Exposure (22 page)

“It's totally my fault, bro,” said Brett.

“I don't think so.” Duff glowered, staring down Craig. “I told you before I was about sick of your bullshit, MacKenzie. You
had
to go push your luck, didn't you? It's
on
now.” The tightly packed crowd backed up to give the two guys some elbow room, as it seemed clear this wasn't going to end well. Duff inched closer to Craig, looking pissed off and menacing.

“Duff, will you just chill?” Craig asked. “It was an accident, man … spill something on me if it would make you feel better. You don't have to get all aggro.”

“I probably don't,” Duff said, “But this is sure going to make me feel a hell of a lot better — ”

Craig didn't even have time to duck. It took only one well-placed punch from Duff to drop him instantly to the floor. I shrieked, along with most of the girls in the room while the guys all chimed in with “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT… !”

Craig stumbled to his feet. There was a gash above his left eye, which was already starting to swell. A line of blood trickled down his temple. He put both arms up in a gesture of peace, but when Duff lunged at him again, Craig grabbed him by the waist and pushed his back against the bar. Glasses toppled as Easy hurdled over the bar and tried to separate them. The crowd was still going nuts while Craig and Duff struggled to overpower each other. A waitress tried spraying them with the nozzle she used to fill Coke glasses, but to little avail. Duff pushed Craig back down on the ground and pounded his face with two more punches before Easy finally managed to pull him off.

By this time, a bouncer who'd been standing at the entrance barreled through and began ordering everyone out. Easy roughly ushered Duff toward the exit. “I'm glad Duncan's not around to see what you've become!” Duff yelled back at Craig before disappearing out the door.

I rushed and knelt by Craig's side. His face was still wet with Coke, which was now mixing with rivulets of blood. He looked up at me and groaned before blacking out completely.

IT WAS MUCH QUIETER IN THE RESTAURANT when Easy finally knelt down next to me with what looked like a tackle box. Craig was just beginning to come to, and I stroked his arm as Easy dug through his kit. He brought forth a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide, but the fact that he was using his nicotine-stained teeth to open a cellophane package of gauze pads seemed a bit paradoxical in terms of sterility.

“Now don't you go movin' round, boy,” he said when Craig lifted his head in a woozy attempt to look up. Easy dabbed at the gashes on Craig's face with the peroxide-soaked pads, making Craig wince with pain.

“Oh it hurts?” the old codger said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “And serves you right, too, starting a donnybrook like that in my bar.” Craig and I exchanged “huh?” glances with each other as Easy rooted around in his tackle box some more.

“This old gal doesn't get much attention these days,” he continued, patting the box like it was a trusted hunting dog. “But she's seen far worse than your scratches, I daresay.” I noticed on the side of the box a medical insignia; an eagle-winged cross with two serpents. I randomly remembered my mom once called it a caduceus, or something like that. A perfectly useless
Jeopardy
fact. Easy must have noticed me looking at it because he proudly said, “That's right — combat medic in the First Battalion, Eighth Cavalry. This is child's play compared to the things I patched up in 'Nam.”

Craig clearly wasn't in the position to say much, so I figured it was up to me to make polite small talk.

“Sorry about all the craziness,” I said. Two waitresses and the beefy bouncer were clearing dishes off the tables and starting to wipe them down.

“Why is it that you preppy high school kids always manage to make the Hells Angels look like stalwarts of civility?” Easy wondered. “You come in here all fancy-like with your dresses and penguin suits and next thing I know I'm mopping blood off the floor.”

Easy started using his teeth again to cut medical tape. He'd made a gauze bandage that he was now affixing to Craig's forehead.

“Well,” I countered tactfully, “alcohol is probably a factor.”

“That's why I don't serve minors.”

“Oh riiigght.” I assumed he was being facetious.

“I figure I can keep the lot of you safe if you think you're drinking here.”

“If we
think
?”

“I wouldn't risk my liquor license and everything I've worked thirty years for to help a bunch of adolescents get sauced.”

“But I thought….”

“Of course you did. And so does everyone else. In the medical profession, you might call it the ‘placebo effect.' Apparently all you young geniuses who have the computer so figured out can't tell the difference between whisky and almond syrup.”

“Almond syrup?
That's
what you spike the drinks with?'” I felt a smile inch across my face.

“Tastes just unusual enough to convince you that your Cokes have been turned into cocktails.”

“Oh, brother.” Craig had finally joined the conversation. He was propped up on his elbows now, his hair still damp with soda. “I've left here some nights thinking I was bombed out of my mind. Are you for real?”

“It was all in your noggin,” Easy said, knocking his own knuckles against his salt-and-pepper scalp. “Let's just say I've earned a pretty good profit margin off almond sodas in my day. But let's keep this all our little secret.”

Secret-keepers? He had picked two of the best. Craig was drinking from a tumbler of water that a waitress had handed him when I glanced around the deserted bar, wondering how we were supposed to get home. I was about to ask Easy to call us a cab when the front door of the establishment burst open. In strode Craig's barrel-chested dad, wearing khaki pants and a red-and-black flannel hunting jacket. With his silver hair and chiseled features, he looked distinguished, but also jerky. His face made it clear this was not a pleasure call.

“Dad!” Craig said, practically gasping.

“Here you are. Why are you hanging out in a bar, alone, at two o'clock in the morning? And what's with your face?” Easy glanced up from drying his glasses but said nothing.

