Arthur stumbled out of the Tipsy Slug with Sam attached to one arm and Macy the other.
"We should ride ponies!" Macy blurted out drunkenly. She was deliriously happy that a boy had talked to her at the bar. Arthur wasn’t certain Macy understood that Jimmy’s invitation to get cupcakes together was supposed to be a date, but he was certain that it would be a happy surprise when she figured it out.
"No ponies," Sam declared. "Ponies are for the weak! We need to find ourselves some tigers!"
"Well you're in luck," Arthur told her. “Vicktor has tigers in his taxi cab.” He pushed Sam somewhat gently into the back seat and tried to maneuver Macy into the front seat, but she was having none of it.
"No! I don't want to get in the tiger car! They'll smell the delicious scent of chicken strips on my fingers and eat me!" Macy squirmed valiantly against Arthur.
In the interest of time, Arthur wrapped Macy up in a bear hug and hauled her into the cab on top of him. He hooked the door handle with his toes and pulled it closed. "We're in!" Arthur shouted to Vicktor.
Arthur's head was resting on Sam's lap and Macy was lying on top I him. "Hey! I don't see any dang tigers! You lied to me," Macy said accusingly.
"Well now you're lying on me!" Arthur shot back. "That makes us even."
"I suppose," Macy admitted. "Where are we going?"
"Back to Sam's house so we can all drink some water and then go to sleep," Arthur answered.
"Sleep is also or the weak!" Sam declared.
"And here we are," Vicktor said. "Good luck with all that, man." He gestured to Sam trying to operate the door handle and Macy struggling with increasing levels of panic I sit up and escape the vehicle.
"Help! I'm a turtle stuck on its back!" Macy shouted.
"Thanks." Arthur shoved Macy upright and opened the door for Sam, who rewarded him with a kiss. Arthur encouraged her to continue exiting the cab despite continues kisses. Finally, everyone was out of the taxi and Vicktor sped off. Macy and Sam followed Arthur reluctantly back to Sam's apartment. Once they were inside, Arthur dead bolted the door so the two drunks couldn't escape. He breathed a sigh of relief and poured everyone a tall glass of water.
Arthur fixed Macy up on the couch with some blankets and happily marched Sam back to her bedroom. Sam flopped down on the bed and peeled off Arthur's old t-shirt that she's been wearing all night. Arthur yanked his own shirt off with a grin and...
And Sam had fallen asleep with her arms still tangled in the t-shirt's arm holes. "And that's exactly how I should have expected today to end." He sighed and pulled Sam's arms free. He tossed the t-shirt aside, climbed into bed curled up next to Sam, and pulled the covers over them.
+
Arthur woke up with a knife to his throat. “Not again. How do you people find me?”
“Listen very carefully,” the woman in her late twenties or early thirties hissed. “You are going to take me to Thomas Varner right now.”
“I don’t know where he lives! He doesn’t exactly invite me to dinner parties,” Arthur growled back. He was getting really tired of being woken up with death threats.
“Bullshit!” The woman pressed her knife tighter against Arthur’s throat.
“What the hell do you want with Varner at this time of night anyway?” Arthur asked.
She broke down in tears. “My husband went to his grocery store tonight and never came back. I know my husband and I’m sure he did something stupid to upset Mr. Varner. He was obsessed with the idea that Varner was some kind of criminal mastermind secretly running the town.”
“Lady, I hate to break it to you, but your husband was right. Mr. Varner is in charge of everything that happens in Port Haven,” Arthur told her.
“Well I know that, but Avery was new in town! He didn’t understand that you don’t cross Varner and now he’s probably dead,” she wailed.
“Wait, you’re Mrs. Nichols aren’t you?” Arthur asked.
She nodded.
“Shit. Put that knife away, we need to talk.” Arthur pushed the knife away and sat up in bed.
“Oh God!” Tears streamed down Mrs. Nichols’ face.
“How do I say this?” Arthur asked himself. “Your husband isn’t coming home.”
“I knew it, he killed him!” Mrs. Nichols shrieked.
“That…” Arthur exhaled exasperatedly. “That is true, yes.”
“Then you better figure out how to take me to him!” Mrs. Nichols pressed the knife back against Arthur’s throat.
Sam lunged in one fluid motion from being sprawled out on her side of the bed to grabbing the alarm clock off the nightstand to bashing Mrs. Nichols in the head with said alarm clock.Mrs. Nichols went down hard, knocked out cold by Sam’s surprise attack.
“How the hell did she find you here?” Sam asked. Not “Why is she trying to kill you?” or “How did she get in?” Arthur worried that Sam was getting to used to these late night adventures.
Arthur shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s Detective Nichols’ wife so I guess he mentioned me to her and she figured out that if I wasn’t at my place I’d be here. We haven’t exactly been keeping a low profile.”
“Do you think she’ll stay knocked out until morning?” Sam lay back down in her comfy bed.
Arthur shook his head. “We should probably tie her up or something so she doesn’t kill us in our sleep.”
“Kinky, you do it,” Sam muttered as she drifted back to sleep.
