Page 30 of Here & There

She nods. “Thank you.” I can hear the anger in her voice. And that’s what truly makes me simmer.

I head back outside and go straight for Flat-top.

There’re two of them this year, I see, as I spot a gray-haired version of the younger one sitting back in a porch chair, chatting with another dude as if this is just a nice, normal gathering and they weren’t just harassing a fucking innocent woman just trying to exist.

Tweedledee and Tweedledumbass.

“A moment of your time?” I ask the younger flat-top, since I know he’s the ringleader. Tweedledumbass.

He snorts derisively. “Your girlfriend gonna mind?” For all his bravado, when I take a step toward him, he flinches. I wasn’t even moving fast.

Another guy says, “She killed Lola!” He shakes a peach-colored flap of plastic at me.

I meet that one’s eye. It’s a look my weekend server Christine calls the Withering Willie. She very much means it both ways.

The guy slinks back into the crowd.

“You’re going to want to hear what I have to say,” I tell Flat-top.

He rolls his eyes but shrugs, coming my way.

I don’t often leverage my height, but it’s handy when I need it. I act like I’m giving him room to pass but stand close enough that he has to go out of his way not to touch me.

On the other side of the porch, I lean in far enough that he has to plop down on the railing.

“What’s your name, son?” At thirty-eight, I’ve probably got about fifteen years on him. I use every one of them.

“Slick.”

For once, I don’t hide my smile. “That’s strange. In that police report my buddy down at the station happily shared with me, they called you Cecil Beaufort.”

Cecil pales.

“She’s leaving today, because you fuckfaces don’t know how to behave around a lady. But it doesn’t end here. If you see her in town, you’re going to avoid her like she’s got a communicable disease. Because she does.”

“What?”

“It’s me. I’m the disease.”

“You can’t make us?—”

“Cecil. I’m more than happy to toss you off the side of this porch now and tell everyone you’re the clumsiest asshole I’ve ever met. I’m slightly more well-liked in this town than you all.They’d believe me.” I run a hand over my chin, as if considering. “Though even that sounds like more effort than you deserve. Another option is I could send your uncle the CCTV footage from the tackle shop on Main. You know, the one that faces the town hall, where someone painted a giant dick on the building? That is your uncle’s office, right?”

The one I used to play in when I was a little kid. My initials are still scratched into the underside of that desk. How that office has fuckin’ fallen.

Flat-top sputters. “You don’t have footage?—”

“You mean it was someone else who painted a dick on the side of the mayor’s office? ’Cause he sure did look like you. Hell”—I glance down at his boots, which are untied but have a distinctive stripe on the side—“he even had boots like yours.” I shrug. “Well, whoever it was blamed another kid. Your uncle pressed charges. He had to pay a fine. But I bet that kid’s family would be real happy to see that tape. They’re truckers, you know. Big, mean fucks.”

In fact, they’re kind people with a fishing boat, but Cecil doesn’t need to know that.

“Okay! Fuck. I won’t talk to her.”

“None of you will talk to her. None of you will so much as look at her or any of the women in town. I’m putting you in charge of that.”

“What? I can’t?—”

“Same goes for the owners of this fine establishment,” I say. “You will treat them like goddamned royalty. If I hear of any shit going down here or anywhere in Redbeard, this will be the last year you descend on my fair town like the fucking locusts you are.”

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