Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [58]
It was time to go to Jenny’s.
On his drive up the Berlin Turnpike, into the south end of Hartford, thoughts about his driveway encounter with Christine continued to filter through his mind.
Yes, he had made a mistake in accusing Christine of infidelity.
Yes, he had told a widower to go home to his dead wife.
Yes, he had jumped to conclusions and lost his temper like never before, and in front of a stranger and his infant daughter, no less.
Yes, he had cursed like a sailor for all the neighbors to hear. But questions still remained. Why was Christine driving around with Thick-Neck Phil in the first place? Why was the kid’s playpen set up in their bedroom? How did Philip become Phil and Christine become Chrissy? Though he had admittedly made a spectacle of himself, Christine had never really answered any of his questions.
Most pressing, was Thick-Neck Phil still in the company of Christine? Was he inside their house? If so, what were they doing right now?
Milo brought his car to a halt outside of Jenny’s and spent several minutes behind the wheel, trying to clear his mind of these thoughts and compose himself. He took several deep breaths and tried to relax his hands and face. He closed his eyes and turned his neck and head in circles, working out the kinks. When he felt his nerves were as calm as they could be considering the circumstances, he went inside. As many times as he had done this before, and the number was probably in the hundreds, he was still a little nervous every time he took the stage.
Jenny’s was a bar on Brainard Road in Hartford. Small, dim, and adjacent to a movie theater, the bar was a bit of a dive that catered to pilots and mechanics who used the small airport at the end of the road, as well as the after-movie crowd. The food was good, the restrooms clean, and the atmosphere friendly. The bar also had its share of regulars, though Milo did not include himself in this group.
He had chosen the bar for two reasons. First, the owner, Jenny Glover, a busty blond pushing forty but trying desperately to cling to her twenties, was almost always working, and she liked Milo. She probably found him to be a little odd, but he was always polite and made a point of buying a beer before a performance and chasing it with a couple of Cokes afterward. The regulars liked Milo as well. Probably found him equally strange, but men and women who spent enough time in a bar to assume ownership of a stool were likely to be less than normal as well.
More important, the bar was also equipped for karaoke, and though Thursdays and Fridays were Jenny’s advertised karaoke nights, she left the system set up throughout the week and allowed customers to use it from time to time if the desire to sing grabbed hold of someone.
“How’s it cooking, Milo?” a large man with an Italian accent shouted as Milo passed through the doors and made his way inside. Several leather-backed stools surrounded a horseshoe-shaped bar, which was attached to a fairly large, rectangular stage on the open end.
“Just fine, Carmine,” Milo said, commandeering a stool close to the stage. “How about you?”
“My foot’s still giving me hell, but as long as I sit here and drink, it keeps its damn mouth shut. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I know. But you really should see a doctor.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You sound like my wife. I already got one of those and don’t need another, thank you very much. Unless you’re offering, Jenny?”
“Forget it, old man,” the blond behind the bar said, tossing a towel in his direction. She was dressed in a yellow tank top and jean shorts, and she had several tattoos covering her shoulders and back, including a large one across the back of her neck—Fred written in red ink. Milo had yet to find the courage to ask her about that one.
“You gonna belt out a good one, Milo?” asked a pear-shaped man, catching Milo’s eye from across the bar. From the neck up, the man, an airplane mechanic and a Jenny’s regular, looked as if he might be in decent shape,