Last Call Lounge (17 page)

MONDAY

EIGHTEEN

At dawn, Frank, Ruby and I got back to the house. Frank went into his bedroom and fell asleep without a word. I poured Ruby a whiskey and she carried it into my room and shut the door.  I knew I should follow her in and explain things, everything, but I couldn’t.  Not yet.  I told myself it would be best for her if she managed to get a couple hours of sleep first.

I made a pot of coffee and sat on the couch. I tried to close my eyes, not to sleep, just to focus, but I had hornets in my veins and my eyes kept popping open. So I just sat, staring at the wall.

Then I starting thinking. One part of a plan came into my head, a small part. I turned it over and over until another part started to form. I worked the two together, thinking over them, back and forth, just staring at the wall and thinking. After about an hour, I had the whole thing thought out, beginning to end.

At eight o'clock, I called Curator Jack.

“What time is the hurricane supposed to hit?” I asked him.

“Probably five this afternoon,” he said. He didn't sound as though I had woken him.

“Are you evacuating?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I've got everything boarded up. I went to the store and bought a bunch of food and liquor. We're gonna have a hurricane party at my house. You can come if you want.”  I took a sip of my coffee and leaned back on the couch.

“Thanks,” I said. “I have plans.”

“Well,” he said. “If you need anything.”

“You're a lawyer, right?” I asked.

“I was,” he said.

“I'll sell you the bar if you can write up the papers today,” I said.

Jack didn't hesitate.

“How much?” he asked. I hadn't thought of a number, but one came to me.

“Forty-two thousand,” I said. “In a trust fund for Jacob. And I want you to make Mitchell a partner. Fifty percent.”

“Hold on a second,” Jack said. “Let me get a pen.”  There was a rustling on his end, the sound of papers shifting. “Okay. Forty-two thousand. Mitchell as partner.”

“You need him anyway,” I said. “He knows everything about the place.”

“I'm thrilled to get him,” Jack said.

“Keep Boyd, too,” I said. “I can't make you, but I'd appreciate it if you would.”

“No problem,” he said.

“That's it,” I said.

Jack repeated back the terms. He asked me a few more details,
Jacob’s middle name, what bank I wanted to use for him. How I wanted things distributed.

“That's it?” he said when he'd asked me everything he could think of.

“That's it,” I said again.

Jack paused.

“Okay,” he said. “It has to be today?”

“I want out,” I said. I told him about Tracy. If the fact that a woman had been murdered in the bar he was buying fazed him, he didn't let on.

“I can have something written up in an hour,” he said.

“Bring it by my house.”

NINTEEN

I quietly went into my room. Ruby was asleep, fully clothed, on top of the bedspread.

There was a framed picture of me and Jacob on the dresser, a shot of us at an Astros game. I took it out of the frame, folded it carefully and put it in my wallet. Then I filled my coffee cup in the kitchen and went out on to the front porch and waited.

The front porch was smaller than the back. The azaleas bent over the railing, making it feel even smaller. There were two metal patio chairs. I sat in one. From the street, I would be completely hidden, but I could see a block in either direction. The neighborhood was quiet and still. Black birds cackled noisily in a tree across the street. I could hear trucks down shifting on the highway.

Forty-five minutes later, Curator Jack pulled up in his shiny gray F-150. He was wearing a sort of Hawaiian shirt of muted colors and khaki pants. He had a large manila envelope under his arm. I rose to shake his hand. He sat in the open patio chair. I lit a cigarette and handed him the pack.

“Here you go,” he said, handing me the envelope. “There are a couple of pages for you to sign. I'll need your tax I.D. numbers and copies of your licenses to make it all official.”

I pulled the pages out. Jack handed me a pen.

“Mitchell can get all that stuff for you,” I said, looking over the pages. “He takes care of more of that stuff than I do, anyway.”  Jack had highlighted the spots where he wanted me to sign. I put the paper on my knee and signed. I handed them back to Jack and he went through them, one by one, making sure every thing was done. From the house behind mine, I could hear the sound of a saw, someone boarding up there windows.   Jack put the papers back in the envelope.

