Rosie O'Dell (44 page)

“Deep. I like that, Tommy-o. You’re here one minute and already we’ve talked
more about the realities of life than twenty weekends on the bus with those
featherbrains—nothing but NHL possibilities and tail. Did you take your old man
up on going to Europe this summer?”

“I said no.”

“Can’t bear to part from Rosie, huh? You two must still be big.”

“Yes, Brent, of course. What did you think?”

“Well, you never know. Christ, she dumped
me
.”

“What are you talking about, Brent? Rosie never dumped you.”

“Well, not technically, maybe. She never went for me. Kind of the same thing.
Instead, holy shit, she ended up with you. I think what shagged me with her was
that she had a deal with her buddy to set me up with her…” He snapped his
fingers five or six times. “The one with the body.”

“Suzy.”

“A bombshell. A lot of the guys had their jockstraps stretched out of shape
over her, pal. I seriously looked Suzy over myself, but there was something
about Rosie, though, something extra. Kind of like the difference between a good
farm team player and a top player on the NHL. I kept thinking about what the old
man said that time: What kids we could have made, me and her! But she wanted
you, man. I couldn’t believe it.”

“So everything worked out great, Brent. You wouldn’t have wanted a girl with
such lousy taste she preferred me over you.”

Brent didn’t crack a grin. “Ain’t that a fuckin’ fact. It did work out. Imagine
if I really got in heavy with her and all that fuckery about Rothesay… I can see
the old man now. Rosie told me in her letter when I was injured that you’ve been
a tower of strength all through this whole shitstorm.”

“Nah. I only did what anyone in my place would do. Suzy and Rosie were the
towers of strength from the start.”

“Yeah, but for a guy who found out someone like Rothesay was rooting at
her—man, I dunno. I wouldn’t’ve been out of the dressing room on that
one, champ. You’ve got more balls than a driving range.” Brent
surprised me yet again by pulling out a cigarette and lighting up. Blowing out
the smoke he used to hate even worse than booze, he asked, “You going to stick
with her when all this is over and done with?”

“Naturally, I am, Brent. Jesus, what are you talking about? Why wouldn’t
I?”

“Him ploughing her every which way, no bodily orifices barred, with that
baseball bat of a cock of his, didn’t that get to you? Shit, man.”

“Who are you going out with yourself these days, Brent? There was one you
mentioned…”

“Yeah, I
was
going out with this living doll, Anita, an octoroon she
called herself as a joke—you know what that is?—because of the hair and the
great lips. Certain angle, she looked like she had a touch of the tarbrush.
Fucking beautiful. I met her in Montreal. Up from Brazil to go to school. Father
a brain surgeon, mother a judge. She’s going to start studying to be an
architect next year. I brought her to the hotel to meet the folks when they were
visiting, and the old man turns to the old lady, right there in front of her,
and says, ‘No one told me she was a neeegro.’ That kind of finished her with me.
Good old Dad, I’ll kill that nasty fuck, first chance I get. No, it’d really bug
me, Tombo, knowing all about it, you know, everything Rothesay did to Rosie, and
Christ, me, I’m hung like a bull moose.”

“So you keep insisting,” I said. “But the last I remember, you and I were
about the same very average dimensions.”

“When we were kids, yes, but a lot happened size-wise as I grew up. And hey, I
never got on the steroids either, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No? But I do have to wonder why it is that your big manly hardware comes with
such a fragile childish ego.” Oh, oh, this could be bad.

Brent looked at me with a twisted smile. He raised his large hands from his
bulging thighs to the top of the table and tightened them into fists. “That’s a
keeper, Tommy,” he said, chortling in appreciation. “This is like the old days.
You would have been great on our bus. Mind if I use that one myself
sometime?”

“Oh no,” said a voice nearby, “don’t tell me my idol has got a fragile ego to
go with that eggshell skull.” A young man was sauntering up to us.

“Oh Christ, it’s Moose,” said Brent. I recognized Cory “Moose” Mercer from the
sports page. He’d gone up to the mainland for hockey school with Brent and had
been his roommate for a while in the residence. He hadn’t been asked back the
next year. The only remark the coach would make to
the demanding
media was, “That boy has issues he needs help to deal with.” Judging by his pale
and puffy face and huge pupils in bloodshot whites, he hadn’t received the help
he needed. After he asked who I was—not before, I noticed—Brent introduced me to
him.

