How the Hula Girl Sings

by Joe Meno

  “Gimme a pack of Viceroy Golds,” the red-faced kid stammered. I gave a little smile, lifting my head off the counter.

  “How old are you, pal?” I asked. He couldn’t have been any more than twelve or so. He licked some sweat from his upper lip.

  “Eighteen,” he lied, digging his fists around in his pockets.

  “Eighteen? You got some sort of ID?”

  They kind of looked at each other.

  “Nope.” The freckled kid frowned.

  “You’re gonna tell me you two are both eighteen?”

  They both nodded slowly.

  “Can’t sell ’em to you boys. Sorry. Wish I could. But I don’t wanna lose my job. I happen to know there’s a cigarette machine at the diner down the street. Maybe you can scare some up there.”

  “Thanks a lot, asshole,” the little red-faced kid mumbled. Him and his pal walked on out, swinging the door closed without another profane word.

  The next day at the gas station, I couldn’t get Dahlia out of my head. I straightened out a rack of snack cakes and fruit pies trying to keep my hands busy. A big, wide-faced trucker in a cowboy hat came in to buy three or four nudie magazines and gave me a good wink as I slipped them into a brown paper bag.

  “More discreet that way,” I mumbled.

  “To tell you the truth, son, my wife prefers me reading these nudie books to getting screwed behind her back. Nothing worse than a dishonest spouse, I’ll tell you.”

  I nodded.

  “Hell, I knew a man down the way from here, Diamond Lou Feltis, a hog man. He had himself a pretty little wife, few kids, a plot of land, nothing too expensive, but everything was real nice and sweet. Well, this fool took to fooling around with motel whores and then he lost it all for lust. Someone’s husband came after him with a shotgun and leveled off his head while he was in bed with some other guy’s wife. There was so many pieces of his brain and head and face left stuck in that wall, his sweet wife had them bury a piece of the wall. Saddest thing you ever seen. Burying a yellow-wallpapered part of the wall like that.”

  I gave a low whistle and shook my head.

  “Nearly got killed for the same thing myself. Used to see a lady every Thursday for a drink and some pool and a nice romantic interlude at her house while her husband was at work, and one day he came home and found the bed was unmade and nearly chopped off her damn head with a butcher’s knife. Wouldn’t have blamed him if he came after me. Don’t think there are things worse than cheating on your wife. Not even murder. Hell, if you murder a man, he’s dead. Don’t feel any more pain. Break someone’s heart, well, that kind of heartache goes a long way. Might as well just shoot ’em dead so they can’t feel any more pain. Nothing I can stand worse than a dishonest man.”

  “Amen to that,” I said.

  The cowboy patted me on the shoulder, then gave a big, greasy-toothed smile. “I like you all right, boy. Look a little wanton, but I can tell you got a good heart. Stay the hell out of unmade beds.”

  I rang him up for ten gallons of diesel fuel, a bag of corn chips, and three magazines.

  The next day, I met with my parole officer, a man named Billy Blakes, from Colterville, who drove on down and had me sign some papers. He was his own little picture of defeat. He was a short, balding man with brown hair and thick glasses, but a thick man, a man who might bust your nose with one stiff blow if properly pissed off. He talked quiet as hell. He gave me a little interview, asked me if I had been involved in anything illegal since my release, asked me how I was adjusting, if I needed anything. He didn’t seem to have much hope for me, and I sure as hell wasn’t a hardened criminal. He had probably seen a thousand cons like me get released, then fall off the straight-and-narrow and end up back in the pen. You couldn’t blame ol’ Billy. He was working against a thing as undeniable as human nature.

  “Please, Luce, if you run into any problems, give me a call. How’s the job working out?”

  “Fine, Billy, fine,” I said.

  “OK. And the living situation?”

  “Just fine.”

  “You’re staying away from the booze?”

  “Best as I can,” I told him.

  “That’s all we ask.” Billy smiled. “That’s all we ask.”

  “Billy, can I ask you something myself?” I said.

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “How come you talk to me like you’re wasting your breath?”

