This is the second half of a story. You can read the first half here.
“Beach, do not go out there,” said Vanessa, her accent twisting his name into a derogatory homophone. “<Confronting that man would be a very stupid thing to do. And I know that I call you ‘stupid’ all the time.>” Vanessa’s gaze burned through Beach’s eyes, tore through the back of his skull, and splattered his brains on the wall. “Do not prove me right.”
“Do you know what happens to deserters in the Coney Cola Navy?” said Beach. Vanessa bit her lip in the way one does when they don’t know something.
In truth, the Coney Cola Navy was rather traditional in its methods of punishment for desertion: firing squad, public stoning, etc. When Cadet Adrien Beach was serving on the S.S. Effervescence, Cadet Arnold Andrews had been caught in the process of deserting the night before shore leave. Though he vehemently denied it, sneaking above deck in the middle of the night with a fully packed suitcase and flippers with a shoreline in sight proved to be damning evidence. As a result, in accordance with naval law, he was keelhauled. The vessel’s arrival at port was delayed by a day because when one student acts out the whole class must be punished. The whole crew were roused bright and early the next morning to watch Cadet Andrews’s torso wrapped in rope and lowered below the deck to be dragged alongside the craggy, barnacled hull of the ship in the relentless wake of the S.S. Effervescence. The ship made circles in the harbor off the coast of Rhode Island from dawn until dusk.
Beach finished, “Nothing good.”
Vanessa was locked in an internal tug of war, and the obvious winner refused to present itself. “Then tonight I will sing.”
“<To who?>” said Beach. The Beach Bar had cleared out with no scheduled evening entertainment to keep the taps flowing. The night server Whatshername (I want to say… Martha?) had just gotten cleaned up for her shift when she was told they wouldn’t need her tonight.
“<To the backs of the chairs,>” Vanessa said, climbing on stage, “<and the board on the floor. A one time only performance for an audience of termites.>” She cranked up the radio. The Beach Bar was filled with a scintillating ad for war bonds. “<…we will wait for the first song. Should be any time now.>”
Beach continued to pack away bottles and clean his tools, mumbling about signs. He picked up his spatula. Vanessa flew across the room, grabbed it from his hands, and rubbed it with shakings of parmesan cheese. Beach reached for it, but she pulled it away. He got in close, his body pushing up to hers. It was warm. Vanessa grabbed blindly and found a bottle of olive oil. She spun the cap off with one hand, and flung the contents wildly across the kitchen.
“You are absolutely cleaning that u—” Beach’s workplace threat was interrupted by the dregs of a bottle of olive oil emptying out on his head. The flame of his temporary insanity was tamped out, though the sizzling oil on his head could fry bacon. The red-tinted glasses fell from his eyes. “<Thank you.>”
“<Do not thank me,>” Vanessa said. She replaced the cap on the bottle. “<Thank me twice. You’re alive and now we know you don’t have lice.>” Vanessa sighed as she had to explain the relationship between olive oil and lice to Beach as he ran his head under the faucet. His sopping wet head dripped onto the tile. “You don’t have a tub?”
“Not exactly,” said Beach. A man is entitled to keep even some secrets. He was trying his best to conceal that bathed in a washbin in the kitchen on nights when Vanessa didn’t perform, and that he slept in the basement of his own restaurant.
“I know you sleep in the basement,” Vanessa said immediately. “What a fool you must think me to not assume I know you sleep on a sad little cot in the basement next to the beans. I could leave, you know. Go somewhere where they know I am smarter than the beans. Where I could sing on a stage bigger than my feet. Somewhere my talents are appreciated.”
“Please don’t.”
Vanessa stopped. Beach searched himself to find the words to follow up what he just said. He hadn’t known he possessed such words. He believed himself incapable of these words. Now they were his, and he was theirs, and now everything was just out in the open dripping water on the kitchen floor.
“<I need you to stay.>”
“<You…>” Vanessa said, “…have sucked all the fun out of this.”
