The bottle came down in a wide arc that started somewhere above Apu's right shoulder and ended in the general direction of where Leo stood.
He barely had to take a step for the bottle to be more than a couple of inches to the left of his head.
Drunk men were easy to read. Apu's whole windup had been visible from the moment his foot left the path, and the path itself had been a sloppy three-step approach that gave Leo enough time to step inside the swing, twist sideways at the hip, and let the glass come down on the painted wood of the porch railing instead.
The bottle shattered. Brown mystery alcohol liquid sprayed across the rail, ran down the side of the post, and pooled in the dirt of the planter.
Leo lamented at the sight. 'I was saving that planter for when I eventually told Marge to garden with me.'
But Apu didn't care about Leo's thoughts. He was left standing with the broken neck of the bottle in his fist, breathing hard, eyes still locked somewhere in the air where Leo's face had been three seconds ago.
He did not register that the bottle was gone.
"You bastard!" Apu continued to roar.
He swung the jagged stub of it like he still had the whole thing, and did his best to aim it at Leo's neck.
If that seriously hit him like Apu intended, it would have been enough to actually kill him. Glass jagged points were no joke.
The good thing was that it was coming from Apu and not some experienced fighter. Leo did not bother with footwork. He caught Apu's wrist on the way past, turned the joint outward with both hands the way he had been taught a long time ago and the broken bottle dropped into the grass without Apu noticing.
Apu, disarmed, threw a fist. If it could even be called that.
It came in slower than the bottle had. Leo ducked under it, slid his right foot behind Apu's left ankle, and put his weight forward into Apu's chest. Apu went down backwards onto the lawn with zero grace at all. The wind left his lungs in one audible whuff.
Leo was on top of him before he could get any of it back.
He flipped Apu over onto his stomach, dropped one knee gently into the small of his back, trapped his right arm up behind his shoulder blades, and held him there.
Apu wheezed into the grass. His drunk state made taking breaths even harder.
The whole exchange had lasted, by his count, somewhere around forty seconds. He had come out of the entire scuffle without a scratch.
Or so he thought. A second later he felt a faint sting along his left forearm and looked down. A thin red line had opened up along the skin there, beading up slowly. A piece of the broken bottle must have flown sideways during the disarm and caught him on the way past. One in a hundred thousand kind of luck. A drunk man swinging a bottle in his general direction had thrown twice and missed twice, and a piece of unattended glass had still found him on the rebound.
Leo sighed at the sight of his own arm and got back to the more pressing problem.
He glanced up the street.
The Trans Am was still folded around the pole. Steam was still coming off the hood. The horn had finally stopped, which meant the wiring had given up, which meant any second now somebody was going to step out to find out the cause of all the noises. Neighbors of any neighborhood loved gossip and knowing what was going on.
Leo had a window. But it was not a long one.
…
He bent low to Apu's ear.
"Apu. Listen to me."
Leo didn't wait for a response.
"Apu. You have about ninety seconds, maybe less. After that, one of these doors opens and a neighbor comes out into the yard. You just drove a car drunk into a pole on a residential street. I know you received the chance of supervised visitation. But you lose what is left of your kids permanently if anybody finds out the wrong version of the story tonight. Nod if you understand me."
None of Apu's earlier rage was present anymore. Apu nodded into the grass. It seemed like he still did care about his kids at least in some capacity.
"Good. I'm going to tell you what actually happened, and you are going to listen to all of it before you say a single word back to me."
Apu nodded again.
"Manjula and Marge Simpson are old friends. You know that. The whole town knows that. When Manjula left you, she went to Marge first, and Marge brought her over here a few weeks ago and asked me as a favor whether I had room in my garage to store some of her things while she figured out where she was going to live. I said yes because Marge asked. Marge is my neighbor, and the lady, your wife, was clearly going through something none of my business."
Apu was very still under his knee.
"Tonight was the second time I've talked to Manjula… ever. She came back with the kids to pick the boxes up because the divorce went through and she has her own place lined up. Even talked about how you had those tight visitation rights, Well… that's what she told me at least. Either way, that was the entire interaction. No other ones have occurred. I don't know what "man" you're looking for and yelling about but it's not me."
Leo paused to look down at Apu. He had broken down. A broken man at this point ever since Leo pinned him down. He had no resistance at all. Just sadness. It was hard to know what was going through his head. However, Leo also had a lot of current thoughts.
