Chapter 532 p.m. EST
She had her ticket and was through security twenty minutes before boarding began. There was a crowd in the seating area by
the gate, but Allie wasn’t ready to plunge in, could hardly look at them. One of those passengers had killed his wife and
killed her slow. He had killed his stepdaughter too and plotted the murders of FBI agents and abortion doctors, and for his
many crimes he had been marked for death, sentence to be carried out by a large lizard. Allie wasn’t sure she’d know him if
she saw him. She had only ever seen one photograph, and that was a grainy photocopy from a newspaper article. In the picture,
taken after the homicide charges were dismissed, he looked every inch the soldier: dark crew cut, narrow, hooded eyes, cheeks
cratered with acne scars, blunt-fingered butcher’s hands. Put that guy on the stand if you wanted, all you were going to get
was name, rank, and serial number.
Allie had to sit down, had to slow her heart rate, take a moment to breathe. She found a stool in a darkened bar directly
across from the gate, a place called Dickens’ Authentic English Pub, full of the odor of stale beer.
They had framed pictures of Dickens, Orwell, and James Joyce on the walls (though Allie was pretty sure Joyce was Irish), a barroom piano against one wall, and microwaved sausage pies on the menu.
If she kept her back to the Jetway, she could almost pretend she was in a London tourist trap .
. . at least until the bartender came to take her order.
He had a mullet, a Jersey accent, and a spray-on tan.
He brought her white wine in a glass roughly the size of a bathroom sink.
She had a tremor in her hand when she lifted the glass to her lips.
She thought about Horation Matthews, the former marine and Christian fundamentalist who fantasized about bringing down the
government. Allie had babbled about waylaying him in a bar, offering him a threesome with Donna to keep him from boarding
the flight. In her mind that was possible, because Donna could talk a man into bed, and Allie could stand next to her while
she did it. She wondered what she’d do if Horation walked in here right now, if Allie could put the moves on him herself.
The thought nearly made her cough wine back up her nose. Horation Matthews believed interracial marriage was a plot to water
down Christian male bloodlines and that the IRS was as bad as the Gestapo. How did you get someone like that hot and bothered?
Whisper in his ear that she had always wanted to be spanked with the federal tax code? Hey, pal, wanna have a few beers and then go somewhere you can do domestic terrorism to my body? Or maybe you went the religious route. Ask him to biblically smite her girl parts, part her legs like the Red Sea.
Someone stroked the keys of the barroom piano over against the wall. By the time Allie looked around to see who, the guy was
already settling onto the stool next to her. She wasn’t sure she’d recognize Horation Matthews, but she knew when someone
wasn’t Horation Matthews, and he wasn’t. From the waist down he was a skinny guy in new-looking jeans with stovepipe legs. From
the waist up he was built like John Candy, a fat man in a cheap sports coat, frayed at the cuffs. His eyes were sharp, though—dark
brown, humorous, and clever.
“Did he let you down?” he said.
“Mhm?” Allie asked, twisting around on her stool.
“You look like a woman been stood up,” he said. “Tell Frank Heck all about it.”
“Heck?” she asked, thinking she must’ve heard wrong.
“As in what the heck.”
“Or: heck no.”
He shot a finger at her to say she had the right idea. He asked the bartender for an old-fashioned and to get another glass for Allie while he was at it. Allie was surprised to see her first was already gone.
“Maybe I’m the one who let him down,” she said, suddenly, her thumb twisting the engagement ring that she really had no business
still wearing.
He saw the diamond flash and smirked. “I wish more of my disappointments looked like you. A man could start to enjoy the feeling
of regret. Where you headed, hun?”
“London,” she said.
“The six forty? Maybe we’ll sit together. What takes you there?”
“Off to see a friend. He’s a lot smarter than me, and I need someone smart to figure out what I’m doing with my life. What
about you, Mr. Heck? What do you do?”
“Make money and spend it on women who look like you.”
