“I know your name, I know your passion, and I know your brother owns a restaurant in Brokeback, Tennessee. What else is there to know?”
Roz almost smiled. He knew good-and-well that town was not called Brokeback.
“I would hardly call myself a stranger,” Mick continued. “Now I ask you again. Why will you not allow me to give you a ride home?”
“I don’t know what you’re capable of. How’s that?”
“That’s fine,” Mick said. “But examples please.”
Roz felt silly now, but if he wanted examples she was going to give them to him. “You might slice and dice me and eat me for dinner.”
Mick laughed. Deuce looked horrified.
“You might boil me like a lobster tail and have your way with me.”
Mick laughed even harder.
“You might chop me up into tiny pieces and make a pot of stew out of me.”
Mick’s laughter eased. “Alright.”
“You might grind me down to flour and feed me to your pet pigs.”
Deuce couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Mick, suddenly realizing that this girl could be serious, was beginning to lose his humor too. “Okay.”
“You might saw me in half---”
“Alright already,” Mick said, unable to bear it any longer. “I get it. I get your point. I’m a murderous psychopath and you’ll do well to steer clear of me. Got cha. So I’ll steer clear of you. Have a nice life, Miss Graham.”
Deuce utilized the umbrella and escorted Mick as he made his way to the limousine. When Mick got inside, he said something to Deuce, and then Deuce made his way back across the sidewalk to Roz. He reached the umbrella out to her. “Mr. Sinatra said for me to give this to you.”
Roz looked at the umbrella, as if she wasn’t sure if she should accept even that little gesture. She seemed overwhelmed to Deuce, like a woman so tired of letdowns that she didn’t know good fortune when she saw it. He considered her. She was young, she was pretty, but she probably never met a man like Mick in her entire life. Something inside of him felt for her. Something inside of him felt for her the way he would feel for his own daughter. “Get in the car and let me take you home, child,” he said. “That man don’t wanna eat you. And I for damn sure don’t want to either. You’re too salty for me.”
Roz couldn’t help but smile. She looked at Deuce. “I’m being pretty ridiculous, hun?”
“With a capital R,” he said.
Roz didn’t have to be told twice. An umbrella in this kind of rain would probably be useless after one block. And the facts were still the facts: she couldn’t stand here all night. She therefore walked across the sidewalk and got into the limo. Deuce opened the door and held up the umbrella as she sat her small body across from Mick’s big frame. When Deuce closed the door, and she saw the beauty of his limousine, down to the gold-encrusted doorknobs, and she suddenly realized the level of man she was dealing with, she felt a little bit intimidated. But she sat tall and ignored the trappings. It was only a ride home.
Mick smiled when she first got in. “No longer concerned about being my meal for the evening?” he asked her.
She smiled too. “Sorry about that.”
But Mick shook his head. “Don’t be. I’m pleased you’re cautious. There are real assholes out here.”
“But you aren’t one.”
Mick was quick to correct her. “Yes, I am. Maybe not Jeffrey Dahmer as you suggest,” he said with a smile, “but an asshole nonetheless.”
Roz didn’t know how to take his bluntness. Maya Angelou said when people show you who they are, believe them. But although his tongue spoke harsh and uncaringly, his actions were different. He showed her nothing but kindness. “Thank you for the lift anyway,” she said.
Mick gave her a very slight nod of the head. “You’re quite welcome,” he responded.
“Where to, boss?” Deuce, sitting behind the wheel, asked over the intercom.
Mick looked at Roz.
“Brooklyn,” she said, and gave her address.
Mick pressed the intercom button and conveyed that information to Deuce.
Roz looked at Mick. She was having trouble figuring him out. But he had already turned his attention away from her, and to the rain outside.
But as the limo began to move, Roz began to feel a combination of excitement and dread. Hope and discouragement. Happiness and sadness. And she had the oddest sense. She had a sense that her life was going to change tonight, and it was going to change in a major way. She just didn’t know if it was going to be for good, or for ill.
But before she could contemplate it either way, a car suddenly rammed the limo so hard that it rocked them both, and then the out of control car began dragging the limo sideways. Deuce was losing control fast as they raced, not straight ahead as they had been going, but across the sidewalk, dodging nearly three different people. Deuce was able to overcorrect, to avoid a hit on Mick’s side on their collision course. But in overcorrecting, in turning the wheel one way and then the other, they went from speeding sideways to speeding head-on into the massive brick wall of a Mom and Pop, fifty-year-old consignment shop.