Hidden Palms

by Harry Bryant

  "Why not?"

  "There are some people coming over to the house tonight."

  "What kind of people?"

  "Fun people, silly."

  "Of course they are," I said. Which translated to a party. Which then translated to "don't bother calling tomorrow either." I sighed, and rubbed my left ear. The one Terrance had popped. "I'll try later this week," I said.

  "Okay," she said, and before I could say anything else, the line went dead.

  "Okay," I echoed, and quietly hung up the phone.

  The desk clerk smiled when I returned to the counter. "That was less than three minutes," she said. "I won't charge you." She slid the twenty back across the counter.

  "Keep it," I said.

  She hesitated. "I'm not sure I . . ."

  "Well, I could use another room, I guess," I said.

  "Yes," she said, her face breaking into a smile. "I can take care of that for you." The twenty disappeared off the counter. "The same room as before, Mr. . . ."

  "Bliss," I said. "And no, another room would be fine." I glanced out at the double row of rooms. "Something on the second floor, perhaps?"

  "Second floor it is," she said. "And for just one night?"

  "Make it two—no, three. Three nights."

  "Three nights," she echoed. "I have just the room for you. On the second floor." She glanced over my shoulder. "Is that your car?"

  I looked. "It is," I said.

  "Mustang," she said, almost to herself as she flipped through a stack of paperwork on the counter near her computer terminal. "‘78?" she asked.

  "Pardon me?"

  She found the piece of paper she was looking for, and I spotted my loopy signature on it. "Here we are," she said. "I have all your details from last night. I can put these in the system again."

  "Oh," I said. I looked back at the car again as she started typing.

  "‘76," she said. "It's a 1976 model, isn't it?"

  I figured out what she was talking about.

  "Yes," I said. "It is."

  She nodded. "I still get those two mixed up. The ‘78 and the ‘76. It's the King Cobra versus the not King Cobra styling. Not that yours is either. Just, you know . . ." She trailed off with a bit of a nervous laugh.

  "You know something about cars," I said. Look at me, being clever.

  She nodded. "Yeah, I see enough of them every day. Plus my brother works at the Shell station down the road."

  "You're local," I said.

  She shrugged slightly. "Mostly."

  I let her type for a minute. The top of her head was level with the base of my throat, which made her somewhere around five foot six or so—depending on how sensible her shoes were. Her auburn hair was pulled back into a twist that was bunched up at the back of her head, making her face look more tense and tight than it probably was. She wasn't heavy, nor was she thin. She was somewhere in between, and probably had to eat and exercise appropriately to not fall one way or the other. She wore a silver ring on her right hand, middle finger, but nothing on her left. A silver chain with a tiny cross on it hung on the outside of her lavender blouse, and she had tiny silver hoops in her ears. She was more tan than her office job suggested, and there was some muscle definition in her upper arms. Her name tag read "Dolly," and I wondered if that was short for something else. Like "Babs."

  "Okay, Mr. Bliss," she said as she finished keying everything into the computer. "Will you be paying cash again?"

  "I will." I started peeling bills off my clip. "Can I just pay for all three nights now?"

  Hotels got nervous with cash customers, and I didn't have a credit card, so everything went more smoothly when money changed hands up front.

  "Sure, uh, absolutely, I mean," she said, eyeing the fold of bills on my clip.

  "And, Dolly?" I paused for a second. "Can I call you Dolly?"

  "What? Oh, yes, of course." She laughed. "That's my name, after all."

  "It is," I said. I put money on the counter. "Call me Butch, please."

  "Butch?"

  I nodded.

  "Okay, Butch. I can do that."

  "That's great, Dolly." I finished counting out enough for all three nights. "Can you tell me where the locals go to eat and drink around here?"

  "You mean, like not where all the tourists go?"

  "That's exactly what I mean."

  "We don't get that many tourists," she pointed out.

  "Well, you shouldn't think of me as one, then," I said.

  "I won't," she said happily. She fondled the money for a moment, and seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but then she ducked her head and fussed with the cash drawer instead.

  I looked at the top of her head as she made change. My right knee twinged a bit, reminding me of what it had been doing earlier, and I wondered how much of a headache each of the Terror Twins were having.

  "All right," Dolly said, and she counted out my change on the counter. And then she added a tiny folio with a couple copies of the room key to the pile. "You'll all set, Butch."

  "Thank you, Dolly," I said. I scooped everything up.

  "And you should check out a place called Rye."

  "Rye?"

  "Go that way two blocks, take a right, and it's on your left. It has a green and red front. You can't miss it."

  "I won't," I said. I tapped the edge of the paper folio on the counter for a second. She stared at me, an eyebrow half-raised. I was trying to decide if she was a compulsive restocker or not.

  "This place—Rye—what time does happy hour start?" I asked.

  She smiled. "Four," she said.

  "And what time do you usually get there?" I asked.

  "Four fifteen," she said. Without hesitation.

  Precise, then. But not necessarily a restocker. Good to know.

