Her Quiet Legacy

Used to cover large areas not requiring detail“I live by two simple rules.” I flicked the beer mat with my thumbnail and it flew into the air, spiralling twice before I caught it between fingers and thumb. The kid next to me pushed his baseball cap further back on his head and eyed me as though wisdom might miraculously grace him. Twenty something and skinny, I knew of his reputation for hitting women. Roddy, the local cop, told me that fact four months, five days, twenty-three hours and four seconds ago. I remember because he breathed beer fumes into my ear and I’d tried not to flinch. I would have remembered anyway. “What are they?” the kid demanded. “What are your fancy rules?” I shrugged and let a smirk play across my lips. The barman stopped wiping the counter and waited, already knowing the answer. “Don’t play unless you can win.” My customary stammer on the last word lulled the kid into thinking I was stupid. He frowned and shifted in his seat. Pushing out his bottom lip, he considered the cash he just lost on the card table behind us. I sensed the cogs of his brain ticking through their rotation as he paused. Fail one. “What’s the second?” he snarled. “Never hit a woman.” Roddy let out a snort at my elbow, spraying beer across the counter in front of him. The barman’s face creased in disgust as he moved over to mop up the mess. The kid swallowed, his fingers straying to the red and purple hickey beneath his jawline. Fail two. “What if they deserve it?” he asked. I bit my lower lip and shrugged, tension easing from my shoulders and ebbing back through the muscles either side of my spine. “They never deserve that,” I replied, adding menace to my tone. My interest waned, and I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. I’d mapped out this hour as my social time, structuring it so I could sit next to Roddy and watch him grow drunker as the clock hands moved towards the magic moment of my escape. The kid’s interference threatened my routine. The large hand ticked past the twelve and the small hand moved too far over the nine for comfort. Roddy nudged me with his elbow, slopping beer into his sleeve. “Leave the kid alone,” he wheezed. “If I don’t understand you after ten years, he sure as hell won’t after five minutes.” I jerked away from his mess, not wanting it to touch me. Not wanting him to touch me. I reached for the bottle of ale in front of me and almost knocked it flying. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I turned up at the club and bought the beer. I took one sip and Roddy drank the rest after I left. Now I’d touched it twice, and the realisation sent a coil of dismay firing through my brain. My hand rested back on my thigh and I clamped it with the other one to stop it from trembling. “You hit on my girlfriend.” The kid balled his fists and spoke through gritted teeth. I figured the friendly chat might be over as he climbed off his stool. “Which girlfriend?” Roddy set his bottle on the beer mat and I saw the barman reach for his phone. “Tahlia!” He spat her name with more bile than sentiment. “And he hit on her.” His dirty finger jabbed close enough to my cheek to contaminate my air space. I pursed my lips to halt the smart a*s reply I’d learned from a squad member in the army. To stop it tumbling out, I took a decent inhale of the bar’s fetid air. Discarded slops and cigarette smoke from the beer garden’s open doorway filled my lungs. Roddy shook his head. “This guy’s been the hottest bachelor in town since before you wore long pants. He doesn’t want any of them.” I slipped off the stool and faced the kid, watching his eyes narrow in determination. He slid sideways and blocked my exit. The clock’s large hand moved onto the five and my nerves jangled. His expression shuttered, and I saw he expected me to lie my way out of trouble. “Excuse me,” I said, and waited for him to move aside. My mother’s voice echoed in my head. “Be polite, Jack. Use your words, son, but only the kind ones.” Like a navigational reference point in my mind, I focussed on the memory of her favourite blue scarf. It smelled of lavender because of the vibrancy of the colour, convincing my brain of its presence like visual onomatopoeia. I liked lavender. It pained me I couldn’t speak to Mother. Not until tomorrow could I obtain her wisdom on the skinny kid’s behaviour. We spoke on Thursdays. I wasn’t sure what might happen if I rang her on a Wednesday night after nine o’clock. Bad things. Awful things. She wouldn’t answer, but someone else might. My mind sparked with possibilities, and I shut it down before it could get into the swing of informed tragedies. “Blonde. Blue eyes.” I drew myself up to my full height and dwarfed him. Conversation at the card table ceased. Lifting one hand, I patted the air as though measuring his girlfriend’s height. The kid’s nostrils flared like a bull’s and he squared his shoulders. “What?” he snarled. “Your girlfriend.” I patted the air again. “Blonde. Blue eyes. Sometimes black eyes if she upsets you. Your girlfriend.” My attention wandered to the swathe of ugly carpet meandering towards the door. Twenty-one yellow squares and twenty-two blues made up my route. Odd and even. Wednesdays were odd days. One shoe per square. If I messed up, I needed to think of a plausible reason to walk back and repeat the exercise. Roddy liked it. I often used the excuse of buying him another beer. “You’ll be sorry you ever noticed her.” The kid took a step towards me. Behind me, Roddy let out an unpleasant swearword. Despite being our local cop, he didn’t hop down off his stool. But his foul language made me want to add another rule. The barman brought the local police station’s number up on speed dial, his fingers working on the keypad while he kept his gaze fixed on me. Clever guy. Dialling without looking. I angled my body sideways to the kid’s, attempting to diffuse the situation before he blew a gasket and hurt himself. Forty three steps to safety called to me from behind him and the large clock hand moved to cover the ten. “You’ve got the wrong guy,” I said. Chapter 2