“Well, lookee here,” said Moose. “Tom the Bomb.” He turned back to Brent.
“Hey, Antsy Anstey, what the hell’re you doing drinking with this guy? I thought
you said you couldn’t stand the prick ever since you were in high school
together. I thought you had a knife out for him ever since he started making it
with the chick no one else seems to have any trouble getting into except
you.”

“You thought wrong, Cory,” said Brent in a soft voice. “Stop fabricating shit.
And stop using that nickname ‘Antsy.’ I told you I don’t—”

“Well, fuck me, I can’t believe my good luck. The famous Tom Sharpe, star
of—no, the late lamented Dr. Rothesay was the star—bit player, yeah, Tom, the
bit player in the porno saga featuring the lovely and versatile Miss Rosie
O’Dell. I’m in the company of greatness here, two celebrities
and
archrivals for Newfoundland’s most famous pussy. Hey, Tom, my new superstar
buddy, put her there, big guy, I mean little guy. Right—Dr. Rothesay had the big
guy.”

Moose started to slide into the booth next to Brent. I looked at Brent. He was
chuckling and shaking his head as if he’d paid top dollar for this performance
and was getting his money’s worth. I went to slip off my bench to the
floor.

Brent reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder and murmured: “Take it
easy, old buddy.” He then said loudly, “Don’t sit there, Cory. Just shag off out
of here. You’re high as a kite.”

“I’m not high, Brent. I know when I’m high, because I get mean, and I say to
you, my hockey idol with feet of clay—or is it brain of mush?—tonight I am as
happy as a pig in… no, happy as a brain surgeon looking for overtime work with
the famous Bulldogs. So relax, Brent, you should be stress-free these days, what
with your brilliant future now behind you. I won’t be long. I just wanted to ask
Tom the Bomb here something. You sit down and relax, too, Tom. Jesus, I’ve never
seen two jumpier clowns than you two. Is that what comes from fighting over
slimy seconds in the same recycled twat? Tombo. Listen, now. Help me out here.
I’ve got a bet on with my mother about this: What turns you on most? When Rosie
is blowing you and she pukes all over your balls or when you’re fudge packing
her and she shits all over your legs?”

That Moose had five inches and seventy pounds on me did not
enter my mind. Nor did the contrast between Moose’s many fights on the ice and
my own lack of even one serious fight anywhere in my life. I only knew that I
had to shut this guy up—forever, if attainable. And the precise moves required
to achieve that coveted end were rolling through my mind as if I were watching
them unfold on a video.

Cory was pulling his legs under the table, his smirking eyes on mine but with a
dawning awareness of menace when I stepped towards him and grabbed him behind
the ears, visualizing now what I’d earlier thought of doing to Brent. Aiming for
Cory’s forehead, I butted him as hard as I could, but because Cory still had the
reflexes to draw his head back, I missed and made hard contact with the bridge
of his nose. He struggled to get to his feet, blood streaming from his nostrils,
but fell to his knees where, as he wobbled to get up, the blood flew in arcs
about him like a loose garden hose on full blast. An unintended bonus had
occurred, I noticed. Cory’s right ear had given way under my vicious tug and was
hanging as floppy as a retriever’s from the side of his head.

Now I put into effect step two from the instruction video rolling in my head.
Thinking or muttering, “I’ve fucking killed better than you,” I picked up my
beer glass from the table and struck the top inch sharply on the metal edge.
Liquid and small shards flew off, leaving a glass cylinder with jagged ends
pointing outwards from my hand. Cory was woozily regaining one knee, with his
other foot in front of him and his hands balancing himself on the floor, trying
to get a bead on me to lunge. I skipped sideways around him and grabbed him by
the hair on the top of his head. Simultaneously, with all my strength, I thrust
the jagged glass at the side of Cory’s neck just below the dangling ear where I
judged the jugular to be. My idea was to sever that vessel and watch Cory die on
the grimy floor amid gushes of his heart’s blood.

