head throbbed, and the smell of the coffee wafting from the container was inviting.
“Do you like cream and sugar in your coffee, sonny boy?”
“Yeah,” Marshall mumbled. He popped the lid off the cup and took a long drink of the coffee, which, he had to admit, was prepared just the way he liked it. Costa tossed a white, waxed bag in his lap.
“Doughnut?”
Marshall made a move to open the bag, then stopped, looking intently at Costa. “Don’t tell me,” he said.
“Sour cream with cinnamon and sugar.” They said it at the same time. Costa grinned.
“How do you do that?”
Costa shrugged, turning the key in the ignition and throwing the truck into gear. “Don’t know. My pop used to do it too.” The big man pulled onto the street and headed north.
“Where the hell we going?” Marshall bit into the doughnut, sugar and cinnamon spilling onto his jacket. He brushed it away.
“Omer,” said Costa.
“Omer? What the hell is that?”
“Little town on 23,” said Costa. “We’re going to see Hubcap.”
“Hubcap?”
“Brian Jankowicz. He was Violet’s third husband. After me. The locals call him Hubcap.”
“Do I want to know why?”
Costa began to chuckle again. “Oh, sonny boy, you’ll see.”
Marshall popped the last of the doughnut in his mouth and washed it down with the coffee. He watched the neighborhood slide by. “Look,” said Marshall, “can you stop calling me that?”
“Okay,” Costa said, his grin wide and white. “Sonny boy.”
When Brian Jankowicz met Violet Benjamin-Montgomery-Pavlos in Beanies, a little bar on the Au Sable River on a rainy April night, the thing he noticed was that she looked totally out of place. Girls that walked into Beanies generally wore tight jeans and tighter T-shirts, tennis shoes or boots, and hairdos straight out of 1985. Violet sat shivering at the end of the bar, nursing a cup of Beanie’s nasty coffee, wearing a wrap-around knit dress and low heels. She had a hat on, which Brian thought looked pretty classy. It was one of those wool hats, like a man’s, but it was a pearly gray color and had a paisley hatband. Her dark hair was damp, her fingers raw and red.
The other thing that struck Brian as strange was how the woman had gotten there. He knew everyone’s car in Omer—he was the only mechanic in the small village—and the only cars in the parking lot were Jessa’s, the bartender, and old man Weaver’s 1962 Chevy pickup. Brian figured right quick the woman must have had some car trouble. And from the looks of her, other trouble as well. He’d seen that same sad look on his own mother’s face plenty of times. Definitely some man problems.
Brian sidled up to the bar, and Jessa slid him a draught of Miller. He tipped his head at her and laid two dollars on the bar. As he sat down, he caught the woman’s eye and nodded to her.
“How ya’ doin’?” he said.
“I’ve been better,” said Violet, glancing around nervously.
“Had some car trouble, did you?” Brian took a drink of his beer. She sat back in her chair, her eyes going wide with alarm. “How did you know that?” she demanded.
“Parking lot,” Brian explained. “Only two cars.” He nodded toward Jessa and Inky Weaver.
“Oh.” Violet’s huge doe-eyes caught Brian’s green ones and nailed him to his seat. Something in his stomach did a flip-flop. It was not an entirely unpleasant sensation. She was so petite and pretty. Brian caught himself staring.
“Have you called anyone?” he asked. It came out all hoarse and squeaky. He cleared his throat nervously, and Jessa looked over at him and snickered. He shot her a dirty look.
Violet’s eyes welled. “I . . . I just left my husband,” she said, blinking rapidly to quell the tears.
Brian slid over in the seat next to her. He grabbed a handful of napkins from a stack on the bar and handed them to Violet. “Oh, hey,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” Violet took the napkins and wiped at her eyes. “I was just upset, you know? And I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention. To where I was going or the car.”
“Understandable,” Brian pushed his dark blonde hair out of his eyes. He wished he’d gotten that haircut last week like he’d intended. He was glad he’d gone home and showered off the greasy dirt of the garage before coming down for a beer. He smoothed his flannel shirt and gave himself a cursory glance in the mirror behind the bar. “I know what it’s like.”
“You’re divorced?”
“Oh . . . um . . . no,” Brian stammered. “There was this girl though . . . it was really, you know, tough when we split.” Another snicker from Jessa. Brian narrowed his eyes at her, and she turned from the couple and made a show of wiping at some bar glasses.
“Yes,” Violet said, blowing her nose on a bar napkin “It’s . . . difficult.”
“Listen, where’s your car?” Brian asked. “Maybe I can help?” Violet told him she’d made a wrong turn off US 23 about a mile down the road. She’d walked back to Beanies after the car went dead.
“You walked on a dirt road in those shoes?” Brian said, grinning.
This got a wan smile out of Violet. “Yeah. Not too smart, huh.” She wiped at her eyes again. “I mean, I had tennis shoes in the car. I just didn’t feel like digging through all the stuff in the back for my bag in the rain and all.”
Brian told her he was a mechanic and offered to get her car running. He’d thrown a tenner at Jessa and told her to make Violet something hot to eat, then promised Inky he’d buy him a couple of beers if he drove Brian out to round up Violet’s car. “And I’ll bring your bag back too, if you want.” Brian offered. “So you can put something warm and dry on.”
That evening, Brian introduced Violet to his Aunt Linda who owned a rooming house in the village, and before long she and Brian started seeing each other, much to Aunt Linda’s displeasure. There was something about that girl she hadn’t liked. She was too . . . perfect, which Linda translated as phony.
For Violet though, Omer turned out to be a great place to hide out. She was a tragic princess, and Brian enjoyed playing the hero. She told him about her life with Costa, how she couldn’t give him a child, about what hard work it was, owning the restaurant and club. How she just wasn’t appreciated by the Pavlos family. Brian listened to Violet’s stories, held her hand, told her she was wonderful and what a shame it was that other people just couldn’t see that. She listened to him, too—and he shyly found his way to telling her things he’d never
