Twenty-Seven

The Beehive fronted Tremont Street in a part of the South End once famous for prostitutes, drugs, and muggings, but now known for theater, Ping-Pong tables, and trendy dining. I stepped through the front door and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. The main dining room, its red chairs arranged with exquisite haphazardness, held diners waiting for the jazz to start.

“Can I help you?” asked a guy wearing thin black glasses and a bolo tie.

“Heading downstairs,” I said.

He made a by-all-means gesture toward the staircase, and I descended, stepping through heavy curtains into the Beehive downstairs bar. With its jazz music, exposed brick walls, duct-work ceiling, eclectic chandeliers, and heavy drapes, the Beehive looked like an Armageddon-proof bunker built by hipsters in hopes that future generations could enjoy our culture’s irony.

Still, the place had a well-stocked bar (also a requirement for Armageddon), an intimate jazz stage, and little round tables where one could drink artisanal cocktails and listen to live music. Onstage now, a black woman crooned a jazz standard, backed up by three male musicians who might have been escaped high-school teachers. They made beautiful music together.

I sat at the bar, my back to the music, and ordered a Four Roses bourbon, double, neat. Given a moment of silence, my thoughts raced back to the Internet.

It’s like Charles Stuart all over again.

What do you say to that? In the pantheon of Boston bad guys, few are worse than Charles Stuart. Whitey Bulger was a gangster, and Tsarnaev was the Marathon bomber, but Charles Stuart was a conniving son of a bitch who killed his wife and unborn infant right after a childbirth class.

That’s it, honey. Breathe. It’ll be over soon.

I flashed to a memory, long repressed, of my wife, Carol, lying in our kitchen, her throat cut, blood seeping along the floor tile’s grout like red lines on graph paper. Imagined how Twitter saw me, standing there, holding the knife. Carol’s image slipped away, replaced by Peter’s head in the bedroom. Again the Twitter view, me standing there with a sword; apparently Twitter thought of me as a blade master. I drank half my whiskey. You’re not doing shots if you don’t drink it all.

I looked around the bar. Took a tally of their bourbon selection, let the jazz music slip back into my head. Thought about the Twitter app on my Droid. What was on there now? What else did the #TuckerGate hashtag and its legion of liars have to say?

The IRC chat that had started this seeped into my head.

Rosetta, did you do anything to her first?

That was it. The ignition point. The implication that I had raped my wife, then murdered her had sent me over the tipping point. The rage built again, narrowing my vision.

I’m going to fucking cut your head off.

I turned the phrase over in my mind, viewed it from all angles. Worth it? Worth having Lee breathing down my neck? Worth being the center of some maelstrom of basement-dwelling, hashtag dweebs with nothing to do but opine and masturbate? Sons of bitches. Peter’s head got cut off. Not the wor—

“What’s that drink?”

I blinked, climbed back out of my head. An Asian girl sat next to me at the bar. Black hair, black eyeglasses, a cropped top that ended halfway down her midriff and floated above her flat stomach, supported by her breasts.

She pointed at my glass. “What are you drinking?”

I said, “It’s Four Roses whiskey, neat.”

“Neat?” she repeated.

“Yeah. They just pour it into the glass and give it to you.”

“Seems pretty spartan.”

“Stiffens the upper lip, for sure.”

She held out her hand. “I’m E.”

We shook. “I’m Tucker.”

“I know.”

“Wait—E? Epomis?”

E glanced left and right. “I never use that name in the real world.”

“Really? What does Epomis mean?”

She motioned for the bartender. “Two more of these.”

“You sure?” I asked. “It’s pretty strong.”

“You’ve had a tough day, and I’m always up for trying something new.”

I drained my current drink to make room. “Twitter is a shit show.”

“There’s also the Internet Relay Chat. Of course 4chan makes Twitter look like a bunch of old ladies talking about knitting.”

I thought of browsing over to 4chan.org. What would I see? What would they be saying? How much worse could it get?

“ … am I right?” asked E.

Refocused on her. Pretty girl.

“Huh?”

“My God, you are having a bad day.”

Our drinks arrived. The bartender had doubled them like the first one. We clinked.

“Salute,” I said.

“Yeah,” said E.

The couple next to us cleared out. E hoisted herself into the bar seat next to me, her short skirt showing thighs with excellent muscle tone. She sat sideways in the seat, breasts forward.

I drank another slug of whiskey.

So one double plus one half of another double, makes three.