“<I know.>” Beach dried his hair on a hand towel. Oil still hung in spots like gel. His hair stuck up in all the wrong places. “<But I guess I needed to say it.>”
Beach hadn’t known the inkling existed until he said it. He hadn’t known he meant it until right now. He still wasn’t sure what to do with it. Depending on the progression of the next few days, this might be his last and only chance to say it at all, whatever it is.
Vanessa said, “You’re not done. Run your head in the sink again.”
The fsssshhhhh of the rushing water tore over Beach’s head. Vanessa had the inborn ability to overcome any sound, no matter how mighty.
“<Are you telling me,>” said Vanessa, blowing the water out of Beach’s ears, “<that we’re about to do this whole thing where you tell me you’ve been longing for me from behind that counter all this time? You watched me perform and it made your heart soar? That each day you saw me was better than the day you didn’t, and some days it felt like I was the only reason to get out of bed?>” She pulled Beach’s head from under the faucet and ran the towel over his hair. We were close to clean. “<That even after the day was done, the sun rose and set with me?>”
“<Something like that,>” Beach said.
“I know how to make a compelling argument.”
Beach rubbed at his sticky head. His hands just had to grab onto something.
Vanessa said, “<It’s okay. Your hair is just greasy now. Like the rest of the men in this country.>” They both knew that just outside the scarred soldier was smoking. It pillowed out the wounds that ran over his face. “I’m not going to do this on your cot next to the beans.”
The pit of Beach’s stomach shot up through his heart and out his chest.
“Then, where?” he asked. “Your place?”
“No, no, you cannot leave here,” Vanessa said. She ran both hands through his hair, sweeping the wet mess out of his face. “I have to keep you here.” She kissed him. Their lips touched lightly at first, but they dug in quick. The invisible chains that held them back were loosed. Beach swept aside her auburn hair and held the back of her neck. Vanessa gripped the hair on the back of his head. She kept pulling. She wanted him to be closer even though there was no closer they could possibly be. She broke and said, “<Can I convince you to stay here with me?>”
Beach sidled her up against the counter. She kissed around his neck and he ran his nails gently over the back of her silken shirt.
The combination of his time in the service and spending every waking second AWOL working behind in his kitchen hadn’t allowed Beach any female companionship in some time. Her visible disdain for almost everyone she met had kept Vanessa out of the arms of man or woman for longer. Here, in this kitchen, these two exemplars of horniness finally allowed themselves the pleasure they had been denied.
They dug into each other, fucking on the counter and then on the floor. Vanessa held onto Beach like he would fall away the second she let him go. As they always did in the kitchen, the Beach Bar duo communicated soundlessly and effortlessly exactly what they needed. Two bodies, in perfect cooperation. The spatula was involved.
The finish came simultaneously, Vanessa bent over the counter, Beach gripping her shoulders from behind. Vanessa rang the order bell.
Neither Beach nor Vanessa said anything for a while. They collected their clothes. Beach whipped up a fresh batch of flapjacks with sliced fruit and some finely pressed coffee. They dined in the restaurant with the curtains drawn.
“Adrien…”
“We should go to the Palladinos—”
“—Adrien…”
“Check the damage. See if we can help rebuild.”
Vanessa snapped her fingers. “<Hello. Adrien.>”
“We can close the bar today—”
“<Unbelievable.>” Vanessa’s fork was thrown to the plate and skittered off across the floor. “<For a year you work here. You don’t leave. Like a Victorian widow. No one can pry you from behind that bar. Most of the town doesn’t know you have legs. You get fucked one* time, and suddenly you are a man about town.>”
*Vanessa is known all over Tranquillo for her frustrated hand gestures, and Beach experienced some exemplary work this day.
Vanessa laughed at her vagina’s ability to alter a man’s very being on contact. She had lost her virginity to a man who joined the priesthood immediately after. The sample size was not big enough to make any scientific determination, but the theory was being built on solid ground. The women in Vanessa’s romantic life seemed immune to her powers, a fact both comforting and confounding.
