Chapter Twenty-One
I can smell the whiskey on his breath almost as soon as I turn around; even in a bar like O’Hara’s, where hard liquor and beer flow like water, the strength of it is almost enough to make my eyes tear up. Scanlon has been drinking, and heavily. By the look of him, it seems as though he started the night we left him and his date at Isabella’s and he hasn’t stopped since.
‘Well, well,’ he slurs. ‘Look who it is. Everyone’s favourite fuckin’ songbird.’ He gives a slow, sarcastic clap – a one-man round of whatever the opposite of applause is. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to send a frisson through the bar. Conversations quieten down slightly, eyes turn to us or down towards drinks. Everyone wants to see where this is going, but no one wants to admit it.
Hale ignores him. ‘Do you want another drink?’ he says, turning towards me. ‘Or should we head back home?’
I can only bring myself to nod mutely. I’m not afraid of Scanlon, but I’m no fool either; I wouldn’t let a snake like that out of my sight for an instant, no matter what kind of high I was riding.
‘Come to gloat, have you?’ he says to Hale’s back. ‘That was a real shitty trick you pulled back at the restaurant. But I guess you knew that, huh? Bet it made you feel like a big man, didn’t it?’
Scanlon is fingering the neck of an almost-empty beer bottle, peeling away the label and leaving a small heap of white paper at the base. He’s playing with it, but not drinking it. An image crosses my mind – a sudden lunge for it, the base smashed against the bar, a thrust and…
Blood. Blood everywhere.
No. I shake the thought away. Everything will be fine. Hale is fine. We’re in a full bar. Even Scanlon wouldn’t be that stupid, surely?
‘Hey,’ he slurs again. ‘Songbird. I’m talking to you. You owe me.’
Hale’s body tenses up. ‘Oh yeah?’ he says over his shoulder. ‘And how do you figure that?’
‘It speaks!’ Scanlon crows with laughter. ‘You hear that, fellas? The fuckin’ Golden Voice over here has decided to grace us with his words. Ain’t we just the luckiest sons of bitches the world has ever known? How about we start with you cockblocking me the other night?’
‘Is that so?’
‘You know goddamn well that’s so. Now are you going to apologise, or am I going to have to find some other way to level the score?’
Even in the crowded bar, I don’t like the way Scanlon is looking at me – well, even less than usual. It’s cold and detached, but oddly lascivious. I’ve seen that look before; it’s a man looking to conquer, to claim, to ruin. It sends a shiver down my spine.
My discomfort is enough for Hale to act. He turns around fully, placing himself firmly between the two of us. His meaning is pretty clear. Some lines won’t be crossed. Threats against me – even implied – is one of them.
‘Seems to me your date got the measure of you pretty well,’ he says. ‘If she had half a brain, she wouldn’t even have turned up in the first place. Only person who’s owed an apology is her, from you.’
Scanlon lets out another harsh whoop of mocking laughter and turns to one of his buddies, who were propping up the bar alongside him as he drowned his sorrows. ‘Well, would you just look at that?’ he says. ‘City Boy over here thinks he’s better than me all of a sudden. What, ‘cause you learned how to play a couple of chords and string a rhyme together? Big fuckin’ deal. Just because you traded in your shithole trailer for some city living? Well, let me tell you something’ – I watch as he stands up as tall as his bellyful of liquor allows, and stares Hale straight in the eye – ‘I can smell the garbage on you from here. That’s a stink that don’t ever wash off. You were nothing then, and you’re nothing now, and everyone here knows it. Ain’t that right, folks?’
The whole bar is silent now; no one is willing to let themselves be drawn into this dispute, torn between their Local Boy loyalty and their newfound respect for Hale and his celebrity.
‘Oh yeah?’ he says to the masses. None of them meet his eye. ‘Is that how it is? Well, fuck you all too. Bunch of goddamn sellouts. He ain’t nothin’ and you all know it.’
‘I think,’ Hale says, his voice slow and measured, ‘that you should sit down and get the hell out of my face.’
‘Is that right? And what are you going to do if I don’t, City Boy?’
