Wicked Fix (2 page)

The scuffling quieted as the sound system began

playing a cut of Bela Fleck's new jazz-bluegrass fusion

CD, "Throwdown at the Hoedown." La Sardina's

owners had eclectic tastes in music, and so as a result

did the guys who tended to occupy their barstools.

Or most of them did. "Throwdown" cut off in the

middle of a banjo lick so breakneck, it had to be heard

to be believed, and the music switched to something

about how lonesome somebody was going to be tonight.

"He's in there," Ellie said quietly. "One thing he

hates is decent music. You wait, before the night's over,

Teddy'll have to toss him out of the place, and then

won't there be hell to pay?"

"Is there anything," I asked, "that Reuben doesn't

hate?"

"Money and misery," George replied, forking up

the last of his baked potato.

With his dark hair, milky-pale skin, and a bluish

black five-o'clock shadow darkening his small, neat

jawline, George looks as if he stepped out of the hills of

Appalachia about five minutes ago. His black gimme

cap, with GUPTILL'S EXCAVATING embroidered in orange

script on the front, sat on the table beside his plate.

"The one he tries getting from you and the other

he tries giving you, when he can. Which," George

added, "is pretty often."

"Well, what's the matter with him?" Sam asked.

"Is he sick? I mean, you know, disturbed?"

Sam's own disposition is so sunny that he has managed

to stay on good terms with both his father and

me, which as a feat is a little like being Switzerland

during WWII, only for longer and with more bombs. In

fact, it was mostly due to Sam's ongoing diplomatic

efforts that his father was with us that evening.

But as I watched Victor fidget, I thought he had

some other motive for coming, too, like maybe he

hadn't wanted to be alone for some reason.

Not that I cared much. Victor and I weren't having

a truce, exactly. More like a ceasefire.

George looked at Sam. "Reuben Tate's not sick.

He's broken. Like a dog you can't cure of being vicious.

Stay away from him, Sam. He's got more ways

to clean a guy's clock than you'll ever learn. And," he

emphasized seriously, "you don't want to."

Sam blinked. "Wow. Okay." For George to utter

so many words in a row was unusual. In the tone he'd

taken, it was stunning.

"Someone," Victor piped up from behind his fresh

martini--the drinks waitress had taken pity on him--

"ought to get rid of Reuben Tate once and for all."

As always, he resembled an ad out of Gentleman's

Quarterly: blue striped silk tie, charcoal slacks, tasteful

gold cufflinks. Even the hairs on the backs of his wrists

looked groomed. Only the look on his face conveyed a

sense of rumpled disnevelment, in part I supposed on

account of those martinis. But I remember thinking

again that something else was going on with him.

Wade put down his glass of O'Doul's. "Think so,

do you?" he commented mildly to Victor. "Someone

should get rid of him? Just take him out?"

"Yeah." Victor glowered. "As a matter of fact, I

do."

When Victor first moved here, I was concerned

that he would become a serious fly in my ointment, in

the romance department especially. Having your crazy

ex-husband living down the street from you might just

tend, as a for-instance, to discourage your boyfriend

from parking his pickup truck overnight right out in

your driveway where everybody can see it.

Lately, though, Victor hadn't bothered me quite so

much. It wasn't that he had gotten saner; maybe the

opposite. His personal idiosyncrasies--his obsession

over physical cleanliness, for example--seemed to have

gotten stronger. But here in Eastport everyone's a skinful

of quirks, so in a way Victor was just like the rest of

us. Also, Wade parked his pickup where he pleased, as

he always had.

None of this, however, made Victor a congenial

dining companion. Now his immaculate, close-clipped

fingernails tapped the table again, impatiently, as if he

couldn't just get up and leave on his own whenever he

wanted to.

"So, are you people finished or what?" he asked.

"Stop it," I hissed at him, and for a wonder he

subsided, though his gaze still strayed anxiously to the

bar area and then to the door, as if calculating some

daring exit strategy.

But I still didn't put two and two together.

Instead I turned back to Wade; the O'Doul's interested

me. Ordinarily, he enjoys breweries so micro that

they measure their ingredients out by the thimbleful.

But in reply to my silent inquiry he just lifted his

glass, and the suggestion his amused gray eyes conveyed

to me then was so personal--and so fully detailed,

right down to my keeping the dog not only off

the bed but actually out of the whole bedroom--that I

was struck speechless for a moment.

