The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(12)

Jim recognized it at once; so did I. It was the same deputy who had come knocking on our door one day to help Jim deliver an object lesson. The buddy who had turned a 911 call into a fishing date. His name was Frank.

Jim and Frank shook hands in greeting and slapped each other’s shoulders and inquired after each other’s wives, as if I weren’t there to answer for myself. Then Frank leaned in close and muttered something in Jim’s ear. Whatever the news was, it wasn’t good. The grin froze on Jim’s face. He stared back at Frank and said something I couldn’t hear; then they both moved away to the bar. Jim didn’t return for a long time.

Close to midnight, most of the couples at our table had left. I was spent, nursing a single Dos Equis all evening, but Jim was downing Coors after Coors and growing more garrulous. When Edie came around next, he gave a What the hell shrug and ordered a double tequila with lime. This was not a good sign.

Munoz shook his head at him. “How in hell you expect to get home, man?”

Jim leaned back in his chair, bloodshot eyes glistening. “The way I always do when I tie one on—lights up, siren wailing.”

Munoz chuckled, but his eyes were wary. He gestured at me and my Dos Equis and smiled. “Joanna here will drive you guys home. She’s been a good girl.”

“Fuck that,” Jim snorted. “We’d just end up in a ditch somewhere.”

Crack.

Munoz exchanged a surprised look with his wife, both clearly uncomfortable now.

Edie brought Jim his double shot. He slammed it and ordered another. “Easy,” Munoz murmured. “Easy.”

When the second one came, Jim smirked and toasted him with it.

Before Munoz could respond—if he had even planned to—he glanced past Jim to something at the other side of the saloon, and his jaw dropped a bit. “Ho-ly,” he murmured. Jim turned to look. So did I.

A woman had walked into the Javelina.

That’s the truest way I can describe it, except to amend it this way: a woman didn’t just walk into the Javelina—she commandeered it.

She was tall and lithe and sturdy. As tall as Jim—taller, if you counted the two-inch heels on her biker boots. Her hair was so black it shone blue, and all of it cascaded down her back like a waterfall. She looked to be in her early thirties, and wore jeans and a studded black leather jacket. She stripped off her leather riding gloves as she strode to the bar like she owned the place. The crowd parted to make room.

At her side, leaving no less of a wake, was a big man with salt-and-pepper hair and a mustache. He was also dressed in leather, and gave every impression that he could, should circumstances call for it, eat the dead.

“Is that Bernadette?” Munoz murmured.

And suddenly I understood everything—Frank’s muttered message, Jim’s abrupt mood shift and his hard drinking, which was so uncharacteristic for him. I had never met Bernadette, but for years Jim had made certain I knew of her, usually in explicit detail. She was his girlfriend from long ago, and the woman he most enjoyed comparing me to. Never, of course, in my favor.

I knew she was a mix of Navajo, Hispanic and Irish and grew up on a sheep ranch on the northern end of the reservation, near Cuba. She had left Wheeler—and Jim—before I’d ever come here. As far as I knew, this was her first time back.

Seeing the woman in the flesh, I understood why in Jim’s estimation I had always come up short, and always would.

Jim was staring intently at her, glowering, working his jaw. He was breaking into a sweat, his fist squeezing the empty shot glass. Bernadette was speaking with the bartender, who nodded in our direction. She turned to look. If she was put off by Jim’s presence, she didn’t show it in the least; she didn’t take in my presence at all. She turned her back and resumed her conversation with the man she’d come in with.

Jim stood, and for a moment I thought he intended to leave. I stood, too, and picked up my handbag and jacket. But he took no note of me and headed for the bar. Uncertain, I trailed behind.

He stood staring at her back for some time without speaking. He stared so hard I thought he would bore tiny, smoking holes in her leather jacket. If she knew he was there, she didn’t show it.

Finally he said, “I see you’re still drinking tequila.”

She took her time turning around. When she did, she surprised me. She barely glanced at Jim at all when she raised her shot glass and answered with a dismissive, “I still have a lot of regrets.”

Mostly, she turned her attention past Jim and on me, appraising me in a puzzled way that became almost sad. Then pitying. I hugged my jacket for protection against that look, suddenly and profoundly mortified.