The Assault on Tony's

The Assault on Tony’s

ALSO BY JOHN O’BRIEN

Leaving Las Vegas
Stripper Lessons

The Assault on Tony’s

by John O’Brien

Copyright © 1996 by the Estate of John O’Brien

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

O’Brien, John.

The assault on Tony’s / by John O’Brien.

    p. cm.

eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9731-3

I. Title.

PS3565.B669A9     1996

813’.54—dc20                           96-1917

DESIGN BY LAURA HAMMOND HOUGH

Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

The Assault on Tony’s

Dayl6

How bad is it?” Langston wanted to know, and the truth was Rudd couldn’t tell him.

“Not so bad,” he lied.

“Then where’s Miles? Not so bad my ass! If it’s not so bad then where the hell is Miles? He’s down already, isn’t he? I should go down before Miles. You know that. So where is he?”

“Only shot,” Rudd told him. “Miles got hit last night during the bombing. That’s where he is.”

Langston eased slightly at this news. “Damn if this thing doesn’t have me feeling six ways of fucked. I’ll try to keep it together. Really, I will. Sorry, Rudd,” he mumbled.

It rattled Rudd to hear Langston cave in—the man had been through a lot without showing the strain that boiled under the rest of them—but he was right. He would have gone down before Miles. He would have been the one to go down first, before any of them. That’s why Rudd couldn’t tell him how bad it was. And it was bad. It was very bad.

Langston pulled a somber beat, said of his fallen comrade, “Shot. Who knows, maybe it’ll make it easier on him.”

“I don’t think so. He was only hit in the shoulder. I think he even managed to stop the bleeding.”

“The bleeding,” he echoed, and it seemed he would leave it at that.

But a chuckle rose from behind the perspiration glistening across his forehead, rose beyond the already moderate quaking of his chest. Langston stood up carefully, as if not to frighten off his skittish smile, and his chair fell away like maybe it was thinking now would be a good time to get the hell out of there. “Tell me you didn’t sterilize it,” he said, his trembling hand seeking out that awesome and feckless bar.

Rudd picked up the laughter, and that made it real laughter. Rudd knew this was part of it, this sort of hopeless mirth. So did Langston. Of course Langston knew. It made him laugh more, under Rudd’s painful gaze, now off, away, down.

For another look in what he ironically still referred to in his own head as dry-storage, he would best take along a witness. Who would be good he wasn’t yet sure. Not Jill, somebody else, one of the guys, and the dry in dry-storage was ironic now for obvious reasons, and originally ironic for insignificant reasons. Only that it was the first place he ever kissed a grown woman, so not Jill.

Not Tony’s dry-storage, not considering he was thirty-eight the first time he ever stepped into Tony’s much less Tony’s dry-storage. No, Rudd’s first kiss was in one of those godforsaken midwestern cities that last he heard was experiencing only pockets of unrest (would be the phrase) and keeping things more or less under control, one of those places that could provide one with a glimmer of hope provided one looked closely yet not close enough.