Terrarium by Valerie Trueblood

Author:Valerie Trueblood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2018-05-09T16:00:00+00:00

His Rank

Knox had a favorite bar, because of the bartender, a woman he was preparing to get to know. It was on a block where the university ran up against a changing neighborhood, close enough to the campus to bring in the grounds crew and campus security. It was small and dark, with nothing except neon beer signs in the window to set it apart from the outbuildings of the university.

The bartender had hair cut as close as Obama’s. Her eyes were so large they took time to complete a blink. When Knox first started coming in they had had a happy hour menu; now a guy in the back washing glasses would make you a plate of nachos, but that was it. The bartender was on her own, no servers.

Knox decided beautiful was a word thrown around—he had employed it a good deal himself—when it should be reserved for examples of indifferent power like that in the curve of the bartender’s eyelids as she worked the taps. When she gave you your beer she looked straight at you, and that was like being wanded at the airport. Even if you were white, the eyes could say you were a man. Then something nice with the lips though not a smile. Then the luxurious blink, as if you, and the whole arrangement—time of day, frosted glass, work, play, men, women—had made her sleepy. Yes, he was going to make his move.

HIS FEET WERE STIFF FROM being hooked over a rung of the high wooden stool by the window. He had been sitting for an hour breaking up with his girlfriend, who kept saying, “It’s because I gained the weight.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“I weigh more than you do. You think I’ll get that big.” In a booth two hefty women in the black uniforms of campus security were sharing a plate of nachos. “Right back.” She stumbled getting down off the stool; she couldn’t hold her beer.

A man held the front door open and allowed a pit bull to precede him into the room. Big guy, already spotted by Knox in the crosswalk with his dog, with a funny look on his face that made Knox say casually to himself, Don’t come in here, dude. The man had on a green tank, though it was not really warm enough for that, and he was handsome in a flaring way Knox had to admit made him uneasy even in some sports figures.

“Dog can’t come in here,” said the bartender.

“She can’t, huh?” The man advanced into the room with the dog, snubbed up tight on the leash so its front paws had to scrabble for the floor.

“You tie him up.” The bartender stretched out her whole arm and pointed her long finger.

“Bus stop. Can’t tie this kind of a dog up in a bus stop.”

“What you want to come in here for?” said the bartender, not unkindly, filling a schooner and setting it on the empty bar. “This that new dog? He nice?”

“She.

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