If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that Scanlon doesn’t want to find out; if there’s a second thing, it’s that Hale is at least considering showing him. Could I blame him, really? I know how satisfying it would be to put a fist into the centre of that smug grin, to have an excuse to settle years of torment. Just say the word, I can almost hear him thinking. Throw the first punch and I’ll show you just what I’m capable of.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even flinch. The two of them stare each other down like a couple of zoo gorillas, each daring the other to escalate things until Willie – the silverback, at least as far as O’Hara’s is concerned – steps up behind the beer taps.
‘I don’t want no trouble, Aaron,’ he says. ‘I mean it. You got a problem with anyone in my bar, you settle it with civil talk. I don’t care who your daddy is, you start fighting and I’ll bounce you out of here faster’n –’
‘Yeah, yeah, I get it,’ Scanlon says. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Hale, not even for a moment. ‘No trouble in your bar.’
Willie gives him the old side-eye for a second or two, as if to drive his point home, but it doesn’t last; there are customers to be served, and even if most of the bar has fallen silent there’s still a line of thirsty drinkers that needs to be attended to. He drifts slowly away to take a new order, casting over the occasional glance to let us know that he’s watching us, and can be back on top of us inside of a country minute.
Having him there gives me a strange sense of relief.
Scanlon, on the other hand, doesn’t seem quite so at ease.
‘So what do you say, big shot?’ he says. ‘Are we gonna take this outside, settle it like men? Just like old times?’
Just like old times? I think. What in the hell kind of old times is Scanlon picturing? The times when it was three against one, four against one? When they pushed him to the brink and hoped he’d snap, just so they had an excuse to beat him half to death? When they knew it didn’t matter what they did to him, because no one would take Hale seriously – and even if they had listened to him, knowing that there was no way they’d get more than a slap on the wrist for their troubles? Yeah, that was really settling it like men. There was a whole heap of honour in that.
So why the hell does Hale seem to be considering it?
I can see that look of determination, the refusal to back down. I know how much it rankles him to have his bravery called into question. In that moment, Scanlon isn’t just Scanlon – he’s Hale’s dad. He’s every bully who ever made his life a misery. He’s every time Eden turned its back on him. But that’s the point – Eden isn’t turning its back on him, not anymore. He’s won. He’s made something of himself. He’s better than they ever thought he’d be, and he’s shown that tonight.
He doesn’t have to fight for it anymore.
Don’t do it, I beg him silently. Don’t do it. You’re better than this. You don’t have anything to prove to him. You don’t –
But Hale is pounding back the end of his beer, and right at that second I swear I could murder him. What the hell is this, a saloon in some crappy late-night western?
‘Come on,’ Hale says, taking my hand gently in his. ‘I think maybe it’s best if we go home.’
Scanlon snorts. ‘Pussy,’ he says.
‘Jesus Christ, Aaron,’ someone from the crowd mutters. ‘Shut the fuck up, would you?’
A low murmur of agreement runs through the bar as we move towards the door, the throngs of people parting in front of us like the Red Sea in front of Moses. The last thing I hear as the cool night air hits us is Scanlon yelling, ‘Who said that? Who said that?’
But it’s over. We’re out. We made it. The night is saved.
‘Thank you,’ I say as I nuzzle into his shoulder. I can still feel the tension in his muscles; his demeanour is relaxed, or what passes for it, but his body is coiled like a spring.
‘For what?’
‘Walking away.’
He shrugs. ‘It was real tempting not to,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t easy. Especially when he started up with you. I could have damn near killed him then.’
‘I know. But you made the right call. Seriously, he’s not worth it. Not now.’
I’d know, I think, and a little bit of bile rises in my throat; I choke it down as best I can. What’s the point in dwelling on past mistakes? They don’t matter anymore. None of it does. The only thing that matters is being with Hale. We can go home, just the two of us. I can order in some takeout, or whip us up something in the kitchen – a nice little thing to keep our energy up for the night, which will be spent in bed together, first in a lovemaking session that will make the Olympics seem positively unathletic and then, once we’ve exhausted our bodies and our imaginations alike, hours spent wrapped in each other’s arms until the sun comes up on my own little slice of paradise.
‘You’re grinning,’ he says.
‘Am I? I hadn’t noticed.’
That’s not even slightly true. If I was smiling any wider, the top of my head would be in danger of falling off.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Hale asks.
‘Oh, trust me,’ I say. ‘It would take a lot more than a pen—’
And then on the wind there’s a voice, a hateful, evil voice, echoing down the parking lot towards us.
Apparently Scanlon isn’t quite finished yet.