“I couldn't help but notice,” Jack said, helping himself to another cigarette. “There's nothing in this deal for you.”

I shrugged. “I have some money,” I said. The wind was starting to pick up, nothing dramatic yet. Jack gave me a long look.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What are you gonna do?” he asked.

I took a drag of my cigarette.

“I have a couple things I have to take care of today,” I said. “Then I’m just gonna get out for a while.”  Jack leaned back in his chair and nodded.

“Well,” Curator Jack said. “If you need anything, just let me know.”  I turned and looked at him. His big face was tight with concern.

“Thanks, Jack,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

Jack looked at his watch

“Jesus,” he said, jumping up. “I gotta get going.”  I stood and we shook hands.  Jack tucked the envelope under his arm and ran to his truck. I watched him drive away.

TWENTY

The rain was a light but steady drizzle now and the street was coated and slick. An early arm of the storm passing overhead.  I smoked another cigarette and thought about nothing.  Or tried.

A man in black jeans and a red rain slicker came around the corner, talking on his phone and leading a large poodle on a leash.  As he passed in front of my house, his dog did a half-turn and half-squat and started to shit.  The guy, still on the phone, turned his back and held the leash down at his side.  The dog finished, scratched enthusiastically at the grass, and loped to the end of the leash.  The guy turned and started up the sidewalk without so much as looking at the pile his dog left on my lawn.

“Hey,” I said.  I stood and stubbed out my cigarette.  He kept walking.

“Hey,” I said louder, coming down the front steps.  He looked at my over his shoulder and gave me a nod.  He still had the phone pressed to his ear and he turned away from me.

“Hey, fucker,” I was yelling now.  “Pick up after your dog.”

“Oh, my God,” he said into his phone. 

I trotted to catch up.

“Dude,” I said when I was right behind him. 

He started to walk faster, so I grabbed his arm. 

“Oh, my God,” he yelled this time.

“Hey, asshole,” I said and tried to turn him. 

He had the phone pressed to his left ear.  His right hand, still holding the leash, came around and shoved me hard in the chest.  My right foot slipped on the slick grass and I fell on my ass.

“Jesus,” he screeched into the phone.  “Oh, my God.”  He was running, his big dog trotting happily beside him.

I sat there, my left leg under me.  Dampness soaked though my jeans.  The rain dripped off my face and down my neck.  Then big hands were under my arms and Archer was lifting me to my feet.

“Nice one, Little John,” he said.  “I gotta admit, you’ve got a way with people.”

He led me around the side of my house and through the gate to his garage.  There were two metal chairs next to a work bench and I sat in one.  Archer had a refrigerator in his garage, of course.  He opened it and pulled out two light beers, twisted the cap off one and handed it to me.

“Hurricane rules,” he said.  “Beer at seven a.m. is perfectly acceptable.”

My eyeballs ached and my knee was sore from twisting under me.  I held the cold bottle against my forehead.  From Archer’s garage, I could see my house.  My father’s house.  The house I brought my son to when he was born.  Blue and gray and square and solid.

“I really don’t know what happened, Archer,” I said.

Archer tapped his class ring against the side of his bottle.

“Well,” he said. “Some yuppie let his labradoodle take a poop in your yard and when you tried to stop him, he knocked you on your ass.”

I rubbed my eyes and smiled.

“Jackass,” I said and drank my beer.  Archer pulled the other chair next to mine and sat.  I looked around the garage.  Tools on peg boards.  Ladders hanging from hooks.  Bicycles and free weights and soccer balls.  Everything organized and neat.  I drank my beer and Archer drank his. 

Leaning against the back wall was a stack of particle board.  I took in a long breath, then asked, “Do we still have time to board up my house?”

Archer lifted his bottle to his lips, tilted his head back, and finished the beer in one long swallow.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said, standing.