  Billy rubbed the white bald spot on the top of his head and frowned. Some light made a halo right above that crown. “I generally am wasting it, I guess. There’s not much hope for people to change the way they are.”

  “Sounds mighty uplifting.”

  “I’m not here to inspire, Lemay, I’m here to keep you outta jail. Go to a goddamn priest if you wanna be lied to. I’ve seen too many of your kind slip back inside to fool myself. If you wanna think you’re a new man, hell, that’s fine. But don’t think you’re looking any different in anyone else’s mind.”

  I put out my cigarette and shook my head. “Any of your cons ever take a swing at you?”

  Billy Blakes made a real smile this time and leaned in close. “Just once, Luce. Just once. Had him back inside so quick his goddamn head spun right off. Think he’s still making license plates down in Marion, if my memory serves me right. Why, you feel like taking a swing at me?”

  “If I thought I’d knock anything good loose.”

  Billy grinned and patted me on the back. “You got heart. I’ll give you that. Dumb as a stump and doomed as hell, but you’ve got heart.”

  After that, I had the rest of the afternoon off, so I walked into town and had a sandwich at the Starlite in hopes of catching a sight of Charlene, but she was nowhere around, then I walked around town some more, and somehow I ended up over at this pink house. Right there, I decided I ought to just give in to all my poor lusty dreams. It wasn’t a thing I could fight. It was something wicked and burning inside of me.

  Dahlia and Favor Muller’s house was a big white one with nice pink awnings and pink trim. It all looked like a nicely iced kind of confectionery. There was no car in the drive. No kids playing out in front. I burdened up my lust at the bottom of the stairs and walked up to the white front door. I pressed my finger to the doorbell and held my breath.

  The door opened and Dahlia stood there grinning with her hand over her ample chest.

  “Ask and you shall receive. Isn’t that what the Good Book says? Just tell me this isn’t a dream.”

  Dal was wearing this pretty little blue number, this blouse that stopped just short of her belly and a matching blue skirt, showing off her middle and her bare legs. I felt myself get nervous. I felt my hands get wet with moisture and my throat grow dry.

  “Do you mind if I come in for a drink?” I muttered.

  “I thought you’d never ask.” She smiled with a little mischievous wink.

  Dal opened the screen door before I really knew what I had just said. I stepped inside and looked around the front room. The first thing I noticed was the sofa. It was red, covered in clear vinyl or plastic, pretty large, set up against the wall. It had been on a couch like that where I had first kissed Dahlia, innocently or not so, I guess, just a kiss on the cheek when we were sixteen or so. It had been there that I had sealed my own fate. I was going to make the same hopeless mistake. Believe what this honey-toothed woman said. Believe all the things she laid so gently at my ear.

  “Where’s your husband?” I asked.

  “At work. Where every husband should be. Collecting trash.”

  Dal sat down on the sofa, spreading her skirt over her bare, creamy legs. They were genuinely creamy. Everything about her was pretty creamy.

  “Luce, I just need to get something off my chest.”

  I stared into her blue, blue eyes, wondering if it was not her blouse.

  “I just need to tell you how sorry I am for putting you through all of that. I mean, the eloping and not being pregnant and all that.”

  I looked her
in her white face. It had all been a lie. The worst one I had ever heard in my whole life. It was a thing that would not go away with a simple little apology. Poor Dahlia had told me she was with child. Pregnant by me, sure as hell. Dal told me if I didn’t elope with her and skip town, then she’d go see the doctor in Colterville and get the problem fixed. Just like that. So I didn’t have any real choice to make. I loved her and I loved the kid that wasn’t even born, so I made off with the returns of the liquor store. But then there was the accident, and the trial, and me going to prison, and then after three months she finally told me it had all been a lie. Nothing more than a way of getting me to marry her and take her out of a town she had hated more than anything in the world. But it was too late. Three months of dreaming about having a child of my own. Watching the way Dahlia’s belly never seemed to grow when she came to the prison to visit. Worrying myself sick that the poor little baby was ill somehow. Worrying that it would grow up wrong having its daddy sitting in prison.

  “I’m sorry for all the pain I caused you.” Dal sighed, pulling my hand against the side of her face. “I still love you so much. You have to know that. I love you more than I could love any other man.”