She continued, “<We made love the first time because we wanted to, but if I have to fuck the sense back into your head I will do it. If it’s once more, great. But I am willing to put in the time. If there is an exact number of rolls in the hay that will equal you behaving like a rational human being, then that’s what it will have to be. Grab the Crisco. I’ll see you on the cot.>”
Adrien reached across the table and took Vanessa’s hand.
“I meant tomorrow.” Adrien leaned back. Vanessa’s hair pencil fell out entirely on its own, and her auburn hair spilled down her back. Taking a sip of coffee, Beach said, “Is the Crisco offer still on the table?”
Outside, the scarred soldier stomped out his cigarette and left the exterior of the Beach Bar.
The next morning, Beach and Vanessa emerged from their love nest. They were the most relaxed they had been in their entire lives. Every fear, every existential woe was left in a stain on the cot. They ate like royalty and screwed royally, often in the same room. Though they didn’t know to be thankful, The Beach Bar was lucky health inspection was not in vogue in this tiny Italian village.
Once, Vanessa had thought she was finished. Then Giancarlo rapped on the window, wondering where his table was. He pressed his face to the glass to get a peek inside. Beach had whisked Vanessa down to the basement and kept her occupied until it was safe to assume Giancarlo had fucked off.
At sunset, Maria had walked in on the two of them locked in a rousing round of sex on the table. Neither of them had noticed. Maria disappeared as quietly as she came.
Now, the pair was walking down to the waterfront. They arrived at the former Palladino residence. A small crew was working to salvage from the remains. Mr. Palladino coordinated with a small crew, hauling and chipping stone, mixing mortar. Their wooden house near the beach had let in the cooling breezes that swept off the water. It had also gone up in seconds. They would rebuild with durable, inflammable stone. Fat lot of good that would do them in another instance of Poppy Fire.
Fabio Versace (no relation) waved to Beach and Vanessa. He remarked he would never have predicted Vanessa on Beach’s arm, citing their lack of chemistry. He said with the bar closed, he would have thought Beach was dead. He then compared Beach’s imaginary death to the death of Giancarlo, which had occurred sometime last night. Fabio was shocked when Beach reacted to this news so forcefully, demanding to know where Giancarlo had died. He remarked as Beach took off at a full tilt sprint down the shoreline. He watched as Vanessa kicked off her shoes and trailed behind.
Beach pounded down the boardwalk. The sea wind whipped at his back, pushing him faster. His heart was in his neck, and the tips of his fingers. He was a tall, long-limbed member of the Sioux nation. He logged more miles in his kitchen every day than most professional athletes log during training. He ran clear across Tranquillo in record time and arrived at the cove where Giancarlo’s waterlogged corpse was being pulled from the water.
Many of the lifters were the same as had been first responders to the fire at the Paladinos’, responding to the call of duty they had never heard before. The soldiers Durwitz and Des Moines were there, and their air told Beach that if they thought resuscitation were possible they’d be trying it. The scarred soldier and the other two in the company were not present. Beach grabbed one of Giancarlo’s legs and helped him up. He was two hundred and fifty plus when bone dry. Together they overcame the corpse’s night of taking on water.
Now, ex-cadet Adrien Beach was not a coroner. However, there were certain things about Giancarlo’s body that were rather obvious. In his white dress shirt and black slacks, he wasn’t dressed for a dip. If he had drowned, it hadn’t been from a night swim gone awry. There was also no obvious gun shot wound. No blow that caved in the back of his head. What bumps and bruises there were on his arms were inconsequential, mostly likely sustained posthumously bobbing in the current of the cove.
There was some discussion of what to do with Giancarlo. “We could take him home,” Durwitz said.
“Then what?” said Beach. He had just searched Giancarlo’s pockets, finding all of his valuables intact. Not a robbery. “We just leave him there to rot? They burned down the coffinmaker’s house.”
“’They?’” said Des Moines. “You’re saying these were connected?” He rubbed the burns on his upper arms. The ginger soldier had what could be boiled down and sold in a bottle as what could only be called A Very Des Moines Vibe.
