Goose in the Pond - Earlene Fowler [114]
As our breathing slowed back to normal I lay with my cheek pressed against his neck, feeling the hard pulse of his heart. After a few minutes he pushed me away, standing up to slip on his Levi’s. He immediately reached for the bottle, drinking long, without taking a breath, his throat a small moving animal in the moonlight.
Anger and humiliation rose up in me, bright and hot as a fever. Anger at his stubbornness, his stupid pride, and for turning to the one thing that held such horrible memories for me. And humiliation for thinking I had any kind of power to keep him from it. “That won’t solve anything,” I said bitterly, buttoning my shirt.
He shrugged. “My business.”
“As long as we’re married, it’s my business, too.”
He turned away and lifted the bottle again. I stared at the tattoo on his bare upper back of the snarling marine-corps bulldog. The tattoo I’d traced so many times with my fingers and my lips. He turned back to me.
“The only business I’m interested in is how quickly I can finish this bottle. So unless you want to stay and watch, I suggest you run along home.”
I grabbed my purse and walked over to him, so angry I could barely say the words. “Give me your car keys.”
Surprise, then disbelief darkened his face. “What?”
“You heard me.” I held out my hand.
“You’re kidding.”
I gritted my back teeth and spoke very slowly. “Listen up good, Chief Ortiz, ’cause I’m only going to say this once. I am not ever going to bury another husband because of that.” I pointed to the bottle in his hand. “Not if I can help it.”
His harsh laugh reverberated across the empty room. “Believe me, sweetheart, I’ve seen more than my share of bodies scraped up off the asphalt. Unlike your dear, departed Jack, I’m not that stupid.”
I flinched as if physically struck, but continued to hold out my hand, hoping he was too drunk to notice its trembling.
He let out an angry breath, dug into his pocket, and tossed the keys at me.
“One more thing.”
He waited.
“Give me your gun. I know you keep one in your car.”
His voice was cold. “No one takes my gun.”
“Give me your gun.”
“No.”
I took a deep breath. “If you don’t give it to me, I will call Jim Cleary and tell him you are drunk and—”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
He let out a long string of Spanish words, most of them too garbled for me to understand. I stood with my arms at my side, refusing to budge. He stared at me a long moment, then went over to the fireplace, his bare feet making a slurring sound across the carpet. He took his 9mm from where it lay on the floor and shoved it into my hands.
“Now get out,” he said.
“With pleasure. Enjoy your whiskey.”
Clutching the heavy pistol to my chest, I opened the front door, feeling like someone had sliced my heart in half with a razor blade. But a faint surge of hope blossomed when the last thing I heard before the oak door slammed behind me was the unmistakable sound of glass shattering against brick.
14
IT WAS PAST midnight when I finally stopped driving and ended up where I always ran when I had nowhere else to go.
The comforting thing about Liddie’s Café was that it never changed. At least not for the thirty some-odd years I can remember. It had the same red leatherette six-person booths, the same black-and-white photographs of lambs and steers from the Junior Livestock Auction, the same speckled commercial-grade carpeting, the same cigarette-scarred Formica tables, and the same glass case in front containing faded packages of Juicy Fruit gum, Red Man chewing tobacco, rum Life Savers, and ratty old postcards showing Liddie’s famous neon coffee-cup sign: OPEN 25 HOURS—GOOD FOOD.
I grew up having breakfast there every Saturday morning. Daddy and the other local ranchers always