“No,” Nick said. “This has nothing to do with omens. Well, for the record, yeah, I have a bad sense. But that’s not why I spoke up. I mean that I thought you outgrew your angry phase, and now it looks like you’re getting ready to pick a fight.”
Snapshots of Jake’s life flashed through his clouded mind — photographs of a father he never knew, a mother’s alcohol-related car accident, a submarine’s commanding officer who purposely gave him HIV, a fugitive existence followed by service as a puppet and pawn, dashed hopes with a wife’s false pregnancy.
His nine-figure net worth, earned by a decade of supporting Pierre Renard’s plans, accentuated his void of purpose and his disdain for a god he couldn’t force himself to accept.
“It’s still in there,” he said. “The anger. Just let me keep drinking so I can douse the flames.”
Jake gulped the liquid, lifted his empty beer glass, and shouted across the table.
“Fill it up, boys. And get a new pitcher and shots. I’m buying the next round.”
He reflected that he could buy the bar and everyone in it, but the sense of belonging in the crowd escaped his reach. Except for the mastery of submarine tactics that made him an asset, he belonged nowhere and to no one. He knew his wife loved him, but her attempts to bond clanked off his heart like ice picks on steel.
The welder leaned forward, pointed, and yelled. Jake followed his finger behind his shoulder and noticed two young ladies.
“See that beauty behind you?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Sure.”
“Can you get her attention? I know her,” the welder said.
“Which one?”
Jake turned and aimed his palm at the lady behind him.
“This one?” Jake asked.
He shifted to the next, accidentally brushing the back of her sweater.
“Or this one?” he asked again.
Jake’s antics caught the intended girl’s attention. She saw the welder, rolled her eyes, and looked away.
“That’s her,” the welder said.
“I don’t think she knows you that well,” Jake said. “Or maybe, too well.”
“We used to date. Sort of.”
Jake felt a rough tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw a man with cropped hair and hollow, dark eyes staring through him.
“You like touching women?” hollow eyes asked.
“What are you talking about?” Jake asked.
“Don’t play stupid with me. I saw what you did.”
“I think you saw it wrong.”
“I saw what I saw.”
“Are you accusing me of something? I didn’t do anything.”
“So you’re a pervert and a liar,” hollow eyes said.
“I’m not going to argue with you. Let’s cut to the chase. What the fuck are you going to do about it?”
Shadows and lines cut across hollow eyes’ face.
“I’ll take you outside and teach you some manners.”
Jake measured the man’s build. He stood a few inches taller than himself, and his tee-shirt outlined bulky muscle. But he guessed that he had a twenty-pound advantage, meaning that hollow eyes either knew how to fight bigger men, he had help, or both.
Jake leaned into Nick.
“Stay out of this. No matter what. I mean it.”
Careful to avoid exposure to a cheap shot, Jake sprang upward, moved beyond arm’s reach, and faced his adversary.
“I’ll be outside if you want to talk,” he said.
He worked through the crowd and pushed open the bar’s back door, feeling the encroaching winter’s chill. Stopping beside a dumpster, he bounced, twisted, and whipped his arms in circles to warm himself.
As minutes passed, Jake wondered if his bluff would die uncalled. But then three men, led by hollow eyes, walked out the door and stopped several paces away.
“Three against one,” Jake said.
“You asked for it,” hollow eyes said.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “I guess I’m just in the mood to kick someone’s ass, and you’re the dumb shit who volunteered. Am I going to pound your buddies here, too, or are they just gonna watch you bleed?”
“They’re gonna watch me tear your eyes out.”
As tactics to inflict pain and render hollow eyes unconscious flickered through Jake’s mind, a crack hammered through his head, his drunken field of vision tilted sideways, and his world turned black.
When his vision returned, he felt men holding his arms to their chests, exposing his torso to hollow eyes’ punches. With two men cheering their leader, Jake counted five total adversaries, and the ache in his jaw told him that he had let someone sneak up behind him for a sucker-punch.
“Punk!” hollow eyes said as he embedded his fist into Jake’s ribs.
Caught unprepared, Jake forewent the advanced technique of softening his midsection to diffuse the blow and instead tensed his muscles as armor. He screamed to tighten his body at impact.
His ribs felt bruised as he conceded that hollow eyes punched with power. Fearing that another blow might break bones, he tested his restraints.
The man on his right held a skillful thumb lock and leveraged respectable pressure against Jake’s elbow. His other arm enjoyed more freedom, its captor using unskilled strength and weight to hold him.
Jake dropped himself, forcing his restrainers to lurch forward. He then jumped up, lifted his left foot, and jabbed his heel into a captor’s foot.
He yanked his left arm free and pivoted to his right. His skilled captor made the mistake of remaining committed to his joint lock, and Jake punished him by ramming the butt of his free hand into his jaw. The man dropped to a knee.
The wounded-foot man staggered and telegraphed a right hook. Jake slipped aside the blow, parried it, and launched his leg under the extended arm. As he planted his knee into the man’s stomach, he felt the man’s body convulse and drop.
With two attackers down and two men appearing content to observe, Jake squared his shoulders toward hollow eyes.
Hollow eyes withdrew a knife from his jacket, and its blade reflected the parking lot’s overhead lights.
He led with a stab that Jake dodged, but he left no immediate opening for a counterattack. Taking the offensive, Jake channeled his anger into a series of brute force kicks into the man’s side. He then sneaked a snap kick between forearms and caught hollow eyes in the mouth. His assailant stunned, Jake stepped forward to achieve his evening’s goal.
Unleashing his inner lion, he swiped his elbow across the man’s temple, and hollow eyes went down. As the blade clanked against pavement, Jake straddled his victim, grabbed his jacket lapel, and roared.
“Fuck!”
Jake thought about his broken childhood, and he drove his fist into the man’s face.
“Fuck!”
He remembered the anger, fear, and betrayal that had ended his naval career, and he drove his fist into the man’s face.
“Fuck!”
He felt hopeless and void of purpose, and he drove his fist into the man’s face.
His vision blackened, and he repeated the blows in endless rhythm with his angry heart until one of his recovered victims stood over him and yelled.
“Dude, that’s enough!”
Jake looked at the man who stood rubbing his jaw.
“You want to go another round with me, jackass?”
“No, dude. It’s over. Just stop.”
Red rage subsided, and Jake lowered his fist. As he rose to his feet, he realized that hollow eyes lay motionless, his lungs unmoving.
“Oh, shit,” Jake said. “Call nine-one-one.”
“What?”
“Just do it!”
As the man stepped back and lifted a phone to his ear, Jake trotted into the bar. He grabbed his brother and commanded him to drive him home.
He climbed into the passenger seat, and in silence, Nick drove into the night. Once on the interstate, Jake picked up his phone.