“You were there.”
“Only for the last minute. I was there for the part where I came down a hallway, saw a guy bleeding on the floor and four guys who needed to not be standing. That’s my version. I wantyours. From the beginning. Tell me everything and don’t leave anything out.”
“Your cop voice is making me nervous. Seriously. You really want to do this, right now? Don’t you want to finish eating first?”
“No, I need to hear it so we can get it over with. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
I put my pizza down and take a deep breath. The whole night is right there, waiting for me to open the door and let it back in.
My eyes burn and my throat goes tight. I jump up to go to the window to keep from looking at him. How can he stand to look at me? We were having a nice moment eating pizza and now he wants me to talk about this.
But he deserves to hear it, and I’ll tell him.
“Benji?” he says. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just give me a second.” I start to wipe my eyes with the backs of my hands and stop when I realize I’ve got pepperoni grease on them. “Damn it.” I grab a napkin instead and dab at the corner of my eyes.
I go back and sit in the chair. He deserves the story no matter how hard it is for me to tell it.
“I wanted to watch the sunset,” I say. “That’s it. That’s the only reason I was at Tex’s bar. I’m in town doing a wedding on 30A, and I’d been cooped up in a rental condo with a parking lot view for three days. I wanted to sit somewhere with a cold drink and watch the sun go down over the Gulf. That’sall I wanted. Because I’d heard the sunsets are prettier here than in Miami.”
“You’re working a wedding on 30A?” he asks. “I drive that road all the time. Not on patrol. Just passing through.”
“Yes, it’s a gorgeous location for a wedding. Everything is white. But there’s nowhere to sit on the beach with a drink and watch the sunset like a normal human being. So, I searched online for beach bars with a Gulf view and Tex’s place came up. Good reviews. Best brisket. So, I went there.”
“And you walked in alone during car show weekend,” he says.
“I didn’t think anything of it. Why would I? I’m not ashamed of who I am and I’m not going to hide it.”
He’s watching me with that steady cop attention, his pizza forgotten, his hands resting on the blanket.
“The car show guys noticed me right away,” I say. “Four of them at a table near the bar. Matching T-shirts, sunburned, drinking all afternoon. One of them came over and told me I might be more comfortable somewhere else. Told me it was a man’s bar. I told him last time I checked, I was a man.”
“How well did that go over?”
“About how you’d expect. He went back to his table and they all started staring at me. And then Sheila came to me and said, ‘Those boys have been drinking since three o’clock and they’re looking for a reason. Don’t give them one.’ She offered to call me a cab. I guess she didn’t know I’d driven my car there.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no. She asked me again twenty minutes later. She told me she’d been doing this for thirty years and she knew what was coming. She even said please.”
“And you said no again.”
“Yes, I said no again.” I look away when my voice cracks.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t willingly leave rooms just because someone else says I don’t belong there,” I say. “Because I have been walking into rooms where other people believed I didn’t belong since I was twelve years old. Locker rooms and churches and bars in red counties. Maybe someone decides my face is wrong or my shirt is too fancy or God forbid I’m sitting with my legs crossed. And all that means I’m something they get to push out because they don’t think I deserve to be there. And I have never, not once in my entire life, given anyone the satisfaction of watching me get up and leave because they made me feel like I didn’t belong.”
I stop for a moment and take a deep breath.
“Then Sheila asked me a third fucking time,” I say. “Right before I went to the restroom. She practically begged me. Three times she tried to save me from myself and three times I told her no.”
“And then you went to the restroom.”
“Yes, and they followed me. All four of them. They were waiting in the hallway when I came out. The big one told me I had a smart mouth. I told him many people had tried to fix that and I was difficult to train. He called me a faggot.” I wave my hand in the air. “Why do they always go with that word?Can’t they come up with something original? It’s the word that always comes right before the fist. By now, you would think I would automatically duck when I hear the word, because the fist is always coming after. I stood there, knowing exactly what was about to happen, knowing Sheila had been right, knowing I should’ve left, and I corrected the grammar on his T-shirt. Because that’s what my mouth does when I’m scared. It gets faster instead of slower. It’s a flaw. I can’t help it.”
“No, that’s not a flaw. What happened after the grammar lesson?”