At the risk of being overly blunt with a trained combatant, Beach said, “Yes. I think the two heinous crimes in the last two days are connected.”
“<But who?>” It was one of the local helpers. Name of Enzo.
“<The cremator’s conspiracy.>” Beach rounded on the soldiers. “Where are your friends?”
“That’s a real accusatory finger you’re pointing,” said Durwitz. He stood up to face the finger. He had a few inches on Beach.
Des Moines put his palms up at the two of them. “Now, what my squadmate is trying to say… We’re soldiers. We’ve got no orders to mess around in this place.” Des Moines had planted himself between them, but even he was inching closer to Beach.
“I’m not accusing the two of you,” said Beach. He flattened his panic into short, curt sentences. “You’ve been nothing but helpful in these crises. But the day you arrive, this starts happening. Your cohort—the one with the scars—came by my restaurant yesterday.”
“He was hungry,” Durwitz said.
“It was closed,” Beach said. The panic seeped out in puffs and wisps, like gas through a crack. “He was outside for hours, where it would be impossible for him not to have met Giancarlo.”
“That is our brother in arms you’re talking about,” said Des Moines. His outstretched arms flexed. Beach didn’t think it was intentional, but if the rube was getting flared up this would all end in tears. “You can’t understand the trust soldiers have in each other.”
“I’m leaving,” Beach said. Vanessa had just arrived. She grabbed his arm. “But if not him, then where did the fire come from?”
“Wrong army, asshole.” Durwitz spat, and leaned down to assist the others in carrying Giancarlo back to town.
Beach trudged back along on the shore. More accurately, Vanessa pulled him along by the elbow. The crashing of the waves on shore filled his ears, drowning out the frantic extemporaneous speech of a riled up Italian waitress. (Start with “<Rampaging idiot, running off to a murder with the man out to get you. You will be the second murder, mark my words…>” and extrapolate from there what you think the speech’s contents were. You’re probably right).
The walk up the slope of Tranquillo never seemed so treacherous, so much like the houses and carts might fling themselves down the hill and onto Beach. He hadn’t felt so alert in years. Aware of every shake of the leaves, for ambushes hid in trees. Assailants lurk behind stone walls. Vanessa pulled Beach back to the bar. There were zero assassination attempts.
A pair of Tranquillo villagers asked Vanessa if would be performing tonight. She smiled and denied them, saying Adrien was sick, which wasn’t difficult given his current pallor and sweatiness. Vanessa sat him down on a chair. She fixed him a drink he didn’t sip and laid a wet towel on his shoulders. Receiving little feedback, she started in on a handjob, which did seem to calm him down somewhat.
“Maybe they’ll follow me if I leave,” Beach said, Vanessa tugging away on his anatomy. “I can lead them away.”
“<Try to maintain the mood, will you?>” Several seconds of tugging elapsed in near silence, save for the soft fap fap from below. And then, “You don’t know that they’re targeting you.”
“They killed Giancarlo.”
“Giancarlo was annoying. Notoriously. Perhaps he angered them? <Perish the thought…>”
“<I will run, and they will chase.>” Beach planted his hands on his knees and sat up, the universal symbol that he was about to stand. But the tender handjob continued.
“<You will wait.>” After a beat, “I’ll pack a bag.”
“<Yesterday I asked you to stay with me,>” Beach said. “<Today I am asking you to stay without me.>”
Vanessa stared him down, her hand popping in and out of the bottom of her vision. The intensity of her feelings was reflected in her tugs.
“You and I are done when I say we are done,” Vanessa said. She finished Beach with one exquisite pull. Satisfied, albeit in a different way than Beach, Vanessa stood up and chucked a towel on him.
And so Beach packed a bag. It didn’t take long. He had lived in Tranquillo with three shirts and a pair of black slacks. His uniform had gone down with the ship. He arrived in Tranquillo with a white undershirt and a pair of tattered and discarded pantaloons he had found near what the locals called the “Cave of Young Lovers.” What became of the mystical pantsless youth was never to be known. Beach had imagined the youth, mid-coitus, being found by the father of his partner and tossed, naked and erect, into the very sea.
