Charlie Huston No Dominion
Thats not the surprising thing; the surprising thing is that it didnt shatter when he threw me against it. Shouldnt come as a shock. This place, they went through a few front windows the first year they were open and decided it was more cost-effective to lay out the extra cash for the safety glass. Save them from having to replace it every time theres a brawl in here. Which is pretty regular Id imagine. Any case, Im not bitching. Wasnt for the guy who had the bright idea, Id be on the sidewalk right now, my good leather jacket cut to ribbons and my face sliced up in all kinds of new and interesting ways. But now its breaking, it is most definitely breaking. Im sure about that because my face is jammed up against it. The big question for me is whether this is the kind of safety glass that bursts into thousands of tiny pebbles when it breaks or the kind that turns into shards. Pebbles would be fine. Shards, not so much. The window creaks. Tiny fissures appear in front of my eyes.
OK, time to stop worrying about the glass, time to start worrying about getting this guy off of me. I cant expect any help from the bartenders or the crowd, not after they watched him pound on the bouncer with that pool cue. And I dont see any helpful officers of the law rolling up outside at this point. Not that I have any intention of being here when the cops show up. So, I guess its just me and him. Thats OK, I can go this one alone. Not like its new to me or anything. I just wish he really was on PCP; if it was just PCP hed be pretty easy to deal with. But this? This is gonna take grace and style, maybe even a little tact.
He shoves my face harder into the big front window. People out on the sidewalk flinch as they see my features squashed yet flatter against the glass. The glass creaks again. The fissures grow another millimeter. Hes still screaming, babbling insanity at the top of his lungs, howling so loud I can barely hear Boxcar Willie on the jukebox:
Hes enraged that my face wont just explode through the damn glass the way he wants it to. He rears back, and before he can slam my face forward, Ive slipped to my right, spun, twisted my arm free of his grasp, winced as a clump of hair is torn from the back of my scalp, planted my right foot in the hollow behind his right knee, hammered my elbow into the back of his neck and sent him face first through the window in my place. The sidewalk audience scatters as he hits the pavement. I step through the dagger-edged hole he left behind. Shards it is.
He was spazzing the second he came out of the bathroom.
Before that, I hadnt even noticed him. Why should I? Not like Im working; not like theres any reason I should be doing anything but paying attention to the booze in my glass, the cigarette in my mouth, the pool game in front of me and the girl by my side. Especially the girl. Girl like this, most everyone in the place is paying attention to her. Want to be invisible? Hang out with a girl like Evie. All that red hair, the body that not only wont quit but works weekends and holidays, too. That smile. Shes the kind of girl guys like to look at, but most arent sure how to go about approaching her. Too bad for them. They miss out on the best part, they miss out on how cool she is, how funny, how sharp, how down-to-earth. Anyway, a girl like Evie on your arm and you turn into a shadow, just the lucky fuck taking up space next to the best view in the place.
So a night like this, when its so cold out Evie is wearing her leather pants and that tight old thermal top with the Jack Daniels label silk-screened across the front, a night like this where shes glued to my hip and every guy in the place wishes he was me, is it any surprise I didnt smell him the moment he came through the door?
Most nights I would have picked up his scent right off. Couldnt miss it. After all, he smells just like me, only different. But what with the Early Times Im pouring down my throat and the Luckys Im sucking on and Evie rubbing up against me, I just cant be bothered. Still, he couldnt have been in here all that long. Sooner or later I would
have smelled him no matter how distracted I was. It wouldnt have meant trouble necessarily; we would have eyeballed each other a bit, sniffed each others asses like a couple of big dogs, but there wouldnt have been any trouble, not in here, not where everyone can see us. That shit just doesnt happen. As it was, I was lining up a neat little combo that was gonna let me run out the rest of the table and he came out of the john and started spazzing out.
This wasnt your run-of-the-mill junkie-who-just-shot-up-in-the-can stumbling around. He came out of there like the Tasmanian Devil: spinning, arms flailing, kicking anything that came in range, sending tables and people flying; a full on spaz. A space quickly opened up around him while he whirled and gibbered and foamed at the mouth. The bouncer, a nice enough guy goes by Gears, came over and tried a little sweet talk.