Bandit Beloved (sample)
She was perfect. David Briggs knew nothing at all about women, never had and was sure he never would, but he knew that Amy Paxton was perfect, and could not believe his fortune, could not identify what selfless action he had taken in some past life to bring her into his arms. “Girls like Amy don’t exist, man,” Frank had said, not ten minutes after David had somehow made a move and obtained her contact info. “Not for nothing guys like us. We’re not bad. We’re just not on her level.” (Frank was actually sort of bad, but skated by on charm.) “How’s a girl like her still single?” “I asked her the same question,” David admitted. “And?” David blinked. “You know, she didn’t tell me.”
It was Saturday night in a Hackensack dive. Frank had just finished pounding David in darts, a game they hadn’t played since a junior-year frat thing that neither had been invited to. “Good times,” Frank said, bumping David’s conciliatory raised fist, and a crummy rock anthem from that same year kicked in, reminding them of younger, dumber versions of themselves. “Good times,” David returned, whereupon five strange women strode in, single-file, and the last of them was luminous. Painfully lovely. David felt his heart skip a worrying number of beats. Like her companions, she sported a pink, poorly-printed “Last Fling Before Susan Takes His Ring” cotton tee. Unlike her companions, all mere mortals, she boasted soft skin, luscious lips, hair the color of sunshine dialed down for human eyes. She barely walked. She floated. She was thirty feet away. “Whoa,” David would later recall himself saying. “Pour some cosmos!” shrieked one of the pink shirts, presumably Susan (she wore a veil, an advantageous look for her). “Let’s get some cosmos up in this bitch!” Amy’s eyes screamed apologies to everyone else in the bar. For his part, David barely even noticed the feminine squawks; he was processing seismic-scale upheavals. “You all right, man,” came Frank’s voice in his ear. “You look like that guy in that movie.” “What movie.” “I forget, but he had a fucking heart attack and died.” “Way ahead of you, buddy,” said David. He watched her. They both did. They couldn’t help but do so. Direct kicks to their incisors would have scarcely distracted them. Two useless, agog minutes passed. Frank’s rodential grin gave way to resignation that this wasn’t gonna work. David ran a jittery hand through his hair and let it pause around the part of his brain that parsed his sense of time and space. “I’m gonna do it,” he said, and didn’t do it. Facts were facts. It was too long a shot. His jokes were decent, but on looks he offered blandly handsome, undistinguished features and acceptable smiles for employee IDs. He wasn’t in her species, much less league. But she stood on the same turf as him, no pretentions, no excuse, and he knew he’d hate himself if he didn’t go down swinging. And the lighting was bad… He waited till she’d finished a drink—and then another—then sailed in. By then Frank was already striking out with a girl named something on the Kristy-Christie spectrum. “Hi,” David said, giving Amy’s glass a casual point. “Can I buy you another one of those?” “Sadly, yes,” she replied, her smile a slash of mischief. “If I don’t drink what all these other idiots drink, they yell at me and say that I’m not being fun.” “That’s all right. I’ve been there. I came here with my shit-for-brains friend.” “Oh, you’ve got one too!” She attempted to sip her drink before remembering she’d finished it. “Yeah, you didn’t look like you belonged here. You’re more like one of those city guys who crawl across the river for adventure.” David picked at his button-down. “I, uh, live in Passaic,” he mumbled. She just cackled. “Montclair. Don’t worry about it.” Sparkles danced behind her big brown eyes. He fell in love, if he hadn’t already. “Whoo!” bellowed Susan, for no stated reason. “I’m David,” he announced, ignoring that. “David Briggs, and I know that name makes me sound like an asshole. Or a children’s book character. Possibly both.” She gave him a nod. “I’m Amy. Don’t worry about it.”
He took her out the Friday after Susan’s tacky wedding. A cheery Italian place with checkered tablecloths. She wore a swishy black dress, and the candlelight was magic on her skin, and David managed not to stammer, faint or vomit in his gnocchi. They got the getting-to-know-you garbage done. She said she sold fashions in a high-end boutique; he told her that he never knew a girl who called clothes ‘fashions’ before. “I wear Dockers to work, basically,” he admitted. “I work for Essex County.” “Hey, that’s me.” He shrugged. “I push papers around.” “Well, I’ll call ya if I ever get a parking ticket,” she said, and raised her glass. He clinked. “I’ll call you if I need a cashmere shawl.” “That’s the spirit,” she snickered. “See, both our jobs are stupid. Now relax.” David sighed. “You can tell, can’t you. I shuffle through quarterlife assuming I’m the mathematical average of any fifty straight white men with bachelor’s degrees and office jobs and a burgeoning acceptance that they’re not on the path to change the world.” “And I’m a basic blonde girl who’s moved up just enough to stop explaining stupid shit to stupid customers and start dealing exclusively with screw-loose rich bitches who should die,” Amy rattled off. “Buuuut I get some say in my schedule. That’s important.” He raised his glass. “To you.” “To us.” They clinked. They didn’t mind that they’d done so just before. She leaned in, impish corners of her mouth crinkling up, and the play between the color of her lipstick and her skin was electric. “Any more pathetic stereotypes you’d care to confess to?” He processed a gulp. “I’m one of those guys who doesn’t like ‘Dave’. Only ‘David’. Is that a stereotype? Or just a captivating quirk?” “I think a pet peeve. Or perhaps a bête noire.” “Or just a hobby.” He sighed. He was doing that a lot. “Hey, cards on the table, you know? I’m guessing I’m like any guy you’ve gone out with.” “Well, don’t you know a lot,” she purred, amused. He stirred his side salad, as if it helped him churn up his thoughts. “I guess they’ve all thought they’re pretty lucky to be going out with you, you know?” he said. “I mean, I sure do. Think that. So then we wonder what we’ve got goin’ on that’s so great.” “Or what’s wrong with me that makes me settle for you hideous ghouls,” she chortled. “Am I in the ballpark here?” He lamely shrugged. She shook her head, and her radiant mane cascaded down her shoulder—she had the kind of hair that cascaded. “What can I say, David-not-Dave. You finally reached the age your parents promised you, when all that superficial stuff doesn’t matter.” “Oh, that was this week? I knew I should have opened that letter.” “You like making jokes, huh,” she observed. “You should see me when things get really bad. I start to juggle.” “All right, you got me.” Her laugh was fantastic, wild cackles with a funny little sway in her shoulders just the right side of awkward, his side, the adorkable side. She thumped the table; the silverware shook. He basked in the jazz of her delight. “I’m not always that quick,” he admitted. “We can both bend over backwards making good first impressions, or we can get real,” Amy said. “I’d forgive you if a few dates down the road, I found out you’re not perfect.” “Who told you.” “Hey, I know what I want.” She looked into the flame of the stubby, sad candle between them, then back into his eyes. “Look, I’ve seen a lot out there. More than you know. And all I’m looking for is a guy who really cares about me.” He had read, in terrible novels, of eyes that could stare into your soul. He knew not where his own soul resided or how one would feel were it stared into, but as he met Amy Paxton’s gaze he suspected that this, to use her phrase, was in the ballpark. The feeling was something like reading a book (not the terrible novels) and understanding less when you were done than when you started; what you’d learned was how much you didn’t know.
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