Make It Stop by Jim Ruland

Author:Jim Ruland [Ruland, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

10

RIOT AT THE BEACH

“Fiery Cat and Coke.”

The bar is dark and gloomy. An incubator for bad decisions. Her kind of place. It’s been a long time since she’s gotten drunk in a place like this, and she intends to make the worst of it.

The bartender sets a pint glass on the bar. “Ten.”

Melanie puts down a twenty. “Keep the change.”

The bartender makes the money disappear. He doesn’t nod or say “thanks” or even crack a smile. He doesn’t look like he knows how.

“Is it always this dead in here?” she asks. It’s got to be past five o’clock in the afternoon—happy hour—but the bar is mostly empty.

“We just opened,” he says with a shrug. He’s doing something super important with the pint glasses now. Soaking and stacking. Still no eye contact. His loss.

The sound of a cue ball clacking directs her attention to a pair of edgy-looking day laborers in heavy shoes and sweat-stained baseball caps. Melanie goes to investigate. They’re playing a game of eight ball, stripes versus solids, on a warped table, the faded baize riddled with cigarette burns. A sign on the wall reads, NO FUCKING ON THE TABLE. They look like the kind of white, blue-collar guys who bet on sports and spend payday at the strip club. Their eyes blaze and their faces sag. They will have to do.

“Can I play?”

“Sure,” says the less attractive but more outgoing of the two, who scoops up the balls and sweeps them into a plastic triangle. His name is Eric. His friend is Blaine. They have strong forearms and weak chins. They are tight with their feelings and loose with their cash. They are house painters, Eric tells her, but they’re also framers, glazers, and roofers.

“Anything you need for twenty bucks an hour,” Eric says.

“Eric?” Melanie interrupts. “Do I look like I care about any of that shit?”

Blaine laughs.

When the game is over, Eric fishes a joint out of his shirt pocket. “Care to step outside?”

As they head out the back door, Melanie rips a flyer off the wall for a punk rock band called The Furors. The show is for later that night at a country western joint called The Cattle Prod, farther down PCH. Perfect. She stuffs the flyer into her pocket as she surveys the parking lot. Chain link fence. Concrete wall. Ass-end of a dry cleaner on one side, a mini market on the other, all towered over by a parking structure to the south.

Blaine sparks the spliff and passes it to Melanie. She feels a tightening in her chest, a narrowing of her field of vision, as she takes in the smoke. How many hours has she spent in parking lots, backyards, and bathrooms, smoking with strangers who are only interested in getting in her pants? Hundreds? Thousands? Her whole life?

She passes the joint to Blaine, who holds it for way too long, telling one bullshit story after another. He is younger and a better physical specimen than Eric, but his big mouth is a turn-off.

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