You know as well as anybody that Tim Shepard is fucked up. There always was an edge of crazy to his cool, but Curly's death in Vietnam pushed him over the line. It took him exactly one week to torpedo the little empire he'd built over the years and get a job in the stockroom of a discount department store, and it took him exactly six hours to lose that job by stabbing Two-Bit Mathews in the Junior Misses department.
Two-Bit was in the Junior Misses department because he had grown weary of waiting in the car for his little sister to pick out some back-to-school blouses and decided to harass her along. No one knew why Tim was in the Junior Misses department, because he was supposed to be unpacking boxes in the back; but there he was, and Two-Bit made one or two (Two-Bit told you, which means five or six in reality) jesting remarks about it, and Tim grinned briefly and then stabbed him in the shoulder. Two-Bit went down, Anita Mathews clocked Tim with a clothes hanger, and the Shepard reign over the stockroom Selton's Discount Special came to a close.
Two-Bit did not press charges.
"Look, we both know me and Shepard weren't gonna get through our entire lives without one of us stabbing the other," he told you over the phone, sounding much too blithe for someone whose stitches were two hours old. "No hard feelings, you know?"
You definitely did not know, but you also did not feel up to saying that out loud. So instead you asked about the store and the manager and how Anita was, and all the while you could see your finger winding the cord of the dorm phone tighter and tighter, and all the while you could see a boy lying still in a pool of moonlight and a fountain flowing gently behind him.
(When you remember, there's never any blood.)
The store manager also did not press charges, probably out of an solid sense of self-preservation, and so Tim Shepard is as free as he ever was to wreak whatever havoc he desires.
The havoc he desires is evidently somewhere in Rolly's Bar tonight, which is unfortunate for you, because Annie has set up camp at the table in the corner and she's your only chance at a ride tonight, in more ways than one. (Is this a gross thing to think? Possibly; and yet Annie is always making jokes about riding you, so it seems fair.)
Tim has staked a claim at the bar, ordered a single beer, and not touched it in two hours. So far no one has tried to talk to him, but you don't need hard evidence to tell that anyone who did would get the freeze out at best. And neither does anyone else, apparently.
You get that. His brother died two months ago, and he wasn't exactly the friendliest kitten in the box before that. He looks like shit. He looks like he's going to fall asleep. He looks like he's going to wreck somebody.
He looks fucked up.
But you're not thinking about that; you're thinking about Annie, because Annie is right in front of you and you're great at concentrating. You concentrated your way to a 3.6 GPA this semester, it is your second night back in Tulsa since Christmas, and you deserve (deserve?) a break. Annie is good at breaks. That's not even an innuendo; Annie Nowak has a gift for repose that would make a Buddhist monk shriek with envy. Life is a sweet slow river and Annie is flat on her back on a raft; big brown eyes closed against the sunlight, bare feet trailing across cool water. If you concentrate you can smell the damp earth of the overhanging bank and see little roots reaching down and tangling beneath the surface. If you concentrate, it's the most beautiful place in the world.
But you're terrible at concentrating. And Rolly's is a truly magical place; any attempt to pretend you are not in it increases its noise exponentially. It smells like beer and smoke and sex and sorrow, all those things that are always mixed together in your mind. (In retrospect, you should not have lost your virginity in a parked car twenty yards from the intersection where your parents crashed and died. Yup, yep, retrospectively, you can nod and stroke your beard like a sorcerer in a play: ah, yes, a bad choice, young man. You're so good at retrospection. If you were a superhero, your name would be Retro-spectacular.)
Ok, so maybe the noise is grinding against you like one bone against another when the muscles and joints wear thin in between. Maybe not even Annie's soft hand on your spine is enough to make you forget that someone in this bar stabbed someone you love, and for some reason, some small and clearly unidentifiable reason, you have a big fucking problem with that.
What a mystery.
Annie leans in and her scent pulls you back into yourself in a way that words never could. She smells like sweat and cinnamon soap. You think about burying your nose in her neck, about the way her laugh would vibrate through you, but you don't do it.
She leans in until her long brown hair curtains down onto your shoulder. "Get me another drink?"
She whispers it like it's something naughty, or illegal, which strikes you as very funny, which was her whole purpose in doing it, so you laugh. Ha ha ha. You're a bubble in the air, Curtis. Life is a parade of mirth.
