CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Nick

Jesse held up the shot glass holding the two fingers of tequila and waited for me to tap my glass to his. “You laid pipe to Kyle Cassidy’s wife. Right there in that restroom? Whew, son, now ain’t that something.”

“I didn’t know she was Kyle’s wife at the time,” I said, tapping my glass to his before tossing back the tequila. I sighed through the burn and wiped my lips with my fingers. “And yes, she was something.” I held up the empty shot glass to signal the waitress to bring us another round.

“This place sure is fancy,” Jesse said, glancing over his shoulder at the other patrons lined up at The Haven Club’s bar, mostly older men in suits chatting up women in short dresses. The proper couples, the men who actually brought their wives, were seated in the restaurant across the hall. Jesse grinned at me. “You remember that dive bar where we met all those years ago, down on Third? What was the name of that place? Ed’s or Ted’s?”

“Fred’s,” I said, sipping a cold beer to chase down the tequila. “It burned down about five years ago, I think.”

“Yeah, a real shithole, that place was,” Jesse said, smiling at the memory. “My kind of place, though. This place makes me want to hold out my pinky finger when I take a drink.” He nodded at the door behind me that had a plaque with the word RESTROOMS mounted to it. “Do they have a guy in there that holds your cock when you take a piss? Or hands you a towel to clean yourself off after you fuck a woman?”

“No, but I’m sure that could be arranged.” He laughed, which made me laugh, even though I didn’t really feel like laughing. That was why I had forced Jesse to come out for a drink on Friday night. The old man had a way of always making me smile.

We were sitting in the same booth I’d sat in with Fiona a week before. It had been two days since I’d seen her at the funeral. I hadn’t heard from her and didn’t expect to. It was fun while it lasted. Though I had to admit, it ate at my soul that she shared a bed with Kyle Cassidy for years, and that my mouth and my cock had been in a pussy that motherfucker had been in before. The thought made me want to sandblast my tongue.

“Maybe she was telling you the truth,” Jesse said as the waitress set two more shots and two more bottles of beer on the table. Jesse thanked her like a gentleman and turned to watch her walk away. Even though he was in his sixties, Jesse was as much of a pussy hound as I was, and probably got more pussy because he wasn’t as picky. To hear him tell it he’d worked his ways through all the old widows at the downtown PB church he attended and was now working his way through their daughters. See why he makes me smile?

I picked up the beer and took a sip. “Telling me the truth about what?”

“Maybe she is divorcing him, maybe they were split up,” Jesse said with a shrug. He eyed at me through the candlelit darkness. “Would that make a difference?”

“She lied to me, Jesse,” I said, sounding like a petulant child. I couldn’t help it. I was pissed. And since I couldn’t fight anymore whining seemed to be my only method of venting.

“Hell son, all women lie,” Jesse said with a dismissive wave. “All men lie, too. It’s what we do. God gave us free will so we could lie ourselves into a corner, then figure a way out. It builds character.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “So, I’ll ask you again, if she was divorced and not still married to that cocksucker, would it have made a difference?”

“Guess we’ll never know,” I said with a sigh. I took the shot glass between my hands and rolled it around for a moment, then picked it up and shot the tequila down my throat. Wiping my mouth on the back of my hand, I shook my head. “Besides, I don’t want Kyle Cassidy’s tainted leftover pussy.”

Jesse’s white eyebrows knitted at the center. “Oh, come on now. Don’t you think that’s pretty harsh?”

“No, I think it’s pretty accurate.”

“Now you’re just being a dumb ass,” Jesse said, shaking his head. He wagged a meaty finger at me. “You can’t sit there and tell me you didn’t enjoy being with her. Monday morning, before you found out who she was, you were as excited as I’d ever seen you over a woman. I could tell she wasn’t just another piece of pussy. This woman was different. You might deny it now, but you would be lying to yourself and to me.”

I brought the bottle to my lips and took a long drink. Then I saw Kyle and Danny O’Shit walk in the door. My temperature immediately went up twenty degrees. I felt my face flush in anger. My nostrils flared to breathe. My fingers tightened around the shot glass.

