Fight

The Backside Lounge sits off the highway, glowing pink and shameless.

Low brick. Blacked-out windows. A neon girl kicking one leg forever above the door. Pickup trucks, luxury sedans, work vans, and poor judgment packed into the lot bumper to bumper.

Three motorcycles hit that lot like artillery.

Mine leads.

Whiskey Trotter and Putter thunder behind me, laughing into the wind.

We do not park.

The vestibule is empty.

I make sure of that.

Then we drive straight through the front doors.

Glass explodes inward.

Wood cracks.

The music dies mid-thrust.

Every head in the place snaps our way.

Girls onstage freeze beneath colored lights. Men stop with bills halfway extended. Cocktail waitresses stand stranded between bad choices.

Smoke drifts through what remains of the entrance while three motorcycles roll into the heart of sin like we own stock.

I guide mine to the foot of the main stage and kill the engine.

Silence spreads.

“How hard is it,” I ask the room, “to get a little Eagles up in here?”

Nobody answers.

Putter laughs so hard he hiccups.

Whiskey claps slowly.

Then Te and Tay come off the wall near the bar.

Both look mad enough to chew brick.

Perfect.

The DJ, sensing that violence pays almost as well as nudity, brings the music roaring back.

Heavy bass shakes the room.

Men immediately forget about the dancers and turn toward the only sport that matters now—laying cash, shouting odds, and arguing over which fool is about to lay which other fool out first.

Te cracks his knuckles.

Tay rolls his neck.

“Well, look at that,” I say. “Just the boys I was hoping to see.”

“I’m gonna kill you!” Te shouts.

“You’ll have to wait your turn. I ain’t dying today.”

They charge.

Te swings first.

I duck beneath it and bury my right fist in his ribs.

Tay catches me behind the ear hard enough to ring church bells.

I smile.

There it is.

Real pain.

Clean pain.

Not shame.

Not guilt.

Not the fire in my chest since the Village burned.

Just impact.

I tackle Te into a row of chairs and send customers scrambling.

Tay kicks me in the thigh.

I come up swinging and catch him beneath the jaw with my left hand.

My broken pinky detonates.

White light flashes across my vision.

Worth it.

Tay stumbles backward into a poker table where four men are suddenly very interested in protecting their chips.

Cards and cash fly like confetti.

Whiskey Trotter body-slams one bouncer through a mirrored divider.

Putter picks up another by the belt and collar and throws him into the ATM.

The machine beeps in protest.

Te rushes me again.

I catch him by the shirt and bounce his forehead off the stage twice.

Tay grabs a bottle and swings.

I block with my forearm, take the hit, then drive my shoulder into his stomach and fold him over a velvet booth.

For one bright, stupid second, I feel magnificent.

Then Kristy Lee steps through what remains of the front entrance.

Purse over one shoulder. Keys in hand. Station jacket zipped halfway up.

She stops dead.

Broken glass. Overturned chairs. Dancers hiding behind curtains.

Me standing in the middle of it like a proud idiot.

I smile at her.

Actually smile.

I want her to see me winning.

Then a woman screams.

Not startled.

Not playful.

Fear.

I turn.

Whiskey and Putter have two girls cornered against the back rail.

Hands everywhere they have no business being.

One girl is Mara from the Village. Her son once gave me a birthday card with six dinosaurs on it and spelled my name three different ways.

The other is Janelle, who brings casseroles to sick neighbors and cusses like a trailer-park homecoming queen while doing it.

Mara shoves Whiskey in the chest.

He laughs and grabs her harder.

Something inside me goes cold.

I’ve seen hands like that before.

Usually attached to men who smelled like cigarettes and my mother’s bad years.

“Hey!”

Both bikers look over.

“Let them go.”

Whiskey grins.

“Relax, preacher. We’re celebrating.”

“I said let them go.”

Putter slides a hand where it should never have gone.

Mara slaps him.

He laughs too.

The whole room shrinks to a pinpoint.

I start toward them.

Whiskey meets me halfway.

“You got loud awful quick.”

“That’s enough.”

He throws a punch.

It never reaches me.

I don’t see John enter.

Judging by everyone else’s face, neither do they.

He catches Whiskey’s fist in midair.

Just catches it.

Like he plucked fruit from a tree.

White shirt. Dark slacks. Calm eyes.

Sunday morning in the middle of hell.

Whiskey blinks.

John twists his wrist until the biker drops to one knee.

Putter roars and charges with a red velvet folding chair raised over his head.

John turns, catches the chair by two legs, and drives it backward into Putter’s chest hard enough to sit him down for the foreseeable future.

Then he looks at both men with patient disappointment.

“I’ve always had a thing for beating up devils.”

Even Te and Tay stay where they are.

Yorkie bursts out of the office, red-faced and sweating through silk.

He points at me like I’m a stain.

“I’m telling Ted Polmey about this!”

I wipe blood from my mouth.

“Tell him.”

Te spits out a tooth.

“We’ll remember this.”

“I bet you will.”

John looks toward Kristy Lee.

“Get him out of here. He’s too important to be this self-destructive.”

She nods once.

That somehow feels official.

I wheel my motorcycle back through the broken entrance, limping worse than I want anyone to notice.

Outside, the night air hits me cold.

The adrenaline drains all at once.

My hands shake.

My knees soften.

I try to lift the bike upright from where it leans too hard in the gravel.

Nothing.

I try again.

Less than nothing.

My body has resigned without notice.

Then a hand touches my shoulder.

Kristy Lee.

“Come on, Big Guy,” she says softly. “Let me take you home.”

I look at the motorcycle.

“John said he’ll take care of it.”

I look back toward the club.

“How long have you two been conspiring against me?”

“Get in the car, Gene.”

I look at the tiny Prius parked three spaces over.

Then at myself.

Then I nod.

Getting me into the passenger seat requires engineering, prayer, and both of us pretending this is normal.

She slides the seat all the way back.

I fold in piece by piece.

No jokes from her.

No pity either.

She just shuts the door gently.

As she walks around the hood, I glance toward the club.

Across the lot, beyond the wash of pink neon, stands a red-haired woman beside two shadowed figures in dark coats.

One of them leans close and says something I can’t hear.

She smiles directly at me.

Her voice should disappear beneath the engines and approaching sirens.

Instead, it crosses the parking lot as clearly as if she’s leaning through the open car door.

“He’s exactly the one we need.”

Kristy Lee opens her door.

She doesn’t react.

I blink.

The red-haired woman and the two figures are gone.

Kristy Lee gets behind the wheel.

“How did you know I was here?” I ask.

“John called the station.”

“When?”

“Before you got here.”

Of course he did.

She starts the Prius.

I stare ahead while the little engine hums like forgiveness.