A mean cunt in a crowded pub

I was still mulling over what the evening might hold in store, glancing around the taproom to see if anybody caught my eye—or if I’d caught anyone else’s—when someone slid into Baggett's seat next to me, cheerfully drumming their fingers on the table. I’d already half-turned, thinking vaguely that it was long enough since I had a tumble that it might just be this bold stranger’s lucky night, when I caught sight of the man’s big, dirty-looking fingers and felt pure ice lance through me. I hadn’t seen Lydell up close since the time at Lamb’s place, and the two times I had glimpsed him in the interim it had been at enough of a distance that to avoid him was easy.

“You’re a tough one to catch alone,” he remarked with such exaggerated, false good cheer that it set my heart thudding crazily. “Almost gives a person the feeling he did something to offend.”

My scalp prickled at the glittering meanness in his eyes.

I wished my two pints hadn’t left me a bit drunk.

I wished it had occurred to me that if we went out anywhere near the watch house, any fucking person from an adjoining ward might show up on a Fourthday night.

I wished I were holding a crossbow.

“You sure waited a while to look me up,” I made myself say anyway, hoping my false bravado wouldn’t show through. “Took you that long to admit you like getting pissed on?”

Lydell smiled at me, big, and unpleasant. “Heard you and your oversized shadow made SCD. Figured congratulations were in order.”

“Great. You’ve congratulated me. Now get lost.” I took a pull on the remaining stub of Baggett's cigarette to keep my hands from shaking.

“Things like that, though, people do wonder what might spark such generosity from the high-ups. Both of you, detectives and sergeant-constables at only twenty-five? Both jumping the floater pool line to land the same plum assignment with a waiting list a mile long? Makes people curious what you did to get all this stuff you didn’t earn.”

“Shit like this,” I said recklessly, then ground the cigarette out on the back of his hand.

Lydell made a noise of surprise and jerked his hand away, glaring, then reached down and grabbed my knee under the table. I **** myself not to react even though his grip was so tight it made me a bit queasy the way he was grinding the cartilage in the joint. “I see you’ve gotten daring in your old age,” I told him, summoning every bit of nerve I could lay hands on. “Used to be you went in for scared teenagers you could get cornered somewhere. Now you’re chatting up a mean cunt in a crowded pub without even checking how many knives she has hidden on her.”

“Or clocking how long it takes her drinking partner to come back from taking a leak,” Baggett said, appearing suddenly behind Lydell and pressing something against his side that I was pretty sure was a dagger. Lydell stiffened instantly with the instinctive caution of a predator suddenly less confident of his advantage.

Relief flooded through me so fast I worried it might make me go limp. “Hey there, Bag,” I said, taking liberties with this improvised nickname that I hadn’t earned, and hoping he’d play along, “my fellow academy graduate and I were just starting a list of all the things on a person’s body they only need one of,” I said.

He did play along. “Yeah?” Baggett experimentally repositioned the knife a little bit lower, looking thoughtful. “Kidneys are the classic example.”

“Good one,” I said, inwardly congratulating myself on how steady my voice sounded, and on how I hadn’t dropped to the floor and curled up in a ball. “For some reason my mind runs straight to testicles.”

“Sure. Though technically,” Baggett offered, with a generous, lazy ease that made me doubt we could stay enemies, “one could argue a person doesn’t really need either of them. So, I mean.”

“You make a good point,” I mused.

“Laugh it up, assholes,” Lydell said in a low, furious voice, “and sure, don’t think twice about what a huge fucking mistake you’re making right now.” He let go my leg, though not before giving me such a viciously painful pinch on my inner thigh that I had to bite my lip to keep from reacting. “You and your partner better watch your backs, you tattling little slut.” He picked up the smashed cigarette and dropped it into what was left of my pint, then spat into the glass, apparently feeling his initial show of aggression required still greater emphasis. “You're lucky I’m in too good a mood to put up with the hassle of breaking your fucking legs so bad neither of you ever walk again.”

“Well shucks, look us up some other time, I guess,” I said, and Baggett stepped back to let him stand up, though I noticed he didn’t resheathe his dagger.

There was a long, tense moment while Lydell looked Baggett up and down, and while I tried to decide how things would play out if he decided a fight was in order. Baggett was almost as tall as our opponent, and while Lydell’s paunchy, but muscled, bulk meant he outweighed him by probably ninety pounds, something about Baggett’s general bearing made me think he might be quick in a brawl. And everything about Baggett’s general bearing made me think he wouldn’t hesitate to fight dirty when it was appropriate to do so.

We might stand a chance, if neither of us cared about the other guards thinking we fought fair. Keeping my eyes carefully on them both, I began slowly to reach for the knife I kept in my boot. I had already made up my mind that if Lydell lunged for Baggett, my best bet was to drop to the floor under the table and inflict as many stab wounds on Lydell’s instep as I could, hope that it bought Baggett the extra few seconds he needed to execute whatever equally unfair move he was considering, and from there do my best to hamstring him before he could react and use his weight against me.

