Stuart Ste. Croix - Exercise #2

Bar Fights, Trashed Cars, and Donovan She took a swing at him. Pulled her arm back and swung hard, aiming for his face. She felt her knuckles graze the stubble on his chin, rough like the side of a match box. Sandpaper. “Goddamn sonnavabitch,” she hissed, lifting her arm again. “You fuckin’ whore,” he laughed. “You stupid cunt suckin’ whore. That almost hurt.” She could feel the weight of her arm suspended in the air and her shaking hand curled into a ball, nails digging into the palm. Stinging knuckles. She wanted to hit him again, but hesitated. He leaned back and wobbled. His right arm extended out, a bottle of beer dangling from his finger tips. Behind him the bartender reached for the phone. “You don’t want to go toe to toe with me, little lady. I’m just ‘bout drunk enough to take you over my knee right here and now.” He took a swig of his beer and smiled. “Careful, she seems like the type to take you up on that,” someone called out. The voice came from a table behind him. It was covered in bottles. Overfilled ashtrays. He turned and looked at them briefly, then back to her. “That right? You like it rough? I can give it to you rough.” “You fuckin’…” she could feel the spit coming from her lips as she swung again, this time missing completely. Her friends looked on in disbelief, trying to piece together what had just happened. The chain of events. The missing puzzle piece. She looked at them briefly, wondering why they weren’t doing anything, but as she turned around all she saw were his calloused hands moving forward. They hit her hard in the shoulders. Real hard, and sent her back into the table where her friends were sitting. As she and the table fell to the floor, she watched as her friends slid their chairs back. She noticed how strange they looked upside down and felt the broken glass cut into her elbows and lower back, a Mojito spilling into her hair, her head against the hard floor. There was a flash of white light and a pain that almost seemed pleasurable. Numb and playful. She heard a commotion, but couldn’t see what was happening with the tipped table in her way. There was a hand on her forehead. A cool hand. Susan’s hand. But she didn’t look up. She lay there and gagged at the smell of the ash covered floor. A few minutes later the police arrived. They asked a lot of questions, made sure she was alright. They asked her if she wanted to press charges, gave her a card, told her to call in the morning. She shook her head and nodded. It hurt like hell to speak. They told Susan to take her to the hospital, that she might have a concussion. They talked to her friends, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She thought she heard Matt say something about ape shit, but that couldn’t be right. Maybe. Who knows? If anyone would say that, it would be Matt, she thought. Susan offered to take her to the hospital, but she didn’t want to go. “I’ll be fine.” “You should go, just let them check.” “Fine, I’ll go. But I want Amy to take me.” Susan looked hurt. Stung. “Why Amy? I can take you, it’s no problem.” She glared at Susan and snorted out her nose. The snort of a horse. “You should have done something, rather than just sittin’ there staring like some dumb ass retard.” “You’re mad at me?” Susan said, lifting a hand to her chest. “Amy didn’t do anything either, why are you mad at me?” “Amy’s small, she couldn’t do nothin’if she wanted. But you, you’re a fat assed bitch who should’ve done something, ‘stead of sitting with your cold hands up your hole. You, Matt, and Richie can go to hell for all I care.” Susan shook her head and watched her and Amy leave. Outside the cruiser’s lights were still flashing. The man was cuffed in the back seat and glared as they walked by. The officers were talking to the bartender now. He moved his hands, reenacting the event. Susan lit a cigarette and walked out. She felt her cheeks burn. She was pissed. Ashamed. As she passed by the cruiser, she stopped. The man looked up and snarled. His face looked hard like wood or tanned stone. She gathered all the mucus she could from her nose and throat and spit against the glass. It ran down in a stream of brown and olive green and the man just sat there, gritting his teeth. “But I didn’t do anything. I just sat there with my cold hands up my ass,” Susan said to her husband. “You don’t have cold hands,” he said. “That’s not the point. This dick hit her, gave her a concussion and I just sat there. What kind of friend am I?” It was past two o’clock and she could tell that he just wanted to go to sleep. She pressed her fingers against his back, felt his spine in the dark. He shivered and pulled away from her, to the other side of the bed. “Well what did she do? She must of done something to piss this guy off.” “Nothin’, I think. At least nothin’ I can think of. I’m not sure. It just happened so fast. One minute she’s going to the bar to order a drink and the next she’s throwing punches.” He moaned and rolled over to face her. “You were shocked, that’s normal. Besides, what were you suppose to do, kick his ass? Forget about it. I’m sure she will too, if she was sober enough to even remember it.” Susan turned on her back and stared at the ceiling. There was a crack running across it, from one wall to the other. In the dim light she could see where the paint was peeling. It was muddy brown. A bank-less river. She waited for her husband to fall asleep and got out of bed, pulled the clothes she had been wearing from the hamper and got dressed in the bathroom. A few minutes later she was in the car, driving back towards the bar. There were only two cars in the parking lot. One was an old Toyota Corolla, the other a brand new Chevy pickup. Susan knew that one of them had to have been his car, but wasn’t sure which one. She couldn’t picture him crunched into a tiny Toyota, but he didn’t seem like the type to be driving around in a new truck. She pulled in between them, got out and walked over to the Toyota. The floor was littered with cigarette butts and the backseat was filled with boxes and empty fast food bags. There was a Donovan CD on the passenger seat. Donovan? Who the fuck listens to Donovan, she thought and decided that this couldn’t be the car. She walked over to the truck and went up onto her tiptoes. The glass was tinted and hard to see through. It looked clean inside, a gym bag on the back seat and a Yankees baseball cap hanging from the driver’s side visor. She took her keys from her pocket and began to scratch at the paint. Slow at first and then faster. Harder. Deeper. She moved along the door and then down the side. When she ran out of breath, she picked up a piece of the cracked yellow curb and threw it against the windshield. The glass splintered and spread out like a spider’s web. Magnified dendrites. She took it and threw it again and again, moving from window to window. She was panting hard and her arms felt weak. Her hands were cracked and bleeding, warm and stiff. She threw the chunk of curb to the ground and began to walk back to her car. Before she got in she stopped and looked at the Toyota. She tried once more to imagine him behind the wheel, listening to Donovan while folded in half like a second rate circus clown. Fuck it, she thought and went back for the crumbling piece of concrete.