South Of The Border...

Beth and I had felt a strong need to do lunch in the aftermath of what was rapidly becoming known as ‘The Belly Affair’. Since we had learned, the hard way, that any attempt at serious conversation between us invariably turned into an occasion for serious assaults on the world’s supply of Heineken, we decided to cut our losses, go to a bar and settle right in.

Beth:  I’ve been feeling...like somebody’s watching me.

Deb:  No, no...it goes...I always feel like somebody’s watching me.

Beth:  I’m serious, you lush.

Deb:  So am I.

Beth:  You’re also drunker than I am.

Deb:  Not by much.  These couple of weeks been good to you?  He
been good to you?

Beth:  He’s been wonderful.

Deb:  What’d he buy at Hudson’s?  You get it yet?

Shyly, Beth extended her hand to display her ring.  I touched it with a
forefinger, almost reverently.

Deb:  Lord, Lord, Lord...will ya look at that?  If that’s not the most 
beautiful thing.  Beth, I think the boy’s in love.

Beth:  I know I am.

My hand strayed to the ‘ten pound reminder’ that I still wore around my
neck.  The one I wouldn’t take off.  I wasn’t going to make any more cracks
about Billy being chintzy because he really wasn’t.  He was as free with his
money as the next guy - had really given me no grief at all about the
thousands of his dollars that I had spent.  Oh, I'd heard a lot of crap
about 'takin' the cost of the redecoratin' out of my ass.' but talk was all
it was.

Deb:  I'm glad.  You two are so sweet together.  You look so right.

I was drunker than she was.  I was becoming morbidly sentimental and that
would have to stop.

Beth:  How was your trip?  Was the cabin good?

Deb:  Lovely.  I don't know how much he liked it, really - no damn tv, not
even a damn radio worth listenin' to - but for my money two solid weeks of 
nothing but Billy was sheer heaven.

Beth:  Did he...say...anything?

Beth knew about my campaign to convince Billy to speak his heart.  She
knew I believed there was more for him to say than wham, bam, thank you 
ma'am.  She also knew that admissions of any sort out of Billy were scarcer
than hen's teeth.  She had already seen a couple, so maybe I was on to 
something.

Deb:  Oh, yeah.  First night out.   Course he was loaded with Darvon and
Tylenol and he was all bent out of shape from the trip.  Two more, please.

This last to the waitress.  We were in what Beth had told me was 'a real
cowboy bar.'  'As opposed to a fake cowboy bar?' I had asked facetiously,
only to be told there was such an animal.  There were yuppie cowboy bars
with lots of phony antiques and branding irons on the walls, all the wait-
staff dressed in approximations of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader uniforms,
lots of ferns.  There was also the kind of hole in the wall Billy hung out
in, where the three-piece band played behind chicken-wire and kept right on 
through the main entertainment, the fight.  This was the sort of bar a real cattleman might come to.  Hard core country boomed from the jukebox, there
were jeans and worn boots on staff and customers alike...and nobody acted
like a cowboy.  You just knew they all were.

Beth:  So, what'd he say?

Deb:  Well...he was zonin' out and I said to him, 'Billy, who do you love?'
He kept trying to ignore the question, hide from it, make me back off, but
eventually the drugs in his system caught up with him.  He was barely awake,
all smacked around but he said...it.

Beth:  No way!

Deb:  He came as close as I ever expected.

Beth:  What'd he say?  How'd it come out?

Deb:  I will never forget this...how much?...keep the change...for as long 
as I live.  He said 'damfool woman...gotta ask.  You know...love you.'  Z's.

Beth:  But it doesn't count because he didn't know he was saying it.

Deb:  Counts for about half.  He was too jacked up to lie.  The idea now is 
to get him to say it when he's lucid, the way he was when he told me not to
leave him.  He knew exactly what he was saying, and he knew he was saying
it.

Beth:  I don't know if that won'...change him somehow.  Part of what makes
him such fun is his absolute refusal to be tied down.

