Apology by Jon Pineda (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

harder. It came back that much harder the next time. Momentum accrued from their impatience, more nods and shoving of the cue ball, until the two men took notice of the one walking past, dragging his foot behind him. The smaller of the two, with his round, penny-colored face, said, “Hey, bud, you fall off your bull or something?” and the taller friend laughed and nodded as he took a long swig from his bottle, its glass the color of wet pine bark.

“Hey, friend, Lee asked you a question,” the taller one said.

Exequiel stopped at the edge of the table and grabbed the cue, lifting it up so that he interrupted its course. “I’m not your friend, puta,” Exequiel said, making sure he eyed both of the men. They looked to him like off-duty rodeo clowns, men who should otherwise be wearing makeup and polka-dotted pants ten sizes too big with hula hoops for waistbands, all of it held up by fat pairs of matching suspenders.

Exequiel took a slow breath and then said, “Sorry,” and at this, the smaller one, Lee, smiled and came around the side of the table and said, “Oh, now don’t piss yourself, bud. What was that you said? What did you say? Roger and me didn’t quite get that last bit there.”

“Yeah,” Roger said.

“I said I’m sorry,” Exequiel said, staring into the cue ball like it was a crystal ball. Something a dwarf fortune teller might use. He looked hard into its milky core but could find only some traces of blue smeared in erratic streaks on the surface. Its life consisting of hits.

“Sorry? Sorry for what?” Roger said. He hadn’t moved and stood where he was, sipping his beer. When he started to walk around, his smaller friend held up his hand to stop him.

“Yeah, bud,” Lee said. “What would you be sorry for?”

He was happy that this stranger was the kind of man who would take Roger and him seriously. He was happier, too, that the near-stoic look on this stooped man’s face might be masking a rising fear. Lee wondered what they could get him to do, what strange routine this man they had stopped would suddenly perform for the two of them. Would he buy them both a round for the inconvenience, maybe? Or maybe he would buy a round for everyone within earshot, beers for the women in the back corner booth and beers for the men, this stranger with a sheepish grin and scraggly mustache, his strange way of crossing a room, beers for the band? Even a shot of whiskey for the pretty blonde leaving the restroom?

When Exequiel looked up he saw the woman pause, assessing him and the others. Exequiel didn’t care. He asked her if she knew these guys. Perhaps it was the way she reacted, scoffing almost, that sent fire through him, a goring that burned in his blood and washed over his chest like that same blood burning.

Gaslit grass gone in one gush of wind.

His eyes watering from the smoke inside him.

Not that Exequiel could have known this woman’s past, but he sensed in her a reckless stretch of judgment. Rather than laughing off his proposition of a whiskey shot, she stood closer to Exequiel and leaned on him to get a better look, as if to peer into the future the cue ball held inside.

She whispered, “You shouldn’t let them get to you.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t do that. You haven’t done anything yet.”

“Yet?”

“Yes,” she said. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

He left her to move closer to Lee, the smaller one. Once Exequiel was within an arm’s length, he grabbed Lee’s throat. His thumb threatening to snap the larynx altogether. He felt it give, but then it slid back without breaking. The trauma alone, though, caused the smaller man to collapse onto the table. It was then Exequiel began to shove the cue ball into the man’s mouth. He was bloodying the teeth and the lips, trying to get it inside him, trying to get him to suck it like an egg.

“Hey,” Roger said, confused. “Hey, friend! What are you doing, friend?”

Lee, the smaller one, had passed out.

Exequiel thought at first he was going to have to break the friend Roger’s cheek, especially if he tried to interfere now, but the friend Roger remained in place, as if paralyzed. Better yet, as if his boots were nailed to the floor.

Roger would make a terrible rodeo clown. They both would.

Before anyone could make sense of the scene, the woman pulled Exequiel through the back exit and into the parking lot. A film lay over the stars in the Taos night sky, as if the sky were packaged. A store-bought cosmos.

Across the road was a field of sagebrush. Tumbleweed rolled like ghost cue balls roaming the pocked felt. The yellow lights from nearby adobe houses were brighter than the stars themselves.

“What’s your name?” Exequiel said.

“Elle,” the woman said. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said and then kissed her.

She kissed him back.

“What’s your name?” she said, pulling away finally, smiling. She was embarrassed.

“Jeff,” he said.

“That’s bullshit. What is it?”

“Jeremy.”

“Now you’re just fucking with me.”

“I am?”

She laughed.

He seemed different from the recent ones. A part of her was still burning from the encounter she had witnessed. She wanted to return to the bar and see him do it again. She almost said for them to go back inside. She wanted to see what he would do if he had to own up to the damage he had done.

“I don’t think we should stay out here any longer,” she said, scanning the parking lot. “What do you drive?”

“I don’t.”

“Here,” she said and took his hand. It was warm.

It wasn’t until she was leaning against the door of her Chevelle that she realized it was the same hand. The one that had held the cue ball almost lovingly at first. Or so it had seemed to her.

Before he smashed it, mashing