Nothing happened the way she expected. She woke after ten straight hours of unmolested sleep to the soft buss of sunlight on her cheek. A bare trace of buttery warmth managed to squeeze between the clouds, leaked through the window and teased across her face. She opened her eyes and saw the brief flicker on a faded poster curled on the wall. Roger Maris, the old Yankee hitter. Then it went back to shadow.
She smelled fresh coffee.
She’d got out of bed and tiptoed to the door, very carefully eased open the knob, and looked into the living room. He was sitting at his desk, his back to her. Already dressed. Then he turned slightly and she saw he was holding a pistol in his hand.
Oh boy.
But he quickly put the pistol in the drawer and shut it. He’d got up, went to the kitchenette, and returned holding two cups of coffee.
“I don’t know how you take it, so I got one of each: black or with half-and-half. You need an Alka-Seltzer?”
“The black’s mine, and I’ll pass on the seltzer,” Nina said.
“No hangover?”
“Just a little tired.”
“You slept in. It’s almost noon. Here, this’ll help.” He handed her the coffee and she took a sip. Her facial expression showed her approval.
“I order it special from a place in Bismarck. Use that plunger-dealie. Seems to work pretty good,” he said.
Some of the strangeness had worn off. They knew each other a little now.
“I’m going to make some breakfast. Bacon and eggs all right or are you a granola person?”
“Over easy,” Nina said.
She took her time in the bathroom. Enjoying the hot water, the shampoo and conditioner, using his razor to shave her legs. She inspected the contents of the cabinet over the sink: maybe a little more aspirin and Alka-Seltzer than usual, but nothing prescription or illegal.
She dried off, finger fluffed her hair, and decided to skip the makeup. She stared at yesterday’s clothes as the smell of frying bacon drifted in the humid air. She decided to put the peekaboo T-shirt back on along with the change of underwear she carried in her purse. Then she inspected herself in the steamy mirror, twirled.
Five more good years, he’d said.
Get serious, you’re working, she reminded herself and went out the door.
Breakfast was eggs, bacon, cottage fries, and toast. He apologized: he was out of orange juice.
They sat at the small table in the kitchen nook. Downstairs they heard the door open, the heavy scuff of shoes.
“Gordy,” Ace said.
“You and him seem pretty different,” Nina said. “You know what he reminds me of? That movie, The Time Machine-those guys who lived underground, the Morlocks.”
Ace smiled at the reference and said, “You know, I seen that movie, they were cannibals.” Then he shrugged. “Gordy’s not exactly a walk in the park, but he ain’t as bad as he’d like to be. He came with the territory. My dad hired him to run the bar. He went to school same class as my brother. Works like hell.”
“So bar manager isn’t your regular business?”
“Big iron.”
“Come again?”
“I drove heavy machinery for Fuller Construction-crawlers, dozers mainly, belly loaders,” he said. “You name it, I ran it. Now Fuller’s gone, like my dad.”
Nina looked around. “I just thought…all these books?”
Ace smiled dryly. “Nina, this might come as a shock, but all the smart people don’t necessarily go to college.”
She frowned and ducked her head in mock fright.
He laughed and cleared away the plates, topped off the coffee, then sat back down and lit a Camel. “So,” he said, “what are we gonna do with you?”
She peered into her coffee cup. “By now Jane’s probably called my old man. Or that cop has, so he’ll be coming to pick up Kit.” She set down the cup and raised her hand, fingers spread as if holding off an invisible oncoming weight. “Once he gets here, I’ll have to talk to him.”
“What’s he like, your husband?”
Nina didn’t have to fake a word. It came out straight and honest and she wasn’t planning to hold Ace’s eyes so directly when she said it but she did: “Hard to read. Sorta like you. Lives mostly below the surface.”
“All things being equal, if he’d a met you like I did yesterday, coming off some bad rebound scene, and you half-tanked, would he have…ah?”
“Taken advantage of me?”
“Yeah.” “Probably not. He told me something once. About barroom attractions. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but, he said when something comes at you out of nowhere, it’s probably not attraction. Probably it’s more a question of propulsion.”
Ace made a soft reeling motion with his finger, asking for more.
Nina shrugged. “He’s a good dad.”
Ace repeated the reeling motion. Wanting more.
Nina pursed her lips, then bit down hard on the words, not having to fake this one either. “Just that the fucker thinks he can tell me what to do!”
Ace leaned back respectfully. “I get the message. We’ll take it one day at a time.”
Nina stood up. “I’ll do the dishes.”
He cocked his head and studied her. “No you won’t. I can tell. It just ain’t your thing.”
Perceptive, she thought. So she didn’t argue and went for her purse to get her cigarettes. She paced back and forth, smoking while he did the breakfast chores.
This wasn’t the way it was suppose to go, was it?
She was starting to like the guy.
Nina excused herself to use the bathroom, and when she shut the door she heard Ace go down the stairs. As she was finishing up, she became aware that she could overhear voices; Ace and Gordy talking in the office. Stooping and listening carefully, she soon figured out that the water pipes under the sink ran down through a hole in the tile and floor joists. The hole was masked off with a piece of plywood, split to fit around the pipes. She knelt down, removed the plywood, and put her ear to the pipe.
