It gets harder for a man to believe in love the older he gets...
But them pretty young things sure make you keep trying...
But them pretty young things sure make you keep trying...
Sucker Play by R. Daniel Lester
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After chatting online for months, Becka and I, we decided to
meet for coffee. At a Starbucks. There was another Starbucks across the street.
Go figure. She was late. I waited. I fidgeted. I checked my watch. I got that
sinking feeling. I knew she was too young and beautiful for a washed-up
ex-soldier like me. My gut churned. The coffee was acid. I hated myself. I
hated the picture I uploaded to the dating website. I hated my reflection in
the window. Over-the-hill and trying too hard to climb up the slope. Then she
texted, “LOL 2 Starbucks! stay where u r…” Turned out she was at the other
Starbucks and thought I was late. Thought she wasn’t good enough. Too young.
Not mature enough. But when I saw her in person for the first time I knew she
was enough of everything, especially curves.
We ordered more coffee. She had a soy latte with extra foam.
Got some foam on the tip of her nose by accident. Cute as hell. We shared
stories. Histories and her stories. We closed down the Starbucks. Asked to
leave, they had to put the chairs up and mop the floor.
I pinched myself the whole evening. As my lips talked and my
ears listened, my brain threw harsh jabs. Said a stunning thirty-one-year-old
born in 1981 only wanted a sixty-two-year-old born in 1950 to pity, to mock, to
bleed dry. I decided to let her do as she pleased. Problem was, I didn’t
realize then she had a plan all her own.
I walked her to her car. She went on tippy-toes and kissed
me on the cheek. Said she was out of town on business for the next few weeks but
we could get together on the 18th. If I wanted to. Dinner. Her place. I said
I’d love to but it didn’t have to be that night if it felt rushed. I thought
she’d take the bait I conveniently let dangle in the water. I gave her an out,
a reprieve. Instead, she smiled shyly and told me it wouldn’t feel rushed at
all.
I showed up at Becka’s place five minutes early. Prom night
jitters. She grinned, hugged and invited me inside, showing me around her tidy,
nicely decorated one-bedroom condo. Then she grilled ribeye steaks medium rare
on the BBQ and added baked potatoes, arugula-and-roasted-beet-salad and
homemade chocolate pecan pie for dessert.
The night was warm. We ate outside on the patio. Her cat
curled around my legs in persistent figure eights, signaling, if not acceptance
then at least tolerance. Becka served espresso with dessert and I didn’t have
the heart to tell her that caffeine after four p.m. kept me up all night. Old
man problems. She switched to scotch after the coffee but I said no because I
had to drive. She asked did I really? And I shook my head. Crickets chirped.
Darkness ate at the edges of the candlelight. A moth committed suicide. Then
she grabbed my hand and led me upstairs.
In her bedroom, we got naked. I said I was a little rusty.
She put her hands on me and said I seemed pretty tuned to her. Then she said
she liked old dogs because you could teach them new tricks but they still
remembered some of the old ones. She was too pretty for words. I had none to
give, anyway. The ones I did have were gibberish and grunted into her neck and
the sheets and those sounds joined our sweat there, dissipating together.
After, thanks to the espresso, I couldn’t sleep. I waited
until Becka was breathing deep and regular and crept out of her bed. I went
downstairs in my underwear to have a glass of water and try to dislodge the
horseshoe stuck up my ass, just to see how big it was and how long I could
expect such a lucky streak to continue. Turned out to be a small horseshoe. The
guy that crept up behind me was two steps away before I heard him. Had to give
him credit for getting even that close. I’d once been a big man trained to be a
ghost too. And the air, no matter how delicately sliced, still ripples. I
darted to my left but he was fast, faster than me, and his knife carved a chunk
out of my right shoulder.
I’d barely turned around when he was on me, taking me to the
floor for the kill. He was wearing desert camouflage from head-to-toe. I stared
at his eyes as he held the knife above my ribcage. I knew the look. From ’Nam.
That private who collected an ear for every kill. That hospital medic who hung
himself with his belt and left no note. And this one with the knife who was so
fresh from the beaches of Iraq or Afghanistan, I could practically see the
grains of sand on his skin. Different war. Same crazy.
Then his eyes changed. It was surprise. He didn’t see me
grab the chef’s knife from the block on the counter. But he felt it in his
stomach, as his weight forced the blade further into his body.
“I told that bitch I’d be back,” he said, blood in his spit.
“For her and her new fuck buddy. First thing, soon as I got shipped home.”
He was dead when Becka came down the stairs in her robe,
barefoot. And I was half gone. The body was too heavy to move and his knife,
from the weight, was slowly piercing my chest. Next stop, heart.
And I understood.
She hunted for the biggest, baddest hombre she could find
online and made sure he slept over the night her nutcase ex-husband promised to
return. I’d been suckered. The hook of her sunk deep in the meat of my cheek
and she pulled me along until I was plucked out of the water and gutted.
Becka knelt down beside me, waiting.
