“Aces n’ Eights,” Mitch whispered. “Sonofabitch, how could I’ve been so stupid?”

“What on earth is going on?” Monty asked. “Are you saying that the cowboy and Jane were an item?”

“Not exactly,” Mitch said. “More like . . . well . . .”

In the next room they could hear Jane yanking open cupboards, drawers. A glass slammed, then cubes of ice slammed into the glass.

“Don’ take this the wrong way, fey, I don’ wanna be no metiche, but I thought you were her man. ‘Least while we were all together.”

Mitch sighed. “Hang onto that thought a minute, willya Jake? I gotta go try an’ take my foot outta my mouth.”

Mitch left the room. When he entered the kitchen, Jane was sitting on one of the stools, facing the wall.

“Hi Jane,” he said softly.

“You were a pussy when we were a team, Mitch. Y’all ‘re a stupid pussy now. Fuck off an’ lemme be.”

“Ooh, givin’ me the tough girl treatment. Make me worry you’re gonna cut my balls off an’ use ‘em for earrings, huh?”

“The thought occurred to me.”

“Jane, you’re still mad? It’s been over thirty years. He’s been dead twenty-five.”

“It ain’t just him, Mitch. Doncha get it?”

“No, Jane. But if I get much closer, I think I’m gonna get it.”

She turned to look at him. Tears tracked down her face. “I ever tell you ‘bout my family, Mitch?”

“Some. That what this’s about?”

“Some. My daddy was a good man, Mitch. He shoulda never been a farmer. He liked to look at things, an’ figger out how they worked. He was a lot like you, come to think.”

“ ‘Splains a few things, I guess.”

“Yeah. Well, Momma took me aside one day, told me . . . naw, she yelled at me, while Daddy was out in the fields, yelled me an’ shook me good to make sure I understood. She said ‘Don’t you never marry a man like your Daddy, you hear? He’s just good fer nothin’! Better to marry a man mean as a snake an’ drunk as a skunk, so long as he’s bringin’ the bacon an’ puttin’ food on the table!’ She was yellin’ an’ yellin’, and I was cryin’ an’ sobbin’, and then she left. Then affer a while Daddy came in. ‘What’sa matter, princess?’ he says, an’ I told ‘im what Momma said.

“I bet he got kinda sore at that, huh?” Mitch’s tone was one part kind father and two parts a man walking through a minefield. He’d also inched closer to Jane when he thought she wasn’t looking.

“Naw. He was- he made some cocoa, and then sat down with me. ‘Your Momma’s just sad that some things didn’t turn out like we thought they would, Honey,’ he said. ‘But when the crop comes in, an’ we got more money, things’ll be okay.’ ”

“Were they?”

“Hell, no. The fights got worse an’ worse. I hated it. I hated Momma for always gettin’ mad, and eventually I hated Daddy for never havin’ no money and never standin’ up to Momma. I hated Momma for always bein’ mad at Daddy no matter how much he worked.”

“Why’d you get upset about a comic that had you fightin’ Aces n’ Eights, then, Jane?”

Jane looked at Mitch. “You know, you were th’first boy who liked me, what didn’t try to get in my drawers? You know what that’s like, growing up and learnin’ and knowin’ that every guy, every guy who says they cares’ve got the same damn thing on their mind? You was the first one, Mitch, the first one who loved me just for me. But I could hear my Momma say in the background just how much I needed to get a man who had money, and yet Daddy treating me so nice. The only way to shut those voices up-”

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“...Was to break up with me, and take up with a guy like Aces. With a rich superhero, action figures, cracked first the comic books and then they did his Saturday morning cartoon that all the kids watched.”

“Someone both my folks would’ve loved. And he didn’t try to get in my drawers, ‘neither, but that was because he was-Gawd almighty I was such a damn fool!”

