Read Online After the Rain by Chuck Logan - Free Book Online Page B

brought her to the subject of what was going to happen tonight. Nothing in her training had exactly prepared her for this assignment.
    Would Ace change his story when they were alone and expect to sleep with her tonight? Would he get rough? She took a fast inventory of the men she’d gone to bed with in her life. More than half of them had been a waste of time.
    This was the first time she’d had to evaluate a potential sexual encounter professionally. Like a hooker or a particularly calculating trophy wife.
    She squared her shoulders, grabbed the doorknob, took a deep breath, and pushed it open. Hu-ah.
    She walked back to the table, sat down, and said, totally spontaneously: “I’m a lousy mother.”
    “You’ll live. C’mon,” Ace said, standing up.
    “Where to?” Nina said.
    “Take a ride. Eat supper. Get you a toothbrush.”
    “Big of you.”
    “Got nothing else going,” Ace said.

Chapter Seven
    An hour later they were in another bar and Ace was still playing Dr. Phil. “I mean,” he said, “we only got a few more years of this.”
    Nina screwed up her face. “What do you mean, this? ”
    “I mean, what are you—thirty-five, thirty-six? ’Bout the same as me. We ain’t like wine, you know. We don’t get better as we age. Like, right now—today—bang,” he snapped his fingers, “you can walk into any bar, anywhere, and make something happen because you got some looks and a body. But in five years…”
    Nina slouched in the booth and held up her glass in a grudging salute. “Forty,” she said glumly. She didn’t have to fake this conversation. Uh-uh. This was a subject she thought about all the time.
    “And you know what the stats are on divorced women over forty getting remarried. Ain’t pretty, sweetheart. Us boys definitely got more shelf life.”
    “You’re depressing the shit out of me. No wonder the population of North Dakota is rock bottom, if this is the way you court your women.”
    Ace shrugged. “Just saying, you should probably give the marriage a little more work, that’s all. Bird in the hand.”
    Nina leaned forward. “A bird in the hand bites. My husband is a total asshole .”
    They stared into their empty glasses. Nina had switched to vodka sevens. She’d had a lot of success drinking vodka with a crazy bunch of Russian paratroopers in Kosovo. A new round of drinks arrived. The way Ace spread his hands before he spoke, Nina could see him behind a pulpit.
    “Okay. It’s like this,” he said. “You’re strung out. Strung out means you talk a little too fast. And there’s off-the-wall thoughts come out of nowhere and bash through the conversation at random times. Like just now.”
    “You know this for a fact?” Nina said.
    “Sure. I’m strung out, too. But mine is more long haul, more like holding off deep space. Mine’s sadder. Yours is madder.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “Drink. Booze tames down the brightness and buffs the edges off so it don’t make the air bleed.”
    “Jesus. You been thinking about this stuff way too long, Ace.”
    “I’ll say.”
    And that’s the way the afternoon went into sunset: the ironies of marriage counseling, Ace’s slow-hand seduction and booze. One bar, two bar, red bar, blue bar. Not quite a blur. Maintaining. Hey. They were both obviously competent folks.
    They drove east out of town and he got her talking. About growing up an Army brat, schools on bases all over the South. How she’d gone into the Army, served in the Gulf War in a signal company, and moved to Minnesota after discharge. How she was tending bar in this joint called the Caboose by the U of M when she met her husband.
    They stopped, gassed the Tahoe at a Super Pumper. Ace made good on his promise and bought her a toothbrush. They went to dinner in Cavalier, the next town east, and she talked about having a kid, thinking it would improve the marriage.
    They drove back to Langdon in the dark.
    Then Ace suddenly switched off the headlights and the night