“Ah! That’s a good line. I’ve never had a line.”
“Girl like you don’t need a line.”
Allie had now finished off most of two glasses of wine in just a few minutes and her head was swimmy. “What about you? Why
are you going to London?”
“Well, now, I’m developing a few propositions. Like the Churchill Atlantic Commander One-Piece Sleeping Costume for Men. Did
you know Churchill designed his own pajamas? Like a jumpsuit with booties on it, made him look a little like, who’s the guy
in the McDonald’s commercials? Big purple guy?”
“Grimace.”
“Right, Grimace. Shoot, what is Grimace, anyway? Is he a big potato? Or, like, a giant raisin?”
“He’s a tumor. He represents what grows inside you if you eat too much McDonald’s.”
“That explains how I wound up in this state,” Frank Heck said, and smacked his belly. “Maybe it’s not fat at all. Could be
a tumor.”
“That’s what got my brother. Cancer,” she said, and then wished she could take it back. Theo wasn’t the stuff of casual pub
conversation with a stranger.
“I’m sorry to hear that. What was his name?”
“Theodore. They never made a better man.” Enough, she told herself. The problem with wine was it made you emotional. The problem without wine was sobriety.
“Let’s drink to Theo then,” said Frank Heck. “Let me buy you another.”
“No, thank you,” she said, and felt a sudden surge of emotion, a great swell of pride in her own forceful resolve. No. She would not have another glass of wine. Not until she was in her seat on the plane, and then a little one would be fine. “One drink is
polite, but a second with a strange man would be inappropriate.” And this time she flashed the engagement ring deliberately.
“Well, then, b’God, we should drink to holy matrimony. That’s not inappropriate.” He nodded to the bartender, who was already
there to fill her glass, and she gave in, didn’t want to be rude. Heck said, “I guess he must have faith in you, let you go
off to London all by your lonesome. How’s he know you won’t meet a pajama salesman and decide not to come home?”
“I never wear pajamas,” she said, and Heck fanned his face with a paper napkin and rolled his eyes.
“Hun, don’t say them kind of things. Man carrying as much weight as me, my heart could go at any time.”
Allie laughed and for a moment almost liked the pushy fat man who was trying his luck with the only single woman in the bar.
He had brass, and brass counted for something with Allie.
The flight announced preboarding for families traveling with children and anyone else who needed extra time. She began to
dig in her purse for her credit card. Heck glanced down into the open crochet bag in time to see the bottle of Gordon’s in
the bottom, half-full (not half-empty . . . Allie was an optimist). She was too buzzed to be embarrassed. He put his hand
on hers.
“Let me,” he said. “Buying a pretty woman a glass of wine is what I call a smart investment.”
“Well, aren’t you sweet as heck,” she said, and he threw her a broad wink.
She slipped off her stool while he was turned away, raising his hand to get the bartender’s attention—New Jersey had moved down to the end of the counter to unload the dishwasher.
But she glanced back when she was halfway across the pub and saw him watching her go.
The look in his eyes gave her a nasty chill.
There was something hard and bright in his stare, an almost clinical curiosity that didn’t go with his easy talk and down-home twang.
His finger was moving around the rim of his old-fashioned, but he hadn’t touched it. Not a drop.
She smiled uncertainly back and, as she passed the piano, played her left hand across it, saying goodbye to him the way he
had said hello—her nimble fingers finding the first few notes of “Give Me That Old-Time Religion.” He raised the glass in
acknowledgment.
But then—as she tottered away, a heel wobbling beneath her, so that she came close to turning an ankle—the piano played on,
sounding out the first five notes of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” keys rising and falling on their own for a moment. She hip-checked
a table and had to grab a chair to keep from falling on her face. No one else seemed to have noticed. But then no one else
was supposed to notice. It was a little joke intended for her alone. King Sorrow had his failings—mass murder among them—but no one could
say he didn’t have a sense of humor.