Making the Galaxy Great

The thing is,” said Candice, rubbing her index finger around the top of her wine glass and staring at its emptiness as if willing it to magically refill itself, “I’m over the hating part.” She arched her eyebrows to stare at Jason. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Jason?”

Jason looked up from Candice’s breasts, which hung half-exposed above the table because there was at least one extra button undone on her top. Why had she dressed like that, as if they were on a date? In fact, why had she asked him to meet her for drinks in the first place? Was it just to relay some new collection of vapid phrases she’d heard from her therapist?

“I understand,” he said tentatively. “You’re over the hating part.”

“I’m over hating you,” said Candice firmly, in the same voice she used to tell Shelby she had to finish her homework before looking at Snapchat. “I don’t hate you any more. How do you feel about that?”

Jason had never stopped to think that his ex-wife might truly hate him. “Umm . . . I feel good about that. I mean, glad.”

And then, in the way she had of simply dropping a topic as if she’d said all that could possibly be said, Candice asked him if he wanted one more drink. Jason tapped the side of his pint glass, which was still half full. He was drinking a remarkably good IPA from a craft brewery in Michigan, following a disappointing sour from Oregon and a bracing coffee stout from Colorado. Oh brave new world, that had such beverages in it!

“I’d better finish this one and get home,” he said. “There’s something I really need to do tomorrow.”

He’d been completely distracted during most of Candice’s monologue. Over at the bar behind his right shoulder he’d noticed Evie, a young woman who worked in Accounts Payable at Schnitzelberg Brewing, Jason’s employer. It was difficult not to notice her when she arrived: a shock of pink and white hair pulled up high above her head, a sky blue sleeveless top and a short skirt that few women could justify wearing. It showcased her rather perfect legs, which were elaborately tattooed with intertwining vines that ran up the back and disappeared under her clothes. Ever since she’d been hired a few months ago, he’d been contemplating the tops of those vines.

Perhaps because she no longer hated him, Candice seemed disappointed that Jason didn’t want another drink. His glance veered once more toward her breasts, which seemed so much more conspicuous now that she’d lost some weight. (He’d already had to listen to a full account of the weight-loss regimen she was using, and why she couldn’t eat any of the appetizers on the menu. Apparently, the diet did not extend to drinks with alcohol in them.)

“It’s Friday night, Jason. When did you ever get up early on a Saturday except to have morning sex?”

It was easy to forget that he and Candice had been married for seven years, until she made comments like that. But his Saturday mornings were now his Saturday mornings, and none of her business. It wasn’t as if . . .

Shit! He caught his breath.

“Who’s with Shelby tonight?” he asked suddenly, with more urgency in his voice than he’d intended.

Candice smiled and lifted her eyebrows, almost imperceptibly. “She’s staying at Molly’s. I thought I told you. I’m a free woman tonight.”

Jason felt his hands grow clammy. Drinks . . . half-open top . . . more drinks . . . free woman. His ex-wife intended that they should screw tonight. He gripped his glass so hard he nearly shattered it.

I’m such a fucking dumbass!

Earlier in the evening he’d abandoned his usual no-comment policy and actually answered Candice’s questions about his sex life — more specifically, his recent lack of one. And now it appeared that his oversight had flashed a big green light at Candice.

She looked terrific tonight, there was no denying it. And yet, he felt as if going for it would be like picking the wrong door on one of those old-time TV game shows. There was no telling what dangers lurked behind it.

“So what do you say?” Candice stared into his eyes and smiled fetchingly. “Just one more? I don’t get a chance to get out like this very often, you know, being a single mom and all.”

Oh, Christ.

She had just turned over the guilt card and thrown it down on the table to trump any card he might try to play.

It wasn’t his choice that Shelby only stayed with him every other weekend. He would have been happy with full custody, but Candice would never have allowed that. And they had both agreed that splitting Shelby’s time 50/50 would have been too hard on her. So now Candice always carried the custody arrangement like a weapon, ready to discharge it anytime she needed or wanted something from him.

“I—” Jason hesitated. His mind bounced back and forth between images of Candice and her breasts heaving on top of him, and Candice sitting in the bed expounding on her diet or guiding him through the complex labyrinth of her weekly sessions with her quack therapist.

“You were the one who wanted to try this place,” Candice reminded him.

“They have 52 beers on tap,” said Jason. “Including Buster’s. You know, the beer my company makes.”

Candice was not impressed. “We’re drinking in a bar called The Grinder that used to be a meat packing plant. They used to kill animals in here.”

Jason winced. He preferred to think about the beer, not the animals, but he also didn’t want Candice to win the putdown. “They used to create sausage in here. So it all depends on how you look at it.” It was weak, but it was something.

Their server, Tammy, stopped at the table and interrupted the battle. “Another round for you guys?” she asked pertly.

Jason finally made up his mind. “Not for me. Do you want one more, Candy?”

“No. I guess I’m done,” Candice half-murmured, her disappointment palpable.

