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CHAPTER 19, EXCERPT 4
Ten minutes later she walked in with her eyes pointing at the floor and her upper lip kind of overlapping the lower one in the closest thing she could get to a stern look, cute as she was. She had on white Capri pants and a silky red blouse and her hair was golden and perfect. Made Frank wonder if she already had a new man, the way she was glowing with the sheen of the one that got away.
They always look fantastic when they’re leaving you.
“C’mon in, Nik,” Frank said as she brushed passed him. She was halfway to the living room before she turned around and faced him. He could feel it coming, the look she was giving him painful to see. “We gonna have our serious talk now?” Frank asked, immediately regretting it when she made a face like a mother running out of patience with a difficult child. A face that Frank had seen many times before from a variety of sources.
“Can’t you ever be serious, Frank?” Nikki said. “Can’t you just sit down and listen to me?”
“Sure I can, Nik. What’s on your mind? You look gorgeous, tonight, by the way.” Her face scrunched up and turned red and she looked like she was biting down on something.
“Don’t start with that, Frank. Have you been smoking pot? I can smell it in here.”
“A little. Keith brought me a get-well bud.”
“You and Waverly again. No wonder you can’t be serious. You think getting stoned with a concussion is a good idea?”
“Made me feel better,” he said, sinking down into the worn couch and gazing up at Nikki standing there defiant in the middle of the room, hands on her hips like she was staring down a hoodoo. And maybe she was. “Is that what this is about? My choice of companions and my use of controlled substances?”
“Indirectly, Frank. Try to listen without cracking wise if you possibly can. What we need to discuss is your condition last Saturday morning.”
“That’s old news, Nik. You know I got attacked, that someone poleaxed me.”
“It’s about how you smelled, Frank.”
“I know. I stunk. Booze, puke and blood, the bartenders holy trinity.”
“More than that, Frank. There was more.”
“Well, someone pissed on me, Nik. Whoever knocked me out, probably. Didn’t I tell you that before?”
“Several times, Frank, several times. But there was more to your olfactory aura than urine and vomit.”
“I’m sure I needed a bath. It was a long night.”
“I can see you’re not gonna own up. You just can’t see yourself, can you? You stunk like another woman, Frank. Some other woman’s pussy, to be exact. Cheap perfume, cheap booze and cheap pussy— that’s your holy trinity. And you had white powder in your nostrils along with the blood. If I hadn’t had you clean your nose on the way to the hospital you’d have walked in there with cocaine on you. That kind of behavior is just totally unacceptable to me, Frank, and I’m sorry, but I think we need to go our separate ways.”
“No need to be sorry, Nik. I agree that’s what’s best for you. So now you can fuck Jimmy Carl like you always wanted to.”
Jesus, why did he say that? Didn’t mean to, it just came out. His mind just spewed things out these days like the censor was on vacation.
Nikki got rigid as a lamppost. “Oh, please,” she said, her face turning shades of crimson. “Jimmy Carl? Is that the best you can do? You really have fallen, Frank. I didn’t expect this kind of shit from you.”
“I’m sorry, really I am. I didn’t mean to say that. Stuff just comes out sometimes and I don’t know where it comes from. It’s like someone else is saying it.”
“It’s your subconscious, Frank. Jimmy Carl? Is that how you think of me? First chance I get I’m going to jump in the sack with that sleaze? God. I think I’ve seriously overestimated you.”
“More than likely you did, Nik. It’s my Irish charm. But once that wears off you see the troll underneath. It’s a Ford-family thing.”
“Here we go with the self-pitying, cursed family nonsense. When are you going to grow up and lose the self-defeating attitude?”
College girl giving the old man behavioral advice. Jesus.
“That’s easy for you to say coming from your entitled background, Nicole. You have no idea what it was like growing up in my house. You never had to go without. Never had to wonder where your dad was. Only hardship you had was growing up in a cloud of religious delusion. And you’re still trying to figure out who you really are, so don’t go all self-righteous on me. Truth be told, I always suspected that I was just another one of your sociology experiments. Let’s call it, Excursion to the wrong side of the tracks.”
“I don’t believe this—I don’t believe you. But you have reminded me that I need to get back home and work on my thesis. My parents want me to come down to Wisconsin to spend the summer at the cottage with them and I wasn’t going to go at first, but I’ve changed my mind. Now I see that a change of scenery is the best thing for me. And if I finish the thesis before I leave Zenith, I can be out looking for a job by fall.”
“So how’s the great work coming along?”
Her lips wrinkled and she shot him a narrow-eyed, questioning glance. “Nearly done,” she said. “Just a couple more things to put in before the final draft.” Her body was less rigid now and the muscles in her face had relaxed into a slightly-bewildered-but-I’m-gonna-keep-pushing-on look. She started for the door and then stopped to gaze at Frank, seeming like she wanted to say something but couldn’t decide exactly what. “Frank… I really have to go. Sorry it had to end this way,” is what she chose, looking at the floor.
“Am I in the thesis, Nik?” Frank said as she walked away from him forever.
She turned and gave him a look of regret or sadness or rebuke, hard to tell which. “You’re an entire damn chapter, Frank. Maybe two now.” She turned to leave again, didn’t stop this time.
“Have a nice life, Nikki,” he said and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Why is it you always say something ridiculous and clichéd at moments like this?
When she walked out, the air in the syrup can became charged, electricity coming from all points on the compass, the buzz shocking Frank out of his controlled indifference.
No way he could stay here now.
He went upstairs and changed into a tan chamois shirt and a clean pair of jeans; gathered some cash from his dresser drawer and put his pistol in the inside pocket of his Levi jacket. Then he went outside into the darkness wondering what adventures the Zenith City would cough up for him tonight.
Sure would be nice to have a car, Frank was thinking walking down the hill gazing at the auras around the streetlights. Any restraints he might have held about chasing down Artie Autry and Doughboy Loy had flown out the door with Nikki. And although his body seemed to be on autopilot going in the direction of the Metropole, he was able to bypass the place and head west toward the Paul Bunyan, a saloon the two miscreants frequented. And if Autry and Loy weren’t at the Bunyan, at least he could ask the bartender some questions about the day Ray disappeared.
(End of Chapter 19)
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