by Larry Brown
She stopped what she was doing for a moment and looked up and said, “Just come right on in.” Then she went back to what she’d been doing. The man was gibbering some stuff and his legs were shaking. Reena shut the door.
“Sorry about that,” she said. There was a door at the end of the hall and she weaved toward it. “Let’s go out here. Give her a few minutes. Get done with her hum job there.”
Fay followed, not too fast. Reena opened the door and stepped out.
“Hand me that brick right there,” she said, and took a sip from a flask that must have been in her pocket.
Fay looked around.
“Where?”
“Right there against the wall.”
Fay looked where she was pointing and stopped to pick up the brick.
“Put it right there, block that door so it won’t lock. This door always stays locked. Keeps anybody from coming in the back side while everybody’s up front.”
Fay knelt and put the brick down and Reena let the door close against it. There were some lawn chairs leaning against the back wall of the building and she unfolded two of them and set them down.
“Just sit down,” she said. “She’ll be done in a little bit and I can get my clothes. She stays so damn busy. You ain’t got another cigarette I can bum, have you?”
Fay opened her purse and dug them out, handed one over, lit it for her. They sat down and looked out toward the water. Out across the black expanse of night and sea and distance came a low sad horn, a long note that hung in the air and gradually faded to nothing. Fay could see dim lights, specks in the night that was the world out there for somebody.
“What’s those lights out there?” she said.
“Oil rigs. They’re all over the Gulf out there.”
Fay was silent and they sat in silence. It was a few minutes before she noticed that Reena had dropped her head down on her chest and that she was crying. She sat watching her but made no move to comfort her. After a while Reena raised her face and wiped at her eyes with the hand that held the cigarette and then a door slammed inside. Reena sat there. Another door slammed and then she stood up.
“Okay,” she said. “We can go back in now.”
Fay got up and stood there while Reena refolded the lawn chairs and put them back where they had been. She opened the door and kicked the brick out of the way and they went back in. The dressing room was empty now. Reena shut the door behind them and locked it. She came to Fay and tried to kiss her but Fay turned her face away and took it on her cheek and then Reena stepped back, tears leaking from her eyes and her eyes swimming in those tears, and then it was over. Fay’s knees shivered and she shook inside.
A dressing table was there with three chairs and three mirrors with small bright bulbs up and down their sides. Makeup kits and hair-brushes and tubes of lipstick were scattered across the surface of the table.
“Go ahead and sit down while I get dressed,” Reena said. She slipped loose the belt around her waist and threw her shoulders back and she stood naked there in front of her. Fay tried not to look, but it was too easy to see that there was a bruise on her thigh like an egg and on her left arm, high up, near the shoulder, an even bigger one than that. Reena reached for some clothes hanging on a rack nearby. Back in a corner was a bed, the covers rumpled. Off past that was a tiny bathroom, the door open so that Fay could see part of the commode. She kept her hands in her lap and tried not to watch Reena get dressed. Through the thin wall she could hear the beat of the music out front and the dim shouts of the men surrounding the stage.
“How late’s this place stay open?” she said.
Reena was trying to balance on one foot long enough to get the other foot through the waistband and into the leg hole of her red panties. She had to lean over and get a hold on the table for a moment.
“Sometimes it stays open all night,” she said. She got that first foot in and turned and rested her butt on the lip of the table and poked the other foot through and pulled them up high on her waist. She reached for the red brassiere.
“Long as those suckers are paying money they ain’t gonna shut the door. Help me fasten this,” she said, and she moved backward toward Fay, holding the cups onto her breasts, the straps over her shoulders and the back of it hanging down. Fay reached up and found the catches and pulled them together and fastened them. The bra was too small for Reena and the fabric cut into the flesh of her back.
“Thanks,” she said, and she wobbled over and picked up her blouse and put it on and started buttoning it. “Is there anything to eat at home?” she said.
“There’s some bologna and eggs and stuff.”
“How about milk? Those kids’ll need some milk in the morning.”
“I don’t think there’s much,” Fay said.
“We’ll stop by the store. Get a few things.”
“Okay.”
Reena pulled on a skirt and with her toe fished a pair of brown flats from under the edge of the bed. She sat down in a chair beside Fay and looked into the mirror.
“Damn,” she said. “I look like I been rode hard and put up wet.” She looked a little longer and said, “Shit. Like the hind wheels of hell run over me.”
Fay didn’t say anything. She watched her pick up a brush and run it through her hair a few times. Last of all she picked up the tallboy and drained the last few drinks from it. She tossed the can and got up.
“Let’s go. I got to get my purse back from Aaron.”
Fay didn’t much want to hear that, but she figured she could go on out to the parking lot and wait. She got up and followed Reena out the door and back up the hall. It looked like a few people had left when she went back by the bartender, who was sitting on a stool by then and reading a magazine. He didn’t look up.
The music was still playing but the volume had lowered some and there wasn’t anybody on the stage now. She could see some of the girls who had been dancing earlier at tables near the front and talking to some of the men and drinking.