Deb:  Will it?  Don't know.  But one day he's gonna wake up to find himself
all alone.  You'll be off with Sam and crap, who knows, maybe I'll get tired 
of waiting for him and go hunt up Bully.  And there he'll be, too old to be 
bouncing people off the walls, technologically out of the loop, no 401k...
and at that point Ryback might as well have killed him.

Beth:  But he doesn't like to need people.  He likes people to need him,
whicch is one reason he has a hard time letting go of me.  He doesn't want
to believe that I don't need him, that all I need is Sa,m.  He loves it
that you're so obviously dependent on him.  It's a huge kick for Bill to
think that a woman who's otherwise pretty tough and damn smart has a weak
spot, and he's it.

Deb:  He's my weak spot alright.  He knows it and exploits it.  I suppose it
would be different if he were non-verbal but very demonstrative.  As it is,
he's utterly non-verbal and an emotional brick wall.  His idea of being
loving is to go pound something.  'Of course i love ya, dammit...didn't I
just beat hell outa that peckerwood for ya?'

Beth:  I agree.  That's Bill.  Bushido all the way.  Law of the Jungle,
survival of the fittest.

Deb:  Oh, he's fit all right.  Him and Sam both.  I've never seen two guys
who can do for a pair of jeans what they can.

Beth  Don't forget the t-shirts.

Deb:  Heaven forbid we forget those.  But is it only physical attraction
we're talking here?  I mean, we know how long that lasts.

Beth ordered up the next round.  As usual, the Heinies were going down
smooth as glass.  The talk was becoming philosophical now, since our brains
were being properly lubricated.

Beth:  We're talking it, but not completely.  Look at Sam...and Billy, for
that matter.  Put together, bodies that won't quit...gorgeous.  But, here's
the kicker...52-gorgeous.  Not 20-gorgeous, not 35-gorgeous...52-gorgeous.
It has as much to do with their faces as anything else.  Look at Sam...
oozes self confidence, intelligence, authority.  Definitely Commander in
Chief, the man with the plan and that's about as sexy as anything else.  I
know when he takes me in his arms nothing short of an earthquake will move
me.  I am completely loved, fiercely protected...and all this by a man who
can hold up his end of a conversation.  I've got the whole package.

Deb:  Billy's...Billy's the earthquake.  He's like a fifth element...earth,
fire, water, air, Billy.  He's smart as a whip, with a disciplined mind that
he chhoses to let run loose.  He's bigger than life.  If I have to grab 
hold of him to keep up...it feels like I've grabbed hold of a live wire.
I'm more...alive...when I'm with him.  And just when I start to think he's
nothing more than L'il Abner on speed...I see that what's he's reading is
Jane's Defence Quarterly...and taking notes.  That the only reason he's
not dead is that he's not only better trained, but better able to use what
he knows.  That the reason he's a terrorist is that he was able to see
beyond the spin.  I find it a privelege to be near his mind.

Beth:  Not to mention that tight little ass.

Deb:  That's a gimme.  So what's this shit you were being followed?

Beth:  Yeah...feels like I'm being watched lately.  Stalked.  Awful,
eerie.  I haven't mentioned it to Sam.  He worries too much about me 
the way it is.

We were leaving the bar, the Midnight Rodeo.  Billy had more Heinies
at the house than you could shake a stick at, and we could continue on our
merry way to oblivion there, or sit in the hot tub to simmer it out of
ourselves.  Neither one of us was looking for anything out of the ordinary.
That's how it happened.  There were footsteps behind us, we paid them no
mind.  At that point, I thing we were both curious as to how we were going
to manage the drive to Billy's.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the first 
one make his move - he hit Beth like a tackle going in low and from the
outside.  She never saw him coming, didn't even scream.  He hit her upside
the head with something he held in his hand and she went down like a sack of
laundry.  Silently if inefficiently, I threw myself in to render aid.  I
thought it was the ring they were after, never thought it might be Beth 
herself.  The one I never saw stepped on my ankle as he rushed in.
I felt something let go and there was a horrid bolt of pain that shot up my
leg and through my body to my skull, to meet with the other pain the little
man gave me there.  I went down beside her.

