Page 58 of Road Queens
“Hi, Paul. These are my friends, Cassandra Rivers and Sidney Derecho.”
“Hey,” they said in unison.
“Nice to meet you both. I know that’s what everyone says, but it is. Nice meeting you, I mean. And right on time, thank God.” Paul Banks’s handshake was firm, his gaze direct. Glasses magnified his small, smiling dark eyes and laugh lines, and he had the broad shoulders and trim waist of a pro swimmer. If Amanda hadn’t seen his ID (5’8”, 165 lb., age 29), she would have put him at forty. There was a wedding ring on his left hand and splints on the last two fingers of his right.
Amanda was now used to schooling her face when meeting clients. She made no mention of bruises, breaks, burns. She didn’t evincesurprise or even sympathy when she saw signs of the battering-equals-love mentality.
Sidney ... not so much, as demonstrated when she cleared her throat. Cass recognized the phlegm warning too; she and Amanda traded “oh, shit” glances.Maybe I can distract her with—
“So here’s a thought ... and don’t you dare interrupt me or ‘translate,’ Amanda ...”
Dammit!
“... I’m not a shrink or anything, but maybe hit her back?”
Paul blinked. “Why would I do that, Ms.Derecho?”
“To, um, get her to back the fuck off? Keep her slapping and punching and breaking and burning and all the other ‘accidents’ to herself?”
“Sidney—”
“Uh, Sid—”
“And where does that end?” Paul asked, and to Amanda’s relief, he sounded curious, not angry. “You think brutalizing my wife in response will de-escalate the situation? Because I think that would end with one of us breaking a glass and eating the pieces.”
Good GOD.
“Right. Duly noted.” Cass clapped her hands together. “And on that note—”
“Yeah, I guess.” Sidney sounded doubtful, but even she could tell this wasn’t any direction for a sane conversation. Because Paul Banks had a point. Say he broke his wife’s arm. Then what? She’s sorry? She never hurts him again? They live happily ever after, and the only bruises they get are from gardening mishaps and enthusiastic sex on hardwood floors?
Or she heals and bides her time and then arranges another trip to the ER for Paul Banks. Followed by disaster. Destruction. Anything and everything except de-escalation. Divorce court would follow if they were lucky. If not ... another kind of court.
“Sorry, it’s none of my business. Well, it’s a tiny bit our business, maybe. I’ve just never—” Sidney cut herself off, which was the only waytocut her off. “Where’s your shit? I’ll help you load up.”
Amanda understood the confusion. It was one thing to research and come to intellectually understand that women abused and menwereabused, but seeing it in the flesh, so to speak, was something else. She’d never expected to meet a man routinely brutalized by his smaller, lighter, weaker wife. A young man—only a few years older than she and her friends—in decent shape, capable of putting up a fight. And would, so long as he didn’t have to hurt someone he cared about.
All that to say, the broken fingers were only the latest I-hate-when-you-make-me-do-this gift from Mrs.Banks.
“Now what’s this?”
Swell. Speak of the devil. Well, think of her.
“In our defense, we’ve only been here forty-five seconds,” Sidney observed. “No matter what, we wouldn’t have been out of here when she got back.”
Mrs.Banks had pulled into the driveway, and Amanda could feel her glare from thirty feet away. She braked, parked, and her car door flew open hard enough to rebound shut on her shin as she tried to climb out. Even with the windows up, her howl of pain was perfectly audible.
“Oh, shit,” Paul muttered. “Whatever you do, don’t laugh at her.”
A timely warning, given that Mrs.Banks’s attempts to escape her car were an exercise in Three Stooges–esque comedy. She’d gotten the door open again, only to knock her head as she tried to get out.
Mrs.Banks finally freed herself from the vehicle—
“Hon, you promised you were going to wear your seat belt.”
“Fuck off!”
—then came bounding across the lawn like a pissed-off gazelle. Honest to God, a fucking gazelle. Mrs.Banks ran like the lawn was three feet high instead of trimmed to golf-course specifications.
