An hour later they were in another bar and Ace was still playing Dr. Phil. “I mean,” he said, “we only got a few more years of this.”
Nina screwed up her face. “What do you mean, this?”
“I mean, what are you-thirty-five, thirty-six? ’Bout the same as me. We ain’t like wine, you know. We don’t get better as we age. Like, right now-today-bang,” he snapped his fingers, “you can walk into any bar, anywhere, and make something happen because you got some looks and a body. But in five years…”
Nina slouched in the booth and held up her glass in a grudging salute. “Forty,” she said glumly. She didn’t have to fake this conversation. Uh-uh. This was a subject she thought about all the time.
“And you know what the stats are on divorced women over forty getting remarried. Ain’t pretty, sweetheart. Us boys definitely got more shelf life.”
“You’re depressing the shit out of me. No wonder the population of North Dakota is rock bottom, if this is the way you court your women.”
Ace shrugged. “Just saying, you should probably give the marriage a little more work, that’s all. Bird in the hand.”
Nina leaned forward. “A bird in the hand bites. My husband is a total asshole.”
They stared into their empty glasses. Nina had switched to vodka sevens. She’d had a lot of success drinking vodka with a crazy bunch of Russian paratroopers in Kosovo. A new round of drinks arrived. The way Ace spread his hands before he spoke, Nina could see him behind a pulpit.
“Okay. It’s like this,” he said. “You’re strung out. Strung out means you talk a little too fast. And there’s off-the-wall thoughts come out of nowhere and bash through the conversation at random times. Like just now.”
“You know this for a fact?” Nina said.
“Sure. I’m strung out, too. But mine is more long haul, more like holding off deep space. Mine’s sadder. Yours is madder.”
“So what do we do?”
“Drink. Booze tames down the brightness and buffs the edges off so it don’t make the air bleed.”
“Jesus. You been thinking about this stuff way too long, Ace.”
“I’ll say.”
And that’s the way the afternoon went into sunset: the ironies of marriage counseling, Ace’s slow-hand seduction and booze. One bar, two bar, red bar, blue bar. Not quite a blur. Maintaining. Hey. They were both obviously competent folks.
They drove east out of town and he got her talking. About growing up an Army brat, schools on bases all over the South. How she’d gone into the Army, served in the Gulf War in a signal company, and moved to Minnesota after discharge. How she was tending bar in this joint called the Caboose by the U of M when she met her husband.
They stopped, gassed the Tahoe at a Super Pumper. Ace made good on his promise and bought her a toothbrush. They went to dinner in Cavalier, the next town east, and she talked about having a kid, thinking it would improve the marriage.
They drove back to Langdon in the dark.
Then Ace suddenly switched off the headlights and the night outside Nina’s open window jumped up so black and shot with stars it took her breath. “God-damn.”
Stars like she’d seen on night patrols in remote stretches of Bosnia. But more of them here. More sky.
“Welcome to the prairie, gateway to the Great Plains,” Ace said.
But then the grandeur plummeted as she looked north. Anything could come across the border and filter down through the empty grid of back roads, run this deserted highway. The interstate just an hour away. Then she looked at Ace Shuster, who was good with women, but who might do anything for money. Him and his pal Gordy.
He switched the lights back on and drove into town, slowed in front of the Motor Inn, and turned to her.
“You want to see your daughter? Say anything?”
Nina shook her head.
“You sure?”
“Look. I thought about this a lot. I need a clean break or it’ll be a tar baby, I’ll get stuck in it all over again. Jane. My old man probably coming to pick up Kit. I mean, I took her and didn’t tell him face-to-face. Just left a note, for Christ’s sake. I just need some…time.”
“Okay, okay,” Ace slowly accelerated past the motel and continued west on 5 toward the Missile Park.
They found Gordy rolling a dolly, wheeling four cases of booze at a time off the loading dock onto a truck bed. He scowled at Nina and went back to work, hairy and furious. Nina turned to Ace and said, “Maybe you’re right. He doesn’t like me.”
They went inside and Nina pointed to the cases of booze stacked along the wall by the basement stairway.
“You got a lot of booze for a bar that’s out of business,” she said.
Ace scratched his head. “Long story. Tell you all about it in the morning.”
Nina gathered herself and followed him up the stairs into the apartment. And-hello-it was much cleaner than she expected. Dishes washed and put away, the drainboard in the kitchen clean. And lots and lots of books. A beat-up, old-fashioned desk and a swivel chair. Another well-worn armchair with an ottoman and a lamp.
No televison.
One whole wall was a blowup photomural of grazing buffalo.
“Moved in here when I split with my wife,” he said as he stripped the bed and put on fresh sheets. She watched him make the bed, smoothing out the wrinkles, folding and tucking in tight hospital corners.
“You sure you weren’t in the Army, the way you make a bed?” she said.
“Prison,” he said.
He took the old sheets out to the couch. Then he handed her a T-shirt and showed her the bathroom. She took the toothbrush from its cellophane wrapper, used his Sensodyne and brushed her teeth, undressed, and put on the shirt. The shirt was an extra-large maroon cotton number that came down to mid-thigh. The sleeves and neck had been cut out way down the side so the shadowed dents and curves along her ribs peeked out.
She folded her clothing and came back into the living room.
Ace smiled and looked her over. “Picked the shirt to go with your hair and eyes.” They stood a foot apart, watching each other.
“Another one of your little touches, huh?” Nina said as she hugged herself. Her word touches turned slowly in the close space between them like a silky scarf, slowly descending. “Now what?” she said, too abruptly, awkward, clearly on edge.
“Good night,” he said simply.
Nina, wary, went into the dark bedroom almost on tiptoe, walking a plumb line to the bed, not wanting to disturb or touch anything, fearing sexual trip wires strung in the dark.
Alert. She braced for him coming through the door.