Prompt Post #6

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FILL: Legacy, or, Five Times Matt and Josie Didn't Talk; and One Time They Did. (4/6)

[(Anonymous)]

4.

It’s not that Matt’s at the bar that throws Josie for a loop--now that they’re out of school, he and Foggy are in at least weekly. It’s that he’s there alone. Foggy comes by himself now and then, or with a girl; but the last time she saw Matt slip through the door without his friend, he was eight years old.

Instead of heading to their usual corner table, Matt taps his way to the end of the bar, sinks down in a stool, and without looking up, says, “Whiskey, neat.”

Josie slides him the glass, and when he raises his head to drink, she finally gets a look at his face: sloppy butterfly bandage along one eyebrow, a bruise spreading down his cheek from under the sunglasses, split lip that must burn like hell when the whiskey hits it. For one uncanny, reeling moment, she’d swear it was Jack back at the bar: the battered face, the way he shoots the whiskey without a word; glass clenched in one raw-knuckled hand.

“Jesus, Matt,” she says.

He shrugs. “It’s nothing. Someone left a box on the stairs, and I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You’re a shit liar,” she tells him, and slides him a bar towel full of ice along with a second shot of rye. Just like old times. “Your knuckles are a mess.”

Matt grimaces as he runs his fingertips over the ice. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Josie thinks. He’s Jack all over again. “If you’re in something over your head--”

“I can handle myself.” It’s almost a growl, and he must realize how he sounds, because the next time he talks, his voice is softer, conciliatory. “It’s nothing. Seriously.”

Josie puts a hand on his shoulder. She’s expecting him to jump, but he just sits there. “You know who you sound like?”

Matt sighs. “Yeah.”

“Don’t go down that road, kid,” she tells him. “You know what’s waiting at the end.”

“I’m not my dad,” he tells her, shrugging out from under her hand. “And this isn’t--that. I know what I’m doing, Josie. Trust me.”

“He used to say that, too,” Josie says, and heads to the other end of the room, as far away as she can get. A few minutes later, Matt drops a ten on the bar and taps his way out the door.

It happens a few more times, and not long after that, Josie starts hearing stories about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, but she doesn’t put two and two together until some kid from uptown starts pawing at a local girl who’s so trashed she can hardly stand. Matt’s at the bar alone--it’s one of those nights--and she’s expecting him to keep his head down like he usually does, but instead, he picks up his cane, stalks over to the kid, and tells him in a low, dangerous voice, “Leave her alone.”

Josie doesn’t hear what the kid starts to say back, because Matt’s on him faster than her eyes can track. In the end, it takes Josie and Danny both to pry him off. By then, the kid’s bleeding from a split lip, and his nose is about as busted as it gets. Matt’s not even breathing hard.

“Fucking psycho,” the kid hisses, as his buddies drag him to his feet.

“Drunk means no, shithead,” Matt growls back. “Stay the fuck out of the Kitchen, or I will fucking know.” There’s something about the way he says it that makes Josie think he really believes it. That maybe he’s telling the truth. The kid’s friends must hear it, too, because they don’t let go of his arms as they steer him out the door.

Matt shrugs Danny off and nods to the girl. “Can you make sure she gets home okay?” Danny nods, mute, and Matt just stands there until Josie says, “We’ll take care of her.”

Back at the bar, she slides Matt another drink. “On the house.”

“Thanks,” he says, but he doesn’t drink, just taps out a beat on the rim with his fingers.

“Look,” she says. “Matt. What I said before, about your dad, I didn’t mean--but I worry about you, kiddo.”

She’s expecting him to offer the same set of excuses, but he just nods wearily and keeps playing with the glass.

“He used to do shit like that, too,” she tells him. “Play hero.”

Matt takes a sip and grimaces. “Maybe he was just looking for an excuse to hit something.”

She starts noticing things, after that: the way the news reports about the Devil line up with the nights Matt shows up with new bruises. The moment between when he reflexively reaches to catch the cup that Foggy fumbles, and when he lets it slip from his fingers a moment later. She hears stories: a child-trafficking ring busted up, runaways returned safely home. The thugs who cluster in the back of the bar start showing up with bruises, or not at all.

The day she knows for sure is the day a girl who can’t be more than sixteen, in too-tall heels and too much make-up, stumbles in crying, telling Josie that two guys jumped her in the alley behind, but a man in a mask fought them off and told her to run to the bar for help, that Josie would take care of it.

Josie takes care of it.