by Larry Brown
“Well,” he said. “We get us a hotel, I can call down to Henry’s and see if Mama’s still there. I guess we could drive around some tomorrow. I don’t guess you’ve got any idea where they might’ve headed to.”
“Naw,” she said. “It ain’t no tellin. I just thought it might make me feel better if I just knew I tried to see em somewhere.” She looked down at her lap and then turned her face to him. “We wasn’t much of a family I don’t reckon but I wonder about my brother and my little sister. How they’re doin. You know?”
“We’ll look around some,” he said, and that was it.
He checked them into the Holiday Inn downtown while she waited in the covered drive. He came out with a room key and got back into the El Camino and handed it to her.
“They said it was in the back.”
He’d left it running and he pulled it into gear and drove through a gap in the building and then stopped and looked around at the doors for a matching number.
“Looka there,” she said.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “They got a pool.” He nodded toward the parking lot in back where there was a square of blue water, some kids splashing around in it under the lights. “Well hell,” he said. “Where’s it … there it is.”
He pulled forward between slanted white lines and eased to a stop just short of a low brick wall and shut it off. She was already opening her door and getting out with her purse.
“You want to lock it?”
He considered it, a brief hesitation.
“Well …let me get this.”
He bent inside the vehicle and pulled out the zippered bag and then leaned over the bed and opened his suitcase and dropped the bag in there.
“Okay. You can go ahead and lock it.”
She pushed the button and slammed the door. Her suitcase was lying on the bed and she picked it up when he shut his door. He got the rest of the beer in the cardboard carton and his own suitcase and she followed him over to the stairs and up them. They turned at the second floor and walked past rooms on the left, a railing on the right, down to 216 where she set her suitcase down and put the key into the lock and turned it. She pushed open the door and got the key from it and picked up her suitcase again. He came in behind her and set the beer down. The room was half in darkness for a moment and then he stopped at the table and turned on the lamp. There were two big beds and a low table with a color television sitting on it, a bathroom and open closet at the back.
“Home sweet home,” he said.
“I reckon so.” She let go of her suitcase and kicked off her sandals and crawled onto the bed with her purse. He tossed his suitcase on the other bed and went into the bathroom and shut the door. It was quiet in the room and she could hear the water running out of him into the toilet. It ran for a long time. Then the toilet flushed and he came back out and moved his suitcase to the table beside the TV set. He had a plastic bucket in his hand.
“I’m gonna go find the ice machine,” he said, and he went out, easing the door to so that it wouldn’t lock behind him. She saw the remote lying on top of the television and got up and fetched it, then sat back down on the bed and pulled a pillow out from under the covers and propped it behind her back and looked at the remote and punched a button and the TV came on. Cartoons. She saw arrows on the remote and pushed one of them. News. She kept her thumb on it and ran through the channels, an old Western, a game show, a comedy, nothing she wanted to see. She pushed the button again and turned it off.
It didn’t make any sense to go looking for them. They wouldn’t find them. Even if they did, what difference would it make? What could she say to them that she hadn’t already said?
She heard his steps coming back toward the room and he stepped in and shut the door. He slammed the empty bucket down on top of the television.
“Goddamn place ain’t even got any ice.”
“What’d you want some for?”
“Fix me a drink after I found the Coke machine. I bet this place has a bar.” He walked over to the telephone and looked at it for a second and then picked up the handset and pushed a button. He waited awhile before anybody answered. He talked to somebody and said Thank you and hung it up. “They got a lounge downstairs. Why don’t you put on some more clothes and we’ll go get us a drink or two.”
He started to turn away and was pulling his shirt off when she spoke.
“I thought we was gonna go eat.”
He dropped the shirt on the floor and put his suitcase back on the bed and sat down beside it.
“We are. I want a drink or two first, though. Long drive, you know.”
“It’s past nine,” she said. “How long does eatin places stay open around here?”
