"No harm done," Dominic said.
His voice was not loud. It was low and even, and there was nothing in it that sounded like a challenge. But in the quiet of the diner, it carried.
Damien turned around again, slowly.
"What'd you say?"
"I said no harm done." Dominic picked up the ruined paperback and dropped it into the trash bin at the end of the booth. "Accidents happen. I'd appreciate it if you'd be a little more careful with that bag, though. Somebody's liable to get hurt."
It was the most reasonable sentence anyone had spoken all night.
Leon, who was not a stupid man, recognized it as exactly that. He opened his mouth to say something like, Yeah, man, sorry about that, let us buy you another coffee.
Damien got there first.
"Somebody's liable to get hurt," Damien repeated. He said it in a deep, slow, exaggerated drawl, an imitation of an old man that did not sound anything like Dominic. "Somebody's liable to get hurt, y'all. Better watch out."
Brad cracked up.
Damien stood. He picked up his coffee, which Sarah had poured for him before the bag incident, and walked the few steps from the counter to the corner booth. He stood over it, looking down. From where he stood, the man in the flannel shirt looked small. Old. Gray. A tired trucker with a farmer's tan and a sunburned neck.
"You know who I am?" Damien asked.
Dominic looked up at him.
"No," he said. "Should I?"
There was a soft snort from the counter. It was the old roughneck, who had turned all the way around on his stool now and was watching with a kind of grim, quiet interest.
Damien's face flushed slightly.
"Damien Cole," he said. "Lone Star middleweight champion. Fifteen and oh."
"Congratulations."
"You're not from around here."
"No."
"Figures." Damien took a sip of his coffee, still standing over the booth. "Most people from around here know better than to give me attitude."
"I don't believe I gave you any attitude, son."
The word son landed like a slap. Dominic hadn't meant it as one. It was simply what men his age called younger men in this part of the country. But Damien heard something else in it, something superior and condescending, and the muscles in his jaw bunched.
"Don't call me son."
"All right."
"I'm not your son."
"I said all right."
Sarah stepped in between them. She was not a big woman, and next to Damien she looked almost like a child, but she put one hand flat against his chest and pushed, the way she might have pushed one of her own boys out of the kitchen thirty years ago.
"That's enough," she said. "You go sit back down and wait for your steak, and you leave my customers alone. This man was sitting here reading his book, minding his own business, and you came in here and dumped hot coffee on him. You ought to be ashamed."
Damien looked down at her hand. Then at her face.
He laughed.
"Relax, Miss Sarah. We're just talking."
"No, you're not. You're showing off for your friends, and I've seen enough of that in my life to last me. Go sit down."
For a second it looked like he might. Leon had gotten up off his stool and was hovering a few steps behind, ready to take Damien by the elbow and steer him back. Brad was still grinning, but the grin had gone a little uncertain.
Then Dominic did something none of them expected.
He reached into his back pocket, took out a worn leather wallet, and laid a twenty-dollar bill on the table.
"Sarah," he said, "thank you for the coffee. I think I'll head out. Storm's probably letting up some."
It wasn't. Everyone could hear the rain hammering the roof. But the meaning was plain enough. He was leaving. He was giving the young man the room.
Sarah turned. "Dom, you don't have to—"
"It's all right." He slid out of the booth and stood up. Standing, he was three inches shorter than Damien and at least thirty-five pounds lighter. He picked up his cap from the seat beside him and settled it on his head. "You have a good night now."
He started toward the door.
It was, in every way that mattered, the end of the incident. A grown man had spilled coffee on another grown man. Words had been exchanged. The older man had chosen to walk away. Nobody had been hurt, not really. Tomorrow it would be a story Sarah told the morning shift, and by Thursday nobody would remember it at all.
That was what should have happened.
What happened instead was that Brad Kowalski, still sitting at the counter, had taken out his phone and started recording somewhere around the time Damien said fifteen and oh. And Damien, who had spent six years learning exactly how good a confrontation looked on camera, saw the little red light on Brad's phone out of the corner of his eye.
And he couldn't let it end like this.
Not with the old man walking out the door like he'd won something.
* * *
"Hold up," Damien said.
He moved fast for a big man. Two long steps and he was between Dominic and the front door, arms loose at his sides, chin tilted down, a slight smile on his face. He wasn't squared up for a fight. He was too relaxed for that. He looked like a man who had decided to have a little fun.