Tough Baby (Martin Fender Novel) (2 page)

“You look like you lost some weight,” she said, “but you look good.” I could tell she was looking at the dark circles under my eyes. But she wouldn’t say anything about that. Not right now.

“Look,” I said, “I think we’re playing till a little after two, then I have to get paid and we might have to load the van up ourselves because the roadies disappeared after sound check.”

“It’s OK,” she interrupted. “We have to go. Tomorrow is Monday, and I have to be at work early and Michael has school.”

“I still have a key.”

She shook her head and squeezed my hand. “Not tonight, Martin. I’ll see you tomorrow, after work.”

I was disappointed and I let it show.

“I’m sorry, Martin. I tried to take tomorrow off but there’s a big deal going on at the office. They even tried to get me to work tonight.”

“Well, I hope my cat is glad to see me.”

She smirked and ran her fingers over the stubble on my chin. “Martin, you know you won’t be out of here before three or four. People will want to buy you drinks, or somebody will try to sell you a guitar. Or something. I know how it is.”

I reluctantly agreed that she was right and walked them back to her car, kissed her good night, and came back inside to check the tuning on my bass. Still no sign of Nick and Steve, our AWOL roadies. But Ray was in the dressing room with his girlfriend, Kate. In a Chanel-esque suit and leopard print pillbox hat, she was perched atop a road case giving Ray a list of phone calls that needed to be returned. When we were off the road Ray had paying gigs almost every night, sometimes with several different bands. I asked him if he knew where Leo was.

He ran a finger across his pencil-thin mustache and shook his head. “He and Nadine came back here a couple of minutes ago. He bit her on the neck and stuck his hand up her skirt and she slapped him. Leo went out to the bar. I think she left.”

Leo had lived with Nadine ever since he’d sauntered into a diner at three in the morning with no shoes on and couldn’t remember where he’d left them. Kate padded up to him in her cute little waitress uniform and greeted him with the “no shoes, no shirt, no service” line, and he answered with, “No shit, huh, how about a date, then?”

He was a lanky, tawny-haired guy who wore white T-shirts and jeans and tennis shoes. Religiously. Some people said he looked a lot like James Dean, and he had the kind of goofy charm that made you either forget or forgive most of his shenanigans with a roll of his big blue eyes and shrug of his bony shoulders. And most of the time he
was
either charming or harmless.

I had worried about him and a couple of times had tried talking to him about his antics on the road. But the road is not a great place to put things in perspective. Living on a vampire’s schedule, eating at truck stops, and making a living by making noise that made people move funny and ingest large amounts of alcohol, tobacco, and other things that weren’t necessarily good for them, it was easy for him to shrug his shoulders and say,
What do you mean, crazy
?

Suddenly the dressing room door swung open and there he was. He slapped me on the back and spit a guitar pick out into his palm. “Hey, Martin,” he drawled, “how ’bout a couple shots of Jack Daniel’s before we fire up again?”

The last set had five Howlin’ Wolf tunes in it that really smoked. Leo growled out the lyrics with edgy authenticity and Ray honked out the harmonica phrases on his saxophone. It was only May, but the air in the club was so hot and close that my suit had become a soggy mess pasted to my body. Nearly every face in the club was bleary-eyed and goofy. Neon glinted in their eyes like the last live coals in an old fire. An elderly black man jelly-walked his way up front, tipped his beret at me, and mouthed, “Not bad for a bunch a short-haired white boys.” Some couples snuggled in the back, ready to go home. Other pairs looked surly with mischief, ready to get it on in a stall in the restroom, if they hadn’t already. After-hours businessmen checked their pagers one last time before heading out the door or up to the bar for that last cocktail. Billy pounded out a drum roll to signal the end, and we blistered out the last twelve bars of the last song, a rumbling assault of sound that brought the house down and the lights up.

But the crowd on the dance floor wanted more. They stomped and clapped and whistled, even after we were back in the tiny dressing room, toweling off. Rings clanged against longnecks, boot heels clomped, glass broke. Texas crowds are the best. Leo abruptly slung his Gretsch semi-hollow body guitar over his shoulder and headed back out. We followed him up on stage and watched as he rolled his volume knobs up to ten. Billy and Ray looked at me for a sign, and I looked at Leo for one. He rested one of his size twelve sneakers on a monitor and let the guitar squeal feedback for a painful fifteen seconds, then launched into a psychedelic blues version of “The Eyes of Texas.” We couldn’t play along with it, the crowd couldn’t dance to it, and only the hardiest could stand it.