Aaron was sitting on his stool and Reena went to him and put her hand on his knee and said something to him. He looked at Fay and then leaned over sideways and reached his hand out and got a purse and gave it to Reena.
Fay could feel the big man’s eyes on her but she didn’t want to look at him. For something to do she got a cigarette out of her purse and lit it. She glanced toward Reena and saw that she was still talking to him and that he was shaking his head, not like he was mad, just disagreeing with her over something. She wished Reena’d come on. She was ready to get out of here and get some sleep. And already she was hungry again.
The door opened. Two men came in and looked around and headed toward the bar where she was standing. By now Reena was between the big man’s opened legs and he was slowly rubbing one hand up and down her back, his head turned and his ear in close to her mouth to catch what she was saying to him. He must have liked what he was hearing because he smiled and nodded. Fay found an ashtray sitting on the bar and pulled it closer to her. The bartender closed his magazine and left it on his stool when the new customers leaned on the bar. They both looked at Fay and then one of them bent toward the bartender and she heard him order a bourbon and Coke and a beer. She turned away and hoped they’d leave her alone. But that wasn’t to be. The one closest to her stepped over and put his hand up on the bar close to where hers rested, holding the cigarette.
“You work here?” he said.
She shook her head and looked away. “No,” she said.
“Why don’t you let me buy you a drink.”
She turned her face to him.
“No thank you,” she said. “I’m ready to go.”
He picked up his wrist and held it close to his eyes, mock surprise showing on his face.
“Go?” he said. “Why fuck baby, it ain’t but eleven-thirty, what’s your big hurry?”
“I ain’t in no hurry. I’m just ready to get out of here.”
The bartender put the drink in front of him and he reached
for it and took a sip. The other guy was paying, counting bills out and putting them on the bar.
“Say you don’t work here?” the guy said again.
“No.”
“I be damn. I could have swore I’d seen you up on that stage before. Shaking your titties and all.”
She flung her hair off her face and whirled to face him.
“I don’t know you, mister. And you ain’t never seen me up on that stage.”
He took another sip of his drink and said, “Well hell, all you whores are all alike. Long as a man’s spending money on you you’ll talk to him.”
“Why don’t you just leave me alone,” she said.
“Why don’t you suck my dick? I’ll give you fifty bucks but you got to swallow.”
She couldn’t say anything for a few seconds.
“I got fifty dollars right here,” he said. He was digging into the front pocket of his pants and he pulled out a roll of money. “We’ll just go out to my car and you can do it in the parkin lot.”
He put the money on the bar while she stared at him.
“You better quit,” she said. “You better stop talking to me that way.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and moved closer. She could see that he was drunk, could smell the whiskey on his breath now, could see his eyes tinged with red and the stubble of beard that had darkened his chin. She tried to pull back from him but he was strong. He was smiling at her.
“What you gonna do about it?” he said. His fingers had started moving toward her breast when another hand slid over from behind her and locked onto the one that was touching her. It was instantaneous. The man squeezed his eyes shut and showed his teeth and dropped his drink on the bar. The glass turned over and spilled, ice and Coke and whiskey all running back across the dented wood and dripping off the other side. She moved out from under it as the hand lifted from her shoulder and she turned to see the man in black standing there. She could see now that he was crushing the other man’s hand in his, that the man’s knees were going out from under him, that he was shaking his head and gritting his teeth and trying to form some words. But Aaron just kept leaning in and squeezing the hand and the man who was on his knees by now couldn’t say anything at all. His friend was standing behind him with his face white and getting whiter. She heard what Aaron said when he leaned in even closer. It was almost a whisper, but the music had stopped now and so she heard what he said: “Why didn’t you leave her alone when she told you to?”
The man on his knees couldn’t or wouldn’t say. He just kept shaking his head and now Fay could see the tears pouched that had started to squeeze out between his pinched eyelids. And worse, she could hear the bones breaking in the man’s hand. Tiny crackings, the ends of his fingers turning purple. She saw the dark stain spread on the front of his tan slacks when he wetted himself. And still Aaron squeezed him, bending lower and lower, not smiling, just looking into the face going lower and lower until the man was stretched out on the floor with only his hand extended as if Aaron was in the act of helping him up.
“Motherfucker must not a seen the sign!” Reena squealed behind her, and laughed wildly. She was leaning against the wall. She’d gotten another beer from somewhere and was drinking it.
Fay touched Aaron on the shoulder. She didn’t think about what she was doing. She just touched him. His face jerked sideways and she saw the anger flash in his eyes but in a second or two it died away.
“Please,” she said.
“What?” Aaron said.
“Please let him go. I think he’s learned his lesson.”
Aaron straightened a little but he didn’t release his hold. He was looking at nobody but Fay. And then he turned his face back and stared down at the man and seemed surprised to find him holding on to his hand, sobbing quietly on the floor.
“Yeah,” he said, and started to come back from wherever he had been. “I guess he has.”
He turned him loose then. He straightened fully and swept back a lock of his red hair that had fallen across one eye and put his back to the bar and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Be nice or leave, motherfucker,” Reena said, and took another drink of her beer. “Let me have a cigarette, Fay.”
