Janet leaned on the counter. Her elbow was dry skin, her chicken wing folded out from a tight cap sleeve. She had bruises on her upper arms, maybe pinch marks. The black tee shirt she wore stretched the name Rick's Roadhouse like a canvas across her chest. Did Rick like having his name slurred by a pair of forty year old breasts? Probably.
It was rowdy in Rick's Roadhouse. Saturday after five filled the truck stop to the roof. Pool balls winged off each other with loud clacks. Men laughed and shouted. The Jukebox worked overtime in the corner and the cigarettes were depleted.
"Goddamn zoo animals," Janet said and set a beer down for Lucky and a cream soda for me.
I sighed.
"Hey," Janet clucked above the noise. "Someone has to look out for the girls in this town, since your daddy's doing such a bang-up job of it." She eyed Lucky when she said it. I popped the paper off a straw.
"If that's all you got, Janet. It ain't much," I said and tugged Lucky's sleeve to find a place in the corner where I didn't have to talk to her anymore--or listen to her whine about my father. Which, to recall our recent interactions, shouldn't have offended me as much as it did. But when she smeared him she smeared me. And I didn't like that.
My ears stuck out, I could feel them.
The sawdust floor was a mind field. Twice my ass was grabbed, but turning around revealed a pack of most-likelys and I wasn't in the mood to figure out who.
"So Mickey Mouse," Lucky said. "Should we introduce ourselves?"
"No."
"Fair nuff."
He took a swallow from his beer bottle, "What did she mean about your daddy?"
"He's the Sheriff of Nowhere."
He coughed, "Your daddy's a cop?"
"Why, you gonna kill me?"
He shook his head and grinned, "Depends, darlin. You gonna leave me again?"
I rolled my eyes. "How dangerous could you be?"
"Not as dangerous as a cop."
I thought of Deputy Bithell and the burn marks. In my mind he was guilty, and I wasn't worried about meeting the real killer. I already knew who he was.
We sat for awhile, until the suds in both our drinks warmed and the pretzels dwindled to salt crystals. Then, a man in a red trucker cap punched a man who'd taken his pool cue.
"Look at those cavemen go," Lucky laughed as a fight tore up the floor. Shaking up his beer bottle he capped the mouth under his thumb and sprayed what was left across the brawling crowd.
When the police came, we ended up side by side, handcuffed, stinking like hops and shouting obscenities. I liked not doing it by myself for a change. I was suddenly less lonely.
My dad met us in the parking lot. Light tumbled down the front steps of the station, stretching his shadow a mile long ahead of him. He must have gotten a call about me and Lucky. He stomped to our cruiser, ignoring the other bearded drunks being ushered inside where it was clean and yellow not sticky and the dark side of cobalt.
"Is this him?" he asked.
A pointless question, he already knew.
Deputy Bithell escorted me around the nose of the cruiser, my hands still cuffed against the small of my back. He kept me there as my dad grabbed Lucky by the jacket front and crashed the rear car door shut with his body.
"You fucking tramp," he said.
"Fascist pig," said Lucky.
I screamed in surprise as he struck Lucky. Once in the face. Once in the stomach. Tied like me, Lucky collapsed on his knees, gagging. Blood on his teeth.
"Uncuff me!" I shouted at Bithell, twisting in his clammy grip. The heat bugs had stopped singing. All I could hear was my dad's fists thumping angry against Lucky's flesh.
"If you don't let me go, I'll tell everyone you touched me in your car."
"Whatever you say, Fiona."
As soon as my hands were free I lunged for my dad.
"Stop!" I beat on him. "You've got the wrong guy. Stop."
He stopped just shy of hitting me. His breaths quick and absolute. The fog lifted, and he reached toward me. "I told you not to--"
"NO." I said. My jaw so tight I thought'd it break. "Don't talk to me."
"Fiona."
"Don't!"
I helped Lucky into the backseat of the cruiser. The siren light click, click, clicked lazily around each circuit, washing my father in two colors. Not black and white like his moods, but close enough.
I climbed into the driver's seat and vanished.