“Hey, Nicole,” a guy called from the other side of the bar. “Can a man get a drink, or you gonna spend the whole night flirting?”
“What man? Oh, you mean you,” she said.
“You’re not as cute as you think,” the guy said.
“Yes she is,” Wells called out. He was on his second beer and already feeling lightheaded.
“Coming, Freddie.” She leaned into Wells and said, “I’d let him pour it himself but he’d suck down the whole bottle.”
“I heard that—”
“Then you know it’s true,” she said over her shoulder to Freddie. And winked at Wells and walked away. Wells sipped his beer and tried not to stare at her ass. He failed.
FOUR HOURS LATER, Wells turned his Ford into the parking lot of a storefront pool hall down the highway from the Rusty Nail where the illegals watched Mexican soccer and drank two-dollar Buds. He checked his mirror. Sure enough, her Toyota pickup was making the same turn.
He knew that he was making a mistake, that getting involved with this woman — even for one night — would cause complications that he didn’t need. He knew too that Nicole, whatever her charms, was a poor substitute for Exley. But at the moment he didn’t much care. He needed a woman, and the hard truth was that he might never see Exley again. He flicked at his shoulder, envisioning an angel on it disappearing in a puff of smoke.
The guy behind the counter gave them a half-friendly nod when they walked in. Aside from the occasional movie, playing pool was Wells’s only entertainment; he had been here twice before.
“We close in a hour, man.”
“That doesn’t give me much time to kick your butt,” Nicole said. “Let’s go.”
TO HIS SURPRISE, she wasn’t joking. She started cold and lost the first game but won the next two and would have taken a third straight if she hadn’t scratched on the eight ball. “Should have known a bartender could play,” he said, watching her smoothly stroke a ball into a side pocket.
“Hate to get beat by a girl?”
“You haven’t beat me yet. It’s two — two.”
She narrowly missed a double bank shot and walked around the table to him. Even after a few drinks she moved easily. “You’re funny,” she said. “You pretend you don’t care but you hate to lose.”
Wells shrugged. “That’s true,” he said.
“And you’re always watching. You never stop watching. What are you looking at, Jesse?”
Even after all these years alone Wells knew the right answer to that one. “You.”
She laughed. “That took way too long. You’re like a robot that’s almost human but not quite. The Terminator.”
Wells suddenly felt as though he’d gone to a five-dollar storefront psychic and been told not just that he would die, but exactly when, where, and how. She didn’t know how right she was. To cover his discomfort he laughed awkwardly. “That’s not nice,” he said. He leaned over the table to line up his shot. She slid behind him and put her arms on his. Wells could smell her, whiskey and cigarettes. He turned to kiss her but she pulled her mouth away. For a moment he forgot her entirely and thought of Exley, lying on the table in a dirty basement in Oakland. Then he was back.
“No, I’m helping you. Get closer to the table,” she said. “Concentrate. Watch the angle.” She laughed again. “I hate it when guys pull that shit, grab me at the table. That’s why I always lose the first game, to see if they will.”
“Kiss me,” Wells said.
“Make this shot and I will.”
He missed, badly. “I never should have had that fifth beer.”
“That’s no way to be a Terminator,” she said.
“I’m not the Terminator,” Wells said. “I’m the good guy. Trying to stop him. What was his name?”
She picked up her cue and sighted her shot. “Too bad. I always had a thing for Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
“Really?”
“Yeah…well, I was talking to Britney — my best girlfriend — a couple years back, about men, you know? Their equipment.”
“Their penises,” Wells said. “Just say it.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“And?”
She flushed. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
“As long as it’s not about how you lost your virginity,” Wells said.
“What?”
“Inside joke. Between me and myself.”
“Right. Whatever. Anyway, Britney and I decided there’s really no way to know how…large a man is. Except for one thing.” She shot and missed. “This is distracting.”
“You brought it up,” Wells said. He was surprised to find that his disquiet had faded and he was enjoying himself. Maybe she’d done this a hundred times, flirted in a bar with the promise of more to come. He hadn’t. “Let me guess — height?”
“You wish. No.”
“Really? How about big feet, big hands—” Wells held up his palm and she did the same. They touched palms. Her fingers reached barely to his first knuckle.
She giggled. “I’d like to think that’s a good sign, but nope.”
“Then what?”
“Okay. Well, look, it’s not like I’ve got a ton of experience—”
“Coulda fooled me.”
She folded her arms.
“Kidding,” Wells said. “What was the tell?”
“German blood.”
“What?”
“German ancestry. German men are very…well-equipped.”
“Really?”
“Would I make that up?”
“How much German blood? Do you have to be all German?”
“It’s not like I did a survey, Jesse.” She laughed.
Wells wished he could tell her his real name. “So that’s why you like Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
“Well, no. I always thought he was hilarious. I mean, you could tell he was in on the joke in those movies. But the German thing added to the intrigue.”
“You know he’s Austrian.”
“Like there’s a difference. Your shot.”
Wells picked up his cue and leaned over the table.
“Why don’t you miss so I can run the table and we can get out of here?”
He did.
THEY WALKED UP the stairs to her apartment, stopping every other step to kiss, Wells running his hands over her hips, pushing up her T-shirt, touching her soft stomach. Outside her door she stepped away from him.
“You can’t stay over. You really can’t.”
He kissed her neck.
“Five, ten minutes. That’s all. And promise me you won’t be upset. It’s kind of a pigsty, at least by girl standards.” She unlocked the door and Wells followed her inside. Clothes were strewn across the couch, glasses piled in the sink.
