"It was an important argument. He was wrong. The man said conventional oil was fine for a Twin Cam 88 and I said those words in that order should be a felony and things escalated from there. The ribs were collateral damage. They died in the service of mechanical truth. I regret nothing."
He grins at me. I want to put my arms around him and swear I will stand between him and everything dark in this world for as long as I'm breathing. Instead, I steal a bottle of Alabama white sauce and go back to the grill, because that'swhat we do. We work. We keep the routine. We hold the shape of normal life in place with our hands even when the ground underneath is shifting.
The evening comes fast and the bikers come with it.
By seven the lot has a dozen bikes. By eight, at least thirty. By nine, the lot is full and the overflow is parked along the beach road. The music is playing through the outdoor speakers and Big Bertha is producing the kind of smoke that you can see from three blocks away. I'm behind the grill doing what I do, what my dad did, what this bar has always done—feeding people and showing them a good time.
Stormy is working the crowd. Not hiding. Not inside. Out here, in the lot, carrying plates of brisket and ribs and coleslaw to the tables we've set up near the serving station. He moves through the crowd quietly with a competence that makes people trust him before they know his name. He remembers orders. He remembers faces. He knows which regulars want extra sauce and which ones want their brisket dry and which ones are going to argue about the coleslaw no matter what he does.
I watch him the way I've been watching him all night. Not obvious. But every time he walks toward the road, every time he rounds the corner of the building, every time he passes near the edge of the lot where the light fades into shadow, my eyes follow him.
Ron is out there somewhere. At a motel room. Or a restaurant. Maybe parked on a side street with his phone in his hand, checking the map, planning his approach. He drove four hours today. He made rounds of bike shops. He didn't drive four hours to check on a motorcycle and go home.
Nine o'clock. Ten. The crowd holds steady. By eleven it finally starts to thin. The regulars linger. The music plays. The grill cools.
Ron didn't come tonight.
I don't know if that's better or worse. Coming would have meant a confrontation, but a confrontation in a lot full of fifty bikers is a confrontation on my terms. Not coming means he's waiting. Choosing the time. He saw the shops today. He confirmed the bike isn't anywhere in the system. He drove past the bar, maybe, saw the full lot, saw the bikes, and decided tonight wasn't the night.
Which means tomorrow might be. Or Sunday. Or Tuesday, when the lot has four trucks instead of fifty bikes and the bar is quiet and the darkness is bigger. A smart man would wait until Tuesday.
We close at midnight. Sheila counts the register. Stormy wipes down the serving station. I clean the grill, cover Bertha and check the lot one last time. Every vehicle accounted for. Every shadow examined. The beach road is empty in both directions.
I lock the front door. Check it twice. I lock the back door. The kitchen door. The side entrance that we've been using for construction access. I throw the deadbolt and slide a two-by-four into the floor brackets that my dad installed after a break-in attempt in 2004.
Sheila watches me do this. She doesn't say anything. She picks up her big ass purse that weighs forty pounds and raises her eyebrows at me. Our conversation happens without words.
"Goodnight, baby," she says to Stormy. She kisses his forehead. She squeezes my arm as she passes. Then she's gone and it's just us.
"Come upstairs with me," I say.
We go up to our room. I head straight to the closet. Top shelf, behind the winter blankets. The safe is small, black, digital keypad. I punch in the code and the door swings open. The gun is where it's been since the hurricane, cleaned and loaded, fifteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber.
I take it out and check the magazine. Check the chamber. I carry it to the nightstand and set it down next to the clock.
Stormy is standing by the bed. He's watching me silently. His eyes move from my face to the gun to the nightstand and back to my face.
"Talk to me," he says. "What's going on?"
"Ron's back in town."
The words have exactly the effect the way I knew they would. I see it move through him—the fear, the stillness. But it's different than the last time. He doesn't bolt toward the idea of running. He doesn't say I need to go. He stands by the bed and his hands clench at his sides. He absorbs it the way a boxer absorbs a body shot. It hurts, it registers, but he doesn't go down. Not this time.
"When did he get here?"
"Today. Denny called me. Someone spotted him at a bike shop. He's making the rounds, checking shops for the Sportster."
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"I wanted to wait until we were up here. Until I could—"
"I know why. It's okay." He cuts me off. He knows I was protecting him and he's decided to let me. "Does Mickey know?"
"Yes, he's on shift this weekend working Front Beach Road. He'll be close."
Stormy looks at the gun. "You always keep that in the safe."
"That's correct. Now, I'm keeping it here beside me at night."
