The Barbed-Wire Kiss

Sometimes, at night, he drove. He had no route, no reason. He never planned it. Alone in the big, empty house, the wind rattling the windows, he would suddenly find himself with car keys in his hand.

He’d take the old Mustang out on the county road, head west to the Turnpike or east to the ocean. Some nights he drove for hours, stopping only at all-night gas stations, not turning back until dawn lightened the sky and brought with it the hope of sleep.

He told this to a therapist once, in those first months after Melissa died.

“On the scale of things we’ve talked about,” the therapist said, “that’s an easy one.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re trying to go back. To fix the things you loved that got away from you.”

“Maybe.”

“And you know something else, Harry?”

“What?”

“You can’t.”

He knew that. He’d always known it.

Still, he drove.

When Harry walked in the door, Bobby was sitting at the end of the bar, watching a redhead take off her clothes.

Barely dark outside, but in here the night was in full swing. Cigarette smoke hung in the air like cotton, and the music was loud enough that Harry could feel the bass through the soles of his boots. Years since he’d been in here, but the clientele hadn’t changed much. Fishermen mostly, drinking their dinners, hard faces chiseled by sun and wind. He had grown up around men like these.

Bobby’s eyes were on the dancer. Harry came up behind him unseen.

“Hey, slick,” he said. “Put your tongue back in your mouth.”

Bobby froze, a cigarette halfway to his lips. He swiveled slowly, the hard look on his face twisting into a smile. “Son of a bitch. You made it.”

He put out his hand and Harry took it, felt the calloused palm, the strength there. Bobby wore his work clothes: a red flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, jeans, tan work boots. The black snake tattoo that circled his left forearm was faded from years in the sun.

Harry slid onto the stool beside him. Bobby stubbed out his cigarette in a tin ashtray, signaled to the barmaid. She was a hard-eyed blonde in a halter top, with a blue butterfly tattoo above her left breast. He pointed at his empty shot glass, and she took a bottle of tequila from the speed rack, poured, looked at Harry.

“Whatever’s on tap,” he said.

“Just bottles now.”

“Corona.”

She came back with the open beer, the sides slick with condensation, a slice of lime wedged into the top. Bobby slid a wet twenty toward her, and she took it away without a word.

“There used to be a girl tended bar here,” Harry said. “A tall blonde …”

“Lisa.”

“Whatever happened to her?”

“Moved on, I guess. Just like everybody.”

He pushed the lime through, clamped his thumb over the mouth of the bottle and upturned it. The slice rose toward the bottom in a thin stream of bubbles.

Bobby lifted his shot glass. “You know what this shit always reminds me of?”

“What’s that?”

“When we snuck that bottle of Cuervo into the dance, junior year? And got busted by Sister Francis? My old man beat my ass over that. Not that he ever needed a reason.”

He righted the beer, let the carbonation hiss out under his thumb. He scanned the faces on the other side of the bar. Some looked back, held his gaze, eyes shining with alcohol.

“You still driving that old Ford?” Bobby said.

“Got it outside.”

“Still pouring money into it?”

“Put in a new clutch plate last week.” He raised his right hand to show the pink spots on his knuckles.

“I do that shit because I have to,” Bobby said. “What’s your excuse? Hire a mechanic, for Christ’s sake.”

“Keeps me busy.”

He held his bottle out. Bobby touched it with his shot glass.

“It’s good to see you,” Bobby said. “We shouldn’t have let it go this long.”

They drank. Harry’s beer was sharp and cold.

The redhead was down to just a thong and bra. She finished her routine, stepped gingerly from the stage.

“Nice view,” Harry said. “But not a great place to talk.”

“Better than the house. I had to get out of there for a while. And here at least, if you didn’t show up, the night wouldn’t be a total loss.”

“Got a point there. How’s Janine?”

“Fine, I guess. But there’s some shit going on, isn’t exactly making life easy. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

A Prince song began to blast from hidden speakers and another dancer took the stage. She had short blonde hair and wore a sheer white teddy over bikini panties, her nipples and pubic area dark patches beneath the material. He watched her move, wondered if she was married, if she had small children whose clothes and food she bought with the money she made here.

“Tell the truth, I can’t remember the last time we actually sat down, had a drink together,” Bobby said. He thumbed open a box of Marlboros, took out a cigarette, slid the box toward Harry. He shook his head.

“Quit.”

“Forgot. How long now?”

“Almost two years. I stopped in the hospital. Just never picked it up again.”

“Good man.”

Bobby lit the cigarette with a plastic lighter.

“Sometimes I think about what you went through,” he said. “First Melissa, then that other thing. I don’t know if I could have handled it.”

“Sometimes you don’t have a choice.”

Harry sipped beer, watched the dancer. She was on all fours now, tiger-crawling across the mirrored floor, her movements jerky in the strobe lights. She reached the edge of the stage and swung down.

Bobby separated a five-dollar bill from his change, folded it lengthwise, held it out. She noticed it from the corner of her eye, moved toward them. Harry saw she was younger than she looked on stage, twenty-five tops, her skin taut and firm, filmed with perspiration.

She smiled at them, leaned over the bar and shrugged the straps of the teddy halfway down her shoulders, pushed her small, pale breasts together. Bobby folded the five again, tucked it into her cleavage.

She kissed him quickly on the mouth, smiled at Harry, and drew away. When she got back on stage, she tugged the teddy into place, dropped the five into an open gym bag, and fell instantly back into her routine.

“Pretty good,” Harry said. “What do you get for a twenty?”

“She gives you a handjob in the back room and then a bouncer beats the shit out of you and throws you out.”

“Not a bad deal.” He swiveled on his stool. “They still have that deck out back?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go. We can talk better there.”

Bobby emptied the shot glass, gathered his cigarettes and change. Harry picked up his beer, and they walked down a short corridor, past bathrooms and pay phones, and out onto a small wooden deck overlooking the inlet.

The night was warm, the smell of the tide thick in the air. Bobby leaned on the railing, flicked away his cigarette. They looked down at the red and green lights of charter boats heading out to sea.

“Bluefish,” Bobby said. “They’re running now. Night’s best time for it. Guys pay fifty dollars a head, go out there and drink beer, catch fish all night long.”

Harry stood beside him, waited. In the distance, he could see a long line of brake lights on the Route 35 drawbridge heading into Belmar. Across the inlet, a car nosed into the weeds near the water’s edge. The headlights went out and, after a few minutes, they heard teenage laughter, the sound of a bottle breaking.

“It was Janine’s idea I talk to you,” Bobby said. “At first I told her, nah, you don’t need to hear this shit. But the more I thought about it …”

“What’s the problem?” He set the bottle on the railing.

Bobby opened the pack of Marlboros, shook one loose.

“Business deal,” he said. “I should know better, right?”

He lit the cigarette, tucked the pack and lighter in his shirt pocket.

“There’s this guy I know from the boatyard. He had a shot at something, but he needed a partner. It was a sweet deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“What do you think?”

Harry said nothing. The boats were moving under the open drawbridge now. The lead vessel saluted the bridge tender with a bleat of its horn.