Dagger Key and Other Stories

  “Me, too.” She stabbed a piece of egg with her fork, tipped her head to the side as if to get a better angle on me. “I don’t know when it was I started to be able to read you so well. Not that you were that hard to read to begin with. It just seems there’s nothing hidden in your face anymore.”

  “Maybe it’s a case of heightened senses.”

  “No, really. At times it’s like I know what you’re about to say.”

  “You mean I don’t have to speak?”

  She adopted the manner of a legal professional. “Unfortunately, no. You have to speak. Otherwise, it would be difficult to catch you in a lie.”

  “Maybe we should test this,” I said. “You ask my name, and I’ll say, Helmut or Torin.”

  She shook her head. “I’m an organic machine, not a lie detector. We have different ways. Different needs.”

  “Organic. So that would make you…softer than your basic machine? Possibly more compliant?”

  “Very much so,” she said.

  “You know, I think I may be reading you pretty well myself.” I leaned across the table, grabbed a sloppy kiss, and, as I sat back down, I remembered something. “Damn!” I said, and rapped my forehead with my knuckles.

  “What is it?”

  “I forgot to take Stanky for his haircut.”

  “Can’t he take care of it himself?”

  “Probably not. You want to go with us? You might as well meet him. Get it over with.”

  She popped egg into her mouth and chewed. “Do we have to do it now?”

  “No, he won’t even be up for a couple of hours.”

  “Good,” she said.

  The Crucible, a concrete block structure on the edge of Black William, off beyond the row houses, had once been a dress outlet store. We had put a cafeteria in the front, where we served breakfast and lunch—we did a brisk business because of the mill. Separate from the cafeteria, the back half of the building was given over to a bar with a few ratty booths, rickety chairs and tables. We had turned a high-school artist loose on the walls and she had painted murals that resembled scenes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s lost labor-union novel. An immense crucible adorned the wall behind the stage; it appeared, thanks to the artist’s inept use of perspective, to be spilling a flood of molten steel down upon an army of orc-like workers.

  There was a full house that night, attracted by local legends, The Swimming Holes, a girl band who had migrated to Pittsburgh, achieving a degree of national renown, and I had packed the audience with Friends of Vernon whom I had enjoined to applaud and shout wildly for Stanky. A haze of smoke fogged the stage lights and milling about were fake punks, the odd goth, hippies from Garnant College in Waterford, fifteen miles away: the desperate wanna-be counter-culture of the western Pennsylvania barrens. I went into the dressing rooms, gave each Swimming Hole a welcome-home hug, and checked in on Stanky. Jerry, a skinny guy with buzzcut red hair, was plunking on his bass, and Geno was playing fills on the back of a chair; Ian, the rhythm guitarist, was making a cell call in the head. Stanky was on the couch, smoking a Camel, drinking a Coke, and watching the Sci-Fi Channel. I asked if he felt all right. He said he could use a beer. He seemed calm, supremely confident, which I would not have predicted and did not trust. But it was too late for concern and I left him to God.

  I joined Andrea at the bar. She had on an old long-sleeved Ramones shirt, the same that she had worn to gigs back when my band was happening. Despite the shirt, she looked out of place in the Crucible, a swan floating on a cesspool. I ordered a beer to be carried to Stanky, a shot of tequila for myself. Andrea put her mouth to my ear and shouted over the recorded music, “Don’t get drunk!,” and then something else that was lost in the din. I threw down the shot and led her into the cafeteria, which was serving coffee and soda to a handful of kids, some of whom appeared to be trying to straighten out. I closed the door to the bar, cutting the volume by half.

  “What were you saying?” I asked.

  “I said not to get drunk, I might have use for you later.” She sat at the counter, patted the stool beside her, encouraging me to sit.

  “They’re about to start,” I said, joining her. “I’ve only got a minute.”

  “How do you think it’ll go?”

  “With Stanky? I’m praying it won’t be a disaster.”

  “You know, he didn’t seem so bad this afternoon. Not like you described, anyway.”

  “You just like him because he said you were a babe.”

  I took a loose cigarette from my shirt pocket, rolled it between my thumb and forefinger, and she asked if I was smoking again.

  “Once in a while. Mainly I do this,” I said, demonstrating my rolling technique. “Anyway…Stanky. You caught him on his best behavior.”

  “He seemed sad to me.” She lifted a pepper shaker as she might a chess piece and set it closer to the salt. “Stunted. He has some adult mannerisms, adult information, but it’s like he’s still fourteen or fifteen.”

  “There you go,” I said. “Now ask yourself how it would be, being around a twenty-six year old fourteen-year-old on a daily basis.”