Oola

by Brittany Newell

  In peak season, Fishbones served, I’m sure, as the town hub: the dark-paneled hangout looking onto the beach, dishing up fried fish to vacationers made sleepy and chatty and nosy by sun. Fishbones’ claim to fame was its cod and polenta, two glistening golden triangular mounds. The dish was served with a bib that read KISS ME—I’M FISHY! It was, in effect, a gussied-up Bubba Gump with a jazz band on ransom. The furniture was a yard-sale medley of patched armchairs and Oriental-ish rugs; holiday lights were hung around the bar, blinking orange and green and red and blue in a queer calendar of major dates. Little skeletons dangled from one string of lights, bumping elbows with blue Stars of David. The men’s restroom was plastered with Baywatch mementos, and the women’s with posters of every season of Survivor, plus a string of dried chili peppers hung over the sink. The far wall of the restaurant was made of blue glass, offering a 24/7 live stream of the waves’ assault upon the shore. It was in front of this window, on a milk-crate platform, wearing sombreros, that Corny Roy and the Pregnant Seahorses played to an audience of ten, counting me. It was so empty that I could peek into both bathrooms without being questioned or stopped.

  I ordered a lemonade and sat at the bar. The stools were red pleather; the middle-aged bartender was polite but shy. This was clearly a locals-only crowd. She served me my drink, no questions asked, and receded into the shadows, leaning against the sink, eyes fixed on Corny Roy. She looked like she might’ve once dated a Hells Angel before settling down in an RV with a plumber named Hank. I identified her eye shadow, a bit thickly applied, as Blue Monday. I followed her gaze and took in the scene.

  Corny Roy and his band of what looked like dads on vacation were running through the classics with a tightly rehearsed ease: “Autumn Leaves,” “The Very Thought of You,” a smidgen of banter, some Van Morrison, “Summertime,” an Eagles cover, a break. Corny Roy stood at the front, thumbing a guitar, while the Pregnant Seahorses sat on more overturned milk crates behind him. His black hair was gelled and combed into a greaser-esque swoop. During “Hotel California,” he ripped off his sombrero and threw it at the crowd (no one caught it). As a band, they sounded far too good for how dismal they looked. I felt like I was watching a real band warm up, as if they were teasing us with ABCs and, the instant I got up to pee, they’d bust out of autopilot and embark on a soul-stirring rendition of Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” (to the delight of all dads in the audience), during which Corny Roy, still wailing, would have a seizure onstage. Instead, the feistiest they got was during “Summertime,” when Corny Roy, to the surprise of the band, chose to hum the last verse. His bassist smiled for a nanosecond. Their set was an hour and fifteen minutes.

  Watching him, I felt conflicted. It was Le Roy all right; I recognized the hands, which he handled so fluidly, like an air-traffic controller, the long skinny fingers decorated with rings. I recognized the cigarette pants. But something had shaken him. He had the posture but not the concentration. The swagger had calcified; his leather jacket looked tacky. While he was still a very handsome man, there was something brittle about his charm, as though at any moment the spooky gaze and brooding air might reveal themselves, in a shadow cut across his jaw, as syrup-simple sadness, and the haunted look (day-old stubble, red eyes) a response to quite real demons. His body had begun to sag, as is the fate of so many self-professed rock ’n’ rollers. Most noteworthy was the plastic snail in his right ear, unsuccessfully hidden by a curl of hair: a flesh-colored hearing aid.

  They wrapped up their set with a love song: the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There.” “A request,” he said, grinning, and as he sang I saw in his face the old blaze, reduced now to a Zippo light but still able to make heat, the embers of a bad boy who’s grown into a mad man. He had deep-set eyes and a way of looking out of them, with utter calm, that evoked, whether he liked it or not, a sexual assessment; he could be asking for the time and you’d still feel nervous, butterfliesy, awaiting his ultimate verdict: B minus. Or at least this is how I felt when he walked up to the bar after wishing the audience good night—“be kind and be careful,” he’d said with a wink—and ordered a whiskey with impeccable diction.

