“Well, she came back enlightened, but apparently she only had epiphanies about how I should be living mylife.”
Elliott and Carter seemed amused at my expense. Nothing wrong with a bit of schadenfreude amongfriends.
My phone buzzed again. “I’m gonna go take this,” I said, and went out the back to take her call, entertaining her ramblings for a bit before reminding her that I had to get back to work. As I went back inside, I noticed a guy behind the bar, where I’d seen Dallas working the past few times I’d been here. He was an older man with a bald spot on his scalp, and he cradled a box in his arms, struggling with it as he set it on the counter. He turned to start for a stack of them on an L-cart, so I approachedhim.
“Hey, man, did you need any help withthat?”
“I wouldn’t want to troubleyou.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” I said, and grabbed the top box from thecart.
“Just restocking the liquor. Figured it’d be a good day to do it. If you can line them up on the bar, it’ll be easier for me to get into them. Usually Dallas is here to help me out because my knees are a littleshaky.”
“I gotyou.”
As I moved the boxes onto the bar, he opened the one he’d carried and started pulling out bottles and storing them on the shelves along the wall. When I finished, he said, “Thanks for the help…what was the nameagain?”
“DaxMunro.”
He extended his hand for a quick shake, offering a friendly smile. “I’m Benny Saders, the manager here. I’m the one your guy Carter spoke to about arranging theshoot.”
“So I owe you more than moving a fewboxes.”
“How about I owe you a drink? What’ll youhave?”
“Oh, I’ll just have a beer,” I said, trying to bepolite.
He eyed me skeptically. “What do you normally drink? Don’t tell me it’sbeer.”
“A dirty martini, but that’snot—”
“Dirty martini it is!” he exclaimed before I had a chance to object further. “I need one too, and I make a great martini, so just be an angel and accept it. You’re basically doing me afavor.”
“Thank you.” I slid onto a stool while he went to work mixing ourdrinks.
“So you guys came in and nabbed our Jace Kruse,” he noted, wincing as he finished shaking the stainless-steel shaker. “Nice seeing him running around, getting the praise hedeserves.”
I could tell by the way he said it, he held great reverence for Jace, as I figured quite a few people in towndid.
“From my limited interactions, he seems like a goodguy.”
He practically scoffed. “Let me tell you about this ‘good guy.’ About five years ago, I was watching my niece. I have a humble two-story place a couple of blocks from here. Well, it was past her bedtime, and she was sleeping up in my guest bedroom. I normally stay up and watch a movie until I pass out, so there I was, passed out in the living room with some old John Wayne Western on AMC. Woke up smelling burning, and there’s smoke coming in from the kitchen. I saw it was coming through the basement door, and so I did what anyone would do. I ran through the house, screaming for her, figuring I had time enough to grab her. But I get to the stairs, and it’s already ablaze. Never know how quickly fire can creep up on you until you see itfirsthand.
“I called emergency services, and fortunately a neighbor had already reported seeing smoke coming from the house. But there I was, like some kind of animal, trying to think of every nook and cranny I could potentially find to get up to her. Fire was so hot, I had to get out the front door, but there I was, running around, calling for her. If I could have climbed up the goddamn walls, I would have. Fortunately, the firefighters were there not long after, and there comes Jace, running to me, and I’m shouting like a nutjob, begging him to save my little Rae. The fire was creeping on the first floor, under her bedroom, which was on the second, and Jace grabbed that ladder and pushed through the AC in her window. He found her crying and confused, coughing up all the smoke billowing into theroom.
“Seeing how horrified she was was hard enough. But to think I would have had to live knowing something had happened to her in my care… I don’t know that I could have lived withthat.”
“I’m glad she made it out,” I said, since it was really the only thing I could say after a story likethat.
“He’s a saint. You would think that a girl who’d suffered that trauma would have a real terrible memory of the whole thing, but Jace spent time with her after, calming her down. It was real sweet of him, and to this day, she just thinks about how kind he was, not at all about the horror of being inthat.”
“Even without knowing Jace very well, that sounds a lot like him,” Iadmitted.
“That man and his buddies sacrifice so much and give so much to this community, and if anyone deserves a bit of good luck and appreciation, it’s JaceKruse.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said as he poured our drinks from the shaker into two martiniglasses.
He really isBatman.
