Page 31 of Good as Gold
“Hey, barkeep!” yells Rory from down the bar. “My glass is empty.” He sets it down with a thunk that betrays drunkenness.
“Shit,” Leila hisses, looking down the bar. “Should I leave?”
“No way,” I insist. “Enjoy your drink. I’ll deal with him.”
I make my way down the bar again, but my sister beats me to Rory. “You’re cut off,” she says firmly.
“Noway, bitch. The minuteshecomes in here, you throw me out?” He bangs his glass on the bar again. “Matteo? A little service?”
For fuck’s sake. I’m not about to let Rory call my sister a bitch and then hand him another free beer. Heads are turning all around the bar, and I know I need to choose my words carefully.
“Come outside,” I say softly. “You got any smokes?”
He blinks. “Maybe.”
“Let’s go.” I take off my apron. “I treated you to a drink, you can do me this small favor.”
I’m expecting him to argue, but when I duck under the bar, he slides off the stool and walks with me toward the door.
We almost make it outside when he turns to Leila. “You took everything from me. Even the dining room table. But maybe you did me a favor, you know? You’re a terrible lay.”
I punch the door open and pull him through it. “That was unnecessary.”
He leans against the brick exterior and stares up at the night sky. “Yeah, maybe.”
“I can tell you’re hurting. But when you have a tantrum like that, you only make yourself look bad.”
“So?” he argues, patting his pockets. “She took everything, man. My car needs thousands in repairs. I eat dinner standing at the counter every night, like a loser. The place echoes.” He produces a crumpled cigarette pack. “Only one left.”
I quit smoking fifteen years ago, so I couldn’t care less. “We’ll share.”
He lights up and offers me the ciggy. I take the world’s smallest puff and struggle not to cough.
“Smooth moves.” Rory laughs.
I just shrug. We stand there in the quiet while he smokes. He’s going through a rough time, but he’s not the only one. “Let me drive you home, okay? You live right up the hill, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Defeated now, he leads me over to an old Dodge Charger.
“This car is actually cool. Can it be fixed up?”
“Maybe. It’d be expensive.”
“I bet. Good bones, though.”
“Let me start it,” he says. “She’s tricky.”
I worry that this is a trick, and he’ll drive off. But after he gets the engine running, he gets out of the driver’s seat and puts himself on the passenger’s side.
The drive to his house is just a few minutes. I’ll have to walk back, and Zara might be annoyed with me for leaving her alone behind the bar, but it was worth it to prevent a scene or to make Benito handle Rory on his night off.
I start up the hill toward town while Rory smokes, his window open to the breeze. “I don’t care about the fucking table,” he says. “That wasn’t really the point.”
“Mmm,” I say vaguely.
“She took mypride. I lived for that woman. She was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“That’s hard,” I say, hoping it sounds comforting. “But throwing tantrums in the bar isn’t going to help you heal.”