She saw him almost lose it and then get control of it. In a gentle tone he said, “Now how would I know, Fay? I’m gonna clean up and get high and then I’m going down to the lounge. A lounge is my favorite environment. If you ain’t noticed. I’m gonna have a few drinks.” He stood up and started taking off his jeans. “You don’t have to go with me if you don’t want to.”
She watched him without speaking. She saw him snatch a towel off a rack of them back there. The bathroom door shut and then the water came on. Well shit. She didn’t want to stay up here by herself.
She got up and unbuttoned a button on her dress and then another one and then a man walking by the window looked in at her and almost stopped. She leaned for the cord and closed the curtain quickly, then took off her clothes and found some more in her suitcase and dressed in them and was sitting quietly at the table when he came out with his hair wet, wearing the towel around him. She didn’t know why he bothered to cover himself up. He didn’t say anything to her and she watched him while he got the little bag from the suitcase and packed the pipe with hash and lit it. He eased down to sit on the bed and she studied his upper body again, the width and thickness of his chest and those arms that caused second glances from people everywhere they went. There was no way Sam could whip him even if he found her. Even if he was looking for her. She was so close to him now. It was only about ten or twelve miles out there.
She watched him smoke the dope and she watched him slide a flat pint of bourbon from the suitcase and she watched him twist the top off and take a long drink of the brown liquor and she watched him load the pipe again and smoke it down until the smoke died away. Then he put everything back into the suitcase and pulled clean folded jeans from it and slipped them on and put his brown leather loafers on and there was a nice pale green shirt in there that he slipped on, a thin belt coiled somewhere that he put around his waist after he tucked the shirt into his jeans. He got all the stuff from the pockets of his other clothes and combed his hair at the mirror in the little alcove off the bathroom. He buckled on a watch from inside the suitcase and patted his pockets to make sure he had everything. He picked up the room key.
“Let’s go,” he said. She got up and followed him, taking only her purse with her. He held the door open for her and she said a quiet Thank you and he pulled it shut behind them and stuck the key in his pocket. The kids had gone from the pool now and the water was smoothing out, only lightly lapping at the edge of the concrete rim that formed it.
They went back down the steps and stepped into the parking lot and turned the corner at the last room. The asphalt court in front was filled with cars and pickups and vans. She was hoping he wouldn’t want to stay long. She was really hungry and she wanted more than anything to just go to bed. He seemed to be in another one of his moods and she didn’t know if she’d be able to talk to him or not. She didn’t know if she even wanted to talk to him or not. Sometimes when he smoked that stuff he talked a little crazy and didn’t make sense about things. Just looking at him right now you could tell there was something wrong with him. But he wasn’t even paying any attention to her. He stopped just short of the door of the lounge and pulled a tiny plastic bottle from his pocket, took off the cap, then leaned his head back and squirted a few drops into the corner of each ey
e.
“What’s that?” she said.
“Visine. Keeps my eyes from getting red. So everybody can’t tell I’m fucked up. Do I look fucked up to you?”
She didn’t know how to answer that. She didn’t want to make him mad. So she lied.
“You look okay to me.”
“All right, then.” He put the cap on the bottle and stuck it back in his pocket and held the door open for her. Inside it was cold and dark with neon lights glowing softly behind the bar and on beer signs hung on the walls. It looked comfortable. There were round tables and over-stuffed chairs scattered throughout the room. A group of people were watching a baseball game on a big-screen TV. Some soft music was coming from speakers set behind the bar and three men and one woman were sitting on padded stools there.
“Let’s just set at the bar,” Aaron said, and he didn’t wait to see what she said but just moved over to the corner and pulled out a stool and sat down. She followed him, pulled a stool out, set her purse down after getting her cigarettes and lighter out.
There was a big black bartender behind the bar and he moved over to them, smiling.
“How you folks doing tonight?” he said.
“Pretty good,” Aaron said.
