They didn’t make alcohol in a high enough proof to rinse the taste of that guy’s hand out of her mouth.
“She bit me!” Leather Vest wheezed.
Whiny asshole.
“Go inside, Glory.” Eli’s voice was calm as death, and she wouldn’t have blamed Leather Vest if he’d wet himself right there.
She was still furious. “Let me take a whack at him first. He looks like the world’s ugliest pinata hanging there from your hand.”
“Go... inside.”
She heard the wordsthe fucksandwiched in between theGoandinsideclear as if he’d actually said them.
Her judgment might be a little awry but she wasn’t stupid.
She almost but not quite did as ordered. She pushed the door open and stepped inside, but she stayed next to the door frame, leaving it open a few inches.
Eli’s voice was almost conversational. “I can snap your spine like a twig and throw you down that embankment and everyone will think it was an accident. How many strikes you got on your record already,Ezekiel?”
Ezekiel didn’t answer. Which was answer enough.
Eli raised his voice. “You wanna charge him with assault, Glory?”
Of course he knew she was listening. Just as he’d somehow known she was about to fuck up again. She wondered just how much of her exchange with Leather Vest he’d overheard.
“Shebitme! I... barely... touched her!” the guy wheezed out.
This was essentially true.
Eli loosened his hold and the guy’s feet touched the ground.
“Don’t charge him,” Glory called. “But he should know I’m part gypsy and I just cursed his privates. If he ever touches a woman against her will ever again, they’ll shrivel like raisins and fall off.”
She had no idea where that came from.
“Colorful,” Eli said neutrally after a moment.
She closed the door behind her.
Whatever Eli decided to do next, she didn’t want to see it.
But doubtless it would be by the book. Eli did love him some rules. Even if it destroyed the lives of people he loved.
She sat down at one of the scarred wood tables inside the Plugged Nickel and waited for Eli to come in and give her hell.
She managed to lift a hand in a sort of general farewell as Carl shooed the rest of the stragglers out the door. One of the speakers was making an unnervingzzzzt zzzztsort of noise, like a fly caught in a spider web. Carl shut the music off.
The ensuing silence practically rang. She was alone but for Carl.
“Don’t bother getting up, Glory. I’ll just put the chairs up, Glory,” Carl told her, oblivious to the little drama that had gone on outside. “Don’t strain yourself, Glory. No need to help, Glory.”
That was some fine sarcasm.
She was going to have to tell him she was quitting. No matter how much she needed a job, she could see now that she really couldn’t work here. The ugliness would suck her under like quicksand and not even she was equal to it.
She watched the second hand jerk its way around the old neon Schlitz clock over the door about five or so times until Eli returned and settled in across from her.
She couldn’t quite look up into his face yet. Not directly. She aimed her eyes somewhere past his shoulders, which meant aiming them some distance away, because his shoulders went on for yards, it seemed.