People were going out the door in twos and threes, the door shutting behind them. Some of the lights started to come on in the room.
Aaron nudged the man with his foot, prodded his shoulder with the toe of his white cowboy boot. But it was the man’s friend he spoke to.
“Get him out of here,” he said. “Don’t bring him back.”
The other man turned up his beer and let it stand upside down against his mouth until he had drained it. He set the empty on the bar and said, “What about me?”
Aaron didn’t take his eyes off the man in the floor.
“You didn’t do nothing. I reckon you can come back.”
And then he turned his back on them and went along the bar and over to where Fay was standing. He touched her on the shoulder, just the lightest pressure on that little bone just under the skin.
“You all right?”
She looked up at him. His hand was still very light on her shoulder and she liked it. A man like this could take pretty good care of you, she figured.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Nothing hurt but your feelings?”
“That’s all.”
“Well,” he said, and took away his hand. “Some people ain’t got any manners. Some of em don’t understand but one thing.”
“Thanks for taking up for me.”
“Anytime.”
He turned then and put one hand on the bar and scooted a stool up beneath himself and watched the man’s friend trying to get him up out of the floor. Fay watched too. It took a while. The man was still crying and he was holding the broken hand with the unbroken one. He got up on his knees with his friend helping him and wiping at his face sometimes with the unbroken hand and then he was on his feet and his friend was helping him toward the door. But he looked back suddenly and it seemed he suddenly had murder on his mind.
“Don’t say nothing,” Aaron said. “Arthur,” he said. The bartender must have been waiting for him because the shotgun came sliding across the bar, through the puddle of Coke and ice and whiskey butt first and it slid into Aaron’s hand and Fay looked at it as he swung it over the bar and into his lap and held the stock again his belly with his hands holding it by the pistol grip and the shortened barrels. It was a nasty-looking little thing, the side-by-side barrels only a foot long.
“Just in case you want to talk about it some more,” he said to the man with the broken hand.
The man just shook his head and he and his friend went on out the door.
“Sometimes they want to talk about it some more,” Aaron said. He sat there for a while, just watching the door. Some more people went out and more lights came on. It was if somebody unseen was switching them on by remote control. The shotgun never moved, never wavered. Then they heard a vehicle start up outside, saw the sweep of headlights past a window, heard the sound of it diminish out toward the road. When he got up from the stool and handed the shotgun back to the bartender who turned and stuck it under the counter again, Fay saw at the small of his back the ivory grips of a pistol tucked tight against his black leather belt.
“Shut it down, Arthur,” he said. “We’re gone.”
It took Fay a minute to realize that she and Reena were leaving with him.
A SHONEY’S WAS up the beach three or four miles and now they sat at a booth with plates of eggs and sausage and biscuits and cups of coffee. He was on one side of the booth and she and Reena were on the other.
“You feeling better, Reena?” he said.
She was sipping coffee and orange juice and he’d made her eat a few pieces of bacon and some fruit. Fay was working on her eggs and she’d found some blackberry jelly on the buffet bar and she had a tall glass of cold milk and she was smearing the jelly on her biscuits.
“Not r
eally,” Reena said. “I was just about drunk.”
Fay hadn’t said much, had mostly listened to them talk about the bar and then somebody named Gigi but it looked like Aaron got mad because his face turned red and Reena shut up about whoever she was. She thought it best to just be quiet and listen. But he kept looking at her, little glances she couldn’t miss. He’d helped her fix her plate and said things that made her laugh and she’d watched him slip the pistol from his waistband and hide it under the seat of the El Camino he drove. She could see it through the window where she sat, a dark dark red, some kind of fancy shiny wheels, two chromed pipes out the back that had rumbled whenever he’d stepped on the gas.
“I need some more,” he said, and got up. “How y’all?”
“I’m fine,” Reena said.
“I’m about full,” Fay said.
“You better eat some more.”
“I might get me some fruit in a minute.”
He walked away with his plate and Reena leaned into her, holding her cup at her mouth.
“What you think about him?” she said.
Fay picked up some more eggs and some sausage with her fork. She thought about the way he had slammed those two guys’ heads together and what he had done to the man who’d been bothering her.
“Well,” she said. “I’d say he don’t take no shit off nobody.” She bit into the biscuit and scooped some more jelly from her plate. She turned her head a little and could see part of him on the other side of the steam table, his black pants and the bottom of his black shirt moving along slowly, his hands reaching out for more eggs, the spoon he held in his thick fingers.
“He takes care of us,” Reena said. “He don’t let nobody mess with us.”
“What do you mean?” Fay said. She didn’t understand about the girl she’d seen on her knees with that man in her mouth. “What about that girl we saw?”
“You mean the one who was giving that guy the blowjob? Cheryl? I mean you do know what a blowjob is, don’t you?”
“I know what a blowjob is,” Fay said.
Reena was looking at her with some interest now, the beginnings of a small grin playing about her mouth.