“What can I get for y’all?”
Aaron thought for a second. “Let me have a double Maker’s Mark and Coke.”
“And you, ma’am?”
Thinking about the baby again she said, “Can I just have a Coke please?”
“Sure can,” the bartender said, and turned away to fix their drinks. Aaron looked at her.
“You don’t want a beer or nothing?”
“A Coke’s fine. I been drinking too much lately anyway. You know.”
“Know what?” Aaron said.
She lowered her voice. “I mean with the baby and all. It’s probly not good for it.” She started to say something else to him about needing to go to the doctor, but again it seemed like this wouldn’t be the right time.
They watched the bartender making Aaron’s drink. After he had it ready he pulled a straw from a box and stuck it into the drink and capped it with his finger. He put the straw in his mouth and tasted what was in it, nodded to himself, took the straw out and threw it away, then put a clean one in it and served it. He scooped a tall glass full of ice and filled it with Coke and set it in front of her.
“Can we start a tab?” Aaron said.
“Sure can,” the bartender said. “Y’all staying here?”
“Yeah. We’re up in two-sixteen.”
“I can put it on your room bill if you want me to.”
“That’ll be fine,” Aaron said, and the bartender told them to let him know if they needed anything. He went over to a popcorn machine and filled a woven basket full and set it between them.
“Thanks,” Fay said, and reached for a handful. She’d had it so few times in her life that it was really a special treat, covered with butter and pretty salty. She ate some more of it and it seemed to make her hungrier. A Heineken clock behind the bar showed fifteen till ten. She figured they probably wouldn’t be able to get anything but hamburgers if they waited much longer. But she could tell that Aaron was very content where he was. He lit a cigarette and swiveled on the stool and watched the ball game for a few minutes. She guessed he didn’t have anything to say to her. It was embarrassing.
She kept thinking about how close she was to Sam’s house. Would it be possible to slip away from Aaron and go back to the room and get somebody to help her find his number and call him? Ask him what was going on, if it was safe for her to come back? She kept seeing that plane go down. That bag full of money and the one full of dope. The way he’d slammed those two guys’ heads together and the sound Reena’s body had made when it hit the floor that morning.
She looked at Aaron from the corner of her eye and he seemed to be moving to some tune he heard only inside his head. His knee was jiggling a little and he was pulling hard on his cigarette. His eyes seemed fixed and glassy on the TV screen. He turned to her suddenly.
“You got a driver’s license?”
“No,” she said. “I never did get one. I was almost ready to try when I left there.”
“I guess your boyfriend was gonna help you get it.”
“That’s right. He was.”
Half his drink was already gone and he turned it up again. She hoped he wouldn’t turn mean to her now about Sam.
“I was thinking you could go get us something to eat if you had your driver’s license.”
“I wish I did,” she said. “I’ve done got pretty hungry.”
“Yeah,” he said, then turned away, finished his drink, and called to the bartender again. In just a few moments he had a fresh drink in front of him. He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray and looked at the bottles behind the bar. He leaned a little closer to her. “I done caught a hell of a buzz,” he said. “I don’t want to be driving around this town where I don’t know anybody. Can you drive at all?”
“Yeah. I can drive. I’ve drove a good bit. I just never did get my license.”
“Think you could drive somewhere and get us something to eat and bring it back over here? Cause it’s too late to find a restaurant open anywhere probably.”
She was sure hungry. But she didn’t know if she ought to do this or not.
“I mean, hell, you could find a hamburger joint or something somewhere. Drive around long enough you could.”
“Well,” she said. “I don’t know. What if they caught me drivin without a driver’s license?”
“Fuck. Just don’t do nothin wrong, they won’t stop you.”
“What if they do and they find that gun under the seat?”
He must have forgotten about that because he leaned back away from her and said, “Oh yeah. Yeah, that wouldn’t be cool. We need to stay cool.”
