"Jeez, Mavis," Theo said, trying to shake the picture from his mind.
"What? I didn't have my glasses on. I thought he was a hirsute insurance salesman with talent."
"I'd better get him home," Theo said, nudging Gabe, who had turned his attention to a young woman on his right who was wearing a low-cut red sweater and had been moving from stool to stool all night long, waiting for someone to talk to her.
"Hi," Gabe said to the woman's cleavage. "I'm not involved in the human experience and I have no redeeming qualities as a man."
"Me either," said Tucker Case, from the stool on the other side of the red-sweater woman. "Do people keep telling you that you're a psychopath, too? I hate that."
* * *
Tucker Case, under several layers of glibness and guile, was actually quite broken up over his breakup with Lena Marquez. It wasn't so much that she had become a part of his life in the two days he had known her, but that she had begun to represent hope. And as the Buddha said: "Hope is merely another face of desire. And desire is a motherfucker." He'd gone out seeking human company to help dilute the disappointment. In another time, he'd have picked up the first woman he encountered, but his man-slut days had left him lonelier than ever, and he would not tread that lubricious path again.
"So," Tuck said to Gabe, "did you just get dumped?"
"She led me on," Gabe said. "She tore my guts out. Evil, thy name is woman!"
"Don't talk to him," Theo said, taking Gabe by the shoulder and unsuccessfully trying to pull him off his bar stool. "This guy's no good."
The young woman sitting between Tuck and Gabe looked from one to the other, then to Theo, then at her breasts, then at the men, as if to say, Are you guys blind? I've been sitting here all night, with these, and you're going to ignore me.
Tucker Case was ignoring her — well, except for inspecting her sweater cakes as he talked to Gabe and Theo. "Look, Constable, maybe we got off on the wrong foot —»
"Wrong foot?" Theo's voice almost broke. As upset as he appeared, he appeared to be talking to the woman in the red sweater's breasts, rather than to Tucker Case, who was only a foot beyond them. "You threatened me."
"He did?" said Gabe, angling for a better look down the red sweater. "That's harsh, buddy. Theo just got thrown out of the house."
"Can you believe guys our age can still fall so hard?" Tuck said to Theo, looking up from the cleavage to convey his sincerity. He felt bad about blackmailing Theo, but, much like helping Lena hide the body, sometimes certain unpleasantries needed to be done, and being a pilot and a man of action, he did them.
"What are you talking about?" Theo asked.
"Well, Lena and I have parted ways, Constable. Shortly after you and I spoke this morning."
"Really?" Now Theo looked up from the woolly mounds of intrigue.
"Really," Tuck said. "And I'm sorry things happened the way they did."
"That doesn't really change anything, does it?"
"Would it make a difference if I told you that I absolutely did not harm this alleged Dale Pearson, and neither did Lena?"
"I don't think he was alleged," said Gabe, slurring at the breasts. "I'm pretty sure he was confirmed Dale Pearson."
"Whatever," said Tuck. "Would that change anything? Would you believe that?"
Theo didn't speak right away but appeared to be waiting for an answer from the decolletage oracle. When he looked up at Tuck again he said, "Yeah, I believe you."
Tuck nearly aspirated the ginger ale he was drinking. When he stopped sputtering he said, "Wow, you suck as a lawman, Theo. You can't just believe a strange guy who tells you something in a bar." Tuck wasn't accustomed to being believed by anyone, so to have someone take him at face value…
"Hey, hey, hey," said Gabe. "That's uncalled for —»
"Well, fuck you guys!" said the woman in the red sweater. She jumped up from her stool and snatched her keys off the bar. "I am a person, too, you know? And these are not speakerphones," she said, grabbing her breasts underneath and shaking them at the offenders, her keys jingling cheerfully as she did, completely defusing the effect of her anger.
"Oh — my — God," said Gabe.
"You can't just ignore a person like that! Besides, you're all too old and you're losers and I'd rather be alone on Christmas than spend five minutes with any of you horn dogs!" And with that she threw some cash on the bar, turned, and stormed out of the bar.