It emptied the club quicker than a DEA raid. I wished I’d tried a little harder to talk to him on the road.

After we loaded up the van, Wayne, the club manager, came backstage and handed me a stack of money. “One thousand nine hundred ninety-five dollars and seventeen cents,” he said, grinning widely. “Broke your guarantee by almost a grand. Welcome back home.”

“Thanks.” I moved over to where the light was better and sorted out the cash into various denominations on top of a beer crate.

“Your bar tab was on the house. You guys were really hot tonight. Playing all those one-nighters sure punched up your sound.”

“Thanks again.”

“But that Leo, I don’t think his parachute is packed right. You better keep an eye on him.”

“I will. Leo’s just been acting up. I don’t know why.”

He nodded and scratched his head, reaching around to check the short ponytail in back. I went back to counting.

“One more thing you might wanna know,” he said. “The manager of Raven’s down on Sixth Street? He said your roadies, Nick and Steve, come high-tailing it through his club behind two Mexican girls just before midnight. He said the girls were all decked out in biker gear, but your roadies were naked.” He bellowed out a laugh and then shrugged. “Think it’s true?”

I just gave him a blank look. It could be. From out in the club, someone was yelling, “Leo, get your ass down from there!”

“Made you lose count, didn’t I?” said Wayne. “Count it tomorrow and let me know if I shorted you. You know I’m good for it. Come on out to the bar when you’re ready. It’s a friend of mine’s birthday and I got the doors locked. Drinks are on me.”

&&&

There were fifty-one twenties, three tens. That left a lot of fives and ones. I was looking for the calculator in my bass case when I felt a draft. Along with the draft came scents of perfume and leather. I looked up and saw a chocolate-skinned beauty with her hands on her hips, smiling a one-sided smile.

“Bitchin' suit,” she said. “Makes you look like a gangster.” The first thing you noticed was her hair. It swelled up into a bubble on top, not as extreme as a beehive, but retro chic. Five foot five in black leather jacket, black western shirt with pearl buttons and white piping, tight black jeans, conch belt, boots. The half smile seemed like a promise of something better, or maybe just mischief. I liked her.

“In fact,” she went on, “your whole band looks like a gang of bank robbers from some black-and-white movie.”

“Are you a reporter?” I asked.

Her laugh was a tinkling sound, like ice tumbling into a highball glass. “No, I’m not. I’m a detective, and I love the blues.” She extended a hand. “My name’s Retha Thomas.”

“I’m Martin Fender,” I said.

“I know. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Drinks are free.”

“How about a cigarette, then?” she said, tapping on a pack of Camel non-filters. My old brand. I took one and lit hers with the Zippo I still carried out of habit and respect for tradition. “Aren’t you going to light yours?” she asked.

“No,” I said, sniffing it, rolling it around between my callused fingertips. “I quit.”

She nodded knowingly. I stuffed the still-uncounted cash into my jacket and followed her into the bar.

&&&

It was already after three a.m. The band, the regulars, and a few characters I recognized as coke dealers, managers, and people with a nose for dropping in at the right place at the right time were singing happy birthday to someone I didn’t know. Leo sang the worst.

I was glad to be back in Austin, but I still felt like I was in transit. I had a scattered feeling, like I was the victim of some sort of new age baggage foul-up, with my head still in New Orleans, my feet in Dallas, my fingers in Birmingham. Only my luggage had found its way to Austin, and it was still packed, sitting in the back of the van. I searched out the faces of the band members in the mirror behind the bar—Ray Whitfield, Leo Daly, Billy Ludwig, and myself. We all had that look, that thousand-yard stare. We’d get over it.

