Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

She and Steve drove in his car to a nightclub in Mis-soula, on a street that had once housed bordellos, then workingmen's bars, before it had been absorbed into the gentrification of the town as the town lost its blue-collar ways and gave itself over to art galleries and boutiques.

But there was still one nightclub on the street that shook with noise every night of the week. When Maisey and Steve walked to the entrance, the foothills had turned red in the sun's afterglow, and the bowl of sky above the valley was filled with plumes of yellow and purple cloud, as though they had been scoured out of the valley floor, and the dust that blew in the wind was cold and mixed with rain and as hard as grains of sand against her skin.

But even though a storm threatened the valley, the evening was nonetheless a grand one, and the smell of the air was so good and clean inside her lungs she didn't want to disconnect from it.

Maybe she and Steve should just drive out on the river someplace, maybe watch the deer drift down out of the trees to drink, maybe just eat hamburgers in a brightly lit restaurant full of family people and go to a movie afterward.

No, that's exactly what her father would want her to do, the kind of anal-retentive agenda he might as well write out on a clipboard for her.

She hesitated at the doorway. Men who wore motorcycle boots and gold earrings and leather vests without shirts stood at the bar, knocking back shots with beer chasers, their arms blue from the wrists to the armpits with tattoos. But young women, not much older than she, were in the club, too, and a rock 'n' roll band was belting it out on the stage, and three college boys who looked like football players were taking a breath of air at the entrance, grinning good-naturedly at her.

She smiled back at them, as though they were all old friends, and went inside, with Steve in front of her, his shirt hanging out of his pants, his flip-flops slapping on the floor, his face as trusting and vulnerable as a fawn's. But the football players never even glanced at him. Instead, she felt their eyes light on her mouth and rouged cheeks, her blouse, which hung on the tops of her breasts, the crease in her exposed hips when she walked. Unconsciously she slipped one hand in her back pocket to cover the elastic edge of her panties, which she believed had worked its way above the beltline of her khakis.

She and Steve sat in back, and when he was in the rest room she used her forged ID to order him a draft beer and a vodka collins for herself.

"There're some biker guys at the bar, Maisey. One of them just barfed in the washbasin, then mopped the puke off his mouth on the roller towel, and went back outside like nothing happened," Steve said when he came back to the table.

"Thanks for describing that, Steve," she said.

"Why'd you want to come here? It's full of losers," he said, surveying the other tables.

"Stop staring at people," she said.

"I wish I hadn't left you alone that night. I wish I'd had my father's.357. My father says the welfare system is producing armies of subhumans that are moving into the Northwest."

His presumption that he was responsible for her fate, that his presence could have prevented it, infuriated her and somehow diminished the level of injury that had been visited upon her. Steve twisted around and hooked one arm on the back of his chair and stared at the bikers as though he were visiting a zoo.

"Steve, until somebody puts his penis in your ass and comes in your mouth, don't tell me about subhumans," she said.

"That's sick," he said.

"I think if you say another word I'm going to slap your face," she said.

"Excuse me for telling you this, your attitude not only sucks, you look deeply weird in those clothes and that Frankenstein makeup," he said, and got up from the table and went through the front door onto the street.

The noise from the bandstand seemed to envelope her. She was alone now and suddenly regretted the rashness of her words. She looked around to see if anyone was watching her. But the people at the other tables, the crowd at the bar, the couples on the dance floor, were all involved with themselves and their drinks and their own conversations. It was dumb to think anyone cared what Maisey Voss was doing.

Through the open front door she saw Steve's car drive away, the neon glow from the nightclub rippling across his profile.

She would have to call her father for a ride home. She couldn't bear to think about it. She opened her purse and took out the money for another vodka collins.

The vodka was both cold and warm inside her at the same time. She chewed the cherries and orange slices on her molars and drank the sugar and melted ice in the bottom of the glass and went to the bar and ordered another drink and watched the bartender while he made it. A biker's arm brushed hers, but before she could react the biker turned and apologized, then resumed his conversation with his girlfriend, as though Maisey were not there.

The bartender wrapped a napkin around her drink and set it in front of her. She began counting out the money from her purse to pay for it but the bartender said, "Man down at the end's already got it."

"Which man?" she said, looking past the bikers into the haze of cigarette smoke.

But the bartender only shrugged and walked away.

She drank her vodka collins at the table and tried not to think about the phone booth in the corner, the one she would eventually walk to, almost like entering a Catholic confessional, where she would shut herself inside and drop the coins into the slot and admit to her father she couldn't get home by herself.

But the three college boys she had passed at the entrance were using it. Their upper torsos looked huge in their short-sleeve workout jerseys, and she decided the boys were part of the group she had seen running plays in pads and sweat shorts on the university practice field by the river.

Somehow their presence made her feel more at ease. In spite of their size there was nothing aggressive or mean-spirited about them. In fact, their buzzed haircuts, the youthfulness in their faces, the shine of cologne on their freshly shaved jaws, made her think of country boys back home who could twist a steer into the ground by its horns but who wouldn't get on a dance floor at gunpoint.

One of them nodded at her, then turned his attention back to his friends.

"You want another drink, hon?" the waitress asked.