We dragged the wood and a folding ladder across our lawns to my house.  Archer went back for a circular saw and a drill. 

I went inside.  I pulled the door to my bedroom shut so we wouldn’t wake Ruby.  The door to the bedroom where Frank was sleeping was open.  I knocked on the wall.  Frank rolled and rubbed his eyes and sat up.  His eyes were ringed in purple.

“Could you come outside?” I asked.  “I could use your help.”

I went back out while Frank pulled on his shoes.  Archer was unfolding the ladder under the window.  Frank pulled open the door and stepped onto the porch.

“Archer, this is Frank.  He’s gonna stay here for a while,” I said.  “And I thought he could help us board these windows.”

Archer leaned over the railing and shook Frank’s hand.

“You grab that drill,” he said to Frank. “I’ve seen Little John try to use one before and I don’t think I wanna see it again.”

Archer grabbed a rain poncho from his garage for Frank, then he and I pushed the first board up in front of the window.  Frank climbed the ladder and screwed the board to the window frame.  We moved from window to window.  Archer gabbed and whistled through his teeth.  The rain started to fall, thick, fat drops, just as we finished the last window.  Frank grabbed the drill and the circular saw and I grabbed the ladder and we ran to Archer’s garage.  Archer put the tools away, hung the ladder, and got us three beers.

The smell of wet concrete, of sawdust and motor oil.  We stood side by side in the garage door and watched as the rain poured off the roof in growing sheets.  Frank finished his beer and put the bottle in the trash.

“I’m gonna go back to bed,” he said.  “Thanks for the beer.”

“Nice to meet you,” Archer said.  “Thanks for the help.”

Frank grinned, the lopsided grin under his broken nose and bruised eyes, then trotted across the yard to my house.  I took the last sip of my beer.

“I’m gonna get going, too,” I said.  When I shook Archer’s hand, it was cool and wet from the beer.  “Thanks.”

“Ain’t nothing,” he said.  “You getting out of town?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Well, you be careful, Little John,” he said.  “And watch out for dog-walking yuppies.  They seem to give you trouble.”

He gave my shoulder a punch and I stepped out of his garage and into the rain.  I ran around the side of my house and jumped into my truck, cracked the window, and lit a cigarette.  From where I sat, I could just see the light from Archer’s garage spill a yellow rectangle across his glossed driveway, although I couldn’t see into the garage.  Then the rectangle slowly disappeared.  Archer had closed the door.  I put the truck in reverse and backed out.

TWENTY-ONE

The house next to the Fletchers house had been torn down, the trees cut and the lawn plowed up.  I sat in my truck, finishing a cigarette, looking at the lot, now just a square of mud.  Capped PVC pipes stuck up here and there like weeds.  In this part of the neighborhood, the old bungalows were being torn down, replaced with two-to-a-lot townhomes or fat mansions that swelled from sidewalk to sidewalk.

The empty lot made Worm’s mother’s house look stranded and exposed.  The trees and fence that had long hidden the sides of the house were gone and the window unit air conditioners and crooked breaker boxes were laid bare.  I stepped out of my truck and trotted to the gate.

The Fletchers house was a brick bungalow, the brick painted over yellow years ago.  The windows were boarded up with particle board.  I climbed the cracked concrete steps of the front porch.  The door was open.  I leaned my head in a knocked on the frame.

“Mrs. Fletcher?”

“John,” she said from somewhere inside.

I stepped in.  What little light there was in the room filtered in through cracks and seams in the boards over the windows and had a thick, red glow. 

“Sorry I didn’t call,” I said.  My eyes were adjusting.  I sensed she was sitting on the couch, so I made my way to the chair on the opposite wall.  I found it with my foot and sat on the arm.

“It’s nice of you to come by,” she said.  “Gabriel was just packing up the last of my things.” She was sitting, I could see now, with her purse in her lap.  A suitcase was at her feet.  Someone, Gabriel probably, was banging and shuffling around in a back room.  He was Worm’s older brother, older by ten years, and I had always heard more of him than seen him.

