Chapter 2

These people just don't understand loss I thought, as I snuggled back under the blankets on the couch.

There I was with my life all laid out before me.

Mike and I, as happily matramonimized as any two bikers could ever be, without the paper to lock us in…and a baby on the way to seal the bargain. Muscle Beach and the Baby, together forever.

With Mike's help and support I had been able to get into rehab and by the time I found out I was pregnant I had been clean of both booze and drugs for over a year.

One minute my life was back on the straight and narrow and the next I was right back where I had started.

I remembered the day the cops came into my bar looking for Mr. Farland. It was happy hour and we had a two for one special on. The thing about my bar is that it was on the way home for about three quarters of the blue collar workers in the city and during happy hour we did a rock'em sock'em business. There must have been about a hundred and fifty of our closest personal friends in the bar at the time.

I smiled, and pushed the hair off of my sweaty forehead thinking, "what the hell has that jack ass done this time? " Seemed that Mike's current favorite past time was tormenting the local constabulary, not to mention our neighbours.

When he'd first bought his knucklehead he was proud as a peacock and he knocked them baffles outta the pipes quicker than you can say "noise". I loved the sound, and so did he and all the boys.

But those tight asses in that upscale residential housing area I'd let Mike talk me into moving to weren't nearly as enamored. Matter of fact they complained every chance they got.
Which of course only made Mike work all the harder at being loud. He'd spend hours and hours in the driveway some nights gunning that motor and tweaking the timing and gunning and tweaking. "A knucklehead should sound like a heart beat" he'd say "pa-thump, pa-thump, pa-thump."

At any rate, when the cops come looking for him I was sure that I was about to have to bail him out again.

"Who's lookin?" I asked

The young uniformed officer stood in front of me at the bar, with his hat in his hand. As he began to speak we had one of those freaks of nature that happen in a large room full of people every once in a while. Everyone seemed to stop to take a breath at the same time and all of a sudden you could've heard a pin drop in that barn.

"We are looking to contact Mr. Farland's next of kin," said the young copper as I felt the floor slip out from under me.

"He's been killed in an industrial accident on the island and all we could find to identify him was a "Little Baby's Happy Hour" club card. We thought maybe you might be able to help us."

There it was.

In one single simple sentence my life was irrevocably changed and that young pimple faced officer had got it out all in one breath.