Concerns lived in the back of Beach’s mind. The food in the pantry would rot. The people of Tranquillo would have no place to go at night. The next tenant of the Beach Bar would find the erotic comic strip he had been doodling. But perhaps there’d be a stoppage to the destruction of their lives. Life is full of little tradeoffs.
Vanessa lead Beach back to her place. He was unwilling to let her out of his sight. The place where she slept every night was lovely. Furnished with plush pillows and blankets. Lovely streaks of light came in from the left in the morning and the right in the evening. Situated up on the hill as it was, there was a clear and beautiful view down the road from Vanessa’s to the sea. She was packed and ready in two minutes flat, standing in direct opposition to every joke Beach had ever made about women and clothes.
Beach hung on the bedroom. The inherent feeling of warmth. That even though he’d never been before, how much it felt like home.
Vanessa snapped her fingers. She reminded Beach that leaving was his idea, and showed him the door. Vanessa went through first, and he followed. They were both struck over the head with rifle butts. They collapsed, unconscious, and were each caught by a pair of soldier hands.
For the rest of his life, Beach would run over that moment. If he had gone first, could he have stopped it? Perhaps he could have.
Maria reported in for her shift that night and found the Beach Bar empty. No note, no Beach or Vanessa to shoo her away. She did find two of the visiting soldiers (Durwitz & Des Moines) flipping the place inside out, though what they were looking for she could not ascertain before she backed out of the bar slowly.
Beach and Vanessa awoke kneeling on a grassy plain. Their eyes were shot. Shapes faded in and out of extreme fuzziness. Fields of double vision spun in and out of each other. When Beach thought his eyes might spin out of his skull, a large form lapsed into itself and the face of the scarred soldier came into stark relief inches from his own. His fingers snapped like firecrackers from eye to eye. Beach’s heart threw itself into a fit. His panic fought its way out from under the weighted lid that had kept him groggy as he came to.
The scarred soldier tried the same with Vanessa until she bit his hand.
“You’re awake,” said the scarred soldier. He drew back his hand and poured the Coney’s Cola-Based Rubbing Alcohol on the wound. “Good. Get up.”
Neither Beach nor Vanessa budged. No guns were drawn. The scarred soldier and his two blonde compatriots (one more blonde than the other) encircled them. The getaway bags had most likely been left where they had been dropped, if a quick second had not been taken to toss them into the sea. Blonde dug his fingers into Beach’s hair and pulled him up. Blonder did the same with Vanessa.
The scarred soldier said, “Oh, you must not have heard me. Follow me.”
Through the semi-discernable slurs of a concussed man, Beach made his plea, “Please. You’re soldiers. You’re better than this.”
“Are we now?” The scarred soldier touched the tender half of his face. “Then that makes you a deserter. There’s nothing lower in a war than that. You’re a traitor to your cause. To your corporate country. An enemy. There is nothing more noble for a soldier than to stomp out the enemy.” The scarred soldier articulated this clearly with by mashing an imaginary bug into his left hand with his right fist. He jerked both hands back over his shoulders and the small convoy moved that way.
Vanessa’s temper was fixing to burst out of her, but she kept it tamped down for now. Beach, his head becoming clearer and putting the stakes into consideration, begged for Vanessa’s life in exchange for his own. Standard self-sacrificing man stuff. The scarred soldier seemed not to be paying attention, or was certainly ignoring him.
“How did you find me?” Beach was doing a much poorer job than Vanessa of keeping his neuroses in check.
The scarred soldier cocked his less pretty half back over his shoulder. “Accidentally.” The lip of a cliff peeked into view in front of them. “We were caught in a fire fight in Gianni. Lost our medic. We wandered into Tranquillo, and there you were. Old friends reunited…”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought you didn’t recognize me,” said the scarred soldier. His tone was hard to nail down. Beach had him pegged as angry, but Vanessa was sure he was sorrowful. “You’re certainly good at hiding it if you do. I understand.” The scarred soldier brought his whole visage into Beach’s view. He dropped back into Beach’s face, keeping astride of his brothers in arms. “There’s been some damage since last you saw me. I was being dragged around a boat, after all.”
