Page 15

DIESEL

W hen I make it back into the bar, Merrick and Jake are pulling beers as fast as humanly possible, all taps wide open, switching out mugs when they fill, while the kitchen staff hands them out.

Vicki isn’t helping, but that’s nothing new. She blows smoke into Iron Jack’s face. He seems to like it.

I jump into the fray behind the bar, calculating the cost of this fiasco as we fill mugs.

A hundred pulls. That’s two-thirds of a keg. Close to two hundred dollars.

“Stop calculating costs in your head,” Merrick says, elbowing me. “That girl will be the talk of the night.”

“Seems like there’s always something to talk about.” I replace an empty mug with a full one and set it on a tray.

“The girls all right?”

“Yeah, I locked them in the office.”

“Didn’t bank on the tall one being an exhibitionist.” There’s a gleam in his eye about her.

“Didn’t bank on ever seeing them again.”

“You like that blonde, though, right?”

I wonder why he thinks that. I never give a damn thing away, not even to him, not about women. Or much else.

“She’s all right.”

He grins like he knows something. I’ve punched that look off his face more than a few times growing up. He always had a way of figuring me out.

Merrick and I are closer in age and a good deal older than our sisters. We clocked a few numbskulls who thought they could mess around with Sunny and Greta back in the day. Fun times.

One keg floats, so I cap it and move on to another one. I’ll trade it out when we’ve gotten past this.

“What are we going to do with them?” Merrick asks. “Leave them locked up?”

I watch the crowd behind us in the mirror. “Until this dies down.”

“And if it doesn’t? If they see them again, it will rile them right back up.”

He’s right. “I guess I’ll get them off the property.”

“Probably the right call.”

Vicki eventually comes over to take a tray or two. She flings mugs at men with her favorite insults. “This’ll help raise your IQ out of the negative,” and, “One more of these and you might get as smart as a box of hammers.”

When they crowd her, she yells, “You all better take a step back, or this night will be my villain origin story.”

We pull and pull until it seems everyone’s gotten a freebie. A few try to grab a second, but Scottie, the dishwasher, has his beady eyes on them and roars at them in that unnerving way he has.

That’s why he works the back. But today, it’s useful.

Jose dishes out baskets of freshly fried chips, loaded with salt. That’ll keep ‘em thirsty and drink another beyond the free one. Cheap solution to a pricy problem. We have a sharp-thinking crew.

Merrick and I stand watch behind the bar. Jake is already running around the tables collecting empties. That didn’t take long. Maybe a free beer goes down faster.

Celia, Too Fast Freddie’s woman, slides onto a stool. “I see those sorority girls came back for another taste of the Leaky Skull.”

I use a scoop to break up the ice in the trough. “Yeah. What about ‘em?”

“Just think it’s interesting is all. One gets stuck in the bathroom two weeks back, you head in and close the door. Now she’s back.” Celia winks. “You must have got her good.”

I ignore this, bashing ice way past the point of needing to. So, the regulars noticed. Not much gets past them.

Yeah, I better get those girls out of here.

Merrick stands by the taps. “You want to change out that float or me?”

Right. I already forgot. “I’ll do it.”

“And maybe get them out of there before they bust out and cause any more trouble.”

“Any other items on my to-do list?”

Merrick pulls on an extra foamy pilsner. That tap is probably low, too. “Yeah, pick up my summer gown at the dry clearer and stop for that divine French cheese we sampled yester morn.”

I kick his boot out, making his leg collapse, one of our favorite ways to piss each other off.

He turns, fist in the air, like he can actually move fast enough to punch me.

I duck, spinning past him. “Too slow. Always so damn slow.”

He leaps at me, his knees on either side of my back, and grabs my hair.

Amateur. I lean over in a flash, dumping him onto the floor.

The bar roars with appreciation.

“Fuck him up, Diesel!”

“Really knock some sense into him!”

Merrick pops into the air and runs at me, dragging his arm around my neck. I should have seen the headlock coming. I’m shit at getting out of that.

“We need a beer, motherfuckers,” someone yells.

“We need women!” someone else cries.

“Bring back the bitches!”

This starts a chorus.

“Bring back the bitches! Bring back the bitches!”

Shit. We riled them back up.

Merrick lets go of me to grab a mug and fill the man’s order.

I stand, hands on my hips, glaring at each one of the motherfuckers who won’t shut up about the girls. Vicki is laughing her head off.

“The tap,” Merrick says. “Last thing I need right now is a lack of Guinness.”

Right. I head through the doors to the other side of the wall to switch out the keg. I lift the others. Yeah, the other one is nearly gone. I poke my head through the doorway. “Drain the pilsner.”

Merrick salutes and starts filling a pitcher.

I wait on the other side until it rattles three times. He’s done.

When they’re both switched out, I pause at the door to the bar to make sure nothing’s out of line.

The crowd has stopped yelling for the moment. I lock eyes with Merrick. He gives a nod.

Okay, I’ll get the girls out of here. I stride toward the office.

“You got the women back there?” Jose asks over the grill. “Keeping them all to yourself?”

“Something like that.”

I shove my key in the office lock. Time to figure out what to do with them.

Troublemakers. Both of them.

Fortunately, that’s my favorite kind of woman.