“It’s been a long time,” I said and I knew, with a sudden certainty, exactly when I had last been here, in her house, in her living room.  He had called me, a Saturday afternoon the summer that Sarah had left with Jacob.  I was alone in the cool blue living room of my father’s house.

“I have Astros tickets,” he said.  I had spent the morning, dumb and gray, on the couch, only getting up to smoke a cigarette on the porch.  “They’re good seats.  Great seats, I mean, really.”

And I thought, what the fuck? Why not?  Why not spend the afternoon getting fucked up on seven dollar beers and whatever Worm had in his pockets?  No one was waiting for me to take my kid somewhere, no one was expecting me at the bar.  What the fuck, I thought.  Fuck it all.

“Cool,” I said.  “Pick me up.”

It was cool for June and the dome of the stadium was open.  Worm’s seats were great, lower level but high enough up to be under the shade of the mezzanine.  We got tall Bud Lights in plastic cups every time the beer man came past.

“This is fucking awesome,” Worm exclaimed several times, slapping me on the shoulder like we were in a commercial for those Bud Lights.

“You got anything with you?” I asked him, leaning in close even though no one would have heard me over the crowd noise.  He nodded and slipped a baggie from his pocket into my hand.  I put my beer in the cup holder in front of me and climbed the steps to find the bathroom.

After the sunlight of the ball game, the white glare of the bathroom made my eyes ache.  I waited for a stall, my hand clenched around the bag in my pocket.  In the stall, I lifted the seat of the toilet, for some reason feeling the need to promote the illusion that I was in there to piss.  I faced the toilet, opened the bag, and rubbed probably a line’s worth of Worm’s coke on my gums.

Then I walked back to our seats, everything brighter now and more solid.  The sunlight sat on the outfield like gold.

“This is fucking awesome,” I said as I slapped Worm on the back.  I was mocking him, but he didn’t know it.  He smiled at me, took the baggie, and headed up the stairs. 

I seemed to have lost an inning or so.  I sipped my beer through my teeth, stared at the scoreboard but couldn’t seem to get the score.Then Worm was at my side again.

“I’m glad you came out today, Little John,” he said.  His hand was on my shoulder and he was making his serious face.  “I was getting worried about you since Sarah.  You know.”  A shot of annoyance ran across my back, but the coke and the beer and the sun sitting on the outfield brushed it away.

“Well, thanks,” I said.  Not sure where to look, I looked at my beer.  Thin foam swirled in a circle and I realized that I didn’t even know how Worm knew Sarah had left.

Another inning passed.  Worm and I took turns sneaking the baggie to the bathroom until the coke was gone.  The game was just a white glare and the occasional loud crack that shot us all to our feet.  Then we looked up and it was the seventh and the Astros were down by five.  At the bottom of the seventh, they stop serving beer.

“Well, shit,” Worm said.  “I’ve got beer at home.  We can hang out there.”

We climbed the concrete stadium steps into the cool of the walkway.  Sweat stuck my shirt to my back.  Worm put his arm around my shoulder. 

“Awesome,” he said.

As we walked down the ramp and to the street, Worm talked, about the game, about the day.  His habit, after baseball games, was to recount what he considered the best or worst Astros plays, in tiny detail, even if I had been standing next to him.  Even if I had seen the exact same play myself.  The beer and the coke had made me deliciously numb and I let his prattling slip past me.

Then, at the corner where his truck was parked, he was holding my shoulder and giving me serious face again.  I looked at my feet.

“Seriously,” he was saying.  “You need anything, let me know.  Seriously.  Anything.”

“Thanks.”

“Seriously.”

“Thanks.”

In his stupid, huge truck, raised 100 feet above the ground, Bon Jovi thumping from behind the seat, the coke started to wear off, the beer started to tighten my scalp.  My shoulders clenched and I realized I hadn’t had a cigarette since the start of the game.  I lit one and rolled down the window and Worm rolled his down and turned up the music.

