Knives. Dozens of them. Pocket knives, hunting knives, folding knives, a couple of switchblades, some cheap gas station blades with plastic handles, a few that look expensive. They're piled in the drawer like a junk drawer in a house where the junk happens to be weapons.
"What is this?" I ask.
"Twenty years of confiscations." Tex leans against the wall with his arms crossed. "Bar rule since my daddy's day. You pull a blade in Big Tex's, you lose the blade. Doesn't matter who you are, doesn't matter why. You pull it, it goes in the drawer. Some of those have been in there sincebefore I took over. Dad started the collection. I've added to it considerably. That drawer is basically a museum of bad decisions. Every knife in there represents a moment when someone thought pulling a blade in a biker bar was a good idea. Spoiler alert. It never is. The drawer always wins."
I look at the drawer then back up at him. "Do you want me to sort them?"
"Hell no. That pocketknife of yours. The butter knife. I've been thinking about it and it's been bothering me. If you're going to carry a knife, you should carry a real one. A blade that actually works. A weapon that could do some good if you ever needed it to. If you pull that pocketknife on someone all it's going to do is piss them off."
I don't move. I'm crouched in front of the drawer full of knives and I'm waiting for the other part of this. The part where he says, give me your knife and I'll pick one for you. The part where the weapon I have gets taken and replaced with one he controls. I know this game. I've played this game before.
"Pick one," he says. "Or a whole handful. God knows, I've got enough of them. Whatever feels right in your hand. It's yours."
His face is open and his brown eyes are doing that thing where the crinkles at the corners make him look like the least threatening person on earth.
"You're giving me a knife?"
"I'm giving you access to the knife drawer. There's a difference. Pick the one you want. Take your time. If you pick one and change your mind later, you know where the knife drawer is."
I turn back to the drawer. My hands are shaking. I sort through the collection, picking up knives and putting themdown, testing the weight, the grip, the balance. Some are too big. Some are cheap and flimsy. Some are nice but the wrong shape.
My hand closes around a switchblade near the bottom. It's mid-sized, maybe four inches closed, with a black handle that's smooth and warm from sitting in the drawer. I press the release and the blade snaps out with a clean, sharp sound that fills the quiet bar like a finger snap. The blade is bright and straight and when I test the edge against my thumb, it's sharp. Really sharp.
"Oh yeah, that's a good one," Tex says. He's watching me but not hovering. Keeping his distance the way he always does, like he knows exactly how much space I need and gives me a few extra inches on top of it. "Spring-loaded. Italian-made. Took that one off a guy from Pensacola who pulled it during a poker game because he thought Diamond was cheating. She wasn't. She doesn't have to. She's just better than everybody at everything, which some men have trouble accepting."
I close the blade. Open it. Close it. The action is smooth and fast and the click of it locking into place is solid. It feels real in my hand.
"Keep your old one," Tex says. "A man can never have too many knives. But at least now you've got one that won't fold up on you when it counts."
I put the switchblade in my pocket. It's heavier than my pocketknife, and I can feel the weight of it against my thigh.
He just armed me. He looked at the pathetic knife I carry for protection and instead of taking it away, instead of laughing at it, he opened a drawer full of better options and told me to pick one.
People have taken things away from me and called it protection. Nobody has ever handed me a weapon and said, "Here, this is yours now. Use it if you need to."
"Thank you," I say.
"Don't thank me. Thank the idiot from Pensacola who couldn't handle losing to a woman at poker. His loss is your gain." He pushes off the wall. "Now come on. Those gift shop t-shirts aren't going to sort themselves. Although if they did, that would be a hell of a tourist attraction. Self-sorting merchandise. We'd make millions."
I go back to the gift shop. The switchblade is in my pocket and my hand keeps finding it. Touching the smooth black handle through the fabric of my sweatpants, and every time I do, the tension in me loosens a little more.
The day goes on. The heat builds into the high nineties. Tex strips his shirt off by ten and I roll my sleeves up. We work in the thick, wet air with the radio playing and the sun pouring through the open doors. God, it's hot as hell. I finish the gift shop by early afternoon, everything sorted. The dry merchandise is organized on the higher shelves. The wet stuff is hanging on a makeshift clothesline Tex helped me string up across the shop, dripping onto the concrete floor. The ruined stuff is in garbage bags near the door.
When I show Tex, he walks through the shop and nods at each section and then turns to me and says, "This is better organized than it was before the hurricane."
"It wasn't hard. You didn't have a system before."
"I had a system. The system was to put stuff where there's space. It worked fine."
"That's not a system. That's a pile with aspirations."
He stares at me. Then he laughs, this big, booming laugh that bounces off the concrete walls and sounds like it belongs in this bar. As if the building was designed to hold the sound of it.
"A pile with aspirations," he repeats. "Who knew you had jokes? Stormy, where have you been my whole life?"
I don't answer that. He doesn't expect me to. But the question hangs in the air, and I hold onto it the way I hold onto the knife in my pocket. Carefully.
We work through the afternoon. I help Tex pull more flooring, then we tackle the pool tables together, righting them, checking the frames, pulling off the waterlogged felt. Tex examines each table with the attention of a surgeon, running his hands over the wood, checking for cracks, testing the joints.
