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Charlie tilted his head in a way that showed he could see in her eyes that she didn’t want to talk about it, so he didn’t pry. “I just wanted to stop by to make sure everything’s okay, that those two didn’t follow you home or anything.”

Dee Dee kind of appreciated the fact that Charlie was so protective, but it felt constricting somehow. “I can take care of myself,” Dee Dee said, suddenly feeling defensive, since Charlie had stirred up memories she’d worked hard at laying to rest.

Charlie just smiled. “I know you can, darlin’. You’re a fighter. I can see that. Still, I needed to be sure, for my own peace of mind. I hear there are some rough characters around here.”

“No one I can’t handle,” Dee Dee said, trying her best to sound sure.

Charlie nodded as he walked over to the leather couch and sat down. “Those two guys mentioned a name, Damon. They made him sound like some kind of boogieman.”

Dee Dee stiffened at the mention of the name, and the reaction wasn’t lost on Charlie.

“Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

“No,” Dee Dee said. “It’s just that…well, I’ve heard that name before.”

“And?” Charlie asked. “Is he really the boogieman?”

Dee Dee shook her head. “I’ve known guys that work for Damon. I don’t really know him or anything. I mean, I’ve seen him at the club once or twice, but I hear he stays outside of town. Some of the girls who used to work at the club knew him or his guys, before oil got to be such big business around here.” Dee Dee didn’t dare say it out loud, but she knew those girls weren’t pretty enough to keep their jobs once the money rolled in. “Some of them hung around as waitresses or whatever, at least the prettier ones, but they eventually all disappeared. This one girl, Sherry, used to hang around with him, but she’s gone now.”

“What happened to her?” Charlie asked.

Dee Dee shrugged. “I heard she got hooked on meth pretty bad. Then one day, she just didn’t show up for work. I really don’t know where she went, and I don’t wanna think about what might have happened. Most of those guys are dealers or something, and they scare me. You never know what they’re gonna do, like that shit in the parking lot.”

“Why don’t you go to the police if you know something or have suspicions? Maybe they could find Sherry and use her to get to Damon.”

Dee Dee stopped pacing around the room and looked at Charlie, who was still calmly seated on the couch. He looked casual, like always, with that little scruff on this face and his hair matted down and back from wearing that hat all the time. He seemed very normal, very average, like she could have met him before and just not remembered, but something in the way he was talking didn’t seem casual or normal at all. She raised her eyebrow at him.

“What?” Charlie asked.

“You sound…funny,” Dee Dee said.

“What do you mean?” Charlie asked, his composure not changing at all. He didn’t look nervous or shift in his seat, and Dee Dee figured he made for a hell of a poker player.

“You’re new around here. Why are you so interested in the police and this Damon guy?”

Charlie tilted his ear to his shoulder, and his mouth gave a little tick to the side. He breathed slowly through his nose, releasing a thick sigh. “Why don’t you just ask me what you really want to ask me?” he said.

“Are you a cop, Charlie, or some kind of fed? DEA or something?”

Charlie looked hurt. It wasn’t a sad, puppy dog look that would have been over the top and pathetic, but something in his eyes seemed to drop and retreat away from her. “I’m not sure if I should ask why you think that or if I should ask
how
you could think that.”

Dee Dee didn’t remove her stare from Charlie. She didn’t move, as she wanted to see what his next move was going to be. If he stormed out or acted really hurt, she’d know he was playing games, like some high school kid manipulating his girlfriend into feeling bad. Dee Dee didn’t like that Charlie hadn’t answered the question and had, instead, just shifted the focus back to her. “Just answer the question,” Dee Dee demanded, crossing her arms and standing her ground.

“No, darlin’. I’m not a cop or DEA,” he said, his voice hanging in the air. “Why would you ask me that?”

Dee Dee felt like she was on her heels. She didn’t think she was wrong to ask; it seemed a fair question, considering how suddenly Charlie had shown up in town and how he said all the right things and acted in all the right ways, like some knight in shining armor. But now he’d asked about Damon. Why? She started to wonder if she was sabotaging herself, just looking for something wrong because things felt right—a feeling she wasn’t at all accustomed to. Dee Dee tried to explain herself in a strong, sure-of-herself way, without blubbering our sounding weak. It wasn’t easy with Charlie sitting so patiently on the couch looking at her, no anger or fear registering on his face whatsoever.

