“You look like shit.” Ben’s voice cut through the hum of the growing crowd.
I looked up to see him standing over my shoulder, his gaze locked on my wife.
“But you’re still a hell of a lot prettier than paleface over here.” He jerked a thumb at me as he added the comment.
A waitress sidled up to the table and shot me a questioning look. “Do you folks need anything?”
“I’m good,” I replied.
“Black Bush, neat, double,” Felicity chimed in.
“Felicity…” I admonished.
“All right then.” She cut me off with an annoyed tone lacing her words. “Jamieson, neat, double.”
I shook my head and waved my hand in surrender as I looked up at the waitress. “Give her whatever she wants.”
“Black Bush,” my wife chirped.
The waitress craned her neck and looked up at Ben. “How about you?”
“Beer,” Ben told her.
“We have Guinness on tap,” she offered.
“No honey.” Ben shook his head. “Beer isn’t s’posed to be black. Bring me somethin’ in a mug that’s cold, fizzy, and beer-colored.”
“Whatever you say.” She shook her head back at him then before she turned and walked away, she added rhetorically, “Do you want me to bring you a straw with that?”
“Friendly place you picked here.” Ben made the sarcastic comment as he slid into the booth next to Felicity.
“Aye, you’re in a pub, Ben,” my wife informed him, still lounging in her seat. “Quit bein’ a Colleen.”
“She’s doin’ the accent,” he remarked as he looked over at me. “The Twilight Zone thing do that to her?”
“Leave me alone,” Felicity muttered.
“I’m sure it wore her out, but I think the two double Irish whisky’s are to blame,” I replied.
“Yeah, okay.” He nodded, glancing over at her then back to me. “She’s not gonna start talkin’ that gibberish is she?”
“Duairc,” Felicity chimed.
“That answer your question?” I asked.
“She just called me a name, didn’t she?”
I shrugged. “Probably.”
“I said you’re a rude man,” she offered.
“Well, at least this time you got the gender right.” He shook his head and looked back to me. “So explain it to me. What’s up with the squaw doin’ the la-la land thing? I thought that was your gig.”
“Me too,” I answered with a nod. “I’m not sure what’s going on there myself.”
“Will you quit talking about me like I’m not here, then,” Felicity insisted.
“Okay. Chill.” Ben jumped the tracks and boarded another train of thought. “So what about this mornin’? What’s up with that?”
“Again, I don’t know.” I shrugged. “The episode was almost exactly like the ones I had back in January.”
“You mean when you were floppin’ around like a fish outta water when Porter was…” his voice trailed off at the mention of the name.
“Yeah,” I acknowledged and finished the sentence for him. “When Porter was trying to kill me.”
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “Didn’t mean to dredge that up.”
“No problem. It’s not something I’ve managed to forget yet anyhow.”
“So I thought those stopped after he was locked up?”
“They did. Until today that is.”
Ben frowned hard and stared back at me. Without a word, he reached to his belt and pulled out his cell phone. After an aborted attempt, he managed to key in a number with his thick finger and tucked the device up to his ear. I had a feeling that I knew what he was getting ready to do, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer he was seeking.
“Yeah, Roy?” he said after a moment. “Yeah, it’s Ben Storm. Not much, you?… Yeah, so listen, I need a favor. Can you check somethin’ for me? Yeah, I need status on an inmate… No, don’t have his number, but you’ll probably remember ‘im. Uh-huh… Name’s Eldon Andrew Porter… Yeah, thought you would… Yeah. Not a problem. Yeah, on my cell. Great. Bye.”
As Ben ended the call, the waitress came toward the table, expertly maneuvering through the crowd with a drink-burdened serving tray held above her shoulder. In a practiced motion, she swooped it down and plucked a tumbler full of whisky from it then slid the glass in front of Felicity. Next, she placed a pint glass of beer in front of Ben. In a reverse motion, she hefted the platter back up to her shoulder and regarded my friend.
“Cold, fizzy, and well, yellow-colored,” she said, reaching with her free hand into the change pouch around her waist and withdrawing a straw. She tossed it in front of Ben and shot him a smile as she walked off. “Enjoy.”
“Jeez…” he muttered, shaking his head at me.
“So you don’t really think Porter has escaped or something do you?” I asked abruptly, the edginess in my voice was obvious even to me.
“Don’t know,” he replied. “But we’ll know shortly. Roy’s an old friend of mine, and he works for the Missouri Department of Corrections.”
“But wouldn’t there have been some kind of bulletin or alert or something if he’d escaped?” I pressed.
“Depends, Row.”
“That doesn’t make me feel very secure, Ben.”
“Listen, Kemosabe, don’t get all worked up,” he told me. “I’m just checkin’ to be sure. C-Y-A and all that shit.”
“Yeah, okay.”
I knew that my tone was less than convincing. My friend shook his head then brushed the straw out of the way and lifted the pint of beer. After a long swallow, he rested it back on the coaster and watched it intently as he slowly spun the glass.
“So you said on the phone that you were movin’ when Felicity went all la-la,” he finally said, bludgeoning the stalled conversation in a new direction with a blunt segue.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Kind of. When she seized, her foot slipped off the brake, and we started into the intersection.”
“Not too fast then?”
“Not really I don’t guess.” I shrugged. “But I still probably didn’t do the transmission any favors.”
“How so?”
“When I popped it into gear.”
“I don’t follow.”
“To stop the Jeep,” I explained. “I switched off the key and then popped it into gear. Kind of an abrupt stop, but it worked.”
“I thought you said you weren’t movin’ too fast?”
“We weren’t really. Just rolling more or less.”
“Just rollin’?”
“Yeah, why?”
He creased his forehead. “Then why didn’t ya’ just pull the emergency brake?”
I closed my eyes and hung my head in sudden embarrassment as the mental picture of the Jeep’s center console painted itself in my brain.
Ben looked back at me, his face spread into a grin, and I could tell that he was already formulating a wisecrack. Fortunately for me, his cell phone began its low warble, cutting him off before he could utter the taunt. He motioned me to wait and answered it. “Storm. Yeah. That was fast. Yeah. Yeah… You’re sure? Okay, thanks, Roy. I owe you one… Uh-yeah,” my friend hesitated for a moment before continuing, “Yeah, I’ll tell ‘er. Bye.”
A slightly pained look crept in to replace his grin, and I wasn’t sure why, but for some reason, I could tell that it came from something other than the query about Eldon Porter.
I raised an eyebrow and dipped my head at him. “All good?”
“Yeah,” he replied as he fumbled to put the cell phone back on his belt, finally giving up and dropping it on the table in front of him. “Porter is locked away safe and sound, preaching to all the other wingnuts in the population.”
“Great.” I frowned.
“Hey, a coupl’a minutes ago you were getting’ ready to panic on me,” he observed. “What’s up?”
“No I wasn’t.”
“Yeah, right. What’s the deal?”
“Okay, maybe I was,” I admitted. “A little. But I guess maybe I was still just hoping for an easy explanation to all of this.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Woulda been nice, but look at it this way; at least he’s not on the street.”
“True. So since we’ve ruled that out, maybe it is the Brittany Larson thing after all,” I offered with a shake of my head, not really believing it myself. “But that wouldn’t explain why I was having the seizures in January.”