Twisted: The Collected Short Stories of Jeffery Deaver

'Don'tcha?' He dramatically reared his head back and gave a wail of mock horror. 'Manko's falling down on the job.' He leaned forward, the smile gone, and gripped my arm hard. 'It's not a pretty story, Frankie boy. It's not outta Family Ties or Roseanne. Can you stomach it?'

I leaned forward too, just as dramatically, and growled. 'Try me.'

Manko laughed and settled into his chair. As he lifted his cup the table rocked. It had done so throughout dinner but he only now seemed to notice it. He took a moment to fold and slip a piece of newspaper under the short leg to steady it. He was meticulous in this task. I watched his concentration, his strong hands. Manko was someone who actually enjoyed working out — lifting weights, in his case — and I was astonished at his musculature. He was about five-six, and, though it's hard for men — for me at least — to appraise male looks, I'd call him handsome.

The only aspect of his appearance I thought off-kilter was his haircut. When his stint with the Marines was over he kept the unstylish crew cut. From this, I deduced his experience in the service was a high point in his life — he'd worked factory and mediocre sales jobs since — and the shorn hair was a reminder of a better, if not an easier, time.

Of course, that was my pop-magazine-therapy take on the situation. Maybe he just liked short hair.

He now finished with the table and eased his strong, compact legs out in front of him. Manko the storyteller was on duty. This was another clue to the nature of Manko's spirit: Though I don't think he'd ever been on a stage in his life he was a born actor.

'So. You know Hillborne? The town?'

I said I didn't.

'Southern part of Ohio. Piss-water river town. Champion used to have a mill there. Still a couple factories making, I don't know, radiators and things. And a big printing plant, does work for Cleveland and Chicago. Kroeger Brothers. When I was in Seattle I learned printing. Miehle offsets. The four- and five-color jobs, you know. Big as a house. I learned 'em cold. Could print a whole saddle-stitched magazine myself, inserts included, yessir, perfect register and not one goddamn staple in the centerfolds boobs… Yessir, Manko's a hell of a printer. So there I was, thumbing 'cross country. I ended up in Hillborne and got a job at Kroeger's. I had to start as a feeder, which was crap, but it paid thirteen an hour and I figured I could work my way up.

'One day I had an accident. Frankie boy, you ever seen coated stock whipping through a press? Zip, zip, zip. Like a razor. Sliced my arm. Here.' He pointed out the scar, a wicked-looking one. 'Bad enough they took me to the hospital. Gave me a tetanus shot and stitched me up. No big deal. No whining from Manko. Then the doctor left and a nurse's aide came in to tell me how to wash it and gave me some bandages.' His voice dwindled.

'It was Allison?'

'Yessir.' He paused and gazed out the window at the overcast sky. 'You believe in fate?'

'In a way I do.'

'Does that mean yes or no?' He frowned. Manko always spoke plainly and expected the same from others.

'Yes, with qualifiers.'

Love tamed his irascibility and he grinned, chiding good-naturedly, 'Well, you better. Because there is such a thing. Allison and me, we were fated to be together. See, if I hadn't been running that sixty-pound stock, if I hadn't slipped just when I did, if she hadn't been working an extra shift to cover for a sick friend, if, if, if… See what I'm saying? Am I right?'

He sat back in the creaky chair. 'Oh, Frankie, she was fantastic. I mean, here I am, this, like, four-inch slash in my arm, twenty stitches, I could've bled to death, and all I'm thinking is she's the most beautiful woman I ever saw.'

'I've seen her picture.' But that didn't stop him from continuing to describe her. The words alone gave him pleasure.

'Her hair's blonde. Gold blonde. Natural, not out of a bottle. And curly but not teased, like some high-hair slut. And her face, it's heart-shaped. Her body… Well, she has a nice figure. Let's leave it at that.' His glance at me contained a warning. I was about to assure him that I had no impure thoughts about Allison Morgan when he continued. He said, 'Twenty-one years old.' Echoing my exact thought he added sheepishly, 'Kind of an age difference, huh?'

Manko was thirty-seven — three years younger than I — but I learned this after I'd met him and had guessed he was in his late twenties. It was impossible for me to revise that assessment upward.

'I asked her out. There. On the spot. In the emergency room, you can believe it. She was probably thinking, How d'I get rid of this bozo? But she was interested, yessir. A man can tell. Words and looks, they're two different things, and I was getting the capital M message. She said she had this rule she never dated patients. So I go, 'How 'bout if you married somebody and he cuts his hand in an accident and goes to the emergency room and there you are? Then you'd be married to a patient.' She laughed and said, no, that was somehow backwards. Then this emergency call came in, some car wreck, and she had to go off.

'The next day I came back with a dozen roses. She pretended she didn't remember me and acted like I was a florist delivery boy. 'Oh, what room are those for?'

'I said, 'They're for you… if you have room in your heart for me.' Okay, okay, it was a bullshit line.' The rugged ex-Marine fiddled awkwardly with his coffee cup. 'But, hey, if it works, it works.'

I couldn't argue with him there.

'The first date was magic. We had dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town. A French place. It cost me two days' pay. It was embarrassing 'cause I wore my leather jacket and you were suppose to have a suit coat. One of those places. They made me wear one they had in the coat room and it didn't fit too good. But Allison didn't care. We laughed about it. She was all dressed up in a white dress, with a red, white and blue scarf around her neck. Oh, God, she was beautiful. We spent, I don't know, three, four hours easy there. She was pretty shy. Didn't say much. Mostly she stared like she was kind of hypnotized. Me, I talked and talked, and sometimes she'd look at me all funny and then laugh. And I'd realize I wasn't making any sense 'cause I was looking at her and not paying any attention to what I was saying. We drank a whole bottle of wine. Cost fifty bucks.'

Manko had always seemed both impressed by and contemptuous of money. Myself, I've never come close to being rich so wealth simply perplexes me.

'It was the best,' he said dreamily, replaying the memory.

'Ambrosia,' I offered.

He laughed as he sometimes did — in a way that was both amused and mocking — and continued his story. 'I told her all about the Philippines, where I was stationed for a while, and about hitching around the country. She was interested in everything I'd done. Even — well, I should say especially — some of the stuff I wasn't too proud of. Grifting, perping cars. You know, when I was a kid, going at it. Stuff we all did.'

I held back a smile. Speak for yourself, Manko.

'Then all of a sudden, the sky lit up outside. Fireworks! Talk about signs from God. You know what it was? It was the Fourth of July! I'd forgotten about it 'cause all I'd been thinking about was going out with her. That's why she was wearing the red, white and blue. We watched the fireworks from the window.'

His eyes gleamed. 'I took her home and we stood on the steps of her parents' house — she was still living with them. We talked for a while more then she said she had to get to bed. You catch that? Like she could've said, 'I have to be going.' Or just 'Good night.' But she worked the word bed into it. I know, you're in love, you look for messages like that. Only in this case, it wasn't Manko's imagination working overtime, no sir.'

Outside, a light rain had started falling and the wind had come up. I rose and shut the window.

'The next day I kept getting distracted at work. I'd think about her face, her voice. No woman's ever affected me like that. On break I called her and asked her out for the next weekend. She said sure and said she was glad to hear from me. That set up my day. Hell, it set up my week. After work I went to the library and looked some things up. I found out about her last name. Morgan — if you spell it a little different — it means 'morning' in German. And I dug up some articles about the family. Like, they're rich. Filthy. The house in Hillborne wasn't their only place. There was one in Aspen, too, and one in Vermont. Oh, and an apartment in New