“Nobody seesmecoming, McCord,” Truck claimed.
“Aww, now that is a shame. Just you and your right hand these days, Truck?”
More raucous laughter greeted this.
“Right hand!” half the crowd crowed, like a Greek chorus.
Truck’s complexion went a full shade redder. He was now fully as radiant as the beer signs.
“Means if I want to take you out, McCord,” he said thoughtfully, “you’ll be on the ground before you even see me coming.”
Britt tried to maneuver by him again with a tray and Truck’s hand slipped down and swiped at her ass again.
She dodged and handed beers to the girl with the eyebrow pencil and her boyfriend.
“That so?” J. T. said softly. “You’re a ninja, eh, Truck?”
“Bam,” Truck said softly. “On the ground. Before you even see me.”
J. T. nodded thoughtfully, as if taking this in. “See, the problem is that I’veseenyou grab at our waitress’s ass three times tonight. And every single time I saw that move coming a mile away.” His Tennessee drawl had gone as slow and taut as a stalking predator. “I’m going to recommend that you stop doing that. Right now.”
Conversation dwindled uncertainly and then came to a decided, uneasy, fascinated halt.
There was a fraught silence.
“Aw, she don’t mind, right Britt?” Truck didn’t address that to Britt, who was getting ready to dart by him with an empty tray. Truck curled a hand around her arm to stop her.
J. T. saw raw terror flash into her eyes.
It was there and gone, so quickly he might have even imagined it. But it nearly stopped J. T.’s heart.
And this time she didn’t dodge or object or demur. She was frozen.
“Yeah. I’m going to need you to take your hand off her, Truck. Now.”
He knew that was all that was necessary to get that big dumb bomb to go off.
He touched Truck gently on the back.
It was like touching a bank of file cabinets.
Truck whirled on him and brought his pool cue whipping down toward him like a club.
In a series of smooth blink-and-you’ll-miss motions, J. T. blocked it with one hand, snatched it from Truck’s fist with the other, and then snapped it over his knee.
The ensuing silence was so instant and total it was like something had vacuumed sound out of the world. He would have sworn even the neon signs had stopped humming out of shock.
He hung on to the cue. The top half dangled from a single shred of wood, like a man hanging from the gallows.
The silence rang.
And then J. T. became aware of a tiny sound. Like a hungry mosquito had zipped into the silent room.
The sound swelled until it became a gleeful “oooOOOoooo...”
The universal sound of glee that accompanied the anticipation of a fight.
He shot a censoring black look at the culprit.
