Read The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man for Free Online

looking apologetic. “Not you,” I snapped in irritation. She yanked her arm back down. No one else looked like a ventriloquist.
    I swiveled back and faced my opponent, who was beaming with enjoyment. I took aim at the smile and went after it with viciousness in my heart, expending a lot of energy in what would have been a skillful attack if I’d hit him. I managed to connect with his shoulder a single time while he peppered me with blows—not a very good trade-off. My lip started to swell and my eyes stung. I was panting so hard that my throat felt like it was on fire. “Give up?” I gasped at him.
    â€œHe’s faster than you. You weigh more. Get him pinned in the corner,” my voice advised.
    â€œSomeone tell the bear to shut the hell up!” I shouted.
    My opponent was waiting for me to recover enough to put up a pitiful resistance. “The corner!” the voice urged.
    I pressed forward. This time, when my opponent jinked left I moved only to block, backing him up toward the corner. I hunched my shoulders and accepted punishment to my ribs again. Okay. He was running out of room to retreat. At the last moment he seemed to sense my plan and tried to dart to the right but I lunged and had him against the wall. My arms came around him and I squeezed.
    He grunted and tried to pull my arms away. I held on and we toppled to the floor like drunken dancers at a wedding. He no longer looked happy.
    Once he had squirmed around a little it seemed like the easiest thing in the world to catch his wrist and bend his arm back up behind him. He knew that was the end and went limp, surrendering. I lay on top of him and tried to suck in enough air to ensure continued consciousness.
    â€œYou wanna get off of me?” he finally suggested.
    â€œWhere you from?” I responded pleasantly, content to press down on his arm and watch his face turn gray.
    â€œCadillac,” he finally spat.
    Cadillac is just down Highway 131 from Kalkaska. They don’t make Cadillacs there. They actually don’t make much of anything there, which leads to a high rate of frustration that often makes its way north on a motorcycle and winds up in my sister’s bar.
    â€œTell you what.” I stood up, careful to take his wrist with me, and he struggled to follow, wincing. “Next time you’re coming through from Cadillac, you get to my bar, you just keep going. Understand me?”
    He nodded and I let him go, but carefully, like releasing a snake. He shot me a look but didn’t try to get back into it. Some of these guys, when I throw them out I spend the next week wondering if they are going to come back and set fire to the place, but I could see that for this one, the fun was using his karate moves on dumb, unsuspecting bouncers. I’d spoiled the game a bit by listening to the bear and falling on him like a dead tree.
    Naturally everyone wanted to come up and tell me what a hell of a job I’d done, though if they’d had their eyes open they’d plainly seen the guy taking all the points up until the final round. I caught Becky staring at me darkly, and when I met her gaze her eyes shifted to the two girls who were cooing over a finally upright Jimmy. She turned away in disapproval.
    Would I have handled it differently if the possibility of winning one of Jimmy’s hand-me-downs wasn’t in the air? No! Well, okay, yes. Was that so wrong? They both had that quality I found irresistible in women—they appeared to lack better options. If I hadn’t felt their eyes on me, I probably would have shouted at Becky to call the cops, which usually lets the air out of things pretty fast because then the bouncer wins no matter how many flying kicks you land on his cranium.
    Not that my victory did me any good: The girls were so unimpressed with the champion fighter of the Black Bear Bar that they seemed to have forgotten I existed. After half an hour I waved at Becky. “Can