  CHAPTER 7

  Rye was a converted two-story house with an entire parking lot to itself. The trim was green, and the building itself was red. Made it look sort of Christmasy, but not in a kitschy way. The windows were covered with industrial blinds, but framed with delicate curtains. There was a beer garden out back that was easily as large as the restaurant itself. There were a dozen or so cars in the lot already. I parked my car near an old cottonwood at the western edge of the lot—the sun was edging toward the top branches of the tree—and walked across the hot asphalt to the front porch of the restaurant.

  Inside was dark and cool and noisy. To my left was a hallway that led to bathrooms and a closed door marked for employees only. To my right, a handful of large television screens were mounted in the corners of the main room, which was easily half of the ground floor. A long walnut bar curved along the wall opposite the windows. Behind it were floor-to-ceiling racks of booze, and the racks were broken up by large lamps that blessed that side of the room with warm, yellow light.

  Beer taps were placed at either end of the bar. At the back of the room, a large pair of French doors looked out on the beer garden, and to the left of the doors was an archway that led back to a kitchen.

  There were two pool tables, a dart board, and a quartet of pinball machines. Tables were scattered throughout the room in a haphazard fashion that suggested they had once been set in neat rows, but at least two rowdy weekends had passed since that time, and no one had bothered to line the tables back up. A jukebox off to my left was slowly cycling through the hits of the '80s, quietly jetting out a miasma of nostalgia from a hidden pipe in the back.

  Ah, good times.

  There was a stool near the front door, along with a podium, but there was no one checking IDs at the door, and so I wandered across the room and sat on a stool on the left side of the center of the bar. I was examining the plethora of American-made whiskey when a dark-haired bartender with tattoos snaking down her right arm came up and slid a coaster onto the bar in front of me.
r />   "See anything you like?" she asked.

  I made eye contact and kept it. "How often do customers think you're talking about something other than booze?" I asked.

  "You'd be the first," she said. "Today," she amended when I raised my eyebrow.

  "My faith in humanity remains misplaced," I said.

  She shrugged. "The tips are good."

  "How about the bourbon?" I asked.

  She glanced over her shoulder. "Lots of choices, sport. The expensive stuff is higher up. It'll cost you if I have to get out the ladder."

  "How about you grab me something from a shelf comfortably within reach and pour me a glass," I said. "Neat. Please."

  She stretched for the higher shelf and poured me a generous shot. I took a small sip, and sighed as the warm bourbon coated my throat and dripped a trail of fire down my throat. "That's nice," I said.

  She shrugged. "You asked nicely."

  "It was a rule my mother insisted I learn."

  "Just the one?"

  "The only one that stuck."

  "Still, I'm sure she's proud."

  I took another sip, so I didn't have to respond.

  She got the hint. "Food menu?" she asked, moving on to safer topics.

  "Sure," I said.

  She retrieved a single sheet of paper and left it on the counter next to my glass. "Happy hour starts at four," she said. "But it doesn't apply to bottles on the upper shelves," she added. "So there's no reason to pace yourself unnecessarily."

  "Good to know," I said. I glanced around the room. "This place fill up much at happy hour?"

  "Pretty good," she said. "You passing through this afternoon?"

  "No," I said. "Here for a few days."

  "Staying up on Bell Street?"

  "Is there anywhere else?"

  She shook her head.

  "Sounds like I made the right choice then," I said. "Clerk at the hotel said I should check out this place or some bar near the highway. Called the Ruse . . . ?"

  "The Rose," she said. "Yeah, out by Cat Canyon. Pretty rough place. Compared to here." She nodded toward the bottles behind her. "And definitely not the same selection."

  "I'm two for two, then," I said, lifting my glass and toasting her.

  She smiled as she pushed away from the back counter and leaned against the bar. "I'm Freesia," she said, offering me her hand.

  "Robert," I said, offering her mine. Her grip was cool and courteous. "Nice to meet you."

  "You too," she said. "I'm going to check on some other customers and then come back. You can tell me what looks good on the menu, and I'll tell you whether or not you're right."

  "Ah, the pressure," I said.

  She laughed as she wandered off. It sounded somewhat like her handshake, but there was a note of actual amusement in it somewhere.

  Instead of examining the menu, I looked at the rest of the patrons in the room. There were only about eight of them, scattered around the room at a few tables, and they were interesting enough to keep me from the menu. As I finished my clandestine survey, a door opened at the back of the hall past the arch, and light spilled into the hall.

  A guy walked in, and by the time the door shut behind him, he had disappeared to my left, presumably into the kitchen proper. I didn't think much of it at the moment, but when he came back and paused for a second at the door, listening to someone talking to him in the kitchen, I looked up from the menu. He looked familiar, and it took a second for me to remember where I had seen him. He had been in the passenger seat of the van that had pulled into Hidden Palms a couple of hours ago.

  Freesia was talking with the other bartender, a beefy-looking dude with a crew cut and rolled-up sleeves on his polo shirt, and she broke off her conversation with the bartender and started walking back toward me. I busied myself with the menu, so as to not get caught flatfooted, but she wasn't coming to talk to me. She sailed right on past my spot, and greeted two men who were easing themselves into seats to my left. I heard leather creaking, and I smelled sweat and leather and oil.

