Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [70]
“You cut that girl’s hair and I’ll fucking knock your teeth out,” I say. “Bring me a screwdriver and I’ll get it done right.”
But the bartender isn’t having that, so I slap the scissors out of his fat hand, and then I’m in a headlock and the bouncer and the bartender are dragging me out. They’re sorry they let me go out on the sidewalk, though, because now the bartender needs some dental work, as promised.
So then we hit Mary’s, where I wash my bloody knuckles in the sink while Manny looks at his crushed face in the mirror. The bathrooms at Mary’s are tiny and filthy, post–lap dance come stains on the wall next to the urinal.
“Sometimes I think I should’ve gone ahead and died,” Manny says, tracing the scar line up around his eye.
“You know what the smell of blood does to me,” I say. “Right now I could kill you with one punch.”
He turns away from the mirror and looks at me. “You’d do that for me?” I’m surprised to see that he’s serious.
“Come on, man,” I say. “You don’t really want to die.”
His face turns disappointed. “I’m supposed to die so I can come back as an angel.” Then he walks out. Like I said, something’s not right with him.
What happens next is better than Christmas morning, or winning the lottery, or the resurrection of Jesus, or any of that miraculous shit. I finish washing my knuckles, and in through the swinging door comes that sketchy fucker from Burnside, carrying a bent spoon, eyes all red.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I say, grinning. This isn’t something I usually say, but using the word “fancy” here in this bathroom strikes me as fucking hilarious.
It takes a few seconds for him to recognize me, and then I can see the fear in his eyes. I smack the spoon out of his hand. He goes down on the piss-sticky floor, crawling around like a dog, looking for it.
“Just give me a couple minutes,” he says. “Just let me take care of something and then we can—”
I kick him straight in the mouth.
I thought that would do the trick, but then he’s up and on me, and stronger than I thought, or not stronger but more desperate maybe. I’m fighting for fun, for the girl; he’s fighting for his life, for his next fix. But still, I’m not the right person to fuck with, not ever. I bear hug him, crack his forehead open with a head butt, then break the bathroom door open with his body and we spill out into the bar, me on top the entire time. Blood: there’s a lot of it. I think Manny even got a few shots in, or maybe it was Manny who pulled me off him, it’s hard to remember.
12) Manny figures it might not be the best idea for me to sleep at Burnside, but I don’t give a fuck. Right now this place belongs to me.
Sketchy and the girl are nowhere to be found. My best guess is the hospital. I sleep sound, until there’s another knock on my van.
The girl again.
She looks scared. A fresh purple bruise under her left eye.
“Is he okay?” I ask, yawning.
“No, he’s not fucking okay,” she says, climbing into the van. She smells like sweat again, and like something burning. Incense, maybe. Or charcoal.
“I just gave him a friendly beat down. He got what he deserved.”
“It’s not what you did,” she says. “It’s something else.”
“What, the bouncers rough him up after I finished?”
She looks around nervously. “You have any more beers?”
I reach back into the cooler and grab a couple. When I turn around she kisses me hard, and I can feel that she already has her shirt half off. The way she smells does something to me, like the smell of blood does something to me. But this is different. She smells like the ocean and like fire, and the way she’s all over me and hungry is like being out on a big day in Hawaii, when you bail hard and get tumbled all over the fuck-ing place, held under a thousand gallons of seawater, churned around like a dirty sock in a washing machine. Then you finally come up for air and you know you’re probably not going to drown and it feels so good to