'Was there even a need to keep a secret even if it was me sleeping with her? He's a cheater. The divorce is settled. He deserves some more punishment.'
Leo thought about it more.
'But then If he found out he would tell others out of sadness. Like at the bar. And then those people would tell their wives and them hearing I'm with Manjula could complicate certain plans.'
"Tsk."
'Maybe just a little bit is fine.'
Leo put some more pressure onto Apu's back.
"But now that you've tried attacking me, who knows. Maybe I'll be the next "man". That bottle was very sharp, y'know? The things I would have missed out on… hmmm… sleeping with a nice woman would be one. A woman like Manjula. She has quite the body, you cheater. I'm sure the man who slept with her had quite the time. Maybe I'll be the next 'man.'"
To his surprise, Apu didn't react. It seemed he had no more anger left to give. Just sadness and defeat instead.
"Hey, you listening?" Leo shifted the weight of his knee a little bit.
"I'm sorry, sir!" Apu cried out. "Im sorryyy. Im so sorry." He was crying.
"Good. Be sorry. Either way, don't mention anything of what I've told you and I won't mention how pissed drunk you really are and how you tried attacking an innocent man. Remember your kids. You don't want to never see them again."
Although Leo had said he wouldn't mention Apu's state, it wouldn't be hard to smell the thick scent of alcohol coming off of his body.
"I won't! I never do anything right." Apu tried to continue to sob but his tears had run dry. Now the night was only filled with his pitiful wails with no tears. The sound of it was sad.
…
The porch light at 744 came on.
Leo turned his head an inch and there was Ned, already crossing the gap between the hedge and the property line, robe over pajamas, slippers on his feet, hands cupped at his mouth.
"Heavens to mergatroid! Leo-diddly, are you all right?? Is that — sweet mercy! Is that Apu down there on your lawn?"
"Ned."
"Yes-iddly-yes?"
"He's had a rough night. Drove off the road. Put his car into my pole and got out angry and confused. I'm trying to keep him calm until the police get here. Could you stay with him a minute? He could use a friendly face that isn't mine."
"Oh — oh, of course, neighborino, of course, of course. Anything I can do to help a neighbor— neighbors in need."
Ned hurried across the lawn in his slippers, knelt down beside Apu in the grass, and put a hand very gently on his shoulder. Apu did not look up. Ned took that as an invitation to ask if he could pray with him, which Apu also did not respond to, which Ned took as a second invitation, and within five seconds Ned had his hands clasped and was halfway through a soft murmur about the Lord's mercy and the long road of the recovering man.
Leo took two steps back from both of them and let his shoulders drop an inch for the first time since the engine had wound up at the end of the block.
He watched the sight of Ned praying over Apu.
'Isn't Apu a completely different religion?'
It seemed like it was only Ned who came out. Maude must've stayed inside to watch the special needs kids. The crooked arrows. It was a shame since seeing her would've made the night a little better.
Leo wondered if she had decided on what they talked about last. If she would come to him to solve her "seed" and children problem. It had been a while since that happened.
Up and down Evergreen Terrace, other porch lights were beginning to come on. Silhouettes appeared in windows. Nobody else crossed a lawn. Springfield, in its way, was a town that watched a thing for thirty seconds before deciding whether it wanted to be in the thing.
…
Tires crunched. The police cruiser came up the street at a leisurely speed, lights on but no siren, and pulled in at an angle that suggested the driver was not particularly worried about the geometry of his arrival. The car stopped about ten feet from where the Trans Am had ended. The driver's door opened first.
The man who got out was short and round in the middle, wearing a blue police uniform that was pushed to the max. The shirt was untucked at the back. The hat was the wrong size for his head and sat too high on it. His blue hair was visible because of it. He was chewing something. He had a small donut crumb caught in the corner of his mustache that he made no move to brush away.
The second man came out of the passenger side a second later. Taller, leaner, Black. He had a notepad in one hand and a pen already clicked open in the other. He glanced at Leo and gave him a small respectful nod.
The fat one did not glance at Leo. He took a long look at the scene.