(Pony's dr-unk, Irv singsonged to himself when he woke up to you throwing up in your shared trashcan the night Two-Bit called. This was not malicious on Irv's part; Irv is a soul free of malice, plus he was trashed himself and even if you could have found the words he was in no state to understand that you were suddenly five years younger and in a park, screaming. If you were a superhero your power would be time travel.)
You're not drunk now. You're feeling it, but you're not drunk. Rolly's is always like that.
The waitress is the mother of a girl you went to high school with, and also is sitting on the lap of a guy two tables over, making out like it's the last thing they'll ever do. (Maybe it is. NO, shut up, shut the fuck up) So you amble up to the bar and lean in a good two yards away from Shepard the First and try not to think about Curly. Try not to think about his dumb laugh and the time he was lucky enough to fall off that telephone pole, because he surely would have grabbed a wire and electrocuted himself to death if he'd made it to the top.
Think instead about how lucky you are that Soda made it back from Nam safely, that the curse that seemed like it was following your family from month to month like a mortgage has finally slipped off into the ether somewhere, and everyone is fine and happy, including you. Happy as a motherfucking clam. Two celebratory beers, please. One for Annie, one for her horse.
Tim's hand closes on your shoulder and you turn around and hit him as hard as you can. Head turns, fist cracks, the sound of bone hitting bone only slightly muted by the flesh between them. He doesn't go down. You're not surprised. Tim has been getting punched by adults since he was about ten. At twenty four he can probably take a beating with a bat and stay on his feet.
You wish you had a bat.
But alas, you do not. All you have are those two dumb fists and enough rage to rival any Shepard on earth, but it doesn't do you any good.
"That's your free one," Tim says grimly as blood trickles down his chin and drips. He catches it before it hits the floor, and that's what fucks you up, that unexpected gesture, that desire to keep one more stain off the dirtiest floor in Tulsa. You rock back against the bar like he hit you.
He isn't going to hit you. You can tell just by looking at him. He just tells you to get moving and steers you out into the alley next to the bar, one hand on your shoulder the whole way. Fine. Now you're in a dark alley instead of a dark bar. Big deal.
You wait for him to run you up against the wall, his arm a bar against your neck, but he lets go and stands back and looks at you with those holes he calls eyes. Fuck, you could throw a penny into them and you wouldn't hear it hit bottom. That's how deep and dark they are. That's how endless.
Sorry about your brother.
You open your mouth but nothing comes out. You can never say what you mean anymore. You used to be able to, when you were a kid.
"Got a question for you, Curtis," says Tim. He's not close to you, but his voice is a rabid dog slinking along the ground between you. You know better than to make any sudden movements.
Light from the street cuts a triangle into the alley, but neither of you are standing in it. Everything is greyscale where you're standing. When you put your hand at your side your fingers brush the metal lid of a trash can.
"Ok," you say. Brilliant.
"Where," says Tim, in a voice so quiet and soft and infinitely terrible that the hairs on the back of your neck rise up in response, "is my fuckin' sister?"
The bricks that rise up behind you dampen the sound you make, but you still make it and you still didn't mean to. Tim does not respond to that. Tim is a marble carving, one foot up on a stray board, one hand under his jacket where he keeps his gun.
"I don't know," you say honestly, not that you think it will help.
And ding ding ding, the prize goes to Pony! It indeed does not help. Tim draws his gun. Cocks it but doesn't point, just lets you see it, just lets himself feel the weight in his hand.
(Dally hands you a gun and a roll of bills. When you remember, it's not always you who takes them, but it's better that way. It's better that way.)
Suddenly your lips are burning, the imprint of Angela's kiss coming back to haunt you. You don't have to tell Tim you were with her last night. It is eminently clear that he knows.
"No one's seen her?" you ask the gun, because it's better to look at something realer than Tim's broken eyes.
Tim wags the gun back and forth slightly like he's shaking his head no. Ever the comedian. Two-Bit was right. This town was never big enough for the both of them.
"I really don't know," you tell him, and look at his face.
His smile is so much worse than it used to be. So much worse than a glare or a frown. He smiles and fear spiders down your back and crawls around your torso and bites into your stomach with all its teeth.
"Well you were with her last, son," says Tim. "So you better find the fuck out."
And just like that, he puts the gun away. Holds up one finger. Smiles.
"You got one day, boy."
He saunters out into the streetlight, and the illumination makes you turn your head away. When you look back he's still there, standing right at the edge of the alley with his back toward you, crazy as hell and not afraid of anything.
He doesn't have to tell you he's going to kill you if you can't find her. You've always been the smartest kid in class.