  The bartender smiled, eyes wrinkling. “Good set.”

  He smiled back, and only I, inches away, saw the effort that it took for him to chuckle, “It’s all for you.” He jerked his head toward the emptying room and she patted his hand.

  “Don’t be a diva.” Her tone told anyone in earshot, as plainly as a weather report, that she loved him but expected nothing in return.

  She set his drink on the counter and receded to the other end of the bar. She watched the empty milk-crate platform as intently as when he’d stood on it. He sat down on the stool next to mine and folded his hands. His rings caught the light as he contemplated his liquor.

  Eventually he said, not unfriendly, “Are you lost?”

  He wasn’t looking at me, but there was no one else that he could be asking. The extreme care with which he said his words, the s and the t in lost pinging against the back shelves of bottles, sent silkworms down my spine—Le Roy.

  I turned carefully to face him. “No.” I swallowed, attempting a neutral expression. “Just passing the time. You guys sounded good.”

  “Pardon?” He indicated the hearing aid with moving composure. “Forgive me,” he said, “but my hearing’s kaput.”

  In a fluster of embarrassment, I scooched nearer. “You guys sounded good.” In my effort to over-enunciate, I spat in his drink. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Oh, thanks. That’s very nice of you.” The deep-brown eyes suggested sincerity. “I bet you didn’t expect a private show, huh?”

  “Lucky me,” I said gently.

  “Lucky you.” He took a long sip. “Ah, well, it’s a quiet night. In a quiet town. The quiet season.” His q’s could cut glass. When I didn’t respond, he peeked at me sidelong. “And you’re the quiet type, it seems.”

  I nodded. “I guess that means I fit in here.”

  “Not really.” He leaned in, and I realized, with a cold thud in my gut, that he was potted. The most graceful drunk I’ve ever seen, Oola had written in her diary. Only the softness of his gaze gave him away; his diction was still perfect, voice still calm, his gestures still contained. But he seemed to be addressing a point over my shoulder. “I mean that as a good thing,” he murmured. “This town is an armpit.”

  “Really?” I said, resisting the urge to turn my body toward him. I kept my legs crossed, one hand on my purse. The bartender watched us from the shadows without turning her face. “I think it’s sorta sweet.”

  He chuckled: rusty hinges. “Sweet?” He straightened up and focused on my face for what seemed like the first time; a flutter of recognition ran over his features, like a rabbit running over a field. “It’s funny,” he said. “But you remind me of someone. A girl I used to know.”

  “Oola.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Oola.” I took a breath. “She’s a friend of mine too.” I played with the latch of my purse, calming myself with thoughts of what lay inside it. “In fact, she recommended this place. She said you were talented.”

  “Really?” A dreamy look loosened his jaw. “She’d never tell me something like that.” He took a long sip from his drink. “We go way back, she and I.”

  I nodded, blood rising. “Me too.”

  “Are you a childhood friend?”

  “Sort of. You?”

  “Well, we dated.” He stared out the big window, a waxy look in his eyes, mercifully distracted from my convulsions. “She might have mentioned me. I went by Le Roy.”

  “Le Roy? Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  I watched his jaw tense. He ran a big hand through his hair, from widow’s peak to nape then back again, as if to zip himself up. “Ah, well, she was cagey about us. She didn’t want her parents to find out. We used to meet up at this restaurant—well, it was really a shack. It was next to an airstrip for private jets. Maybe you’ve heard of it? It was out past
the high school.”

  I struggled to keep a straight face. “Never been.”

  “You weren’t missing much. The whole point was to sit by the windows and watch the planes come in and out. Michael Jackson had his ranch near there. If you could spot him, you got a free piece of pie.” At times, his precise diction made him sound like a rich person, so well traveled as to have no one dominant accent, instead slipping in and out of British, Spanish, French. “I was driving home from the clinic the other night and I happened to pass by it. Or, I should say, where it used to be. The whole thing’s gone now. Not a plane in sight.” He eyed my glass. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “No, thank you.” My heart was whirring. I’d never heard about this shack before. I wanted to beg him to continue, but I was afraid I’d give myself away. I took a long sip from my lemonade, now mostly ice, to collect myself. He was looking at me with what I recognized as a mixture of compassion and dismay, as if we were fellow mourners but he couldn’t quite remember who had died.

