ALL GOOD DEEDS
I’m not a killer. Or a savior. I’m just one person trying to repair the broken scales of justice one jagged crack at a time. The crack I planned to eliminate tonight sat ten feet away eating nachos. His short, pink tongue darted out to slurp the gooey cheese of the chip before shoving the tortilla into his mouth. He smacked his lips when he ate. Licked his fingers and started over again, like a pig fighting for its mama’s teat. This coward wouldn’t be the dominant piglet. He’s the sort who would be shoved to the end of the hierarchy. The only way for him to feel powerful is to prey on the weak. I flagged down my favorite waitress. Another drink was essential to the evening’s success.
She grinned and started navigating her way between crowded tables. If I were in my twenties and still naïve, I’d probably love the place.
In between telling the boys to quit, the two women competed for shittiest day and sucked down strawberry margaritas. The bigger of the two boys had a red bouncy ball, one of those cheap things bought in any gas station. He took great delight in how the ball sprang back up from the hard floor. I waited for him to toss it at Chester's prized ceiling. Instead, he miscalculated his bounce and slammed the ball off his foot. It rolled three booths down and into the foot of the man positioned in the corner.
Nursing his beer, the man picked up the ball and examined it as if it were a rare gem. One of the women– I could only assume it was the kid’s mother– snapped at the boy and ordered him to fetch the ball. Chin against his chest, he trod down the aisle and muttered something before sticking out a chubby hand. The man, who looked like any other Joe Schmo off the street, smiled obligingly and gave the ball back. The middle-aged woman waved appreciatively and fluffed her hair. Brat boy shuffled back to his own table. Supposedly kids are more attuned to the things adults don’t want to see.
Did the boy since the evil he’d just encountered? Perhaps not, since the child was the wrong gender. He and his margarita-loving mother would go on about their lives, peacefully oblivious to what might have been.
The waitress finally reached my table. She wore stonewashed denim shorts with carefully constructed rips in them– the kind I wore in my youth because we were too poor to buy new ones. She had the Betty Page vibe right down to her jet-black hair and the pin curl in her bangs. The men loved her too.
Their eyes glazed over whenever she walked by, and I didn’t blame them. She never messed up a drink order, and her tables constantly smiled, even if the women who watched her strut away did so with wistful jealousy in their eyes. I liked her because she didn’t ask me how I was doing every four minutes. “What can I get you?”
“Martini, dry, please.”
“Your fingers cold?”
She squinted at my hands. “Circulation problems.” I flexed my fingers. Beneath the wool, the latex clung to my sweating hand. “Plus I’m a bit of a germaphobe. Gloves solve both issues.” Not to mention they were an essential part of my toolkit. Tipping the glass made the liquid swirl beneath the bar lights. It sparkled. Dry. Two olives. Boisterous laughter came from several tables down. Twenty-somethings on a date, chowing down on potato skins chased with one of Chester's microbrews.
I envied their youthful ignorance as much as I detested them for it. I wondered what they would do if they knew a monster was sitting just a few red booths down from them.
If they were like most people, the young couple wouldn’t believe it. Neither would the middle-aged women with the rowdy boys.
A mistake, they would say. Wrong identity. Because surely that sort of person wouldn’t slither among them without their taking notice. Living in the dark is a lot easier than facing the truth. My gaze strayed back to the man in the corner– the man I’d come here for. Steve Simon sat alone.
Facing the crowd, he casually tipped back his beer. Like me, his clothes were understated. He probably chose them as carefully as I did. For all I knew, he justified his behaviors. Perhaps he felt he was born this way, or that he was entitled. But I doubted he spent hours agonizing over his choices. That’s not how his mind was geared. There is no cure for the sickness he harbors. A group of laughing young women strode into Chester's, and for a moment, I was painfully aware I was becoming invisible. At thirty-three, I’m nowhere near old, but the sight of them reminded me how quickly time races forward. Tan and tone, every one of them still had the glorious firmness of their early twenties instead of the creeping softness of the thirties.
The women commanded the attention of all the straight men in the bar. Except for Steve.
He never noticed the hot women. Why would he? He has a fetish for adolescent females. The younger the better. Anything over the age of fourteen is too old for his particular kind of sick. His file was burned into my brain. Molested his kid sister when he was fifteen,
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