Specifically, the fat one did not take a long look at the scene. He glanced at the Trans Am for about a second, glanced at the broken bottle then glanced at Apu and Ned and the praying and the head-in-hands for about the same, and then walked straight past all of it to the curb. He stopped at the chrome front bumper of the Trans Am Firebird, which had detached cleanly in the impact and was lying half on the sidewalk and half in the gutter, gold Firebird detailing folded into itself.
He pointed at it with his pen.
"Whose is this?"
Apu raised his head out of his hands. It seemed like he had calmed down more.
"…It is being mine, Chief Wiggum."
So that, Leo registered, was the police chief of Springfield.
"Yeah." Wiggum chewed. "Got a noise call from the neighborhood about ten minutes ago. Came out to take a look. And what I'm looking at, sir, is a piece of car on a public sidewalk. That makes it litter. Unacceptable."
Apu blinked. Leo blinked. Ned just nodded in understanding.
'…Littering?' Leo said in disbelief.
"…Littering?" Apu said out loud.
"Yep."
"Chief Wiggum, the car has been —"
"I'm not here about a car. I'm here about a bumper. This piece of trash is on the sidewalk. That makes the bumper litter. And you're the owner of the litter. You're coming with me."
'What about the entire accident!' Leo kept his mouth shut. In the end, the result was the same after some more thinking.
Wiggum did not turn his head. "Lou. Cuff him."
It turned out the black police officer who came with him was named Lou.
Leo remembered something he had once thought. How it was impossible for the Springfield police to be terribly incompetent. It turned out he was wrong.
'For Littering??? Really? Not the drunk intoxicated driving? Next time I go to the bar I'm taking my car. Nine drinks? Get me my keys, it's time to drive!'
Apu, defeated, allowed the tall officer to walk him to the back of the cruiser. He did not look back at Leo as he ducked into the seat. The door closed. The cruiser pulled away from the curb at the same leisurely speed it had arrived at, lights still spinning, no siren, the back of Apu's head visible through the rear window with his face still in his hands.
The Trans Am stayed wrapped around the pole. The bumper stayed in the gutter. Despite the big deal he made about it, Wiggum had not even asked anyone to move it.
Ned stood up from where he had been kneeling, brushed grass off his pajama knees, looked at Leo, and shook his head with a sad little smile.
"That poor fella. That poor, poor fella. I'll be praying for him, Leo-diddly. And for you too, neighbor. I'll be praying for the both of you tonight."
"Thanks, Ned. I'll pray for you. Actually, I'll make sure to pray for your whole family. Maude and all."
"Why you kind soul. Thank you! I'm glad I could be of assistance. Anytime, anytime, really. You holler if you need anything, neighborino."
He trundled back across his lawn in his slippers. The Flanders porch light went off behind him a minute later.
Leo was alone in his front yard with a wrecked Trans Am wrapped around a utility pole, a chrome bumper in the gutter, a broken bottle scattered across his grass, and a tire scuff on the path that had been beautifully maintained.
He looked at the pole. The bumper sat in the gutter where Wiggum had left it. Down the street, the cruiser's taillights had already disappeared around the corner.
…
A door opened across the street.
Marge came down off the Simpson porch in a robe over a nightgown, slippers on her feet, and her hair down.
The hair was the part that caught him first. Leo had never seen Marge Simpson with her hair down. He had assumed, vaguely, that it stayed up the way it did because of a hair product, or sheer physics defying obligation, and the reality of it was a long heavy fall of glossy blue that came down past her shoulders and kept going, kept going, all the way to the middle of her back. She looked ten years younger now with her hair normal.
The robe was the second thing.
It was a soft pink, the color of the inside of a seashell, and it was satin. She had not stopped to tie it properly before she came out of the house, which meant the belt of it was loose at her waist, which meant the front of it was being held closed by one small hand pinching the front together at the center of her chest. The hand was not doing a great job. Leo could see the soft inside curve of one heavy breast where it pressed against the strap of the nightgown underneath. Below the hand, the second V-shape opened up over her hip and the line of her thigh through the nightgown, and the nightgown was a length that, on a woman with shorter legs, would have come down to the knee, but on Marge came down maybe a third of the way down her thigh, which left a long stretch of bare leg exposed all the way down to the slippers.
She had not put a bra on. She had not put anything on. She had thrown a satin robe over a thin nightgown and come out of her house barefoot in slippers in the middle of the night.