Lydell probably wouldn’t expect that, since to skip all preludes and move straight to attempted maiming would be an extremely unsportsmanlike, viciously mercenary escalation of what he no doubt figured was going to be an ordinary bar fight that ended with him getting to break us both in half.

But Lydell didn’t go for Baggett. “See you around, queerbait,” he said to him, with a strange smirk that felt somehow significant, then squared his shoulders and gave us both a baleful look before stalking off.

This exchange made me wonder what had happened between Lydell’s vaguely apologetic talk of “fags” at Lamb’s place, and his deliberately offensive choice of words now.

Baggett waited a few moments to make sure Lydell was gone before putting his knife away, then took his seat, his posture a bit rigid.

“Got any rolling papers left?” I asked, when my heart’s jackrabbiting subsided enough that I stood a chance of actually hearing the answer.

He nodded and reached into his jacket, the motion coming off a bit mechanical. While he began rolling another cigarette I reached for my pint, remembered the smashed butt and Lydell's spit, then reached for Baggett’s almost empty pint, realized my hands were shaking too badly to pick it up, and decided to forget the whole thing. I folded my hands in my lap and stared at the table while Baggett finished rolling a cigarette for each of us. He lit the first and passed it wordlessly to me, then began on his own.

We sat there in silence, smoking. The barmaid brought our pints, failing to take away our last round when somebody else flagged her down. Neither of us called after her.

After a while Baggett motioned with his cigarette toward my ruined pint and said blandly, “He had a burn or something. Did you stub that thing out on his hand?”

“Yeah. Pretty dumb fucking move, all said.”

He cocked his head, considering this while he took another pull. “Mm,” he disagreed. “It has its merits.”

“I didn’t know I was going to till I’d already done it.”

“Story of my fucking life, Bersk.” Baggett held the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and used both hands to slide each of us our respective pints. “Scared teenagers and tattling sluts,” he said, raising his eyes to look up at me without lifting his head. “Is that piece of shit Lydell the reason Curry feels like he has to get a signed and notarized permission slip before he leaves you unattended?”

My hands were a little less shaky now. I shifted my cigarette to the other hand and picked up my pint, downing half of it at once, then set it back on the table and shrugged at Baggett. “You first. You were pretty quick to jam a dagger up to his side and wax philosophical about carving out your fellow guard officer’s kidneys—seems like there’s more between you two than him having some quarrel with you going in for the lads.”

Baggett frowned. “Kidney, singular,” he corrected me. “I don’t know how you’re going to make it in SCD if you don’t know people need at least one kidney to live, Bersk.” He shook his head doubtfully.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t catch the part where we actually want him to live,” I replied.

“Fair play.” Baggett cut me a slow, agreeable grin that said he recognized and respected that neither of us felt like discussing the genesis of our grudges against Lydell. After another drag off his cigarette, he blew smoke out the corner of his mouth and remarked, “Staring that mean prick down with balls of steel, putting out a fucking cigarette on him, tossing off backtalk like you gave no kind of shit—I genuinely can’t recall another time in all my life that it even crossed my mind to kiss a woman.”

This made me bust out with an unflattering snort-laugh. “Thanks. I think.”

“Want another smoke?”

“Yeah.”

Baggett reached into his jacket again for the rolling papers, then hesitated. “Want something more fun than tobacco?”

I considered. “Yeah, but maybe don’t mention it to Curry? He’s probably going to fuss later when he smells smoke on me.”

“Perish the thought. I finally met someone else around here who admits to hating that motherfucker as much as me. If that’s not a foundation for alliance I don’t know what is.” Baggett paused. “Actually,” he amended, “let’s finish these pints and get the fuck out of here. I’m pretty much fed up to **** with guard pubs these days. I only even took you two because you’re new and I figured you’d expect it. Let’s smoke some hash and go watch harbor gulls try to eat things that aren’t food.”

“I have to say, tonight you’re really assuaging the fears you instilled in me three years ago, that I wasn’t mature enough to succeed at SCD,” I told him.

“I saw you staring at him while he was settling on whether he wanted a fight,” Baggett said instead of replying directly to that, “and for a half second I thought it meant you’re one of those people who freezes and turns absolutely fucking useless in a brawl.” He paused to swallow down the last of his ale. “Then I saw you were half off your seat with one hand on your boot, and realized you were keeping your eyes up so he wouldn’t figure out you were preparing to slip under the table and stick a knife in him if he made a move.”

I shrugged. “So?”

“So I was a condescending prick to you all week but when it looked like a nasty tussle was about to happen off duty, you were poised to slide into the fray and attack one of the evilest meatheads in the city even though you had to know it would mean getting probably all your ribs broken.”

“Gods, don’t act so fucking sentimental,” I said with exaggerated disgust, and moved as if to stand up and leave. “It’s called a diversion. I was relying on him not being smart enough to wrangle you while I’m busy poking more holes in his feet than he knows how to count.”

Baggett let out a snort of laughter as I aborted my feigned departure and resumed my seat, then picked up his empty glass and held it out for me to hit mine against. “Truce?”

“Truce,” I agreed.

Baggett shoved away from the table and motioned toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.”