Read Online Father's Day by Simon van Booy - Free Book Online Page B

two girls stopped in front of him to look for something in their pocketbooks. Jason raised his half-bottle of whiskey and asked if they were thirsty. The girls laughed, but then Jason noticed two men behind them, pulling fiercely on cigarettes.
    One of them turned to Jason. “Think you’re a fucking hero with that little tattoo on your neck?” The other one just nodded. They were both wearing black T-shirts, jeans, and polished dress shoes.
    â€œFucking maggot,” the first man said. “You wanna fuck with me?”
    One of the girls got in front of the man and pushed him back. “Why do you have to be such an asshole all the time?”
    The other girl was putting away her lipstick. “Let’s go,” she said. “This is boring.”
    The other man wanted to go too. “C’mon, Michael,” he said. “Forget about this asshole.”
    But the first man just kept staring. “You fuckin’ deaf?”
    Jason noticed an empty can on the sidewalk and lowered his gaze, wondering whose lips had once been on it.
    By now a few people had stopped to see what was happening.
    â€œYou deaf, ya little prick?” the man went on. Then he pointed to the can on the sidewalk and stepped closer. “That your can, you fuckin’ litterbug? You gonna pick it up, or am I gonna make you?”
    Jason leaned over and reached for it, then in one motion exploded upward, driving the metal can into the man’s face, shredding the lower part of his lip.
    The man’s friend was tall, so Jason had to go in low at the knees to get him on the ground, where he fought like mad—but then cried out as Jason’s brass rings separated his nose.
    As usual, there was blood and people screaming.
    Then the first man had him from behind. Jason lowered his center of gravity and drove back as hard as he could, but with only one good leg to balance, he couldn’t get enough force to send his opponent through the glass storefront of the hair salon. Even with repeated thrusts, the glass wouldn’t break, so Jason turned and head-butted him over and over until the man went loose in his arms and dropped to the street, blood gushing from his nose and mouth. From a distance people were shouting at Jason to stop.
    Jason grabbed his motorcycle jacket and took off. By the time he reached the end of the block, he could hear police sirens. He knew what would happen if they caught him, but felt little remorse.
    â€œIf there’s one thing I can’t stand,” he told Wanda on the phone, “it’s a bully.”
    F OR THE NEXT few hours Jason dragged his body through the streets of Manhattan, sobering up and realizing that his own nose was broken. One of his teeth was also loose, and his lip had pieces hanging off where the tooth had sliced into it.
    Any brawler, he explained to Wanda, knows the feeling of finding an injury later on that you don’t remember getting at the time.
    Jason found a gash in his shin that had bled so badly, the lower leg of his jeans was completely stuck to his body.
    About four o’clock in the morning, Jason decided he shouldprobably hop the next train back to Long Island, but couldn’t find his wallet. He sat on the curb, and rifled through his pockets, wondering what would happen if the guard caught him riding without a ticket.
    He walked a little more, then collapsed on some Church steps at Madison and Eighty-first Street. When a police cruiser slowed and the cops eyeballed him, Jason got up and started the lugubrious trek across town toward Penn Station. After a few blocks, he saw a sign and realized he’d been limping in the wrong direction.
    He tried to focus on the street numbers but was soon distracted by the bright glow of a shopwindow just a few steps away. He shuffled up to the glass and looked inside. Things sparkled and glittered under the lights. It was a bridal boutique, and the window had been decorated in the style of a hotel