Tammy also seemed disappointed, and went away to get their check ready.

“Looks like this place went from meat plant to meat market,” Candice griped, making sure Jason understood how dark her mood had turned. “Like that little skank at the bar with the art project on her legs. The one you keep ogling.”

“I recognize her from work. And who even says ‘ogling’?”

“Oh, you recognize her. I bet you do. If this was still a meat packing plant they’d be lining you up for slaughter with the other pigs.”

Jason met Candice’s disapproving frown with a tight-lipped glare of his own. “I may be a pig but at least I never banged an old college friend while I was married,” he reminded her.

“That was one time,” she replied.

“Umm, no. It was one person, but three times. That I know about.”

“Whatever.” Candice slammed her purse onto the table and reached inside for her keys. It took her some time to find them, since her purse was a catch basin for all of the daily debris of her life. “Thank you for the drinks,” she said when she finally found her keys.

Jason stood when she did. “I guess I’ll see you next Friday,” he said weakly. “Give Shelby my love.”

Candice left, striding away in her lurching, heavy-stepping Angry Walk, exacerbated by alcohol. Jason waited for Tammy to bring the check, glancing around the bar at the plethora of televisions hung on every wall. Most were tuned to sports events, which on a Friday night in the summer meant mostly baseball a one mixed martial arts bout. But one TV was tuned to a popular news network and Jason saw the President speaking to reporters. The crawl text read: “US to back out of Canadian trade agreement.”

Shit.

Jason winced. His company had been working for five months on an agreement with a Canadian distributor – a deal that could have doubled sales in just a year or two. Why was the leader of the free world constantly playing let’s make a deal, instead of worrying about taxes or terrorists?

Tammy returned with the check and Jason gave her a huge tip, more out of irritation with Candice, and the President, than as a consequence of Tammy’s friendly and modestly efficient service.

It was a warm night and the air glowed hazily around The Grinder’s neon sign. Parking consisted primarily of a gravel lot across the street, and Jason had parked on the back row, next to a winding gulley that separated the lot from a collection of old wooden barns where unsuspecting hogs had once waited for their turn to become dinner. In addition to being unpaved, the parking lot was barely lit, and under the gauze of a humid summer night Jason was already reaching for his keys before he noticed two guys in hoodies leaning on the back of his car: one slender, probably a teenager, and the other much stockier. From the sound of it, they were arguing in whispers, and in a language he’d never heard.

“Excuse me,” he said, “this is my car.”

The instant he spoke, the burlier guy grabbed the other roughly and held his arms from behind. He barked at Jason in a horsey voice, and though the language was foreign Jason understood the menace in his voice.

Jason stopped walking and stuck a sweaty, slightly trembling hand into the breast pocket of this blazer. “I’m taking out my phone to dial 911,” he announced loudly.

As soon as the phone screen lit, the kid in the hoodie broke free of the other man and dashed between Jason’s car and the one next to it, colliding with him and slamming him against his vehicle. They both fell and Jason felt something hard and sharp on the back of his head, followed by a rolling wave of nausea. The boy was on top of him, hood off, looking straight into his face.

Except he wasn’t a boy. She, or they, stared down at him with a long narrow face and large pale eyes set back under a flat, hairless brow and thin brown hair. It was only a quick glance, because the non-binary immediately pulled their hood back on, then jumped up and nearly stepped on Jason’s face before running off. Jason sat up just in time to see the other hooded figure leap over the gulley behind his car, a jump of at least five yards.

Before Jason could get to his feet, he felt a hand on his right shoulder. He pulled away, thinking the stranger in the hoodie was back. Instead, looming over him was a woman he’d never seen before. She wasn’t as bizarre in appearance as the hoodie person, but she was far from average. In fact, she had the most impressively chiseled arms he had ever seen on a man or a woman. He gulped hard.

“The girl,” she snapped. “Where did she go?”

“Who are you?” Jason asked.

She jerked his shoulder with her left arm and he thought he heard a slight pop. “Hey! She could be in danger! Do you know which way she went?”

Jason started to shake his head but discovered that this made his entire skull ache. “That way I guess . . . after they knocked me down. Are you sure it’s a—?” he started to ask.

Without another word, the woman with the ripped shoulders dashed off in the direction Jason had indicated with his eyes.

“Yeah, I’ll be okay, thanks for asking,” Jason mumbled to himself as he tried to keep from passing out.

Then it occurred to him that he didn’t know whether the second woman was really trying to help the person in the hoodie, or was working with the guy who’d jumped the ditch. One more thing to make his head hurt. He wanted to get to his feet but he was dizzy and his head was full-on throbbing in pain. As he rested on his right arm, he felt something hard under his hand and looked down to see an object sparkling atop the gravel. He picked it up and saw it was a large crystal set inside an oval of gleaming, almost iridescent metal — a brooch, perhaps, that someone had dropped in the parking lot in just the right place to catch Jason’s head as he fell.

Then he heard someone calling his name.