  "How are you guys doing this afternoon?" she asked. She followed up with "Beer?" before either of the newcomers could respond.

  They both ordered the same thing, and as Freesia grabbed a couple of pint glasses and started to fill them at the nearby taps, I casually looked over.

  Both of the biker dudes were staring at me.

  "How you doing?" I asked, being neighborly. I raised my glass of bourbon in a polite wave.

  "Good," the shorter of the pair replied. His hair was short too, but he still had the obligatory bushy beard and tattoos crawling out of the collar of his jacket. His face was sun-darkened and his squint was permanently creased into his forehead. "You?" he asked.

  "Can't complain," I said.

  Freesia put two full pints in front of the men, and they picked them up. The taller one drank heavily, his throat pumping beer down his gullet. The second one raised his glass to me before taking a long pull from the foamy glass.

  "You need to see menus today?" Freesia asked.

  "Nah," the one biker said. "We're good, doll."

  Her face froze up a bit, and the line of her mouth tightened. "Four bucks each," she said.

  "We might have another round," the biker said.

  "Still eight bucks for this round," she said.

  The taller biker nudged his companion who put his beer down long enough to dig a crumpled bill out of his jacket pocket. He tossed it on the bar. "He'll have another one," the biker said, nodding to his friend, "but I'm good for the moment."

  Freesia drew another pint before she picked up the crumpled bill. The taller biker finished his first beer, burped noisily, and started on the second. The shorter guy continued to sip his beer slowly, and out of the corner of my eye, I watched him look around the room—mostly as an excuse to check me out a few more times.

  I didn't respond to the attention. It was happy hour, and I was hungry.

  After tossing the bikers their change, Freesia returned to check on me.

  "I'll have the tacos," I said.

  "Beef, chicken, or pork?" she asked.

  "Pork," I said.

  She took the menu and wandered off to place my order.

  In the back, the door opened, spilling light into the bar, and a shape hauled a stack of boxes on a handtruck into the kitchen.

  Kind of late to be delivering groceries . . . I thought.

  "Bitch," the biker said.

  "What's that?" I realized he was talking to me.

  "Our waitress," he explained. "She's not very personable."

  I turned slightly on my stool. "I noticed that," I said.

  He had a bit of a smirk on his face. The patch on the shoulder of his leather jacket showed a snake wrapped around a dagger. There was blood dripping from the dagger, and it looked like the snake was squeezing the blade so tightly that it was cutting itself.

  "Maybe she doesn't like new faces," he said. The smirk became a thoughtful twist of his lips.

  "I was here five minutes before you two," I pointed out. "Which makes me an old friend, relatively speaking."

  "But we might have been here yesterday," he countered. "While this is your first time."

  I tipped my glass in his direction. "You are correct on the latter, which makes it impossible for me to argue counter to the former."

  His companion finished his second beer, belched again, and got off his stool. He glared at me a second, and then stomped off toward the front door and the bathrooms. The back of his jacket had the same logo, only much larger, and along the bottom were the letters "CMFMC."

  "He doesn't like you," the remaining biker said.

  "Was that what he was saying?"

  "You seem like a smart guy. Maybe too smart for your own good," he said.

  "I've heard that b
efore."

  "Smart guy like you probably thinks he knows something about citrus farming."

  "What sort of farming?"

  "Citrus. You know, oranges, lemons."

  "Yeah, I know what oranges and lemons are. I'm not sure why I should give a shit beyond that . . ."

  He took a long drink from his glass, staring at me over the top of the rim the entire time. He belched as he put the glass down on the counter with a loud thunk. He slipped off his stool and came close, sizing me up, and I noticed how clean and tight his tattoos were. They weren't as faded as I would have expected on a leathered lifer. "Be smart," he said ominously.

  His gaze flicked to my right. "Keep the change, doll," he said, and then with a final fiery eyeballing just for me, he walked off. His buddy was waiting by the door, and they pushed out into the afternoon sunlight.

  "What an asshole," Freesia said. She had been hovering nearby, and she went to clear their glasses. Her opinion didn't stop her from pocketing the bills left on the bar.

  "Pretty good tipper for an asshole," I said.

  She leaned against the bar near me, as if she was sharing some intimate secret. "Money doesn't make someone any less of an asshole," she said. "It just makes them think that it's okay for them to act like that."

  I thought about Matesson, and couldn't fault her line of reasoning.

  "You want another one?" she asked. "That asshole is buying."

  I was smart and said yes.

  CHAPTER 8

  Dolly was prompt, and we pretended to not know each other at first. After Freesia brought her a drink, I offered the opinion that she seemed familiar, and she laughed at my ignorance, and then I remembered where I had seen her before.

  She moved over a stool, and we blew past the introductory game that people play at bars, and by the time she finished her first drink, I had learned that "Dolly" was short for "Dorothea," and she had learned that "Robert" was my real name versus "Butch."

  She had added a little bit of makeup since I had seen her last, and while we were waiting for her second drink to arrive, she undid the twist in her hair and ran her hands through it several times.

  I was on my third or fourth drink, which meant I was feeling liberated and loquacious.