A Tale of Two Trucks by Thea Nishimori Page A

So, in a bit I’ll go to the head, and if anybody asks, I need you all to swear that I was here the whole night.”
    “John owes me a favor,” one of them remarked, indicating the bartender. “I can make sure he’s with it too!”
    “You can take my car,” Hank offered, slipping Joe his keys.
    “If you leave your credit card with us, it’ll look like you’ve been buying drinks all night,” Aaron grinned with obvious ulterior motives, and Joe handed me his card.
    “Keep it down to three rounds, all right?” he told me, and I nodded.
    “Be careful, Joe,” I couldn’t help saying. He smiled reassuringly, almost making me melt.
    “Only a coward goes around smashing eggs on cars in the middle of the night. It won’t take much to scare him !”
     
     
    W HILE Joe was gone, I played pool with the guys, chattering cheerily as though I hadn’t a care in the world, but I was inordinately uncoordinated and had a rough few games.
    “Don’t worry,” Hank said to me in an undertone when I paused to take a drink of my second cosmo. “Joe knows how to handle himself!”
    I was touched and terrified at the same time. If Hank could tell how worried I was about Joe, how obvious was I? I didn’t want these guys to get the wrong idea about us (especially since there was no “us”) and say something to Joe that would spoil the friendship we did have. I decided it was time to quit moping; it was time to do something fun and distracting!
    “Hey, is there anything good in that jukebox?” I asked, and Aaron grinned and gave me a couple of quarters. I searched through the titles and—glory hallelujah!—found some Gloria songs. The guys all roared with laughter when “Bad Boys” started playing.
    “You are too frickin’ funny!” Aaron chuckled, then insisted I teach him how to dance. It was tough going, because he simply couldn’t swing his hips, but I jiggled mine enough for both of us. They’d all had two of the three rounds on Joe and were “happied up” as Gramma would say, so they guffawed as though my moves were the most hilarious thing they’d ever seen. Some of the other customers were enjoying the entertainment too, as Hank kept putting quarters in the machine and choosing other disco favorites.
    “May I cut in?” Joe asked, blindsiding Aaron and practically knocking him out of the way.
    “Sure!” I said, elated to see him back safe and sound. I didn’t notice that another Gloria song, “Everlasting Love,” was on until a bit later, since I was busy trying to get Joe to move his feet in time to the beat.
    When we left the dance floor, it was to the applause of most of the people in the joint, and I flushed with some embarrassment. Still, it was a nice vibe, even when Joe’s buddies snorted and chortled.
    “You two sure make a pair!” Hank declared, almost giggling.
    “Yeah—a regular Mutt and Jeff!” someone else pointed out.
    Joe only grinned and bought them their third round of drinks with the credit card I’d slipped into his back pocket while we were, for lack of a better word, dancing.
     
     
    “S O ? How’d it go?” Aaron asked Joe when we were all settled in around the table again.
    “Easy as pie! I caught the guy coming out of his usual bar, right, with this blond kid who looked like he was twelve, and told the kid to take a walk. I had my hood up so they couldn’t really see me, but I stayed in the shadows anyway, like Mike said. Then when I grabbed the guy and slammed him up against the wall, I swear he must’a pissed his pants! So then I said to him, ‘Hey, bastard, you know who I am?’ And he’s all, like, whimpering, saying there must be some mistake, and I told him, ‘I’m your worst nightmare!’ I know, I know—it’s cliché, but it totally worked ! And I said, ‘If I ever catch you around a certain neighborhood, with or without rotten eggs, you’re dead meat, you hear?’ And I slapped him around a couple of times to make sure he knew I meant business. Then I