Unspeakable Things(10)

It was no accident that we were here. Sergeant Bauer and my dad were up to something. Knowing that made my throat go oily. Dad walked up to the bar, rested his foot on the rail, and grabbed the edges of the counter. “Whiskey water,” he said.

I didn’t recognize the bartender. He was older than most of my teachers, with a face like a bulldog. He kept one eye on me and Sephie and the other on the drink he mixed for my dad. He went light on the whiskey, I could see that. I was sure Dad would be angry, but he only smirked, tossing a five on the counter.

“Get each of my girls a pop,” he said. “And the change in quarters so they can play your video game.”

Dad grabbed his drink and loped off toward Sergeant Bauer, who wasn’t in uniform but held himself like he was. He should be out catching whoever was attacking boys, I thought, not in a bar with my dad, up to all sorts of no good.

“I’ll take strawberry, and my sister would like grape, please,” Sephie said, yanking my attention back to the bartender.

He reached into a cooler, pulled out two sweating bottles of soda, one a purple as dark as night, the other the bright red of a maraschino cherry, and he snapped their caps off using an opener he kept on the lip of the counter. I swallowed the anticipatory spit gathering in my mouth. The bartender set both bottles on the counter. I stepped forward and reached for mine, tasting the sweet grape, feeling it slide down my gullet and fill my belly.

I almost had it in hand when he spoke directly to me.

“No kids at the bar,” he growled.

The words hit me like a slap, and the heat to my face was instant. I glanced over at Dad, but he was leaning into Sergeant Bauer, almost kissing his ear he was so close. I’d been waiting for someone to kick me and Sephie out of Little John’s ever since the first time we’d stepped inside. That was part of the thrill of being here. But I hadn’t wanted the moment to come, and I for sure wasn’t prepared for how small it made me feel.

The bartender seemed to be trying not to smile, but not in a nice way. He knew he was being mean, opening those pops and then telling us we couldn’t have them. I couldn’t take that grape soda, not after he’d hit me with those words. It’d be a beggar thing to do. We faced off, he and I, and we might have locked eyes forever if Sephie hadn’t reached forward and snatched both bottles, quick, careful not to touch any part of the bar.

“Sorry,” she said to the bartender. “Sorry for my sister, too.”

The bartender glowered at her, but he took Dad’s five-dollar bill and slapped four quarters on the counter. I had no problem grabbing for those, but I didn’t make eye contact with him. Sephie nudged me with her elbow, but she didn’t need to. I was already on my way to the corner where the Pac-Man machine was, the one near Dad and Sergeant Bauer.

It was still weird to see them together. Up until a year ago, Dad had hated the police worse than lice. Said they were government shills trying to take our freedom. Then suddenly, he decided to invite Sergeant Bauer to one of his parties. That idea had alarmed Mom, but he couldn’t be talked free of it. Reminded her that he and Bauer went back pretty far, all the way to high school, and so it was no big deal that they’d recently decided to look out for each other. Bauer’d only attended that one party last fall, but him and Dad had seemed to find all sorts of reasons to run into each other since.

“I’ll go first,” Sephie said, pulling my focus back as she slid a quarter into the Pac-Man machine. The booping music got my blood moving. I was really good at Pac-Man. Sephie was crap at it, but she kept trying.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dad stride back to the bar. The bartender had another whiskey water waiting, plus a bottle of beer for Bauer. Dad banged down some money and grabbed both. I wondered how much of Mom’s paycheck he was spending.

Sephie kept chomping dots with her Pac-Man. Dad walked back to Bauer. They were louder with these drinks.

“. . . fuck her until—” Sergeant Bauer said, quiet enough that you wouldn’t have heard it unless you were my dad, or playing a video game nearby.

My dad chuckled.

I leaned into the Pac-Man game, wishing I were wearing armor.

“. . . there are mushrooms,” my dad said, still laughing.

I perked up at that. Once he’d bought us pizza at Little John’s. It was one of those perfectly round frozen ones that the bartender slid into a toaster oven. I could have rolled in it, it was so delicious. I tried to hear more, but the two of them were quieter now.

I think they were conversing about the boy who’d been hurt the weekend before. The words “raped” and “every few years like a plague” floated toward me.

Part of me wanted to ask Bauer if a Lilydale boy had really been attacked, like Betty said. If it really had happened, I’d bet I knew him. Kids had been hot-whispering about nothing else after the symposium, but I didn’t have a close friend at the moment I could ask about the attack.

Then it was my turn at Pac-Man. I almost earned a free play on my first round.





CHAPTER 7

There was no pizza, only more drinking and bad words.

Sephie and I ran out of quarters and huddled near the safety of the Pac-Man game, taking the tiniest sips from our pops to make them last.

Not all men are like my dad and Sergeant Bauer and that raping gang from Minneapolis, I thought. There are good ones out there.