“I mean, what else am I supposed to think?” she asked.

Charlie listened to her ramblings, then reached up and gently touched the back of his head, with just the tips of his fingers. “Three months ago,” he, with his fingers still on the back of his head, “I started to get really bad headaches, worse when it was sunny outside. My vision started to blur. It was weird, and I worried that I was going blind. I guess it’s normal to think anything other than a tumor, like some kind of denial of the worst-case scenario. I went to the doctor, and he ran a ton of tests. I remember sitting across his desk, looking at all his medical certificates on the wall behind him. He had my results in front of him, but he kept texting someone. It made me think things had to be okay, because what kind of an asshole would sit there text-messaging someone if he had bad news to tell me, his patient?” When he saw that he had Dee Dee’s full attention, Charlie took his hand away from the back of his head and propped his elbow on the arm of the couch, resting his head against his hand. “He finally put down his phone, and I can still hear what he said to me. ‘Okay…Mr. Kelly, is it?’ I can still picture him looking at the file, his face clouding over. When he spoke again, he had that fatherly tone in his voice, as if he really cared. He explained where the tumor was and told me that surgery wouldn’t remove it all. He ran through a list of grave-sounding options and recommended I see an oncologist, a specialist.  Then, as calmly as if he was giving me the weather report, he said, ‘At best, I’d say you have six months to live, Mr. Kelly.’”

At that moment, Dee Dee’s shapely legs turned to jelly, but as badly as she wanted to sit, she simply couldn’t move. Her eyes didn’t move from Charlie’s mouth; all she could do was watch as he formed the words that made her hurt inside.

As if anticipating her unspoken,
“Oh my God! What’d you do?”
Charlie went on, “I guess I did what alcoholics do. I took stock of my life, recalling all the people I’d done wrong and the people I wanted to see at least once more before my grand farewell. I decided I needed to see Kay again, she was important to me once, albeit a lifetime ago. I needed to see someone from that part of my life.” Charlie paused, and Dee Dee thought she heard the words stall in his throat, but a second later, he went on, pretending it was all okay. “I finally found out she was living here, so I made the trek. I’ve been a different person since the doctor. I don’t rush people when they talk, and I don’t stand idly by when I know something should be done. When I see something I like,” he said, pausing to look not only at Dee Dee, but into her, “I don’t let who I am and what’s wrong with me get in the way. I just want to live and do what I can with the time I have left.”

Dee Dee didn’t move for what felt like a year. When she could finally get her muscles to cooperate, she walked over to the freezer and pulled it open. She took out a bottle of vodka and poured herself a glass. She added a splash of orange juice from the refrigerator and took in down in three quick, very unladylike gulps.

“If this Damon’s such a scary guy, I couldn’t do anything even if I wanted to. But I’m sure the police can do something,” Charlie said.

Dee Dee coughed from drinking so quickly; the cold chill in her throat and her forehead like when she ate ice cream too fast when she was little. “Like the police would care what some stripper says. They treat us all like whores. This one girl at the club went down there to report abuse, and all they did was grill her about drugs. They wanted her to wear a wire and get information for them. They only care about solving cases, not about victims or endangering anybody. They’d wanna put me on a witness stand and make me testify, like I’d be safe after that. Plus, how do I know they aren’t crooked, maybe on the take, being paid to give Damon information? In some little bum-fuck towns like this, they’re all dirty.”

“That Perez guy, the one who took me to ID my friend, seemed okay—a little edgy but okay.”

“Maybe,” Dee Dee said with a shrug. She suddenly remembered the two guys in the club, the ones who’d been asking questions the other night, and she told Charlie about them, paying close attention for any kind of reaction.

“Cops, ya think?” Charlie asked.

Dee Dee poured another drink and shook her head. “If they were, they didn’t say. They sounded like typical jerks, wearing sunglasses indoors like they were some kind of cool.”

“What did they want?”

“They kept asking if I’ve seen any new faces around. It was a dumb question, the place is always crowded, and half the time, we don’t even see faces.” She paused and looked embarrassed. “I mean, you know, because—”

Charlie held up his hand to keep her from embarrassing herself further. “Don’t worry. I understand,” he said. “What’d they look like?” he asked sounding almost bored, as if he didn’t really care.