Jesse frowned at me, then followed my gaze. “Well, speak of the cocksucking devil and up he pops.” He looked back at me with a knowing look in his dark eyes. He reached across the table and put a hand on my arm. “Easy boy. We don’t need trouble. Let’s don’t start something we can’t finish.”

Jesse wasn’t a coward. To the contrary, I’d seen him take on men half his age and twice his size and still walk away with just bruised knuckles. He was thinking of me and my tinderbox of a brain. Every day I woke up with that doctor’s words echoing in my head.

“One good punch to the head could end your life, Mr. Patron. Or at least render you braindead.” Living within such limits was usually easy to do, except when I was around Kyle and Danny O.

My hands were rolled into tight fists on the table as I watched them walk down the bar shaking hands and patting backs. Kyle acted like he owned the fucking place. Danny O followed a step behind with his arms over his chest like he was guarding the fucking president. He spotted me watching them and bumped Kyle with an elbow.

“That motherfucker still looks like a gorilla in a suit,” Jesse said. He tapped his knuckles on the table to get my attention. “I’m telling you, don’t go starting any shit. Your skull ain’t as thick as it used to be.”

“I’m not starting shit,” I said. I shot back the tequila and chased it with the beer. My eyes fixed on Danny O’s leering face. “If he hadn’t hit me with that cheap shot, do you think I would have beat Danny O?”

Jesse huffed. “Fuck yes. You could have beat everybody. But that was a long time ago.”

“I’m still in shape,” I said. “I hit the gym hard every day.”

“That’s all you need to be hitting.” Jesse reached across the table and put his hand on my arm again and gave it a firm shake. “Boy, what are you thinking?”

Before I could answer, Kyle was standing next to the table holding two shots of tequila. He set the shots on the table and put his hands behind his back. He rocked happily on the balls of his feet. Danny O was behind him, still with the smirk on his face.

Kyle said, “The bartender said you needed another shot, Nick. This one’s on me.” He glanced at Jesse. “Jesse, how you doing?”

“Fine,” Jesse said, pushing the shot glass toward the edge of the table. “But we buy our own drinks.”

Kyle glanced over his shoulder at Danny, then planted his palms on the table and cocked his head my way. “Just wanted to let you know, Nick, that Fiona and I are working things out. She has apologized profusely for her grievous mistake and is begging me to come back home.”

“Good for you,” I said, staring into his eyes. “Glad things worked out.”

“Well, they are being worked out,” Kyle said. “As soon as we can figure out a way to get your stench off her cunt, I might let her come back home.”

“Don’t push your luck, boy,” Jesse said.

“Fuck you, old man,” Danny O growled.

Kyle grinned and kept looking at me. “Also, I wanted to let you know that if you have any thoughts of ever booking your fucking MMA events in my city again you had better be prepared to pay a premium price.”

“It’s not your city, Kyle,” I said. My hands were in my lap, clenched so tightly into fists that my knuckles were starting to ache.

“No, but I do hold the booking rights to the major venues, so, yeah.” He pushed off from the table and folded his arms over his chest. “Just letting you know. Be prepared to pay through the nose, you fucking piece of shit.”

I looked up at him with a smile that seemed to lessen his bravado considerably. I said, “Do you know that when I was fucking your wife, she told me that my cock was the first real cock she’d ever had inside her? She said fucking you was like trying to fuck a twelve-year-old boy.”

“That’s bullshit,” Kyle said. Danny O took a step closer. Kyle put out his hand to keep him back.

“She also told me that my cock was the first one she had ever had the pleasure of deep throating. She said sucking on your cock was like sucking…” I looked at Jesse with my thumb and forefinger crooked into a U. “What do you call those little pickles?”

“Gherkins? Midgets?” Jesse somehow managed to maintain a straight face.

“Midgets, that’s it,” I said, holding up my fingers to Kyle. “She said your cock reminded her of a midget pickle.” I frowned at him. “She said your cock was barely long enough to piss through, much less satisfy a woman. She just kept going on and on about how she loved my big cock in her mouth.”

“Okay, motherfucker, that’s it,” Kyle snapped, though he made no move toward me. Danny O was standing behind him, seething. His ruddy face was a deep red. His shoulder was twitching and he was flexing his fingers at his side.

