“The Knocking Over of the Trophy”

I

Scott couldn’t believe his luck! Not only had he finished welding school. The 21-year-old had left Idaho. To be sure, his parents and older brother berated him for “leaving the family,” even though Scott had been living in his apartment for some time. His younger brother and younger sister, however, understood Scott’s need to move further away.

“Hey!” Felix said.

Scott jerked his baby blues off the bar table.

Felix’s voice returned to its natural hoarseness. “It’s daytime, in case you have forgotten.”

“No time for dozing off,” Ivan said in his mellifluous voice.

As if casting fishhooks, Scott threw Felix and Ivan side-glances—first left, then right. “Bear with me.”

“Heading for north of the border must have taken a lot of guts,” Felix said. “I bet you have a lot on your mind.”

“You could say that,” Scott drawled.

Felix lifted his bottle away from the stripes of sunlight. He tilted back his glass bottle and short neck and swigged some beer. The swarthiness of Felix’s neck and nape accentuated the fog of dimness behind him.

Scott raised his square chin toward the short guy.

Felix slapped his bottle onto the shellacked wood of the table. “Have you hooked up with any babes?”

“Not yet,” Scott muttered.

“And you’ve been here three weeks?” Ivan piped in. “We have to get our bass guitarist some cunt.”

Scott’s dick twitched.

“Actually,” Bert said from in front, “my girlfriend has been taking a liking to Scott.”

The rattling plates and glasses must have distorted Bert’s words from the kitchen, Scott surmised, for no dude would ever talk like this.

“Lily doesn’t like us?” Ivan whined. “What doesn’t she see in her fellow Canadians?”

“Lily’s dating me, isn’t she?” Bert said, “and Lily thinks that you and Felix are cool. But the both of you are in closed relationships. Scott is single … and he is American.”

“So what?” Ivan said.

A grin tiptoed across the stubble of Bert’s face. “Lily’s never done it with an American.”

“I’m feeling like crap,” Ivan said. “I’m getting out of here.” He flashed his teeth in a quasi-smirk and fidgeted to his black sneakers.

Bert bent forward and grabbed Ivan’s forearm. “Not so fast, tiger.” Like a batter at the end of a pitch, Bert kept his head down and