Arthur took the knife away from Mrs. Nichols, tied her wrists together with a bathrobe belt, and gently slapped her face until she woke up. “Mrs. Nichols, we need to have the ‘don’t mess with Mr. Vaner’ talk. I’m sure you have things to live for, but Mr. Varner will put an end to any such hopes very quickly. Do you understand?”
“But he killed my husband,” she moaned. “He needs to pay and the cops won’t touch him!”
“That’s because he’d kill them,” Arthur reminded her. “No one crosses Mr. Varner and lives.”
“It’s not fair! He needs to be taught a lesson. I’ll find out what he cares about and then burn it to the ground!” Mrs. Nichols promised.
“Someone already did that and then very wisely skipped town,” Arthur told her. “Your vengeance was taken care of prematurely.” Maybe that would satiate her bloodlust.
It didn’t. “Then it doesn’t count! He needs to suffer! I will haunt him until he begs for mercy!”
Arthur sighed. “No, you will annoy him until he puts a bullet in your skull, and that’s if you’re lucky. Much more likely that he will capture you and torture you until you beg him for death.”
“So be it,” Mrs. Nichols growled.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “And now you’re getting locked in the bathroom, because that’s what we do with crazies.” He shoved a sock in Mrs. Nichols’ mouth and dragged her into the bathtub.
Mrs. Nichols coming here offered Arthur a variety of options to curry favor with the people who would likely be the death of him in the near future. Priscilla wanted Mrs. Nichols dead because she was violently insane and imagined Mrs. Nichols to be stealing her boyfriend away from her. Varner would no doubt delight in another victim to vent his rage on, especially if that victim was plotting his demise. Then there was the conundrum that was both mob bosses being displeased if Arthur turned Mrs. Nichols over to the other interested party. Really, there was no winning for Arthur and both scenarios made him feel like a shitty person.
“What are we going to do with her?” Sam asked when Arthur climbed back under the covers and wrapped his arms around her.
“I think I have to let her go and hope no one finds out we ever had her,” Arthur answered sleepily.
“Doesn’t that count on you being lucky?” Sam asked.
Arthur sighed. “Yeah.”
“Doesn’t that make us screwed?”
“Yeah.”
+
“There’s a lady tied up in your tub!” Macy squealed. “And...I may have thrown up in your sink.”
“Ugh, Macy, why?” Sam groaned. She and Arthur were still in bed and Macy was standing in the doorway with a guilty look on her face.
“I panicked! And I really, really had to vomit or I was going to explode,” she explained.
“Yeah, I hear that happens to you sometimes,” Sam muttered.
“Can we get panacakes?” Macy asked.
“You just threw up, what do you want pancakes for?” Sam replied.
“I’m hungry.”
“Well if you can button your pants we can go to the diner. I’m not taking you out in public like that a second time,” Sam told her.
Macy looked down at the jeans she was still wearing from last night and frowned. “Maybe we’ll just put some waffles in the toaster.”
“By we I assume you mean me?” Sam asked.
Macy nodded.
“Okay, we’ll be out there in a minute,” Sam said.
“What the hell are panacakes?” Arthur asked after Macy left the bedroom.
“That’s how she’s always said ‘pancakes.’ Don’t ask her about it, it’s a really sore subject that no one told her she was saying it wrong until she was seventeen,” Sam explained.
“Lovely.” Arthur stretched and climbed out of bed. “While you’re doing that I’m going to take Mrs. Nichols home, or at least drop her off somewhere far away from here.”
“Good luck.” Sam kissed him on the cheek before pulling on a shirt and going to fix Macy breakfast.
Arthur woke Mrs. Nichols and she immediately lunged at him murderously. He grabbed her wrists, which were still bound tightly, and sat her back down in the bathtub. “Easy, there. I’m going to take you home, okay?”
Mrs. Nichols eyed him suspiciously.
“I don’t want to hurt you. In fact, I want to pretend you never came here, because if anyone finds out you were here it will do nothing but get me in trouble later. There are other sharks out there besides Varner that I have to watch out for, capiche?”
Eventually, she nodded. Arthur ungagged her, but left her hands tied as he helped her up and escorted her out of the apartment to his Festiva.
“Why aren’t you turning me over to Varner? Aren’t you his lackey?” Mrs. Nichols asked when they were out of the parking lot and on the road.
“He’d kill you. Slowly. Which way is your house?” Arthur asked.
“Off of Pine,” she answered. “What do you care if he kills me?”
“I do care and that’s all that needs to matter to you,” Arthur told her.
Mrs. Nichols considered this for a while. “The other shark is Priscilla, isn’t it?”
“Huh?” Arthur seemed to have missed a step in Mrs. Nichols’ thought process.
“You said that there are other sharks in town besides Varner. You were talking about Mason’s batshit girlfriend, right?”
“Oh. Yes, but please don’t tell her any of that,” Arthur requested politely.
Mrs. Nichols sighed. “I won’t. If you’re caught between that bitch and Varner then God help you. Thank you, by the way, for not handing me over to one of them. I’m Lisa, in case you were wondering.”
Arthur nodded because he didn’t know quite what else to do. “Well Lisa, you’re welcome.”
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