  Dal tilted her head to the side, closing her eyes. This meant she was ready to kiss. I felt my mouth go dry right away. Dal flashed open her blue eyes. Boy, she really had pretty eyes, they were deeper blue around the irises, cool and delicate, they weren’t set too close together or too far apart. Dahlia patted the blank, empty sofa space beside her. I nodded and sat down. She placed her tiny white hand over my knee, leaning in close.

  “I just knew you would come. I knew you could forgive me. I knew you would.” She smiled, unbuttoning her skirt. I caught a quick glimpse of her smooth white flesh and the unholy tight blue panties beneath. I always liked the way that looked. I could paint a dozen goddamn masterpieces of “Girl in Panties.” I don’t know why, maybe it was the mystery of it all, but seeing Dahlia in her underdrawers would always be enough to make me fold.

  She had been waiting for this kiss a long time. I could feel it along her lips. She had dreamed of me coming back. She had been waiting for the kiss for almost three years. There was nothing but the tingling of her own lust against my skin. But there was no ardor there that belonged to me. No tenderness that made me want to open my eyes and stare into her unloving face.

  Another lady held my heart in her hand. Charlene.

  Then I could see all the lies that Dal had told me written somewhere upon her sweet skin. All the dishonesty and guilt seeping out of her flesh. And I knew something else, something clear as a bell. I had never forgiven her for all the things she had said.

  “Dal,” I whispered, “I can’t.”

  “He won’t be home for hours. He’s out with the trash.”

  “It isn’t Favor, it’s me. It’s me. It’s someone else. I can’t get her out of my head.”

  “What? But you can have me … right here … right now …”

  “I know. That’s the trouble with it all. My heart isn’t here. I think somewhere deep inside I can tell I don’t like you very much.”

  “Get out,” Dal muttered. “Get out!”

  I shot up from the couch, tripping over an end table, smacking my head on the couch. I stumbled out the front door as Dahlia began throwing things at me.

  “You bastard!” she shouted. She pegged me with some stupid glass poodle, still baring only her underpants. The poodle cracked into a dozen pieces against the back of my head. I tripped down the front stairs and out to the street. I didn’t notice until I was down the block that I was smiling. I felt blessed as hell all of a sudden. All of a sudden I knew how bad I wanted Charlene. All I could do was smile about it and whisper her name to myself again and again in surety.

  knot in the flesh

  A lonely drifting heart may find another of its kind to moor. That’s what I was hoping for, at least. A delicate rope to keep me from floating adrift.

  Viceroy cigs 1.50 pk

  unfiltrd and penitent

  as an only wish

  At night, I stared out the dull glass windows up into Junior’s electric sign. I began to close the gas station a few minutes early when these kids, these really young dirty-faced kids, came in. They had their blue baseball hats pulled down halfway covering their faces, their eyes looking at their feet. They weaseled up to the counter and stared me right in my eyes. This one kind of red-faced kid with freckles and red hair nodded at me. The other one with greasy black hair and real pink lips dropped the money on the counter.

  “Pack of Viceroy Golds,” the kid with freckles whispered, staring down from the blackness beneath his baseball hat.

  I smiled, shaking my head. “You got ID?” I asked.

  “Nope,” the kid mumbled, not moving away from the counter. I looked down into that red-faced kid, right into his little eyeballs, and shook my head.

  “Sorry, kid. I already told you. Try some other place.”

  “Man, don’t be a dick. Just give us the smokes.”

  “Get the hell outta here before I come around the counter and brain you both.”

  They shook their heads, hitting each other in the arm.

  “Asshole!” the red-faced kid shouted. He slammed the glass door closed, still swearing and shaking his head. I smiled and came out from behind the counter and locked the doors, then closed down the station, cleaning and restocking, switching off the lights and pumps. I turned the signs off and folded my blue Gas-N-Go hat and slipped it in my rear jeans pocket. Then I stepped outside into the warm blue night. The night was sweet and clean-smelling like a prom bouquet. I just stood there for a second and smiled, staring up at the sky.