Fling yourself back, as Beach was currently doing, to the story of the morning the crew of the S.S. Effervescence was pulled out of bed early to watch a would-be deserted be keelhauled. Recall his name was Arnold Andrews, and the whereabouts of his body were never revealed to you. And as the scarred soldier brought the pretty side of his face closer to Beach, he recognized this man from their time above water. If you doubt the credulity of Beach’s inability to identify his former shipment, think back to the time an acquaintance of yours wore their hair a different way or applied slightly less makeup one morning and became unto a different being. Then imagine half of their face is missing and a hot person is rubbing up against you.
Andrews’ story, regaled to Beach, can be summarized thus: when working on the torpedo line below deck, Cadet Andrews was given orders to fire upon an incoming vessel. Shortly thereafter, he discovered that his commanders had no certainty that this vessel meant them ill. It was, in point of fact, a civilian vessel. A cruise liner. Whose fiery death had been met with applause by Andrews’ corpsmen. This did not sit well with the lad, and he sought to abandon ship in the dead of night. But a good watcher always keeps eyes on their property, and what else is a soldier in a time of war? Caught in the act, Andrews was publicly keelhauled a few hours later. He was dragged along the hull of the boat. He bashed into the rock hard metal. He scraped and cut along bolts and barnacles. Every breath was fought for and hard won. He survived only on the cask of cola the ship pulled along to ward off sharks. Andrews gleaned whatever droplets seeped from within. He sucked in the acrid brown drink and was filled resolve and the legally required level of nutrients. This went on until well after nightfall.
The boat burned in holy blue fire. The line keeping Andrews tethered was among the first things to burn. Too weak to swim from his day of torment, he grabbed a bobbing metal cannister. A Molotov of Poppy Fire had missed its mark, remaining intact. Andrew wrapped it up in his shirt and succumbed to exhaustion.
He woke up somewhere else. On a grassy shoreline along the current’s path. A rock could have easily bashed his head or, worse, the cannister. Heavy burns called his attention all along the left side of his frame. He was alive, but he hadn’t settled on being grateful. As a truck of Coney Cola soldiers drove up, he passed out in the mud.
This Coney Cola platoon nursed Andrews back to health. Initially, he went by a different name in case word of his alleged treachery had spready. Now called Durante, he served alongside his Coney Cola brothers as they cut a circular path around Italy. As he said, they were ambushed. The wounds across Andrews/Durante’s face were reopened. The dried cola seeped back to the surface. All but Des Moines, Durwitz, Blonde, Blonder, and the rescarred soldier were killed. The survivors limped until they happened upon Tranquillo. Almost immediately, Andrews/Durante saw Beach. The recognition was instant. How could he ever forget a single face that looked upon him as he was hurled overboard? After a dip, Andrews revealed his true identity to his comrades Blonde & Blonder, who seemed more susceptible to leadership.
The coffinmaker’s housefire was a calling card. The dead nuisance was a message. Durwitz & Des Moines were then clued in.
And now you’re caught up.
“Andrews, I…” The words caught in Beach’s throat. No matter what words flew from his lips, there was no conceivable way to make any plea to Andrews’ softer side sound ingenuous. Even though it was the God’s Honest that Andrews’ keelhauling was the event that turned Beach against the Coney Cola Reds. It was singularly the greatest moment of clarity in his entire life. It changed the trajectory of his morality, or his very existence, and there was no regret he held more closely than not stepping in that morning. But from the look on Andrews’ face he knew that his captor would hear nothing of it. Still, “I’m sorry.”
Andrews scoffed. “I don’t care.” He kicked back to Blonde and Blonder. Told them to hold Vanessa while he and Beach walked on ahead for a while. “I have something to show you.”
