Prologue #2
A shot of Copperhead pride! A splash of gin, rum, tequila, vodka, triple sec, and Midori, topped with edible copper glitter.
Joey grins, delighted. “That looks awful. I’ll take four.”
9:17 P.M.
Joey returns with the shots as the lights dim and the familiar strains of Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” start playing.
“Someone’s about to get birthday spankings!” Joey calls out fondly as he passes out the shots. (He bought an extra shot for himself, something called a Big Guy Touchdown, and as a big guy who is a high school football coach, it was clearly calling his name.) “Okay, on the count of three, everyone!”
“What’s in this?” Leo asks as he holds the green and copper drink up to the barely there light.
Joey doesn’t have the time to fight with Leo about this and also, he doesn’t remember what’s in it. “It’s your medicine. Our medicine. We are going to drink these and then we are going to have a Best Night Ever. You hear me?”
Leo looks doubtful, but Sloane is nodding and Bram looks too ready to wash away the memory of dog vomit to say no.
They hold up their shots, clink them together, and chant, “Optimus noctem!”* Then they all give a good, old-fashioned Astra University Copperheads hiss before they toss the shots back and slam the glasses on the table.
“You brought us glasses of poison,” sputters Leo when he can speak again.
“Glasses of magic.”
“I wish Alessandro were here,” Leo says, and Sloane nods.
Alessandro Ottaviano is a professor of neurosurgery at the Astra University Medical Center in Kansas City and is too busy digging inside people’s brains to come hang out.
He’s the only one of the group aside from Sara who isn’t here tonight. *
The DJ comes on the microphone and shouts over the music, “Please give a big old Mount Astra welcome to tonight’s birthday girl, Maddie Kowa-kowaltch . . .” A pause. “Maddie from California!”
The bar hoots and cheers as a fair young woman with golden hair takes the stage.
She’s fat, with smaller curves up top and hips and thighs for days, all of it showcased in a tight sweater set and pencil skirt.
Her mouth is a little too wide and sinfully full, and her large eyes are as green as a pit viper’s.
“That’s her,” Bram says.
His voice is strange . . . low and breathless. Like he’s just won a race but he’s pissed about it.
“Who?” Joey asks, plucking his Big Guy Touchdown off the table.
“The brat.”
The DJ now has Maddie from California facing the side wall with her hands splayed inside the Sharpie’d outlines that have contained the hands of scores of birthday spank-ees throughout the years. The green and copper paddle comes out.
Next to Joey, Bram stiffens.
“How old are you today?” the DJ asks.
“Twenty-six!” chirps Maddie.
“Your safe word is cash tips only!” the DJ says, and starts swinging. The swats start out as mere taps, but the bar shouts along with the DJ as if each tap is a catastrophic wallop, and Maddie looks to the side at the crowd, a smile on her plush mouth.
And then she and Bram lock eyes.
Bram’s hand is a fist on the table. His jaw clenches.
His eyes have hooded a little, and when the DJ gives Maddie a final, no-shit swat with the paddle—hard enough to make her whimper—Bram sucks in a breath.
“Maybe you should go discuss parking etiquette with her,” Leo suggests. “After you can stand up without committing a crime of public obscenity, of course.”
“Fuck off,” says Bram, distractedly. His eyes are still on Maddie as the DJ helps her off the stage.
A slow smile pulls across Leo’s face, making him look briefly like one of God’s favorite angels, all sculpted features and gorgeous symmetry. “Did Bram Loe just tell me to fuck off?”
Joey claps his hands together. The shots are working already!
“More shots!” Joey yells, and Leo holds out his credit card, the black metal one that looks like a prop from a movie about Wall Street stockbrokers.
“I’ll get this round,” says the rich asshole. “I want to see how far we can push Professor Nice Guy tonight.”
10:02 P.M.
Joey skips up to the bar for another Big Guy Touchdown and watches Robbie come down the narrow stairs before slipping behind the counter and reaching for a fresh shot glass.
“You still living upstairs, Robbie?” Joey asks.
Robbie shakes his head. “Moved out years ago. Been slowly renovating the space up there to make it easier to sell the place.”
“You can’t sell it!” Joey exclaims, panicked. “This bar is a staple of the community! The Dry Bean is Mount Astra, Kansas!”
Robbie pulls a battered wallet out of his jeans and thumbs around for a picture.
For a minute, Joey thinks he’s going to see a picture of Robbie’s spouse or kids or grandkids, but when Robbie unfolds the picture and sets it on the bar in front of Joey, it becomes clear that it’s a picture of a pontoon boat. A very old, very ugly pontoon boat.
“She’s waiting for me,” says Robbie wistfully. “At the Lake of the Ozarks. All I need is to get my name off this shithole’s deed.”
10:57 P.M.
Joey bumps into someone tall and evil, and Leo spins around to glare at him. “I’m in the middle of eavesdropping,” Leo says tightly, his voice like jagged ice. “And I will kill you if I miss my cue.”
“Your cue? For what?”
Leo looks down his perfect nose at Joey, a slight sneer on his face. “For announcing my engagement.”
“You’re not engaged,” Joey says with mostly complete certainty.
“And I’ll never be if you don’t shut up.” And then Leo shoves him away.
11:32 P.M.
Bram is looming over Maddie the Birthday Girl. She has her back against the wall and he has his forearm braced next to her head, his face dropped to hers as he speaks sternly to her, presumably about parking etiquette.
He lifts his finger, to scold her or to make a point, and Maddie from California dips her head and bites the tip of it with pearly white teeth.
12:01 A.M.
Sloane is sitting at the bar talking to Robbie, the picture of his pontoon boat clutched to her chest as he gestures at the water spots on the ceiling.
Behind him, mounted to the wall next to the J?germeister sign, is a framed poster of the Lonesome Dove miniseries, signed by Danny Glover and Steve Buscemi. *
Sloane pulls out her phone and starts tapping away, still cuddling the picture of the pontoon.
12:28 A.M.
Joey finishes singing “Barracuda” to the approving roars of the crowd. Someone is calling for an encore. He asks the DJ for “Tequila” by The Champs because he knows all the words.
12:56 A.M.
Joey is at a table arm-wrestling one of his former football players while people shout and drop dollar bills onto the table. Someone shoves another Big Guy Touchdown in his free hand and he finishes the shot as he shoves his opponent’s hand to the table.
Look at all the money he won! Twenty-seven dollars!
His chest swells. Riley is going to be so proud of him. He’s provided for the family. He is a hunter and a warrior. Maybe she’ll still be awake when he gets home . . .
1:07 A.M.
Joey’s vision is blurry, but he is pretty sure he sees a pair of muscled thighs clad in brown corduroys disappear up the stairs to the empty apartments above the bar. Looks an awful lot like Bram’s brown oxfords too.
Is that also the pale blue of a sweater set?
1:20 A.M.
It’s official.
Bram is gone. The Saint James cousins are gone.
Time to Uber home.
Joey Fucking Kemp’s House
2:21 A.M.
“Do you have a condom?” Riley whispers. They always have to whisper. The curse of having three girls who sleep like little princesses atop heaps of peas.
“What can one time hurt?” Joey whispers back. Also the condoms are so far away, like all the way in the bathroom.
Riley seems to think about it. “Okay,” she says, yawning a little. “I guess I’m still breastfeeding. I don’t think I can get pregnant again yet.”
Best night ever.