sometimes complicated, but knowing the fight thing is usually not so hard.”
“You think so,” Michelle said in a tone that said she didn’t.
“Sure. You and I both know, for instance, that sitting on the wall all day smoking grass isn’t the fight thing for you to do with your life.”
“Who the hell are you to say what’s fight for me?”
Michelle said.
“The guy you asked,” Jesse said.
“And chasing you off the wall is obviously not the fight way to help you do the fight thing.”
“So why the hell are you sitting here blabbing at me?”
Michelle said.
Jesse smiled at he?.
“Trying to do the fight thing,” he said.
Michelle stared at him for a long moment.
“Jesus Christ,” she said.
“You’re weird.”
Jesse took a business card out of the pocket of his white uniform shirt and gave it to Michelle.
“You need help sometime,” Jesse said,
“you can call me.”
Michelle took the card, as if she didn’t know what it Was.
“I don’t need any help,” she
said.
“You never know,” Jesse said and stood up.
“It’s what else we do,” Jesse said, and turned and walked back to his Car.
She stared at him as he walked and watched the car as it pulled away. She watched it up Main Street until it turned off onto Forest Hill Avenue and out of sight. Then she looked at the card for a moment and put it into the pocket of her jeans.
shirt and a tuxedo vest with silver musical notes embroidered on it. He played records and did some patter but the noise with or without the music was so loud in the low room that no one could hear what he said. A few people danced, but most of them were sitting and drinking at tiny tables, jammed into the space in front of the long bar.
Tammy Portugal was alone, crowded onto a barstool, drinking a Long Island iced tea and smoking Camel Lights.
She was wearing tight tapered jeans and spike heels and no stockings and a short-sleeved top that exposed her stomach.
She had put on her best black underwear, too, in case anything developed. She had cashed her alimony check. There was money in her purse. The kids were at her mother’s until tomorrow afternoon. She had a night, and half a day, when she could do anything or nothing, however she pleased.
Across the room she knew he had been looking at her and finally she let her eyes meet his. He looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but handsomer. Fabio, maybe. Big muscles, long hair. His pale eyes had a dangerous look, she thought, and it excited her. She had seen him before on her night out, and she had watched him as he moved through the bar. Watched how careful other men were around him.
Watched how many of the women looked after him as he walked past. She had, she knew, been thinking of him when she put on the good black underwear. She wondered if he was gentle in bed, or rough. She felt the sudden jolt along her fib cage as she realized he was walking toward her.
“Hi,” he said. “What are you
drinking?”
She liked the way he came on to her. He didn’t ask if she was alone. A man like him wouldn’t have to worry about whether she was alone. If he wanted her, he’d take her.
She told him what she was drinking, trying to keep her voice down. She liked the throaty sound one of the actresses made on one of her soap operas, and she practiced it sometimes with a tape recorder when she was alone.
He wedged his body into the crowded bar, making room beside her where there had been none. “Seven and ginger,”
he said to the bartender, “and a Long Island iced tea.”
He leaned one elbow on the bar and looked straight on into her eyes. She swiveled on her barstool, as if to talk with him better, and managed it so that her knee would press against his thigh.
“I’ve seen you before,” he said
to her.
They had to lean very close to each other to be heard over the clamor of the hot room.
“I’m out about once a week,” she