“Outside, motherfucker,” Danny O snarled. “Now.”

Kyle hesitated for a moment, as if the thought of a good old-fashioned brawl in the alley was beneath him, even though we all knew he wouldn’t be the one fighting.

“Don’t do it,” Jesse said.

“Don’t worry,” I said. I started to slide out of the booth, but paused to look up at Kyle. “Let’s make a wager.”

Kyle narrowed his eyes at me. “What kind of wager?”

“If I knock out O’Shit, you will wave all your bullshit gratuity fees from now on. We do business like it’s supposed to be done by the city contract. No extortion, no inflated prices, no fucking gratuities.”

“And if Danny knocks you out?” Kyle held his breath and arched his eyebrows at me. “What do I get?”

“If he knocks me out, we pay double your normal rate from now on.”

“Double?” Kyle hummed and glanced at Danny.

“Do it, boss,” Danny said, snorting like a bull. He reminded me of one of those TV wrestlers. “I’m gonna put this motherfucker in the ground.”

Kyle turned back to me and held out his hand. “Mr. Patron, we have a bet.” I reached up to shake his hand.

“Good,” I said, sliding out of the booth. I took off my jacket and handed it to Jesse. “Hold this for a second.”

“Be careful,” Jesse said quietly.

Kyle was still standing between me and Danny O. I suppose he expected me to lead them outside for a formal round of fisticuffs in the alley. Fuck that. Danny O didn’t fight fair, so why should I?

Before Kyle could blink, I hammered my fist into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him and bending him over double. When Danny O instinctively lurched forward to keep his boss from falling, I smashed my right fist into his nose as hard as it would go. The sound of bones cracking filled the air and blood gushed from Danny’s nose. Kyle went down on the floor and Jesse casually planted a foot over Kyle’s throat, pinning him to the ground. Danny O bobbed like a buoy, stunned by the blow to his nose. He tried to straighten himself, but his knees were like jelly. He tried to shake off the force of the blow, but it was no use. His nose was flat against his face. His eyes were flooded with tears. Blood ran from his nose like a broken levee.

I grabbed his lapels and jerked him toward me.

“I want to thank you for that cheap shot that ended my career,” I said, staring into his glassy eyes. “You made me one rich motherfucker. And now you spend your days with your nose so far up Kyle Cassidy’s ass that you can’t breathe. Well, I don’t think your nose is going to work anymore, Danny boy. And neither are your balls.”

“Fuck… you…”

I smiled and drove my knee up hard into his nuts. His eyes bugged out and the air gushed out of his lungs. He bent over double and grabbed his balls. I put one hand on the back of his collar and the other on his belt, then flung him head first through the restroom door. He knocked the door off its hinges and landed in the hallway, curled up in a tight ball, crying and moaning like a little baby.

Kyle was still on the floor with Jesse’s foot on his neck. Jesse pulled back his foot when I gave him a nod. The rest of the bar patrons sat frozen on their bar stools. I knelt and pulled Kyle up by this tie. His hands struggled at his throat as the tie tightened around his neck. His face flamed a deep red.

I said, “Now, you listen to me, you piece of shit cocksucker. There will be no more gratuity fees, do you understand?” His tongue was poking out of his mouth. He was gagging. He gave his head a frantic shake. I put my nose close to his. “Tell me the truth. Were you and Fiona split up when we were together?”

“Fuck… you…”

“You’re about twenty seconds away from passing out,” I said casually looking at my watch. “I’m going to ask you again. Were you and Fiona split up when we were together?”

“Yes… fuck you… yes.”

“And are you and Fiona getting back together?”

His fingers clutched at my hand gripping the tie. His face was crimson, bathed in sweat. He stuttered the words. “No… she… won’t even… fucking… talk to me.”

I let go of his tie and he fell back onto the floor, grabbing at his throat and coughing. He’d be fine. The worst of the damage was to his ego. And to his trained gorilla.

Jesse held out my jacket and I put it on.

He said, “I assume you’re going to see her?”

I put my hand on his shoulder and smiled. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, sir. That’s exactly what I would do.”