Sam glanced automatically at his watch when the phone rang.  Nine o'clock,
and Beth was hours overdue.  If this was her calling, she had better have
a damned good excuse.

Billy:  You seen the pipsqueak, Dawg?

Sam:  That's enough of that shit, Strannix.  Quit callin me Dawg.  What
d'you want with her?

Billy:  What if I said her honey-colored little ass in my hands?  What'd ya
say to that?

Sam felt the plastic casing of the phone giving way in his hands.  He was crushing it.

Sam:  Someday, Strannix, I'm gonna forget everything I ever learned in the
academy and then I'll kill you.

Billy:  Get in line, man, y'think you're big enough.  This's about as much 
fun as pokin' a lion with a stick.  I want the pipsqueak cause I wanna
talk to her, Dawg.  That's all!

Sam:  This isn't something you can talk to Deb about?

Billy:  I can't ask my punk cause I can't find her, but I s'pect she blew
outa here pissed and headed home.  She'll call me when she hits KC, be
missin' me.

Sam:  She oughta have her head read and her ass kicked.

Billy:  Maybe so, Dawg, maybe so.  You touch that young woman, you're gonna 
draw back a stump.  I'm askin' ya, where's the pipsqueak?

Sam:  And I'm asking you what the hell you want with her when you have a
woman of your own??

Billy:  What's it damn well matter, you jealous old bastard?!  You pissed
cause I had her first?  You pissed cause you're afraid I might be better
than you? You afraid she might think so?  I don't want that, Gerard.  I've had her and she's a damn fine piece a-ass, but that's done, and we know
it even if you don't.  I wanna talk to 'er!  That's all!  Now have you seen
the girl?

Sam:  Not since she left to meet Deb for lunch.

Billy:  What's that, ten hours?  You called the fuzz?

Sam:  I AM the fuzz!

Billy:  Then gitcher ass out and find 'er!  It ain't like her to disappear
for ten goddam hours and not tell anybody where she's at!  Her mama don't 
know where she is, her friends don't know, YOU don't know!!

Sam:  YOU'VE been calling all these people tryin' to find my girl?
Why don't you call the police?

Billy:  How'm I gonna do that?  You got a damn BOLO out on me!  I show up,
they're on me like stink on a skunk's ass!

Sam sagged back in his chair.  If this was round one, it was clearly
going to Strannix.

Billy:  You there, fool?  How d'you know she ain't in the hospital?
In jail?  In a ditch someplace ot in a damn box at the county morgue?

Sam:  How do you know she's not with Deb?

Billy:  Cause her life is here, that's why.  Deb's got a reason to leave 
town, Beth don't.  I don't know where the pipsqueak is, but I know
she ain't headed north.  I'll round my people up.  You go talk to yours.
I'll talk to ya at...oh, 2300 hours.  That's 11:00 pm for you REMF's.

Sam knew what an REMF was and he was ready to go through the phone, but
the instrument went dead in his hands.  Sam made his calls grimly, to the
police, to area hospitals...to the county morgue.  He got news he didn't
want from the morgue.  A Jane Doe answering Beth's general description
had been brought in late that afternoon, no identification, no nothing.  
Sam pulled out his Marshal's persona and asked to be allowed to view the
remains.  They told him to come ahead.  Strannix called back promptly at
eleven.

Billy:  Well?

Sam:  Gotta go to the morgue.

Billy:  Want some company?

Sam:  I can manage.

Billy:  you think it might be her?

Sam:  Matches her general description.

Billy:  If it's her...you wanna be alone when they open that drawer?

Sam's throat closed up at the thought.  Even a jackass like Strannix
would be better than no moral support at all.

Sam:  How soon can you be here?

Billy:  Soon enough.

The phone went dead again.  Sam gathered his credentials and went outside 
to wait.  The Suburban pulled up in about twenty minutes.

TO BE CONTINUED...