One Shot

after a shower back at the Metropole Palace. The six blocks north of the black glass tower took him under the highway again and out into a hinterland. Gentrification had a boundary to the south, as he had seen, and now he saw it had a boundary to the north, too. The bar was a little ways beyond it. It was in a plain square building that could have started out as anything. Maybe a feed store, maybe an automobile showroom, maybe a pool hall. It had a flat roof and bricked-up windows and moss growing where blocked rainwater gutters had spilled.
    Inside it was better, but generic. It was like every other sports bar he had ever been in. It was one tall room with black-painted air-conditioning ducts pinned to the ceiling. It had three dozen TV screens hanging from the walls and the ceiling. It had all the usual sports-bar stuff all over the place. Signed uniform jerseys framed under glass, football helmets displayed on shelves, hockey sticks, basketballs, baseballs, old game-day programs. The waitstaff was all female, all of them in cheerleader-style uniforms. The bar staff was male and dressed in striped umpire uniforms.
    The TVs were all tuned to football. Inevitable, Reacher guessed, on a Monday night. Some of the screens were regular TVs, and some were plasmas, and some were projectors. The same event was displayed dozens of times, all with slightly different color and focus, some big, some small, some bright, some dim. There were plenty of people in there, but Reacher got a table to himself. In a corner, which he liked. A hard-worked waitress ran over to him and he ordered beer and a cheeseburger. He didn’t look at the menu. Sports bars always had beer and cheeseburgers.
    He ate his meal and drank his beer and watched the game. Time passed and the place filled up and got more and more crowded and noisy, but nobody came to share his table. Reacher had that kind of an effect on people. He sat there alone, in a bubble of quiet, with a message plainly displayed:
Stay away from me.
    Then someone ignored the message and came to join him. It was partly his own fault. He looked away from the screen and saw a girl hovering nearby. She was juggling a bottle of beer and a full plate of tacos. She was quite a sight. She had waved red hair and a red gingham shirt open at the neck and tied off at the navel. She had tight pants on that looked like denim but had to be spandex. She had the whole hourglass thing going, big-time. And she was in shiny lizard-skin boots. Open the encyclopedia to
C
for
Country Girl
and her picture was going to be right there staring back at you. She looked too young for the beer. But she was past puberty. That was for damn sure. Her shirt buttons were straining. And there was no visible panty line under the spandex. Reacher looked at her for a second too long, and she took it as an invitation.
    “Can I share your table?” she asked from a yard away.
    “Help yourself,” he said.
    She sat down. Not opposite him, but in the chair next to him.
    “Thanks,” she said.
    She drank from her bottle and kept her eyes on him. Green eyes, bright, wide open. She half-turned toward him and arched the small of her back. Her shirt was open three buttons. Maybe a 34D, Reacher figured, in a push-up bra. He could see the edge of it. White lace.
    She leaned close because of the noise.
    “Do you like it?” she asked.
    “Like what?” he said.
    “Football,” she said.
    “A bit,” he said.
    “Did you play?”
    Did you,
not
do you
. She made him feel old.
    “You’re certainly big enough,” she said.
    “I tried out for Army,” he said. “When I was at West Point.”
    “Did you make the team?”
    “Only once.”
    “Were you injured?”
    “I was too violent.”
    She half-smiled, not sure if he was joking.
    “Want a taco?” she said.
    “I just ate.”
    “I’m Sandy,” she said.
    So was I,
he thought.
Friday, on the beach.
    “What’s your name?” she asked.
    “Jimmy Reese,” he said.
    He saw a flash of surprise in her eyes. He didn’t know why. Maybe she had had a boyfriend called Jimmy Reese. Or maybe she was a serious fan of the New York Yankees.
    “I’m pleased to meet you, Jimmy Reese,” she said.
    “Likewise,” he said, and turned back to the game.
    “You’re new in town, aren’t you?” she said.
    “Usually,” he said.
    “I was wondering,” she said. “If you only like football a bit, maybe you would like to take me somewhere else.”
    “Like where?”
    “Like somewhere