Wade is not the most verbal guy you will ever

meet. Once on a boat in a storm he lost, in short order,

his mast, his engine, and a sizable chunk of his left arm,

which later required twenty stitches, and I have it on

good authority that his only comment was "darn." But

when he wants to, he gets his message across.

And not only to me, I realized as Sam got up and

announced that he would be bunking at his dad's this

evening, so I should please not leave the back porch

light on for him or the neighbors would think he had

stayed out all night without permission.

"But me and Tom Daigle and some other guys are

watching the playoffs," he added, "so I might not get

in till past midnight."

The World Series, he meant; Sam and his young

buddies were slaves to the guy-stuff scene lately. But

that wasn't all of it. Victor peeked at me, figuring how

to play this: be-cool dad, or tough, stick-tothe-curfew

father?

The deciding factor being which might most irritate

me. Like I said, it was only a ceasefire.

But Sam picked up on that, too, cuffing his father

on the shoulder affectionately. "Chill out, Dad. It's Friday,

remember? See you later."

Wistfully I watched him pass by outside La

Sardina's window, its dark condensation blurring him

to a neon-lit smear. Once upon a time, I had been that

boy's whole world; now, he plotted so that Wade could

be alone with me.

And I wasn't at all sure I liked it.

Suddenly a shriek like a bird being torn wing from

wishbone came from the bar area. "My ear! That little

bastard bit my ear!"

Moments later a boy-sized man strutted from the

bar. In his forties, he wore tight black Levi's, a T-shirt

with rolled sleeves to show off his small, hard arm

muscles, and black leather boots with metal cleats on

the heels. He had blond eyelashes and hair so blond it

was almost white, combed in a ducktail, and a purple

birthmark shaped like a teardrop under his left eye.

It was Reuben Tate himself, and he was obviously

out of his skull: tequila, or some other high-proof engine

of destruction. His eyes were as bright as highway

flares. But he held it well in terms of motor skills; rumor

had it that Reuben could walk, talk, and perform

an astonishing variety of bad deeds while laboring under

a blood-alcohol level that would pickle a lab rat.

The cleats clicked purposefully across the floor and

stopped right beside my ex-husband, and all of a sudden

I knew why Victor had not wanted to leave without

us.

"Well, well," Reuben said smirkingly. "What have

we here?"

"Shut up, Reuben," Ellie said, startling me. "Leave

him alone or I'll knock your block off."

In a pink cashmere sweater, cream slacks, and a

sheen of pink-tinted lip gloss, with her red hair falling

in waves and her freckles like a sprinkling of gold dust,

Ellie looked just about as dangerous as your standard

lace-trimmed valentine.

Reuben ignored her. "My ear!" somebody moaned

from the bar. There was a smudge of blood on Reuben's

T-shirt.

"Why, it's the doctor," Reuben drawled, his bright

eyes surveying Victor's perfect grooming mockingly.

He kicked the leg of Victor's chair with the toe of his

black leather boot.

"Hey, doctor"

Here I suppose I should explain that Victor was, or

anyway had been until recently, an accomplished brain

surgeon. Back in the city, he was the guy you went to

after the other surgeons refused you, because if they

took you into surgery you would very likely die on the

table, ruining their operating-room statistics.

That, by the way, is why when a surgeon does

agree to operate, you will probably survive; surgeons

love their win/loss numbers more than they love their

own mothers. But I digress:

"Hey, Reuben. Cut it out." George ate the last bite

of his steak, washing it down with a final swallow of

Miller Lite.

Reuben kicked the leg of Victor's chair again,

harder. "Aww, what's the matter? Big-shot doctor, too

good to talk to me?"

"Reuben, do you remember that time in the playground?"

Ellie inquired sternly. "When I beat you

up?"

She sat up straight and gazed at at him without

fear. "Well, I'm about to do it again. I'm not scared to

get into it with you, Reuben. You know that. You

know that I am not."

"Ellie," I said quietly. I couldn't understand why

Wade and George weren't shushing her, too. She was

half out of her chair.

"Ellie," I repeated insistently. But she didn't look

at me.

"Reuben? Are you listening to me?"

There was a moment, then, when anything could

have happened. But at the end of it Reuben backed

down.

Sort of. "You'll talk to me," he told Victor, stepping

away. "Like before. Or you know," he added

menacingly, "what I'll do."

"Damn it, Reuben, I told you to get out of here,"

Ted Armstrong bellowed, charging from the bar ham

fisted and ready to thump someone. "I'll drop-kick