Matchstick Men: A Novel About Grifters With Issues by Eric Garcia Page A

increasing, his head expanding. An arm, caught up in his, a shoulder beneath his palms. Roy, dropping to one knee, exerting pressure, pulling back, and a pop. A squishy pop. And another man down and screaming. In the military, Roy had excelled in his hand-to-hand training sessions.
    Two minutes later, and the circle was clear. Heather and Roy stood on the dance floor, Roy’s vision clearing, the club coming back into view. Five men on the ground, howling in pain.
    Heather didn’t know what hit her, but she was in love.
    They moved in together two weeks later, and got married a month after that. Five-minute ceremony by a notary who worked at a shipping shop. Roy didn’t have a job, and when he foundone, he usually lost it quick. Heather didn’t care. She loved the sex and she loved having her own place to come home to. They lived in a rented room inside a broken-down farmhouse, but it was theirs. She could scream if she wanted. She could wear what she wanted. Roy loved her for all of it. She was still nineteen.
    Twenty when she got pregnant. Didn’t tell Roy for two months, but by then it had all gone away. Heather didn’t come home some nights, and Roy would spend the evenings in his car, driving the streets. Finding girls who looked like Heather. Beating up their boyfriends. Vision blurred. Finding bars nearby. Going through the motions. Roy hit Heather when she told him about the pregnancy. Hit her when she said she’d been hiding it. He’d never beaten a woman before, never would again. He hit her on the shoulders, on the legs, in the face. Stayed away from her stomach, even with his vision blurred and the pressure straining his head. She had bruises for weeks, she moaned for weeks, and then she was gone.
    She was four months pregnant when she left. She was just beginning to show, a small belly on that supple body. Roy didn’t try to find her. He knew there was no point. She didn’t leave because of the beatings. She didn’t leave because of the baby. She left because she was Heather and he was Roy, and they never should have been Heather and Roy. The papers came in the mail a month later, and Roy signed them without reading. Like his signature could erase the memory. He stayed in the house for three straight weeks, and when he came out, the air was clear. It had rained, and it was over.

    “And do you think about her?” Klein asks when Roy’s done with his story.
    “Not really,” he says.
    “What could have been, what might have been?”
    “What’s the point? I got things to do in my life, I can’t be thinking about ancient history all the time.”
    The doctor scratches his chin. “And the baby?”
    “
If
there’s a baby …”
    “If there’s a baby,” Klein echoes. “Do you think about that?”
    Roy is silent for a moment. “I have. Sometimes. Just ’cause—it’s not for Heather, you know, it’s … You put something out there, part of yourself. So is there a Roy Junior running around? He look like me? That sorta thing.”
    Klein nods. “He’d be, what … fifteen?”
    “Fourteen, fifteen, yeah.”
    “Ready to become a man.”
    “I guess.” The chair cushions have become uncomfortable. Roy squirms. “There a point to all this?”
    “We’re just talking, remember? No points unless you say there’s a point.”
    “No,” says Roy after a time. “Unless …”
    “Yes?”
    “I dunno. Sometimes I think it might be good to know if there is a kid. Not to see ’em or anything or interfere, but just so I
know
. That make sense?”
    “Certainly. Certainly. You know, Roy, there’s nothing wrong with a man calling his ex-wife to say hello. Even with the … problems you two had. It’s done all the time.”
    Roy can’t think of it. He tries to picture himself calling Heather, picking up the phone. But the bile wells in his throat.Climbing up, burning. He shakes his head. “Nah, I’d—better off the way it is. Don’t need that. Got no use with a kid.”
    “Not everybody has