She didn’t say anything and he turned back around on his stool to the TV, muttering something about definitely needing to stay cool. She wished he hadn’t gotten messed up like this. And if he kept sitting here drinking she didn’t know what might happen.
Nothing happened for a while. They kept sitting there and the clock’s hands moved past ten o’clock. Some of the people got up when the ball game ended and made their way to the bar and paid their tabs and went out the door. Aaron took longer to finish his second drink and then ordered a third one. Her Coke had melted all the ice in the glass and sat untouched in front of her. The bartender asked her if she wanted another one but she just smiled and shook her head. She was so hungry now that it was starting to give her a headache. She remembered that happening to her a lot when she was younger and there was hardly ever anything to eat in the work camps.
“We need to eat,” she finally said.
He swiveled back around on his stool and put his elbows up on the bar.
“Yeah, I know it. You gonna have to go get it.”
And suddenly there it was. Sam had been meaning to let her drive in town some, but they never had gotten around to that. There were still lots of things she didn’t know, like when to signal for a turn and who had the right of way where and she didn’t know anything yet about parallel parking. She knew gas on the left, brake on the right. But she couldn’t let on.
“You goin with me?” she said.
“What you need me for?”
She leaned close to him and whispered, “I don’t want to drive around with that gun in the car.”
He looked from side to side and then spoke to her without looking at her: “Then just take it out of the fucking car, Fay, and put it in the room. Here.” He leaned back and went into his pocket for the room key and the car keys and a crumpled wad of bills. He dropped them into her hand.
She sat there looking down at all of it. She could see the corner of a ten-dollar bill and some fives and ones. It looked like plenty. But he hadn’t said what he wanted. She asked him.
“I don’t care. Anything. A hamburger. I don’t give a shit what it is, I just need to get so
me food in my stomach. Can’t drink on a empty belly, it’ll eat your guts out. That’s what Daddy said.”
She closed her hand around the things he’d given her and slowly got off her stool.
“Well,” she said. “Okay. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to find someplace. You gonna stay here?”
“Yeah. Just stop back by and get me.”
She bent and picked up her purse from the floor and put her cigarettes and lighter into it. She looked around in the room for a moment. The bartender was moving among the tables, picking up empty drink glasses and emptying ashtrays into a small garbage can he carried with him. He looked up and saw her and said, “You ain’t leavin us this early, are you?”
Something about his smile made her smile back, and she walked closer to him.
“I was gonna go get us somethin to eat. You know where there’s some hamburger places around here close?”
“Aw yeah,” he said, never stopping his work, moving along as he talked. “You go out west of town here there’s all kinds of eatin places.”
“Out west?” she said.
He straightened and pointed.
“Yes ma’am. Just go on up to the square and hang a right and keep on goin. Go through, let’s see …” He paused to think. “Bout three or four red lights and you’ll be right in the middle of em. Burger King Burger Chef McDonald’s, all them places.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“You welcome.” He went back to his cleaning and she turned to the door. When she looked back, Aaron was lighting another cigarette and talking to a woman who had come in and sat down next to him.
She pushed open the door and went back into the night. Going across the asphalt court she stuck the money into her purse and kept out the car keys and the room key. Just stick the gun in her purse, that’d be the thing to do.
The pool water had settled now and was reflecting back the lights that were mounted above it. One couple was sitting in chairs close to each other, talking quietly and drinking beer from cans. She could feel them watching her as she went past but when she walked by the brick wall in front of the El Camino they couldn’t see her anymore. She stopped beside the driver’s door and took a good look around. She didn’t see anybody and she couldn’t hear anything but a few cars moving on the streets that ran along the side and front of the hotel. She found the key and slid it into the door lock. The interior light came on when she opened it and she squatted inside the door’s shelter, feeling under the seat for the gun. He had put it in a black nylon holster and she slipped it into her purse and stood up, relocked the door and closed it. She looked around again. There was nobody about.