“So, did you get any?” Gordy said.
“Oh yeah, went all night. Whips, chains, she tied me up and slapped peanut butter in the crack of my ass. It was wonderful.”
“Bullshit. You didn’t get any. You’d be in a better mood and you’d’ve sent her on her way. Look, I gotta go gas up my truck, be right back,” Gordy said. “Almost forgot, George called.”
“George, great. Lemme guess,” Ace said.
“Where is she?” Gordy lowered his voice.
“Aw c’mon. Cut the shit. Upstairs putting on her face.”
“Man, you are one pussy brain.”
“Yeah, yeah. So? George?”
“Sounds like one of his moonlight packing specials.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Ace said.
Nina squirmed to get more comfortable and pressed her ear closer to the floor. She heard Gordy leave, heard the door slam, then a moment later heard a muted truck engine start up and drive away.
Then Ace was on the phone talking.
“Hey, George, you old bootlegger. What’s up?…Aw, man, I don’t know, at this late date. Why don’t you get Gordy to pick it up?…Okay. You got a point. I don’t trust him on something serious, either. Just let me know. Bye.”
Nina waited another five minutes. She spent the time putting on eyeliner and lipstick. Then she took her cell phone from her purse and went downstairs.
Ace was standing in the empty alcove to the right of the bar. He’d brought a chair and set a cardboard box on it. He was taking a picture off the wall. It was the framed yellowed front page of a newspaper. The headline read: LANGDON-MISSILE CITY, USA.
“Hey. You could help me take these down and wrap them. I promised them to the county library.”
“Can I see?” she asked as she left her phone on the bar and came forward. He handed over the frame. Nina scanned the page. A picture of the town’s main street. A map showing Sprint, Spartan, and Safeguard sites.
“See?” said Ace. “They put in the Minutemen in the late sixties, so then they started building the ABMs to protect the Minuteman silos. That’s how the bar came about. They built this big trailer park for the construction crews right across the road. This place used to really jump back in ’71, ’72.”
Nina noticed that he was unguarded, remembering-there was a softness to the depths of his eyes that was at odds with his physical persona.
“Yeah,” he went on, “the population of the town doubled. The work crews brought their kids, and we had students in our schools from every state in the union.” He took the framed page back and wrapped it in newsprint and put it on the box. “Mom used to joke how we had a rush hour when the crews changed shifts. Just like in a big city.”
It started as a tightness in her chest and traveled up into her throat, her chin, and tugged on the corner of her lips. A feeling of…what? Was it sadness? No, more like trespass.
I wouldn’t feel like this, goddammit, if he was more…bad.
But he wasn’t.
Or was he? Who was George?
She remembered seeing him earlier with the pistol. Casual, charming, putting it away, never mentioning it.
“Dad brought in the equipment dealership, thought he was going to really cash in on all the construction contracts. But then, like a lot of things around here, it all sorta dried up and blew away.”
He pointed to another picture, a massive snarl of interlaced steel reinforcing rods. “Nixon’s pyramid. Government put out close to two hundred million bucks for that pile of concrete. Just south of town at Nekoma. I’ll show it to you if you’re still around. Was supposed to house the radar for the ABM system. Never used it. Jimmy Carter. SALT II.”
Nina looked away, saw another newspaper page under glass. A quote in the center of the page: “If North Dakota seceded from the Union it would be the world’s third-largest nuclear power.” She turned and studied him, wrapping faded mementos in newsprint. What was he doing? Dallying with her? Pretending to accept her and her sad little personal story?
If he was who they thought he was, he had to be suspicious.
“Is there any coffee left?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said, not even looking up from his wrapping. “Gordy keeps a Mr. Coffee in the office.”
She walked directly to the office, went in; there was a desk, computer, fax machines, printer…and wouldn’t you know it? — next to the phone: a caller-ID unit.
A second later she pushed the review button. The data materialized on the tiny gray screen, a time, today’s date, the number, and a name: Khari George. She grabbed a pen off the desk, removed a Post-it note from the pad beside the phone, scribbled the number, then slipped it under her shirt and into the waistband of her panties. The coffeepot sat on the edge of the desk, half-full of black tarry liquid. She selected the cleanest-looking one from a lineup of several mismatched mugs, filled it, and went back into the bar.
As she came out, Ace was reaching up with both hands, his back to her. He was taking down a faded military pennant that showed a wedge of stars and the wreathed heading: 321 ST MISSILE WING.
Seeing him like that, back turned, vulnerable, she had the impression that he was dismantling and packing away pieces of his own life, not just picture frames. She remembered his blithe bar chatter about depression. And how Gordy sounded suspicious of her. Yet Ace was casual to the point of folly. She remembered a suggestion from his dossier; that his charming drinker’s act was likely an attempt at self-medication.
What if she were stalking a cripple?
And if so, was it an advantage or a disadvantage? What would Broker say?
Ace turned, saw her watching him, and asked, “Are you all right?” Just then she heard Gordy’s truck pull up in front. A second after that, her cell phone rang.