goddamn heating bill? Goddamn fifty-five degrees in here.
It was the kinda thing a crazy kid would do, rolling around on that lawn. What about the neighbors, I said, won’t they hear? Can’t they see? But this girl, Lizzy. She just giggled, bit my chest, and laughed at the way I gritted my teeth and tried to make like it didn’t hurt when she knew it sure as hell did.