His house, back then, was pinched between two other houses.  It was dark, then, too, blissfully dark and blissfully empty.  Worm went to the kitchen and came back with two cold cans of beer.  He sat on the couch, put his arm across the back.  I opened my beer and stood in front of him.

“You got any more of the other stuff?” I asked. 

He sipped his beer and shifted his weight.

“No,” he said.  “No.”  He took another sip of beer.  “Look,” he said.  “I’m staying here for a while, with my mom.  Just for a while, to help her with the rent, you know?  And she doesn’t want me doing any of that.”  He sipped again.  “Not that she said anything, you know.  But I thought, while I’m here, I’d cool it on dealing.  For a while, you know.”

“I’m not talking about dealing, Worm,” I said.  My body was vibrating, like I’d just gotten off a long train ride.  “I’m just talking about some for us.  Just to keep going.”

“Yeah, well,” he said.  “That was the last of what I had.  And I’d have to call somebody and I already told him I was gonna take a break for a while, too. And, I mean, my mom.”

I laughed.

“Jesus, Worm, how old are you?” I sat down on the arm of the chair, this same chair I was sitting on this day, the day I should have been evacuating from a major hurricane.  That day, after the baseball game, I sat on the same arm of the same chair and made a face. “’My mom,’” I said in a grating voice.

That was about all the convincing it took.  And then we were at the Galaxy shooting pool.  And then we were at my bar, after hours, drinking draft beer and doing lines right off the bar top.  And then I woke up, thumb-tounged and cracked and alone in the cool blue of my father’s house.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Fletcher,” I said.  “I really am.”

In the dark, I could see her sigh, see her body sag.  Her face was still mostly shadow, but it wasn’t hard to see that she was crying.

“I remember when your mother died,” she said.  He voice was deep, a smoker’s voice, with a South Texas accent. “Sorry to bring it up, but Ray’s death has made me think of things like that.”

“It’s okay,” I said.  “I’ve been thinking about her lately, too.”

“Could you have stopped her, do you think?” she asked. “If you had known she was going to do it?”

I sat back in the chair and struggled for a moment to clear my thoughts and put together the right thing to say.  The room seemed darker.

Then she said, “He loved you, John.”

“I know.” I did.

“Sometimes you were probably his only friend,” she said.

I closed my eyes.  I couldn’t, for a moment, feel anything, not my body, not the chair.  Then, for the first time since my father had died, I cried.

“I wasn’t a very good friend, I guess,” I said.  I sat in the dark and cried and she was silent.  “I could have been and I wasn’t.” I wiped at my eyes with my fingers.

Mrs. Fletcher set her purse on the couch next to her.  I thought she was going to stand, but she just wiped her face with her hands.

“Why did you come today, John?” she asked.

I stopped crying and tried to study her face.  Gabriel was still banging around somewhere behind me. 

“I don’t know,” I said.  My throat was dry.  “I guess,” I said, “I guess I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”

Now she stood.  She picked up her purse and held it in both hands in front of her. 

“I need to finish preparing,” she said. 

I stood and she held out her arm, leading me to the door.  I crossed the dark room toward the gray light of the still-open door.  Outside, the weather had started to turn.  We were between arms of the storm and now the rain was a thick mist and the sky glowed green.  Mrs. Fletcher followed me onto the porch.

In the sunlight, I finally saw her clearly.  She was tired, obviously, and her eyes were red.  She had a mannish head and deep green eyes and her face was more lined than I remembered.   I tried one more time.

“I am sorry,” I said. 

She held her purse in both hands and stood in the threshold of the door.

“I appreciate that you came by, John,” she said, looking past me.  “I really do.  But I can’t forgive you yet.”

I stepped off the porch and walked on the flagstones through the yard and out the gate.  When I got to my truck, I turned, but the door to the Fletchers’ house was closed.