A constraint on my arm from behind, nearly equal to my own force, threw me off
my target, and I succeeded only in gouging gobs of flesh off Cory’s cheek. A
most horrible frustration at failing to finish Moose off seized me, and I lunged
ahead against the arms around my chest pulling me back and kicked Cory hard and
square in the mouth, sprawling his torso backwards till his head touched the
floor between his heels. As I strained to get at him again, Cory rolled over and
scrambled, whimpering and cursing on all fours, to the exit. Now I started to
comprehend the sounds in my ear: “It’s okay, champ. That’s good. You did good.
You got the bastard real
good.” It was Brent’s voice. And these
were Brent’s arms around my shoulders and chest. I stopped struggling and Brent
loosened his hold and pried the beer glass with gouts of blood on its spears out
of my hand,

“I called the cops, Brent,” the guy behind the bar said, putting down the
telephone receiver. “That looked like it was going to be real nasty. Pass me
those beer bottles and your glass. You guys want to stay or go?”

“We’ll stay,” said Brent. “I want to file charges against that idiot. You saw
what happened. He would have got me right in the side of the head with that
sucker punch if Tom hadn’t been here to stop him. It probably would have
finished me after what happened on the ice.”

“Tried to sucker punch you, did he? I wouldn’t doubt it. He’s a mean
one.”

Within three minutes a police officer came in the door. “I’m Constable Blundon,”
he said to the bartender. “Moose Mercer is out in the cruiser heading for
hospital in rough shape. He says a Tom Sharpe tried to kill him with a broken
glass or the like. Is that person here?”

Brent said, “No one tried to kill anyone except that idiot in your cruiser,
Officer.”

“Hey-y-y, Brent Anstey. Welcome home, guy. How’s the old noggin? You going
back?”

Brent shrugged. “We’ll see. I dunno. But if Tom here hadn’t gotten between me
and that asshole’s sucker punch to my temple, I wouldn’t be going anywhere
except on life support.”

“Why would he try to sucker punch you, Brent? He says he’s a friend of
yours.”

“Used to be. You ever play hockey, Officer? Some players are not satisfied to
restrict to the ice certain animosities that may arise during a game.”

“You’re the Tom Sharpe in that sex trial, right?” said Constable Blundon. “And
linked to the death of the perp, that doctor. Are you trained in the martial
arts?” When I shook my head, he went on. “You sure you didn’t learn a few lethal
techniques in order to finish the job the law couldn’t do on Rothesay? Can I see
you guys’ hands?” We showed our hands, fore and aft, and he said, “See, the
problem I got, there’s an individual, a big man, in the cruiser with a broken
nose and a cheek on him like a piece of raw meat and cracked teeth and the man’s
ear is hanging by a thread and we’re bringing him to the hospital for some
serious patching up, and I’m looking at two guys here with not a scratch on
them. Wait now. That bump on your forehead there, Tom, is that where you butted
the guy in the snozz?”

Brent said, “I think I did see their heads inadvertently
connect as Tom was stopping Moose from vegetablizing me. I want to lay charges
against Cory ‘Moose’ Mercer, Officer. Can we do that now?”

“You’ll have to go up to the station to do that, Brent. The wound on buddy’s
face in the cruiser, that does look like the handiwork of a broken glass, like
he said. Is that what you did it with, Tom?”

My training under Leonard Barry, Q. C. was holding. I said nothing.

“No beer bottle here, Officer,” said Brent. “We’re too young to drink. That
abrasion on his face could have been caused by anything, the side of the bar,
the side of the stool, the floor. He was acting like a total madman when Tom
tried to subdue him. Look at the blood on his shoe. He had to fend off Moose
with his foot.”

“What’s all that glass on the floor down there?”

“That’s where Cory’s glass broke when he slipped and fell.”

“There’s two of you and one of him and you’re a hockey player, Brent, with a
big rep, so fearing for your very lives may not ring all that true on the
witness stand.” The policeman turned to the bartender. “What’d you see?”

“Not a lot. After Moose fell down, I saw him getting up to come back at this
guy, and I called the cops. I know what a mean bastard he can be. He’s been
barred here a couple of times.”