Trigger Finger by Jackson Spencer Bell

table, short, intense and explosive.   I didn’t last long.   That was
okay, though, because she didn’t last long, either.   When we finished, I took her hand and led her
down into the basement, where we each had a glass of red wine at the bar and
did it again —slower this time—on the
pool table.   She didn’t wince, stiffen
up, cry, anything you’d expect the survivor of a brutal rape to do the first
time she has consensual sex after being forced.
    And this made
perfect sense to me, because she hadn’t been forced.   Pinnix and Ramseur saw her walking with my
daughter at the mall and had devised a plan to do that—to force her—but they’d
never got the chance.   Because I stopped
them.
    But Allie was only
one of two women who lived in my house.   So the next evening, I decided to broach the subject with Abby.

 
    Abby had a soccer
game that night, and I took her by myself.    Allie had a meeting at the Arts Council, so she couldn’t make it.   Normally, this would have meant a phone call
to another parent and a little shuck-and-jive routine to get somebody else to
take her.   Post-shooting, however, I could
just get up and walk out the door at a normal time and no one would say
anything to me about it.   Other attorneys
would look at me as I walked past their doors on the way out but they’d quickly
look away.   Only Craig Montero had the
balls to speak to me when I left at five-thirty.
    “Run, Forrest,
run!”   He said.
    I could count the
number of times I’d taken Abby anywhere by myself on one hand, a natural
outgrowth of having a lucrative but demanding job and a wife who didn’t
work.   And as this life went on, my
little pink toddler with her outstretched arms had increased in size to where
she stood nearly as tall as her mother.   Something had happened to her eyes and ears along the way, and she
didn’t see or hear me anymore.   As the
rest of her form developed, her hands had grown a mobile phone that she used to
constantly text-message other afflicted children and update her Facebook
status.   Her ability to communicate in
the English language had deteriorated to the point where she could only express
herself with her thumbs.
    So after the game,
I took her to McDonald’s.   There, I made
the mistake of letting her stand in line with me while I ordered the food.
    “You’re Kevin
Swanson, aren’t you?”
    The girl behind
the register looked no older than Abby, although by law she had to be at least
sixteen.   Large, blue eyes blinked at me
from beneath her Golden Arches cap.  
    “Uhh…yeah.”   My left hand held my wallet, my right the
credit card I had removed to pay the total.   I felt suddenly conscious of Abby’s observant presence beside me.
    “Dude, you’re the
man.   And I mean it, you are the man .”
    The manager
stopped behind her, looking from my face to the order screen.   He wore the shirt and tie that identified him
as a person of authority even though his face identified him as someone who
couldn’t legally buy a beer.   His name
tag identified him as RODNEY.   He wore a
headset and he adjusted the volume on it as he shook his head.   “Uh-uh,” he said.   “This guy’s not paying.”
    The girl looked
over her shoulder at Rodney when he spoke.   I just blinked.   “Umm…it’s okay, I
can pay cash if…”
    Rodney shook his
head emphatically.   “No way.   Your food’s free tonight.”   He tapped a pimply-faced boy, who had been
preoccupied with making a fudge sundae, on the shoulder.   “Steve, check it out.   We’ve got Kevin Swanson up in here.”
    Not just here; up in here.   The distinction wasn’t lost on
Steve, who nearly leapt over the counter to shake my hand.   “Kevin Swanson?   Holy shit!”
    I leaned forward
and accepted the proffered hand.   Abby,
her hair pulled back and her uniform shirt streaked with field dirt, watched
silently.
    “For real,” Rodney
said, crossing his arms over his skinny chest.