As we headed out onto Broadway the streets were starting to fill. It was about 10 o’clock, and all the bars had their acts going. We meandered through the throngs of humanity until we got almost all the way back to the car. I had just started to think that we had made it through one whole city without anything stupid happening when Emily’s cell phone rang. She looked down at it, gave a puzzled look, and answered it.
“Yeah, mom? What’s up? Oh no.” I might only be able to hear one side of the conversation but it didn’t sound like I was going to like the outcome. “Alright, we’re almost at the car, we’ll be there as quick as we can. What? Yeah. We found him. What? What about my tone? Nothing, alright. Geez, we’ll be there in a few minutes.” She blushed a little as she hung up the phone and looked at it like it knew something it had no right to know.
“What’s up?” I asked. Em snapped back to the present and looked up at me.
“Oh. Um, well, we need to go.” She said.
“We’re on our way. Is there someplace in particular other than the hotel that we need to go to? And is there something that I should probably know about that you’re trying not to tell me?
“Well, it seems like there’s a bit of trouble at a biker bar just out of town.”
“Really? And who exactly is involved in this trouble, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Eve. And Cain. And by extension, I guess, my Mom.” The first two surprised me not at all, and the third didn’t really surprise me, but the quickening of my pulse when she said Myra was in trouble was a bit of a surprise.
“Well, let’s get a move on. And why don’t you try a little explaining as we roll.” We got into the car and she gave me the address. I punched it into Myra’s GPS and saw that it would take us about fifteen minutes to get there.
“Well, nothing’s happened yet. Exactly. But Mom seems to think there’s a good chance that a big fight is about to break out, and that Eve and Cain might be in the middle of it.”
“In the middle of it or the cause of it?” I asked.
“She didn’t say, but I guess we could figure, based on past experience, that it’s probably the latter.”
“Excuse me?” Sidney piped up from the back seat where he and Michael had been listening.
“Yeah, Sid. What is it?” I asked.
“Um, Sidney. Please. I really don’t like to be called Sid.” He replied.
“Build a bridge.” I told him.
“Excuse me?”
“Build a bridge. It’s what we use to get over it. Now what do you want?”
“Um, did you say Cain? As in…” he trailed off. I think he was really starting to get an idea of exactly what was going on.
“Yeah, Cain. As in my second son. As in the founder of fratricide. As in really, really old and oughta know better than to get into bar fights with rednecks when you’re hopelessly outnumbered and there are people around who aren’t immortal. But his mother is a bad influence sometimes, so it’s not all his fault.”
“Um, his mother?” The kid was starting to look a little green. I couldn’t tell if he was getting carsick after drinking or if the enormity of the situation was just now sinking in. I guess it’s all well and good to sit in a bar and talk to a guy who says he’s Adam, but when you start throwing the rest of the Fig Leaf Brigade into the mix it can be a little much for most normal folks. Even normal folks with faces like pincushions and arms that looked like comic books.
“Yeah. His mother. Remember Eve, the weak one who took the apple? She’s not such the wilting flower as your little novel there makes her out to be, and she has a bad habit of starting fights in bars.”
“Now in her defense, Dad, she didn’t start the thing in New Orleans.” Emily chimed in.
“Okay, I’ll give you that one. But still, she has a history of starting fights that goes all the way back to Troy.”
“Troy?”
“Yeah, you remember Troy, right? Paris, Menelaus, big horse? Ring any bells?” I said.
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with Eve?” Emily still looked confused.
“There wasn’t a Helen. Eve was Helen. She was married to Menelaus, got bored, and ran off with Paris. Menelaus got pissed, called his brother Agamemnon and they besieged Troy for a decade or so. Eventually that whole thing with the horse happened and Troy was pretty well screwed. By that time Eve was wandering around Egypt hanging with one of the Ramseses, I forget which one.” I explained.
“Oh.” Emily was quiet for a few minutes, but then piped up with “There’s her truck.” Sure enough, that shitty old Ford was parked in front of what had to be the seediest looking bar within a hundred miles. Eve really knew how to pick ‘em. There were about two dozen bikes out front, mostly Harleys with the occasional Triumph or Indian mixed in. No BMWs or Ducatis here, and definitely no crotch-rockets. These were big, growling machines that were made to eat up the road and announce their coming from a mile or more away. There were a couple of muscle cars parked here and there, and a good dozen trucks with rifles in the gun racks scattered around the parking lot. Depending on how many people Eve had managed to piss off, this could be challenging.
