Re: log:nick/frank
Ends of the fuckin earth. People here, they were born here or they drifted. Nick didn't know nobody in the B and B who had driven or whatever, picked up and moved out deliberate to take in the town for a week or two, see the sights. It wasn't New York. It wasn't ocean-limned, the air wasn't salt-crusted or fresh some way that couldn't be found no other place. It just was. Ordinary America with a slice of the real fuckin' extraordinary. He knew a handful of people who'd drifted. It wasn't a destination. It was just the land where your boat bumped up and you were too exhausted to think about packing up and shipping out again.
Nick, he'd picked it. He was an ornery sonofabitch and ordinary America might have been the purpose. Maybe he just didn't want to listen to sirens late night, think about shouldas and couldas until he could taste the sour cold of the beer after a shift with his friends, until the rancid resentment choked the back of his throat, throbbed way back in a part of his body that was s'posed to be fuckin' dead now. Maybe it was going off-books with access, a way back. Some other Morgan in town. But he didn't think Frank was hunting down the burned-car wreckage of a family he'd left for dead. Nah. Some other reason.
"You? You gotta live a little, Cubano is a little piece of living." Watched the coffee go in, watched the way his old friend glanced habitual, exits, doors, the swing of the kitchen as Caesar came in and out. Way of watching that came with waiting for the gun to go off, or the mortar, whatever shit you saw in your nightmares, figured was gonna come one day or the next. "Me? I lost a bet." He flashed a grin that was eat-shit charming, the kinda smile brandished late nights, two beers in and watching a woman circle close by. "I got benched. So I got gone."
Rapped the side of his wheel with the flat of his knuckles, like Frank needed the reminder. "Bad job. You? You went three rounds with Tyson or something?" He was looking at the baseball cap.