"The interesting part is that, being Eugene and Dwayne, they managed to misjudge their intended victims. They picked on a couple of guys who had studied the martial arts. In short, Eugene and Dwayne got their asses kicked. Literally. It was not, I am told, a pretty sight."
"Oh, good." Octavia brightened. "I love stories that end like that. They confirm Aunt Claudia's theories about karma."
"Eugene and Dwayne apparently got a real jolt of karma that night." He picked up the menu she had taken from him and opened it again. "As you can imagine, however, it is not an incident they wish to have widely publicized here in Eclipse Bay."
"Ah, so that's it. Now I understand. No one here knows about their humiliating experience in Seattle?"
"Trust me, it is, perhaps, the best-kept secret in Eclipse Bay. If it ever got out that two g*y men had used Eugene and Dwayne to mop out an alley, I doubt if the dynamic duo would ever be able to appear in public around here again."
She propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. "In other words, you threatened Eugene and Dwayne."
"That's pretty much what it comes down to, yeah. Subtlety does not work well with those two."
"Hmm."
He looked up at that. "What?"
"If no one here in Eclipse Bay knows about Eugene and Dwayne's excellent adventure in Seattle, how did you learn the details?"
"Virgil Nash."
"Virgil? What does he have to do with Eugene and Dwayne?"
"As little as possible, like everyone else. It's another long story but I'll give you the short version. Several years ago, back in our wilder days, a bunch of us used to get together with some other guys out on a road near the bluffs to race our cars."
"I thought drag racing was illegal."
"Hey, we were nineteen-year-old guys with cars. What else could we do?"
"Right. Guys with cars. Go on."
"At the time, Eugene's pride and joy was a Ford that he boasted could beat anything else on the road. He was winning regularly but one night I beat him. He didn't take losing well, to put it mildly. After the race he followed me home. It was one o'clock in the morning."
"Go on."
"He had Dwayne with him, naturally. They probably egged each other on. At any rate, Eugene started playing games on the road that runs along the low cliffs just south of town."
"I know it. There are a lot of tight curves. What kind of games?"
"Coming up fast from behind, nipping at the bumper of my car, pulling up alongside and swerving toward us just as we went into a curve."
"Us?"
He shrugged. "Jeremy was in the car with me that night."
"I see." She looked thoughtful.
"We didn't know if Eugene was really trying to force us off the road or merely attempting to scare us. He was more than just annoyed because he had lost to me that night. He was crazy mad."
"What happened?"
"I figured I had two choices; I could either try to outrun Eugene, which would have been dicey on those curves, or try to fake him out. I went for faking him out. Jeremy watched him while I concentrated on driving. When Eugene made one of his moves to pull up alongside, Jeremy gave me the word. His timing was right on the mark. I braked hard. Eugene kept going and lost control. His car went over a low bluff and down a short incline, and landed in some shallow water."
"Whew. Well, obviously he and Dwayne weren't killed."
"No. The only thing that saved them was the fact that the tide was still partially out. I stopped at the top of the bluff and Jeremy and I went down to see how bad things were. Eugene was slumped over the wheel. At first we thought that he was dead but then we realized he was just badly dazed. Dwayne was frozen with shock. There was no time to get help because the tide was coming in fast. Jeremy and I hauled them both out of the car and dragged them out of the water. We wrapped them in some blankets I kept in the back of the car."
"In other words, you and Jeremy saved Eugene and Dwayne."
"And neither of them ever forgave us for the humiliation," Nick concluded dryly.
"Where does Virgil Nash fit into this story?"
"Virgil lives out near where the accident happened. After we got Eugene and Dwayne out of the car, we went to Virgil's house to get help. He was there when Eugene made some threats to Jeremy and me."
"Threats?"
"Eugene was really pissed, like I said. Blamed us for wrecking his beloved car. But mostly he was just furious because he had screwed up and we'd had to rescue him. Anyhow, Virgil took us aside later and said that we should watch our backs for a while. We did, but Eugene never made any moves. The years went by and we figured everyone involved had forgotten about what happened that night."
"But Virgil didn't forget?"
"No. Virgil's been watching Eugene ever since, and that means watching Dwayne, too, since for the most part they're inseparable. When they got into trouble last year in Seattle, Virgil heard about it from a colleague who runs a sex toy shop there. He e-mailed both Jeremy and me and told us the story. Reminded us that guys like Eugene don't change and that someday it might pay to have some ammunition on hand, just in case."
"And today you used your ammunition."
"You could say that."
She watched him with an odd, unreadable expression. "For my sake."
"Yeah, well, I didn't want them spreading that story around."
"It's the kind of thing your hero, John True, would do."
He should have been flattered, he thought. But for some reason it irritated him that she was making a connection between him and the character in his books. He wasn't John True. He was Nick Harte. He closed the menu a second time and looked at her very steadily.
"Don't," he said grimly, "get me mixed up with John True. He's pure fiction. I'm real."
The interesting expression on her face disappeared immediately behind a cool veil. She took her chin off her hand and sat back. "Got it. Trust me, I won't make that mistake."
"Good." He was more annoyed than ever now. What the hell was wrong with him today?
A young waiter appeared, saving him from getting too deep into the introspective thing. Octavia ordered a salad. Nick realized that he was hungry. The confrontation at the Total Eclipse had given him an appetite. He chose the oversized tuna sandwich and fries, knowing from past experience that it would do the job.
When the waiter had disappeared, Octavia looked at him.