“So why contact me, E? What’s up?” I asked.

“Rosetta is kind of a celebrity,” said E.

“Only to hackers.”

“Works for me.” She sniffed at the whiskey.

“Are you a hacker?” I asked.

“I’ve got game.”

“You sure don’t look like a hacker. You’re a beautiful woman, and you don’t have Cheetos stains on your fingers.”

“Wow. Cheetos? Does that make you a self-loathing hacker?”

“I think I’ve earned it.”

“What about Runway?”

“You mean Peter?”

“Yeah.”

“What about him?”

“Do you think he earned it?”

“What do you think?” I asked, playing it close.

“I think I asked first,” said E, playing it closer. She cocked her head, waiting for my answer.

“I think he earned a mild beating,” I said. “Tricking a little girl out of her password and humiliating her in front of her friends? Definitely worth a few slaps in the head.”

“But not removal of said head?”

“No.”

E took a tiny sip of her drink. “Wow, this is good.”

“Really? I didn’t take you for someone who would drink it straight.”

“My father used to pour Johnny Walker Black Label at the dinner table with supper. So I’m used to drinking whiskey.”

“Black Label’s a good way to start.”

“Kind of like training-wheel whiskey.”

“Yup. Smooth.”

E asked, “So who do you think killed Runway?”

“Clearly, you don’t think it was me,” I said.

“Ah … no. Picking up a murderer in a bar would be a little crazy.”

“A step beyond daddy issues?”

“I don’t need daddy issues to find you attractive.”

“I don’t know. I’m an older man who feeds you whiskey.”

E put her hand on my leg, leaned closer. “I just like you. You have a nice vibe.”

A pleasant warmth spread outward from my gut, triggered by having an attractive woman make eye contact and say something nice. Conventional wisdom has it that men are seduced from the crotch out; not true at all. That’s just sex. The true engine of seduction is having an attractive woman pay attention to you. The feeling echoed kindergarten days when my teacher Ms. Potsdam would lean in close, her tropical-shampoo scent filling my nose, and ask, “What are you drawing, Tucker?”

“A dog.”

“That’s a great dog. Maybe add some whiskers?”

And she’d be gone to the next student, leaving me wishing for just a few more minutes to bask in her affectionate gaze.

E looked at me the same way, her hand tightening a bit on my leg, demonstrating that its position was no accident.

I coughed. “A vibe?”

“A nice vibe.”

“Drink your bourbon.”

E flashed a little smile, dutifully turned to her bourbon, took a tiny swallow.

I tried to break the mood. “The guy who killed Peter—”

“They know it’s a guy?” asked E.

“Not for sure, but it kind of has to be.”

“The FBI did a profile?”

“There are no women on the Internet. Present company excluded.”

“And this killer has to be on the Internet?”

“This whole thing was started on the Internet.”

“Don’t you find that a little scary?”

“I find it annoying.”

“I see.”

The warm feelings of E’s gaze had dissipated. I wanted them back. “Here’s what I don’t get,” I said.

E’s raised eyebrow peeked out from behind her eyeglasses. “What?”

“The whole Internet is telling you that I’m a depraved, sword-wielding killer. Why call me now?”

“You’re famous now.”

“More like infamous.”

E leaned in, her hand returning to my leg, a little higher this time. “I have a confession to make.”

Bourbon went down the wrong pipe. I coughed. “Confession?”

“I Googled you.”

“You make it sound dirty.”

“Read all about you. Every Globe article is still online.”

“And yet here you sit.”

“You’re a good guy. Maybe a great guy.”

“I wouldn’t say gre—”

E leaned in, closed her eyes, parted her lips. But it seemed too soon, so instead of kissing E, I placed my hand on top of hers.

“Thanks,” I said. “I needed to hear that.”

E leaned back. “You left me hanging there. Kisses have the same rules as high fives, you know.”

Her warmth, intelligence, and insistent grip on my thigh overwhelmed my vestigial chivalry. I moved my hand to E’s bare lower back, slid it up her spine, and tipped her toward me. Brushed my lips against hers, let her tongue flutter along mine.

My other hand, freed of responsibilities, spilled my bourbon on the crooner’s keyboardist, who had slipped up to the bar.

“Hey!” he said. “Get a room.”

“Sorry.”

His eyes tracked down E’s body to her backside, and back to mine.

“No, seriously, dude,” he said. “Get a room.”

E laughed and leaned close. Breathed into my ear, “I live around the corner.”