“Jane, look . . . it’s, well . . .” he shifted his weight again, put his arm around her shoulder. She glared at him, but only for a second. “Jane, where most people do other things, like go see a shrink? We chose t’put on masks and costumes and rob banks. We’re the kindsa folks the head-shrinkers just love to pick apart, ‘cause we’re all so screwed up. But you know what? Even folks as screwed up as we are, we can have some happiness.”

“Bullshit. Bullshit on a cracker in the hot summer sun.”

“Look, Jane, I . . . Jane, I got married to a nice lady. And she’s good to me, most of the time. So, I can’t . . . I won’t jeopardize that, you understand? I’ve gotta answer to God for the things I do, so I’ve got no other motives here and now than helping you, understand?”

Jane looked at MItch for a very long ten seconds, then nodded her head while fixing her eyes on the glass in front of her.

“Jane, I was real, real hurt when you took off. I figured I just wasn’t enough for you. When the team fell apart and you went solo, I felt like a piece of me was gone forever. But then, about a year later, when I was in college like I oughta been before, I saw a picture of you and Aces n’ Eights on the cover of some gossip mag. Did you really try to stick up a bank that big all by yourself?”

“I was feelin’ mighty low, Mitch. You know how that goes. We had a good team, but it fell apart. And I had a good man, you, an’ I left ‘im. I couldn’t keep anything together, so I just did something stupid ‘cause I was mad at myself.”

“People do risky behavior when they’re depressed or suffer a big loss. It happens.”

“I walked into the place, fired two shots into the ceiling- first mistake. Coulda hit a civvie, and made life ten times worse for me. Then I say it was a stickup, but I was so sloppy by then that a buncha folks slip out. I get a bag of money, and I only had one exit- Miguel wasn’t there to case the joint first. And there he was as I was leaving, standing with his fists on his waist and his big smile and that stupid little sap of his dangling from his belt.”

“Ace? With a club at his belt?”

“Nope. Ace came later. The feller who showed up when I tried ta’ rob the bank solo was Blackjack. Remember him? Hell, it was Vegas; all the capes there had a card-thing, or some kind’ve gambling gimmick going on.”

“Humph. Yeah, but they really weren’t the brightest bulbs in the drawer. There was that gal, Roulette? With two dogs, Red and Black? Some mobster shot the dogs when she tried to run him down and she quit on the spot. Stupid costume, too- wheel on her head or something.”

“Yeah, well, Blackjack waren’t too much smarter. He left the mob alone and stuck with folks like me, but he didn’t count on me havin’ a gun drawn when he stood for his pose like he was in one of the funnybooks. I shot him in the foot, he went down screaming like a little girl with her hair on fire. All I hadda do was step over him and get walkin’ to my car outside- I’d carjacked a beat-up station wagon a few minutes before- and I was makin’ for my ride when Aces ‘n Eights stepped out an’ got between me and the door. ‘Well, little lady,’ he says, his own gun already drawn [already, he showed he was smarter than Blackjack], ‘let’s you an’ me have a little talk.’ He smooth-talked me to drop the bag of money on the ground, then got me onto his motorcycle.”

“Dang, he was good!”

“Hell, yeah. That sonofabitch actually took me to his hideout- or one of ‘em, anyways; it was a ranch on the outskirts of Vegas, with a secret entrance made up to look like a construction site. I got wined and dined that night and… he didn’t try anything. A perfect gentleman cowboy.”

“Or so you thought.”

“Yep. First man since you that I thought maybe I might actually get married to. I thought that maybe, just maybe there was a man out there who could actually love me an’ stay that way. Things stayed like that for a while; I played house with ‘im, and I found out later his comics had him an’ me in a romance thing, too, teamed up to catch the bad guys, and the like. They made me his sidekick. Me, when in real life I was the one who could shoot the eye of a squirrel out at fifty yards after chuggin’ a fifth, an’ he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a gatling gun after a beer an’ water.”

“You were the best shot of all the capes, Jane.”

“Still am, even though I needed bifocals afore we got the blue rocks.”

“You ever gonna tell us where those come from?”

She paused. “Not today, Mitch.

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TO BE CONTINUED....