It’s a long strange road out there—vans break down, club owners try to stiff you, and there aren’t many good enchiladas. Up through the crawfish circuit and the swamps and the backwoods of the delta where the blues was born, through a hundred Denny’s and over the interstates dodging methamphetamine-crazed truckers and sadistic highway patrolmen, up the East Coast through the gray slush of the last winter snow, playing the dives and college pubs and even a couple of hyper-trendy underground dance clubs in Manhattan, then trickling back through Ohio and Michigan and Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, grinding down frets and popping strings, eating breakfast at four a.m. in truck stops and getting kicked out of motels—we had been on the road and it had been on us. It did something to you. It made your hometown look like a strange town, like something you remembered from a dream. It made every bar seem the same. Because over all the miles and through all the drinks and the thick smoke and local chatter, some things always
were
the same. The music was the same. You pulled into town and people got plugged into your music, then you packed up and either split or stuck around for a few drinks and—until I’d quit—cigarettes, finding out that the people who had danced to your music were pretty much the same, or you went back to the motel. And motels were pretty much the same. When you live on the road, life is a road, and the people you encounter are pit stops.

She looked good to me.

“I hope you don’t think I’m trying to pick you up,” she said. She had fake fingernails, as unrealistic as birds’ beaks painted red and glued to her fingertips. But for some reason, they suited her.

I shrugged. “I’ve got a girlfriend.”

“The girl with the kid who was here earlier?”

I nodded. “Ladonna. With Michael. Eight years old and he’s my most brutal critic.”

“Maybe you’re just a wimp, or you haven’t run into that many critics.”

I laughed. “Oh, I’ve known a few. I think he prefers more modem stuff. And I’m not his father.”

“She’s really pretty.”

“She is. She’s got to work tomorrow.”

“You probably sleep till noon.”

“You’re a good detective. What are you working on?”

She smiled that half smile. The way it bared her eyeteeth suggested a possible cruel streak. Or maybe she was just trying to keep from smearing her teeth with lipstick. “I heard there’s a party. It looks like this one’s winding down.”

“I don’t know.” I looked over at the bartender. She was running a rag over the bar with a look of finality. The beer chests were padlocked.

Retha Thomas pointed at the cigarette I held close to my lips. “You gonna have a relapse? Light one up for old times’ sake?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s a jam session going on at the party. I heard that the band down at Antone’s was gonna head over there after their gig.”

“Eddie Shaw and the Crows?”

She nodded. I hadn’t jammed with the Crows in almost a year. Over in the comer, Leo had just told a bad joke. People were laughing anyway.

“Let’s go,” I said.

&&&

I put my bass in the trunk of her rented Ford and we went to the party. It was in a three-story house in Travis Heights, a rolling, shaded section of town just south of Town Lake. It was also no more than a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment on South 1st Street. Something to bear in mind, I thought, as we entered the raucous throng in the foyer. Disco music blared away at ear-splitting levels.

We wormed our way through the crowd, trying to sniff out the liquor supply as we were carried along by the noisy current of hot flesh, twanging voices, smoke, and sloshing drinks. Before long we were out on the patio in back. A band was playing. The next thing I knew I was yanked up onto a makeshift stage. A clunky Japanese bass guitar was thrust in my hands, and Eddie winked at me and played a riff in
E
and the rest of us kicked in. The night air was heavy, and with the crowd hemming us in on all sides I was soon blowing pearls of sweat off the end of my nose. I don’t know how many songs we played. Some were Wilson Pickett songs, which I did not mind in the least. Some were mindless three-chord party jams, and those were OK too. After thirty minutes or so, a bass player I recognized got too close to the stage and I shoved the bass in his hands. I hopped off the platform, straight into the hot and sweaty embrace of Retha Thomas.

It was like an electric shock.

We clung. Two sweaty bodies colliding together will sometimes do that. She’d been dancing. I gave her a salty kiss. At first it was just a mindless thing, a reaction to our sudden collision, but then it took on a mind of its own, plunging deep and long as the humid mass of humanity pulsed around us. For a few seconds we were somewhere else, in a cheap motel room in a naked, sweaty knot—then a couple of drunks jostled us and we broke apart. I took her arm and we made our way through the dancing mob, back into the house, back into the disco music. I tried to avoid her gaze and brush off the sudden eruption of passion as just one of those things, but it was a halfhearted effort at best. My body throbbed for her.