  “There he is!!” someone shouted from the blackness.

  “Asshole!!!” someone else yelled.

  A big wad of dirt flew through the black night, crossing down, and hit the glass door behind me. I had just cleaned the windows that day. I turned back around, squinting into the dark.

  “Get ’im!!!” someone shouted.

  “Asshole!!!”

  There was another volley of dirt. Three or four clumps smacked the glass windows and doors behind me. One lucky clump caught me right in the forehead, sent from the cover of darkness. I squinted my eyes and peeked behind the dull fluorescent streetlights and saw about a half-dozen little bastards lined up behind the first line of gas pumps, armed with a big gray plastic bucket full of dirt.

  “Asshole!!!” the kids shouted. It was the goddamn cigarette kids. I could see that lousy little red face as another dried clump of dirt caught me in the ear. They all laughed and kept throwing, smacking the glass behind me, haw-hawing through their miserable little teeth and dirty mouths. Then the front of the glass Coca-Cola machine suddenly shattered with shards and bits of rocks and dirt. That was it. I saw that happen and ran right for one of them. He gave a little cry as he froze where he stood, shrinking up in on himself as I grabbed him around his tiny arm. The other kids shouted and took off, leaving this one kid all by himself. It was the one with red hair and splotchy red freckles. His face was so tight and full of fear that he looked ready to cry.

  “Broke the goddamn Coke machine!” I shouted. “Little punk!!”

  “Don’t brain me,” he muttered, his eyes watering with tears. “Sweet Jesus, I’ll come back tomorrow and clean it all up. I swear. It was just a joke. I’ll come back and clean it up and pay fer it to be fixed.”

  I let go of his arm and turned him loose. He ran off into the dark. I stood there for a minute, looking at the mess. There was dirt all over the front windows. Bits of plastic and glass strewn along the front of the Coke machine. I gave a little mumble to myself. It was a mess. There was no way in hell that kid was coming back. It had felt like the right thing to do, turning that kid loose. But there was no way he was coming back. I shook my head and frowned and began picking up the broken glass. I went back inside and got myself a broom and some towels and started whistling to myself to keep from getting mad as he
ll. It took me two hours to clean it up. By then it was nearly midnight. I began to walk down the road, still whistling to myself. A huge white moon hung low and heavy in the sky. The rest of the night sky was black and thin, like a sheet, it slipped around the moon like a nice black frame. It was very beautiful is all I can rightly say.

  Don’t ask me how or why, but I ended up at the Starlite Diner again. I stood outside the joint and stared in through the glossy white glass windows. It was hot and warm. I looked in through a side window, shading the light from my eyes with my hands, and stared inside.

  Charlene saw me and looked up from the shiny white counter, just lifting her head a little. She smiled a low sad smile, like she was forgiving something, then looked back down at her white, white hands. Her brown hair was so curly. It twisted and ran all over her shoulders. She leaned closer against the counter as I walked around the front of the diner and inside. My chest felt weak and heavy all at once. I marched right up to the counter and took a red vinyl seat at the bar without even knowing what I wanted to say.

  “Hi,” she kind of whispered. Her hair smelled so good and heavy and sweet. She pushed some of it behind her ear and leaned closer over the counter.

  “How do.” I smiled, staring down at my hands.

  “Are you going to order anything tonight?” she asked curtly. Her eyes were cold and stinging and brown.

  “No,” I mumbled, giving her an awful look back, still kind of smiling a little.

  “You can’t just come and sit here. You’ll get me in trouble.”

  “Fine,” I grinned, swiveling on the red vinyl stool. “What do I care?”

  “You’re really some sorta jerk, aren’t you? Don’t you have anything better to do than bother me?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “No, not really.” I looked down at my hands as I ran my fingers in big wide circles across the counter. I twisted a paper napkin between them. I poured a tiny mound of salt and began sifting it back and forth nervously. “Jerk,” she murmured with a small smile, rolling her eyes. “What do want from me?” she finally asked.

  I wanted to touch the back of her neck. “Nothing,” I murmured. I looked around the diner. The same trucker with the same red beard was in the same seat. Maybe he hadn’t ever left.