Beach looked back at Vanessa. Her face was a contortion of sadness and rage, of worry and regret. But if her eyes had the strength to pull Beach back into her arms they would. They’d slip their captors, sprint down the coastline as fast as their legs would take them, coast up in a cave or abandoned shack, and keep going until they were safe enough to stop, to breathe. Andrews pulled his sidearm and stuck it between Beach’s shoulder blades.
“Let’s go.”
The wind beat over the flatland, dusting the duo with water from the sea just in sight. They walked until Vanessa and the blondes disappeared. Andrews held Beach by the scruff of his coat, dangling him over a sheer drop. It was a hole. Forced to look down, Beach could see into a damp cave. Glittering at the bottom (what wasn’t covered in rust), was a small cadre of firearms.
“Organized criminals,” Andrews said. “They used to dump their spent firearms in the sea over there. The current swept them into this little cave. Half of the year, this is underwater. But right now we have a clear, perfect view of Tranquillo’s criminal past.”
Acid climbed Beach’s throat. His muscles ached from cleaning as he tensed his whole body to keep himself upright.
“Ran into a fella from Tranquillo during my service. Nephew of Giancarlo’s, I believe. Told me all about it. What are the odds? He told me what his uncle told him: that this whole town was built as a cosa nostra operation. That’s “mafia” for us yanks. Free labor started as a way to appease the don and his men. They’d kill each other, and dump the guns here. A sort of tradition. Those Italians love tradition. Well, eventually the mafia operation of Tranquillo killed itself out, and the name went from ironic to iconic. Now that I think on it, poor kid might never know he’s a nephew in past tense. Well, if he survives on the front lines, I’ll be sure to let him know you got his uncle killed.” Andrews’ hot breath drew sweat on Beach’s neck.
Beach spun around. Andrews’ fingers held tight. His mistake. He jerked forward, tumbling head first into the hole. Beach shut his eyes, preparing to follow. A lucky bounce saved his life. Beach landed with a soft thud in the grass as Andrews tumbled headfirst into the cave below.
If you asked Vanessa to summarize the end of adventure, she would, cigarette in one hand, red wine in the other, summarize it thusly:
“<This guy. Never seen him run like this. He stands behind that bar, you know. Thought his legs might atrophy. He comes blazing back across the field. Dirt flying up from underneath him. The blonde guy, the other blonde guy. They start freaking out. They charge him. They charge him, right? He jumps into the air. Clear kicks one of those idiots in the head. The other one catches Adrien, grabs him from behind. Adrien, he stomps down on this guy’s foot. Over and over again. Hard. Blood. He yells out in pain. That’s when the other clear lays Adrien out flat with big, dumb, meaty fist.>”
If you asked Beach what happened next, undereye bags growing each day, fostering concern that they might one day dominate his entire face, he would say this:
“I know it’s a cliché--‘<Never mess with an Italian woman>’—but goddamn it’s true. That soldier was twice her size and he didn’t know what hit him. She sent him clear off of his feet. Basically curb stomped the guy on a rock. I got in a good nut shot on the other guy, but she obliterated him. Kicked him—swear to God—kicked him in the chest, clear out of his boots. They just sat there and he was gone.
“Y’know, so they’re taken care of. And we make our way back to Tranquillo. Most folks were just going about their business. They were rebuilding the Palladinos’… The carpenter had peace of mind enough to work on Giancarlo’s coffin, which was good. Nessa and I made it back to the Beach Bar. The place was a mess, but no one was there. I don’t know if they found anything. I didn’t really have anything to find, to tell you the truth. They never reappeared. Can’t remember if Maria was there.”
If you asked Maria if she was there, she would say:
“Yes. I was there.”
Vanessa and Beach sat in the tossed Beach Bar and, for the first time in their tenure as coworkers, they did it in silence. They slept that night at her place, putting a few buildings between their heads and the beans. The next day, they returned to clean the bar. And the day after that. On the third day, the bar opened as normal. The regulars donated Vanessa a new radio so there could be a show that night.