“It’s some Norwegian film. Arty. Classy. I thought it’d be good to teach the kid a bit of culture.”
“Bullshit,” Mack interjects. “It’s about a bunch of fucking Nazi zombies massacring students in the mountains in Norway. I heard you talking about it.”
“Snake, that movie sounds fucking amazing. And maybe later we’ll get drunk and watch it. But you’re not showing it to Josie. Because she’s fucking eight years old. She’s too young for you to corrupt, all right? So go sit in the fucking corner by the window, keep an eye on the parking lot, and play guard duty until I come up with something better for your creepy ass to do. Mack, you better get a move on and check on Blaze. You know he can’t sit still for long.”
“Got it,” Mack says.
Snake says nothing. He takes his drink to the corner and slumps into a chair.
I ignore him, because I’ve got something more important to do: be a babysitter to a surprisingly entertaining eight-year-old.
“All right, Josie, you ready to read some Goosebumps?” I say as I sit down next to her at the table.
She smiles at me. And then turns her attention back to her book. “I am, Crash. But you’re late, I’ve already started without you, and I only have the one book, so I hope you don’t expect me to start back at the beginning and catch you all up.”
I burst out laughing. From over by the bar, I see Violet look over at us in surprise, a smile on her face. Damn, that woman glows when she smiles.
“No, kid, that’s fine,” I say. “Besides, I was thinking about reading something else. Something really scary.”
She lowers her book just a little and gazes at me across the top of it, her eyes glowing with curiosity.
“I’m listening,” she says.
I take out my phone and, with a few swipes of my finger, I have a truly creepy book on my screen.
“You ever hear of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Seriously? Here, check it out.” I hold out the phone to her. She takes it, looks it over, and her eyes get wide with delight.
“This is gross. I love it,” she says. “Oh, look at one! This story’s about a severed head!”
Maybe it would be all right to show her that Dead Snow movie.
“Are you corrupting my best friend’s daughter?” Violet calls out. She’s got a rag in one hand and she’s wiping down the bar, but most of her attention is focused on me and Josie. “Josie, your mom is not going to like it if she hears you were spending this whole sleepover staring at severed heads. You should get back to your reading.”
“Yes, Aunt Vi,” Josie answers. But she takes her time — and swipes through a few more pages, letting out a couple ‘oohs’ as she does — before she hands me back my phone.
“We’ll look at it later,” I say to her, quiet enough that Violet can’t hear. Then I raise my voice, “But your Aunty Vi is right. You should finish that Goosebumps before we do anything else.”
And so, for almost two contented hours, while Violet restores her bar to looking like the massacre last night never happened, I sit at that table, with my feet propped up and a children’s book of scary stories on my phone, while next to me, the coolest eight-year-old I’ve ever met reads a book of her own. Then, with a satisfied look on her face, Josie slaps the book down on the table.
“Finished,” she exclaims.
I hold out my hand for a high five, and she slaps it.
“Good work, kid,” I say.
Then I feel a hand on my shoulder and turn to see Violet standing behind me, with a glass and bottle in her free hand.
“Looks like you two have been working hard,” she says. She puts the glass down on the table in front of me and fills it halfway. “This is your reward. It’s a little Kentucky bourbon I got from a small distillery out there, and I’ve added a few little infusions and twists of my own. I think you’ll like it. And Josie, if you finish the report that I know you have to write on that book, you’ll get yours: I’ll order pizza for dinner.”
Josie’s eyes light up. And, once I take a sip of the bourbon she’s poured for me, my own might light up a little, too.
Sitting at this table, with this kid and with this impressive woman behind me, is a feeling I could get used to. I wouldn’t even mind if Josie called me ‘Uncle Crash.’
While Josie starts in on her report and I sip my bourbon with Violet’s hands resting on my shoulders, I’m content like I haven’t been since things ended with Rosa.
Then, after only a minute of writing, Josie puts her pen down and gives me one of those looks kids give when they’re being far too perceptive for their age. The kind of look that leads to trouble.
“Crash, are you in a gang?”
“Josie,” Violet says behind me. “Don’t be rude.”
“It’s all right,” I say. “Josie, what makes you say that?”
“You wear the same kind of clothes as those guys that are always bothering my mom. And she says they’re some kind of gang of criminals. So I just thought…”
I finish my bourbon. Without even asking, Violet fills it up again. The stuff is damn good, and I give her a grateful nod.
“I’m not in a gang, Josie. Me, Mack, Blaze, and Snake are part of a group, like a club, and sometimes we do some stuff that the police wouldn’t like to find out about. But mostly, we keep to ourselves, we do a little
