I was in the machine. My whole life. Then the machine coughed and spat me out. So I thought, OK, if I’m out, I’m out. All the way out. I was a little angry and it was probably an immature reaction. But I got used to it. – Lee Child, One Shot
I recently came across a large collection of material from back a number of years. The writings emerge from those dark days when I was held captive by a pack of stoner mongrels, half dog, half wolf. Puppy mill escapees. A hard lot, but loving.
All Barker Ajax wanted was a thick steak, cooked right. A quiet meal undisturbed. Uninterrupted conversation. Sex later.
Was that too much to ask?
The waiter’s name was Dick. He introduced himself just as Barker’s date was about to say how much she had always admired his writing. Barker liked that in a woman.
“My name is Dick and I’ll be your waiter this evening,” he spouted without waiting. “Our specials tonight? Well, there’s our simulated salmon in a light flan noir sauce in a hollowed-out pig knuckle. Then we offer herbed Alohan-Spam-ka-bobs with twice-cooked lima bean melange, drizzled with reduced taco chips. May I suggest one of each?”
“Don’t even try. The lady will have your best end cut. That piece of prime rib the manager’s been saving for himself should do nicely. And bring me the biggest piece of aged sirloin you can put on a plate, medium rare. Please.”
“Perhaps some wine with your meal?”
“Something local, bold and red.”
“I know just the thing, sir,” Dick assured the couple. “Is your daughter of age to consume alcohol?”
Topaz was a redhead, local and bold and about half Barker’s age. She was maybe the same age as Dick, Barker thought, wondering how the waiter had managed to last so long without somebody strangling him. His parents must’ve had a reason or two.
She was young, true, but Barker could live with that. Her life had been changed by his words, she had actually said that very thing. And she could never do enough to repay him. The thought make Barker feel like a victorious politician on election night. The people love me.
Topaz was telling Barker how she had read all his stories and how they had moved her to tears at times, other times how she’d laughed out loud, too. The story she liked best was ….
“Here we go, folks,”
Dick put the prime rib in front of Barker, the steak in front of the girl. “No, that’s not right,” Dick seemed to criticize himself. The waiter leaned between the couple and switched the plates, his elbows just missing their heads like a great bird swooping over the table. “Enjoy!”
Barker watched the way Topaz cut into her meat. She took a hungry bite. A good appetite, he liked that in a woman. She had beautiful teeth and she made that first mouthful, her lush red lips moving like a hug, something erotic. She could smile and chew at the same time.
Barker could swear his entree gave a muted “moo,” faint but distinct, as he put his serrated knife through the meat. Too rare.
Barker sent the steak back to the kitchen. And that meat returned looking like a petrified cow pie, left out in the sun all summer. Barker slowly burned. Started looking for the waiter. Dick was, of course, clear across the room doing a clever impression of a potted plant flirting with the bar maid.
Barker tried to attract the waiter’s attention. Dick wouldn’t notice the Goodyear blimp if it floated into the restaurant. Finally, Barker whistled at him.
Dick was large and he was stuffy and he was soon in Barker’s face. The waiter trained an obsequious eye – the other continued to roam the rest of the room – on Barker.
“A problem?” Disdain dripping.
“I fear you are trying to poison me,” Barker said. Quietly.
“I am sure I don’t know what you mean,” Dick offered. “Is there a problem?” He looked around, as if he might have something better to do.
“Maybe you’re the problem,” Barker said. Firmly.
Dick looked at Topaz, who smiled at him innocently. He turned, like his starched collar was too tight. He looked at Barker. Dick flexed, puffed up. Practically turgid.
“You think you’re a tough guy, don’t you?”
“It’s not a thought process with me,” Barker watched the tuxedoed numbnutz’s brain. Barker looked into the waiter’s eyes and it was as if he was at a drive-in movie, watching a very short subject.
Life arrives for some people like an unexpected guest; for others, everything happens in slow motion. Who are you most like?
And just as Barker was saying “I’m only as tough as I have to be,” he nonchalantly drove his shin into the other man’s groin. Slam dunk. He loved it when that happened.
The waiter folded over like a plastic bingo chair but he didn’t drop all the way to the floor. Barker caught him by his insouciant pony-tail.
Barker twisted the man’s head around. Looked again into those vacant eyes. And thought, just for a flickering moment, he saw some sign of intelligence. Just a faintest recognition, a reflection really, too late, of a mistake made.
Life is just a game basically of random chance. You never make a mistake, you just make better, or worse, choices.
Barker broke the waiter’s nose with the heel of his left hand, splayed serious cartilage. Barker remembered to move aside an instant before the blood spurted onto the couple having a bad date at a nearby table.
Bone appetit.
The waiter didn’t know what to grab. His balls or his suddenly flexible nose. The best part was… he didn’t make a sound. No moan. No outcry. No noise whatsoever. He just kind of grunted on impact. Other than that, Barker thought, he might as well have hit a tree. A hardwood.
No sense, no feeling.
Barker’s appreciation for the shoot-first-ask-questions-later school of thought was reaffirmed. He was a little impressed, full of himself, flushed with a hit of adrenaline. This was clearly the annoyingest sonuvabitch waiter he’d ever kicked the shit out of in a fancy surf & turf restaurant.
Almost told the guy that, when the Dick started to rise to his feet. Barker decided this was not a good time for compliments. Waiter might expect a tip.
Handed the man a fresh white cloth napkin.
“You’d better stay there,” Barker suggested. “I feel better when you’re crumpled on the floor like fresh roadkill.”
Muffled. “You had no call to do that.”
He managed to whimper and act surprised at the same time.
Barker took a sip of wine, a feisty yet impertinent Oregon pinot.
“I clearly said, medium rare.”