  “It must be difficult,” he said.

  “What must be?” I tried to keep my voice upbeat.

  “Seeing her like this.”

  I didn’t understand. I wondered just how drunk he was. I bit my bottom lip. “I’m not sure.” I swallowed. “Is it hard for you?”

  He nodded, and before I could ask him to continue, to tell me what she had ordered at the airstrip shack and what she had worn and how she had taken it off hours later in the air-conditioned safety of his rented room (giddy? Timid? Bound and gagged?), he finished his drink with a flourish and stood. “Enough of this sad shit. Do you want to, like, go watch a movie with me?” His eyes were gleaming weirdly. “You’ll have to drive. I’m fucked.”

  I had no choice but to comply. He was so close that I could smell him, count the comb marks in his greased-back hair, like fork marks left in frosting; I couldn’t lose him now. He marched toward the door. The bartender, cleaning glasses, paused mid-wipe to watch us leave.

  “Good night, Eileen!” he called to her. “Be kind.”

  “Be careful,” she parroted, then returned to her glasses.

  He wasn’t exaggerating about being drunk. As soon as we got to my truck, he slumped forward in the passenger seat, forehead pressed against the dashboard. My God, I thought, resisting a grin. This is almost too easy. I checked to make sure that my weapon was still tucked away, nestled deep in my purse. Then I laid a hand on his back, gingerly, between his right-angled shoulder blades. “You OK?”

  “Pardon?”

  I leaned in to his good ear. “The place where I’m staying is ten minutes away. Nothing too fancy. It has cable, I think.” I wetted my lips. “Why don’t we go there? You can rest for a while. I think the room even comes with a coffeepot.”

  With great effort, he assumed a semi-seated position. He stared at me with bleary gratitude. “We can still watch a movie,” he said, as if to reassure me. Minute by minute, the famous grace was sliding off, like tiles from a roof, revealing something sticky. I tried to remember O’s words on the matter: LR is in one of his funks again, matey matey! was as close as I could get.

  I returned my hand to the steering wheel. “Yes,” I said, nodding. “We’ll find something good.”

  He nodded too, as if we’d settled a deal. He watched himself in the side-view mirror as I drove. “Jesus,” he whispered. The s’s still whipped out, as if he were addressing the savior himself. “I’m despicable.”

  “Why’s that?”

  But he just shook his head.

  When we got to the motel parking lot, he pulled a small woven pouch from his pocket. “Do you mind?” he asked, seatbelt still buckled.

  “No, no.” I waved my hand at him, thinking he was rolling a cigarette. I got out of the truck and lit one of my own.

  “Would you like any?” he called from inside, and I’d said no before I realized he was offering me a bump.

  Skin tightening, I made my way across the lot, high-stepping over diesel puddles, and waited for him by my door. The drugs were something new. I smoked hard and watched him approach. Fucked or not, he cut a nice image from afar, striding forward, barely weaving, with his hands jammed in his pockets. How elegantly do you heave around this mortal flesh? Much more than we admit comes down to this, a question of comportment, and Le Roy, even at his lowest, sure knew how to sling himself: head up, shoulders level, thumbs loosely hooked in his belt loops. Even as that body spluttered, led him far astray, he carried himself so regally that I wondered, for one instant, if he didn’t have his own plans, just as I had plans for him. I can’t lie; the thought excited me.

  “Forgive me,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. His grin was almost boyish.

  “For what?”

  He laughed. “I suppose I don’t really know.”

  Still smiling, I nudged him aside and unlocked the door. I led the way in, flicking on the lights. “Home sweet home,” I chimed falsely.

  Keeping his hands in his pockets, he strode past me and wandered the room with his face tilted up, the way one might wander a cathedral or crash site. He whistled. “Nice place.”

  “Are you serious?” I lingered in the doorway, rooting through my purse as though searching for gum.