The slippers were the third thing. Soft pink, the same family as the robe, with a small bow at the toe that had flattened over time from being walked on. They made her feet look small. The bare skin of her ankles caught the porch light above each one.
She crossed the street in the slippers, looking left and right at habit even at this hour. The robe moved with her. The hand stayed pinched at her chest the whole way over, holding the front of it shut by sheer force of finger pressure.
She came up onto his lawn and the porch light from his open front door caught her properly for the first time.
"Leo. Are you all right? I saw Chief Wiggum take Apu away. What in the world happened over here."
He gave her the version of events he had decided on while watching the cruiser turn the corner. Marge was inside this story since she was the one who introduced him to Manjula.
"Apu's been spiraling since Manjula first found out, Marge. From the look of him tonight he's been drinking heavily for a long time. Driving around hoping to find Manjula randomly. He drove that Trans Am into my pole at about forty miles an hour. Got out swinging a bottle at the closest person he could find, which happened to be me, because it was my pole he hit and my lawn he wrecked his car on. I do not think there was a plan to any of it. He saw a man on a porch and he came at the man on the porch. I had to put him down before he hurt himself or somebody else."
She was looking at him with very round eyes.
"He came at you with a bottle."
"He did. The bottle is in pieces on my grass and planter. I'll clean it up in the morning."
"Are you hurt?"
"No, no. Not at all."
She let a long breath out through her nose. The breath fogged a little in the cool air on the way out.
Her free hand had come up and was pressed to the base of her throat.
"He could have hit anybody on this street, Leo. Anybody. He could have —" She stopped herself. "I should have done something when Manjula first told me. Manjula is my oldest friend in this town. Because of that I also have known Apu for a long time. I should have gone and talked to him. Maybe sent Homer. I should have at least tried."
"Marge."
"I should have."
"You couldn't have. People like Apu hit bottom on their own time. Nothing you said to him when it first happened would have changed what he did tonight."
She looked at the wreck against the pole instead of at him.
"You always know the right thing to say."
The smile that almost reached her mouth was small and tired and did not quite get there. She kept her eyes on the pole for another second.
"You're a good man, Leo."
That was the second time he had heard that today.
She looked up at him finally. The porch light caught the side of her face and the long blue fall of her hair, and he was very aware that the last time he had been this close to her she had been in a black bikini on the floor through the fabric on his hand, and he was very aware that she was aware of it too, because her color was already going up underneath the porch-light glow before he had even finished the thought.
She tightened her hand on the front of the robe.
"I —"
"I know."
"I have been thinking about —" She stopped. She couldn't finish.
"I know, Marge."
She closed her mouth. Her hand had come halfway up off the front of the robe at some point and she had not put it back down. The hand was hovering at about the level of his sleeve, fingers slightly open, like the hand had set out with a plan and then forgotten the plan halfway across the distance.
She put the hand on his forearm.
It turns out Leo's arms had gotten scraped at some point. Leo had pushed it aside in his mind and had quickly forgotten when it happened earlier. Marge did not press, but the contact found the raw line along the flesh and the sound she made was small, involuntary, and went straight through him.
"Oh — Leo, you're bleeding."
"It's a scrape."
"It is not a scrape, that is a cut. You are bleeding right now. We should be cleaning that. Do you have peroxide. You should have peroxide. Come over, I have a kit in the cabinet above the —"
"Marge."
"I am being serious, Leo, you cannot just —"
"Marge."
He lifted his free hand and put two fingers against her mouth. Lightly, just enough to stop the next word from coming out of it.
Her lips were warm. They closed against the pads of his fingers since she was not quite sure what to do.
She went very still.
He let the fingers rest there for a count.
The exact moment his fingers settled on her mouth, Marge felt something fold over in her chest she had been keeping a lid on since their photoshoot. The shape of his hand. The smell of his skin this close. The same hand she had felt on her, through a black bikini, on the floor in his studio. The same fingers. She had finished on those fingers. She had come on them with her own hands braced on his shoulders and her face hidden in his neck and her whole body locked around his lap and she had told herself afterward, sitting in her own kitchen with a glass of water she could not drink, that it had been the margaritas and the heat of the lights and the way her bikini top had slipped and that none of it counted because no clothes had come off and she had not kissed him and she had walked out of his garage with most of her dignity intact.
His fingers were on her mouth now and her dignity was running out quickly.