“Dad, it was after prom. Everyone just left. We were just about to head home ourselves, but I knocked my head — ”

“
WE??
” Mr. MacKenzie snorted cynically and glanced at me. “And who is
WE?
”

“This is Skye. She's a friend, Dad. I've told you about her before.”

“I don't want to hear about your little friend. What I want to know is why your girlfriend turned up on my doorstep bawling her eyes out about an hour ago.”

“I tried to find her! She took off in the limo and I figured she was pissed off at me — ”

“What kind of jerk-off abandons his prom date in the middle of the night? Is that the kind of man I raised you to be? While your mother and I were trying to talk that pretty little girl of yours down off a ledge, you were out here making moves on some other unsuspecting young hussy?”

“Dad. STOP.”

“You're coming home. NOW. Get in the goddamned car.”

“I can't leave Skye here.”

“You left another girl tonight … you can do it again. Now get in the car before I kick your ass six ways to Sunday.”

“Skye….” Craig looked at me, pleadingly and apologetic.

“I can take a cab. It's fine.
Really
.”

“I'll call you.” He followed his dad, dejectedly, out the front door. I heard the sound of a truck engine rev and the tires squealed as they careened out of the parking lot. The two exhausted-looking waitresses gave their boss pecks on the cheek before slinging purses over their shoulders and heading out the rear exit. Easy glanced at me sympathetically.

“Looks like you could use a
real
drink.”

“Nah….” I sighed, but I took a seat at one of the bar stools anyway. Elbows on the bar, my chin in my hands, I looked at him glumly as he emptied out the cash drawer on the register and began separating the bills into piles.

“Craig's a good kid,” he said offhandedly. I muttered my assent. “His dad comes in here every now and then. Bit of a hardass, that one.” I nodded again. “But he brags about his kid every time he's in here. Can't get the man to shut up.”

I found that seriously hard to believe, which Easy must have judged from my facial expression because he changed the subject.

“So, how was the ball, Cinderella?”

“Okay … but I think my carriage has officially turned back into a pumpkin. Speaking of, would you mind calling me a taxi?”

“My pleasure.” While Easy was on the phone with a cab company, I checked myself out in the mirrored wall behind the shelves of liquor. Margot and my mom had done a good job. My makeup was surprisingly still mostly in place and the curls in my hair hadn't completely collapsed yet.

Easy turned back around, stuffing his stack of bills into a leather envelope.

“You got enough cash to pay the driver?” he asked, paternally.

“Yeah.” I patted my satin clutch purse. He continued fussing around with accoutrements behind the bar before circling his way back to me.

“So … if you were here with the MacKenzie boy, then what's this about him having a girlfriend? Is that the bossy little blonde I've seen him with?”

“Yeah, that is she. It's a long story.”

“Well now, I'm staying put here till your cab comes, so enlighten me.”

“I get the sense things are over between them as of tonight. It was long overdue. The problem is, she's always had it out for me, and now that Craig and I are together….”

“Let me guess: ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.'”

“Bingo.”

“Aww, I wouldn't pay her too much mind. Seems to me that girl is a good two feet shorter than you. I think you could take her.”

“I hope it doesn't come to that!” I laughed nervously. “I mean,
jeez!
”

“I never underestimate the petty squabbles of the so-called weaker sex. Some of the catfights we've had in here could rival the medieval berserkers. Guys can be belligerent, but women? They can be downright evil.”

“Uh, you're not making me feel any better.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Easy continued cleaning up behind the bar as I sat with my chin in my hand, wondering what Beth would say to me Monday at school. Eventually, my cell started to vibrate in my clutch, so I reached to grab it just as the telephone behind the bar started to ring. I glanced at a text message from Craig.

Skye. Soooo sorry. Meet me at Regent asap … will explain l8ter
.

“Your cab's here,” Easy announced.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling. “Craig just texted. Sounds like he's okay.”

“That was fast,” Easy said. “His dad must have been burning rubber.”

“He might have texted from the car.”

“Oh … you're probably right. You kids and your infernal cell phones.”

“Thanks for everything. I'll see you around.”

“Ten-four, doll.” When I slid in the back seat of the taxi, my heart was racing again. I instructed the cabbie to drive me to the Regent Theater, wondering how and why Craig would want to meet up with me there.

“YOU SURE YOU WANT TO BE DROPPED OFF HERE, GIRLIE?” I handed the grizzled cabbie a tenner and hopped out onto the still-wet, abandoned street. “It's getting late,” he said.

“Yeah, it's fine. I'm meeting someone.”

“If you say so.” He shrugged.

I still hadn't gotten the knack of wearing heels and had to catch my balance as I leapt over a puddle and onto the sidewalk. It was well after two a.m. when the yellow cab pulled away from the curb, so I was surprised to see the bright pink neon of the Regent sign reflected in the pavement. It usually closed at midnight. I wished I'd brought along my camera. The empty street and the theater would've made for a gorgeous shot. They must be hosting a special midnight showing, I mused. If so, why did Craig want me to meet him here? Though I guess if we had a place that was “ours,” this was it. Was it his way of attempting a symbolic fresh start at the place where it had all begun? I pulled my wrap closer around me. It was a romantic idea, but a little late to be continuing where we'd left off in the hotel basement earlier that night. Just thinking about it made my heart thump wildly in my chest.