  “Of course.” He sat down on the foot of the bed. He tapped his hands on his knees, a musical tic I recognized. “You should see where I live.”

  “Is it near here?”

  “Unfortunately.” He flopped backward and addressed the ceiling. I double-bolted the door. “But it’s not permanent. I’ll be moving along soon.”

  “Where to?” I took this opportunity to dip into the bathroom, purse in hand. “Let me think,” he was saying. I didn’t dare look in the mirror. I had to act quickly. I took the garter out of my purse and slid it up my leg. It snapped into place. I almost forgot to tear off the Goodwill tag. “Somewhere lively,” he tossed out. At the last minute, I decided to keep my heels on. I emerged from the bathroom, trembling only slightly, and minced my meat toward him.

  “It’s yet to be decided,” he said. He sat up and fixed me with a winning smile. “Any suggestions?”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed nearest the door. “What makes you think I would know?” I crossed my ankles. “We’ve just met.”

  “I don’t know.” He had that look again, deeply calm, pupils frosted, as if he was sizing me up. “You seem like you’ve been places.”

  “You seem like that too.”

  He liked this comment; his face filled out. “I have,” he said excitably, leaning in. “If it weren’t for this”—he pointed to his right ear—“I could have been famous. I know that sounds shitty to say, but it’s true.” Panic flashed across his face. “Did that sound shitty to you?”

  “Just a little.”

  “I wish I could prove it to you.”

  “Don’t worry.” I kept my hands in my lap. His heat was making me uncomfortable, the familiar yet toxic smell of leather threatening to mix me up when I most needed to focus. “Have you thought about Berlin?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Berlin. A lot of young people go there.” I reached for the remote. “Maybe this will inspire us.” I flicked on the TV, but he didn’t turn away from me.

  “It’s weird,” he said, and perhaps I was paranoid, but his tone sounded sharp. I needed to remember who was hunting whom. “You seem so familiar. Are you sure we’ve never met before?” He squinted. “Oola never introduced us?”

  “Never,” I whispered, forgetting that he couldn’t hear.

  “Poor old Oola.” In one smooth gesture, he unzipped his jacket and tossed it to the floor. The flamboyance of his emotions unsettled me. “Have you been up to see her?”

  “Pardon?” I turned up the volume.

  He was too fucked up, too engrossed in some upsurge of sadness, to take offense at my tone. His eyes dropped to my collarbones, exposed in the dress. “She says she gets lonely, that nobody visits.”

  I changed the channel. The light change
d to butter. “Visit her where?”

  “At the clinic.” He had that pitying look again, as if he might pat my shoulder, tuck my hair behind my ear. “I figured that’s why you came back.”

  I flicked through channels at a manic pace, struggling to keep calm. “She’s sick,” he ventured, waiting to see my reaction. I kept on clicking. Commercials flashed by, tingeing our faces with violet and orange. “She checked herself in,” he said. “Something’s wrong with her skin, but no one knows why.”

  The light from the TV made the carpet fall out; perched on the bed, we fell sideways, into a tunnel of gadgets and babettes and cornflakes galore. I couldn’t stop clicking. In the fluster of images and vomitous hues—female voices on loop, I-love’s interrupted, American Idols’ O-faces, the strobing school portrait of an Amber Alert (if this face looks familiar, please call…)—I felt like Dorothy ass-up in the twister to Oz.

  “Wait!” Le Roy cried, jolting forward. “Don’t change it!”

  I dropped the remote as if burned. He turned to face me, eyes weirdly bright. “I wrote this song,” he said.

  Boy George’s cover of “The Crying Game” played in the background of an ad for waterproof mascara.

  “Oh, really?” I cocked one brow in an attempt to be funny, but my voice came out cutting. His expression didn’t change.

  “I’m serious,” he said, still staring. He looked like a dog that had caught sight of a rabbit. “I wrote this fucking song.”

  “I believe you,” I said, attempting a soothing tone. Something about his expression unnerved me. He was leaning forward, shoulders tensed, as if ready to spring at me.