Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [119]
She stands in front of the cook holding clasped hands to her breasts. Her dark hair is streaked with gray. Eyeliner runs down her cheeks. “Please, please, please.” She is in a white blouse and black skirt, an apron around her waist and hips, and her legs are in black stockings, her waitress shoes white like Sam’s mother’s. “Please.” She keeps shaking her head, and her lower lip trembles and why is she so scared? The question stops everything, the wind dying to nothing, no more sound coming out of me. I want to say something to her, I want to calm her down, but when I step forward she steps back, her hands tight fists against her throat.
Is she afraid of me? How can she be afraid of me?
“Time to go.”
Vinny’s voice, no others. The only sound is the sizzle of bacon, these men and women watching us from the counter and from the booths, faces I now turn away from. We walk past the kid curled in a ball. We step over the big one who has not moved. Is he gone? The girls are outside already. They stand together under the halogen haze of the security lights, their breaths small clouds in the air, and Vinny and Sam and I are pushing open the first doors, then the second, the restaurant behind us so very crowded, and so very quiet.
WE SHOULD’VE gone straight to Sam’s Duster. We should’ve all climbed in and driven to the hospital for Sam and his chin. We could have gone to Vinny’s then for coffee and omelets, the sun rising over the tree line and frozen lake, but instead we took our time out in the parking lot. Maybe Theresa and Liz wanted a cigarette first, or maybe we were waiting for one of those shitheads to stagger outside. I felt weak and empty, my knuckles starting to burn. Then two things happened at once: two police cruisers pulled one after the other into the lot, their blue lights flashing, and like dark ghosts, the three we’d left behind drifted out of Sambo’s.
But it couldn’t be them, could it? Five minutes ago all three lay on the floor, out, or close to it, especially the big one, and how could he be standing there with his blood-streaked face looking at us in the flashing blue of real police lights?
There were cops’ voices in the air. Vinny stepped over and flashed his Bradford security badge and started telling our story. I was relieved the big one wasn’t dead. It was good I hadn’t killed him or anyone, but I was also disappointed they were already well enough to be walking, and this weak emptiness in my arms and legs had to go away because Liz said something to the kid who’d pulled the knife and out of his face came, “Fuck you, you fuckin’ cunt.” And Vinny was halfway to him before I even moved, both cops tackling him, and now it was close to sunup and the five of us were at the Haverhill police station waiting for Sam’s father.
After our arrests at the beach, it’s the one thing he insisted Sam do if he ever got into trouble again: call him. Sam gave his name to the lieutenant on duty and asked if he could use his desk phone. “You the inspector’s son? Sure, be my guest. Give him a call.” He sat back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. He wasn’t the only friendly one. The two cops who arrested Vinny offered us coffee, and one of them kept smiling and shaking his head, “You guys couldn’t’ve picked a better trio to beat on. Believe me, those three are the lowest