Page 40 of Torch Songs

She swallowed against his shoulder and pulled away just as the door to the foyer opened, and who but Eugene Calhoun himself opened the door to the break room and shouted, “Why the hell are all these people milling around out here? That damned girl can’t handle all this. She’s useless!”

“Tracy’s good at people, sir,” Guthrie replied, ducking out of the coffee cubby and putting April behind him. “I told you to staff more today, and you blew me off. And it’s too bad because I’ve got a family emergency, and I’ve got to go.”

“You’ve got towhat?” Calhoun was an almost gaunt man with bulging eyes and a red, bulbous nose from too much scotch with his coffee. As he came unglued, not only did hiseyesbulge, but his nose seemed to throb along with the vein in his head.

“It’s in our contract, sir,” Guthrie said. “Everybody gets two emergencies a year without question. You approved it yourself.” Guthrie had written it into the contracts and then waited until Calhoun was tired from a good day grifting, erm, selling, andreallymellow from half a bottle of scotch in a pot of coffee. “I’ve been here two years, haven’t taken one of those once. This ismine. Her brother’s a policeman, and he’s in mess, and he needs his little sister, and I’m the one making that work.”

He turned to April and gestured with his chin to stay behind him as he swung around Calhoun to keep her at his shoulder. Calhoun had been known to reach out and grab a girl’s wrist with hard, pointy witch’s fingers, and Guthrie wasnotletting that happen here.

Calhoun did it with Guthrie’s wrist instead, his fingers digging into the nerve, and Guthrie gasped. “You walk out of here, Woodson, and you won’t have a job when you get back.”

Guthrie snorted. “Sir, if you fire me, I get bennies for a full six months and car maintenance for three. Do you think you’re the only game in town? This place was a disaster two years ago—you couldn’t keep customers because your staff was running around like headless chickens and thumbless monkeys. You got a good staff now, and I keep this place running like a Swiss watch. You want to jeopardize that because you can’t honor a contract you signed yourself, you go ahead.”

“Some piece of ass wanders in here and asks you for help and you bail on me? Nail her in the bathroom if you need to, but donotleave me in the lurch!”

And it hit Guthrie—he’d covered his ass in all the ways he’d had, but he still might lose his job because Calhoun knew, like all good tyrants, that even if they’d put their names down, that didn’t mean the little guy had the wherewithal to make them keep their word.

Guthrie peered behind him at April’s pinched face, at the bravery it must have taken to get her on a bus to come here—Tad must have mentioned the place, that could have been the only way she’d known—to comehereand look for Guthrie’s help.

Guthrie wasn’t rich, and he wasn’t powerful, but by all that was fuckin’ holy, he knew how to keep his word.

“You do what you gotta,” Guthrie said. “My plaid flannel hoodie’s in the lobby. I gotta go.”

Later, he reflected that he might have bailed. He’d had to fight his way through a throng of people to get that hoodie, but it was Tad’s, and Guthrie couldn’t bear to part with it. As Tracy leaned forward and competently dealt with the person at the counter in front of her, he tugged it off the chair and turned to Martin.

“I’ve got to go,” he murmured. “Calhoun might not let me come back, so if this is it, man, it’s been good working with you.”

Martin turned stricken eyes to him. “Aw man—no!”

Guthrie paused and realized that he might not miss the job, but Tracy, Martin, the other employees—they were all right. He glanced over his shoulder, saw April hovering in the doorway, and gave her a little wave. His wrist ached and his heart ached and his worry for Tad made hisstomachache, but he had a moment to give Martin a squeeze on his shoulder and a wink.

“Keep practicing, amigo. You deserve something good too.” Then he brushed Tracy’s shoulder with his knuckles and said, “You’re doing good, sweetheart. Don’t let nobody here give you shit, anddon’tlet Calhoun touch you anywhere you don’t want to, you hear?”

She turned to him, her dark brows drawn tight under a mane of fuzzy yellow hair. “Guthrie?”

“Take care of yourselves,” he said. “If I can, I’ll be back Monday.”

But he wasn’t counting on it. He slid his hands into the hoodie, checked his jeans for his wallet, phone, and keys, then turned to April and vamoosed.

He opened the truck door for April and gave her a hand up, because the giant beater wasn’t short and Aprilwas.

“Did you…,” she asked hesitantly as he started the thing up. “Did you just… just quit your job?”

“That’s up to Calhoun,” Guthrie muttered, putting the thing into gear and backing out. “I’m within my contract rights, which I know because I rewrote everybody’s contract and the work handbook. But the problem with getting a drunk monkey to sign something that helps everybody is that in the end he’s still a drunk monkey, and his best talent is flinging shit.”

“You quit your job,” she said in wonder. “Oh my God. Tadfinallyfinds a guy worth his time and he falls down a fuckingwell?”

Guthrie sputtered a little laughter as he took the freeway onramp and headed for his apartment. “I don’t think he fell down that canyon on purpose,” he said, his lips twitching.

“I think it’s typical,” she sniffed. “Most other officers, they’re worried about getting shot.Tad, on the other hand, ends up sliding down a mountain with MacGyver.”

“Yeah,” Guthrie muttered. “The hellwasthat? If I wasn’t worried as shit, I’d be intrigued, you know?”

“Too smart for me,” April said decisively. “I can barely put one foot in front of the other, most days.”

Guthrie grunted. “I’ve had those days,” he said. “Not like you, but the world gets damned hard.”

“Tad makes it better,” she said disconsolately, leaning her head against the window.

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