“Trixie said one of them had a long scar on his arm. She only noticed because she has a thing for scars, but he wasn’t interested in a dance. The guy just acted all high and mighty and left.”

Charlie patted the seat next to him.

Dee Dee sat down, reflexively curling her legs up and resting her head on Charlie’s shoulder. She felt his head drop down to the side and nuzzled in; it felt nice and safe and warm.

“Sounds like nothing. And you don’t gotta worry about those boys from the parking lot. They won’t come back around,” Charlie said as if he knew how tense she was, even after that stiff, vodkaed-down screwdriver.

“How do you know that?” Dee Dee asked.

Charlie gently moved his head from side to side, like he was trying to pat her head with his chin. “Guys like that are just a step up from animals. They get too much booze in ‘em, and they convince each other that all their bad ideas are good ones. Sure, they talk big, but if they’re part of some crew you should be worried about, there woulda been more of them than just the two. If anything, this Damon guy is gonna be mad at them for stirring up trouble and hostility. I get the feeling he’s not the kind who wants anyone drawing attention to him.”

“You sound so…sure,” Dee Dee said. She pulled her head up and looked at Charlie, suddenly concerned. “Are you sure you’re not a cop?”

Charlie grinned. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure. I’ve just been around guys like them before. They’re only dangerous when there isn’t anyone there to swat them on the nose.”

Dee Dee continued to stare at Charlie’s face above her, watching to see if his eyes, those deep pools, would shift, trying to see if he was just putting on a show. “Does this mean you’re gonna hang around for a while?”

Charlie looked at her thoughtfully and smiled. “I think I just might.”

Now it was Dee Dee’s turn to smile as she flicked at Charlie’s shirt, the same shirt he’d worn every day since they’d first met at the club. “Well, in that case, the first thing we need to do is get you some new clothes. No offense, but you’re starting to stink.”

Jimmy and Petey sat on a couch in the side room of the barn, the one that held the pool table and dart board. Petey didn’t look so good after getting jacked in the nose by that prick in the parking lot, and Jimmy really just wanted Damon to give him the go-ahead so he could go after the nosy asshole in the stupid hat and make him regret that he’d ever messed with the likes of the Wheeler family.

They’d arrived back at the barn after five, and Rook—that sore thumb of a black fella—had told them Damon was sleeping. Even when they told Rook it was important, he just stared at them like his cotton-picking relatives had never taught him good old American English, back when times made sense. Rook always pretended to be tough and wore those slick suits, as if he was better than everyone else, but Jimmy knew it was all some big act; he couldn’t figure out why Damon liked the guy so much. Jimmy reasoned it was because he was always threatening people with the drill and Damon liked the show, though Jimmy’d never seen the man use it. Petey swore he knew a guy who’d been drilled in the kneecap, but Jimmy knew it was all just to scare those stupid meth-head dealers who didn’t know any better.

Jimmy was asleep when the stereo kicked in and almost blasted him off the couch. No one in that barn-turned-complex ever played any good music like Skynyrd; it was always some death metal crap that sounded like a litter of cats in a thresher. Damon only wore a pair of baggy jeans and a white tank-top when he walked in, and he didn’t say a word. He just turned on the stereo, scared the hell out of Jimmy and Petey, and took a seat in one of the big armchairs near the wall, next to the plywood-and-sawhorses table some of the guys used to play poker. His eyes were barely open, like he could fall asleep at any moment.

Jimmy looked at Damon, then at his brother, as he had no idea who was supposed to say what. “Uh—” he started.

At the very sound of Jimmy’s voice, Damon’s eyes popped open, wide and white. “Did I tell you to speak?” he asked through clenched teeth, cutting Jimmy off.

Jimmy shut up quick and sat there as Damon just stared back at them. Time stood still, it seemed, and it took what felt like forever for Damon to move again.

“What the fuck were you two thinking?” he asked.

The question derailed Jimmy’s train of thought. Ever since he’d left the bar, he’d been waiting for a chance to go after that jerk. He hadn’t expected Damon to ask him about thinking. “What do ya mean, Boss?” Jimmy asked. “We was just—”