Coronado - Dennis Lehane [60]
BOBBY New?
GINA New?
BOBBY Here. You’re new here.
GINA Um, yeah. Yeah. Yes, I am.
[She places his drinks on the table.]
BOBBY What happened to V?
GINA V?
BOBBY Videlia. She was the waitress here for, like, centuries.
GINA Oh, she met a man. You know. True love. Moved all the way to Coronado, way I hear it. He’s a musician.
BOBBY Big music town, Coronado? I hadn’t heard.
GINA You know how it is. It’s all big music if you think you can play.
[BOBBY throws back his shot.]
BOBBY And if you can’t?
GINA You find out, don’t you? One way or the other.
[BOBBY nods. He smiles at her. She smiles back. A curious, comfortably awkward beat.]
GINA Well, I should…
BOBBY Sure. You go ahead, um…
GINA Gina.
BOBBY [Offers his hand.] Bobby.
GINA [Shakes his hand.] Nice to meet you, Bobby.
BOBBY The same, Gina.
[GINA has a little trouble letting go of his hand, but eventually she does.]
BOBBY And, hey, Gina?
GINA Yeah?
BOBBY I’m thirsty as all hell tonight. Fact, I’m fixing to howl at the moon. So keep ’em coming, yeah?
[GINA smiles a broken smile.]
GINA You bet, sweetie. But you promise me something?
BOBBY Sure.
GINA You let ol’ Gina tell you when you’ve had enough. Okay? It’s been raining nickels out there the last half hour. You hear it?
BOBBY I hear it.
GINA And the weatherman says it’s going to rain all night. The roads get slick. Real slick. And I want you getting home.
BOBBY Okay.
[She nods and he nods back and she walks off into the darkness. BOBBY spins his empty shot glass as the rain clatters on the roof.
A song comes on the jukebox and BOBBY watches a YOUNG WOMAN appear and start to sway to the beat. A MAN comes up behind her, and she leans back into him. For a few moments, it’s purely sexual, and then she turns in his arms and looks straight in his eyes and mouths the song’s refrain to him, and he looks back at her, helpless and emboldened and in love.
Lights fade on the rest of the bar.
BOBBY watches them with a mixture of enjoyment and envy and heartbreak. When it gets to be too much, he turns away. He spins his empty shot glass again. He looks back at them and gives it all a small, sad smile. He turns back to the table, spins the shot glass.
Lights down on BOBBY.
Only the MAN and YOUNG WOMAN are lit as they dance. They can’t take their eyes off each other.
Lights down on the MAN and YOUNG WOMAN.
The song ends abruptly.
The rain takes over, clattering…
…and faintly, the sound of BOBBY spinning that shot glass.
Lights out.]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DENNIS LEHANE is the author of A Drink Before the War, which won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; and the New York Times bestsellers Mystic River and Shutter Island. A native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, he lives in the Boston area.
www.denislehane.com
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ALSO BY DENNIS LEHANE
A Drink Before the War
Darkness, Take My Hand
Sacred
Gone, Baby, Gone
Prayers for Rain
Mystic River
Shutter Island
CREDITS
Front jacket photograph by Randy Olson/Getty Images
COPYRIGHT
“ICU” originally appeared in the Beloit Fiction Journal, Spring 2004, vol. 17. “Gone Down to Corpus” originally appeared in The Mighty Johns, edited by Otto Penzler, published by New Millennium Press (July 2002). “Running Out of Dog” originally appeared in Murder and Obsession, 1999. “Until Gwen” appeared in The Atlantic, June 2004, and was adapted for the stage as Coronado in November 2005.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.