She did not move.
"It is going to be fine," he said quietly. "It is a scrape."
She still did not move.
"But," he went on, in the same low voice, "if you are really worried about it, I have heard there is something in saliva that helps a wound heal. Maybe you can give it a couple of licks."
Her eyes came up to his.
He smiled at her with the corner of his mouth, the same smile she had seen across his kitchen table the day he told her he liked her, and the color climbed up into her cheeks and her throat under the porch-light glow.
Then, slowly, he pushed the two fingers a quarter-inch past her lips.
Not far. Just enough that the pads of them passed the soft inside line of her mouth and rested against the front of her teeth, and her bottom lip closed reflexively around his knuckles, and she made a sound.
Her eyes closed for half a second on their own.
She caught them. They came back open. The color was high in her face and her chest was rising visibly under the robe and her hand had not come off his forearm.
He kept the fingers exactly where they were.
"Leo."
The word came out around his fingers, muffled and soft, and she heard how it sounded coming out of her own mouth, and the color went up the rest of the way to her hairline.
"Leo, you are being —"
"I am being helpful, Marge. I am suggesting medical care."
"You are being —"
"You started this. You said I was bleeding. I am simply taking you up on the offer."
He let the fingers stay one more count.
Then he drew them slowly back out from between her lips, the pads of them brushing the soft inside of her bottom lip on the way, and let his hand drop back to his side.
Her lips stayed slightly parted for a second after the fingers were gone, as if she had not given them the instruction to close yet.
"I should get home before Homer notices I'm gone."
"He notices things?"
"Not often. Especially when he is asleep." Her voice was not quite steady yet. "But the kids are right there in their rooms, Leo, and I do not want to push my luck on the kind of night this has been. I am glad you are all right. I am glad it was you. I should go home."
"You should."
"Goodnight, Leo."
"Goodnight, Marge."
She drew her hand back from his arm and tucked it into the pocket of her robe, and crossed back. The robe was not tied tight, and the back of it had loosened on the walk. He watched her up her porch steps. She did not look back until she was at her own door, and then she did, once, with her hand on the knob, and he was looking right at her.
She went inside.
Her porch light went off.
…
He slept badly.
By eight in the morning the tow truck had been and gone with the Trans Am dangling from a winch. By nine the city pole crew had come out, shaken their heads at the pole, taken three photographs from different angles, and gone away again with a vague promise to send someone the next week. By ten Leo had a cup of coffee in his hand and was standing at the kitchen window looking at the long brown skid in his front lawn where the Trans Am had carved a path on the way to its appointment with municipal infrastructure. It was the first morning in a while that he was completely alone.
His silence did not last long.
The phone rang.
"Baby."
"Cookie."
"Baby, I have done it. The Carlson lot. I am closing it under your ceiling by ninety-six thousand. The papers will be ready for you to sign on tomorrow morning. The seller is being very motivated."
"That's great, Cookie."
"And baby."
"What."
"It is also being my very lucky day."
"How so?"
"Because I have also sold another house just yesterday on your same street. The little one on the Hibbert side of Evergreen, with the dead grass in the front and the white shutters that need to be repainted. 740 Evergreen. You know the one, baby."
"The Winfield's place? I never got to meet them."
"Yes! The Winfield's. Old, old people, baby. They moved to Florida. I have sold the house in one weekend. To a mother and her teenage daughter. Just the two of them, baby. Powers or something is their name."
"…A mother and a teenage daughter?"
"Mm. The mother is being the buyer. Single, I think. Not that it matters. The only thing that matters is I paid twice today, baby. You and them!"
Leo turned the coffee cup in his hand.
"When are they moving in?"
"Tomorrow, baby. They are wanting to get their daughter settled into school before the weather changes. So, baby —" she paused with the deliberateness of a woman who had been waiting for this line all morning — "you are not going to be the newest neighbor on Evergreen Terrace anymore. Congrats!"
"Thanks, Cookie. But I don't think I ever thought of that as an issue though."
"Mm. Congrats anyway. New property and no longer the newest. I will see you soon for the signing, baby. Wear the gray shirt. I like you in the gray shirt."
The line clicked off.
Leo set the phone down on the counter. He took a long sip of the coffee. He looked out the window at his front lawn one more time.
...
...
...
[A/n]: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!