In the seconds before he would experience a horrifying death either by blades or by bullets, Ben was oddly self-aware enough to realize that he had chosen to take utter humiliation off the table. He had not been a deer in the headlights of this unearthly baleful stare coming at him from the man who was trying to separate him from Charisse. No, he had actively volunteered for the alternative of violent death, as face-saving as it was final. It was as stupid as a bird choosing to fly into a plate glass window, but arguably as gallant as a grim kamikaze, painted rising sun on head band tied at the back, diving into the smokestack of a battleship.
And then he heard a voice that was different than the archangel welcoming him to the afterlife. It was a deep voice of an older man, a voice that was filled with the gravel of authority.
“Arturo! Bastante! Bastante!” Only he said it with upside down exclamation marks before each of the bastantes. It rattled the place. It made the Miami Sound machine sound like ear skittles.
The two of them froze. Arturo still cocked like a trigger, his eyes burning through the back of Ben’s skull. Ben staring back. He was still locked in when Charisse collected him by the top of his arm and spun him with her toward the door.
“Jeezus, Benny,” is all she said.
As if this was my fault? he asked himself.
Charisse wasted no time getting the car out of the parking lot and onto West Okeechobee Road.
She was a little too drunk to drive and horns blared as she went through a red light trying to reach the Palmetto Expressway.
The prospect of the car being t-boned at high speed in an intersection was scary but relative to the sudden death bar scene at the Bocas del Toro it was barely upsetting. At least out here the cars that could have crashed into them were actually trying to avoid collisions.
She found the expressway and settled into the middle lane. He sat there doing the science, this time on himself. No, it wasn’t just that Charisse had needed a couple drinks. She also wanted to just knock ‘em back with her grace and form, to be the siren in the peach camisole.
Well, check that box.
And knowing this about her, he was willing to risk death rather than give her up, for a while, to a stranger they’d never see again? What’s the calculation in this? What was he thinking?
“Okay,” Charisse said. “Let’s go see daddy.”
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