Free Wild Thing: A Novel by Josh Bazell

on it.
    For a while she can hear what sounds like a Tom Petty album playing somewhere ahead of her, but the source, when she reaches it, turns out to be the open front door of a house with all its lights off. Later, what seem at first to be red flares on the horizon resolve into the cigarette tips of a ring of people standing in the middle of the street, talking in murmurs.
    No reason for them
not
to be in the middle of the street, Violet supposes. There aren’t sidewalks here, just loud gravel shoulders, and she has yet to see a car.
    Still, she circles the smokers without alerting them, half expecting them to put their faces into the air and start sniffing for her.

    The bar turns out to be four blocks past Debbie’s. It’s called Sherry’s—raising the possibility, Violet supposes, that if she goes inside, a woman named Sherry will come after her with an ax. Worth the risk.
    Inside, it’s a deep, narrow space of dark wood and Christmas lights, with only four stools and two people: the bartender and, on the left-most stool, one customer.
    Both are males in their early thirties or so, which in Portland would make them hipster man-boys, but here means they’re grown men in practical haircuts who look like they’ve been through some shit. The bartender in particular has the electrocuted expression Violet associates with people who have been through rehab. The guy on the stool has the sloping back and lowered shoulders of a bear. They’re both big, and neither of them is leering.
    Violet likes the big guys. The little ones always want to resent-fuck her. It may explain why Dr. Lionel Azimuth, with the forearms and the laugh like a garbage disposal, makes her want to take her bra off.
    Or maybe nothing explains that.
    She takes the right-most stool. Says “Got any interesting beer?”
    “All beer is at least mildly interesting,” the guy on the other stool says.
    Violet couldn’t agree more. Beer is the perfect population-overshoot scenario: you put a bunch of organisms into an enclosed space with more carbohydrates than they’ve ever seen before, then watch as they kill themselves off with their own waste products, in this case carbon dioxide and alcohol. Then you drink it.
    “You mean like a hefeweizen or something?” the bartender says.
    “Maybe not a hefeweizen per se.”
    “I was just using that as an example.” He pokes through the refrigerator under the bar. “Doesn’t look too good. If you’re not from around here, you might find Grain Star interesting.”
    The guy on the stool raises his bottle. Cool retro label.
    “Sounds good.”
    “Grain Star it is,” the bartender says.
    “But what makes you think I’m not from around here?”
    Both men laugh. “Saw this place in the Michelin guide, huh?”
    “Yeah,” Violet says. “It was under ‘Bars in Ford that are actually open.’ ”
    The bartender spins two St. Pauli Girl coasters onto the bar and puts a pint glass on one and a bottle on the other. * The bottle steams water vapor when he opens it. “I don’t have St. Pauli Girl either,” the bartender says. “The coasters were here when I bought the place. I’m still going through them.”
    “Then we should use them up,” Violet says. “One more for the bartender, please.”
    “Thank you, but I’m a Diet Coke guy, myself.” The bartender raises his glass to show her, and Violet and the guy on the left-most stool lean to clink it with their bottles. Violet’s liking this place more and more.
    “Not bad,” she says after she’s swallowed. Not good, particularly, either. Grain Star is sweet, thin, and metallic, though shesupposes it’s unusual enough that you could form an attachment to it if you did something fun while you were drinking it.
    Doesn’t seem too likely. Not unless Dr. Azimuth shows up and takes her to their hotel wanting to pull her hair from behind.
    Violet didn’t just think that. She belches. Says “Fuck’s the matter with this place?”
    The bartender and the