Red’s Hot Honky-Tonk Bar

by Pamela Morsi

  “Cam, you don’t know all that I’ve been, things that I’ve done.”

  “No, and I don’t care,” he answered. “I’m not going to be scared off by your history with other men. I’m not those other men. And this is not then, it’s now. I believe in living for now.”

  Red shook her head and sighed. “Cam, you are a terrific guy. You’d make a wonderful husband. But I know your type. It’s a great type but it’s not the right type for me.”

  “My type? When have you ever had a clue about who I am?” he asked. “You thought I was a wastrel musician. Then you thought I was a trust-fund kid. Now you just think I’m lazy and lack ambition.”

  “I don’t think you’re lazy,” Red corrected. “I just think…Cam, I understand that you want to save me. That’s not a bad thing. A lot of men like to be the hero that rescues the woman who’s made a mess of her life. But I can’t be the kind of woman who gets saved.”

  “Save you? You think I want to save you?” Cam shook his head and chuckled lightly. “Red, you’re the one I’m counting on to save me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you remember at Brian’s wedding that I told you there were two things I wanted to tell you?”

  “Yeah, vaguely. Once you said the M word, I wasn’t ready to hear anything else.”

  “I had two things that you needed to hear and I didn’t know which one should go first. Frankly, I picked the wrong one. I thought that explaining first that I want to marry you made sense because the other is something I really don’t share with just anybody. It’s not the kind of thing I’d tell a woman who was only my girlfriend.”

  “Okay,” Red replied uneasily.

  “Tasha told you that I got a vasectomy when I was eighteen, right? And I told you it was because I carry a gene for my mother’s disease.”

  “Right,” Red agreed.

  “It’s not just my mother’s disease,” Cam explained. “It’s more like my family’s disease. My disease.”

  Red took a startled breath.

  “My mother died from Huntington’s,” he continued. “So did my grandfather, or at least we think so. Back then, doctors knew so little that he was never really diagnosed. Huntington’s is an inherited disorder caused by a defect in a gene that allows brain cells to die. It’s a pretty awful disease and it has no cure.”

  Red’s brow furrowed.

  “It’s a late-onset disease,” Cam continued. “Most usually, it doesn’t show up until people are forty or fifty years old. By then, people with the disease already have a family. If you have the gene and you have a child, the baby has a fifty percent chance of getting the gene, as well.”

  “And you have this gene,” Red said.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “In 1987 they came up with a genetic test that could tell you if you’re a carrier. As soon as I was old enough to sign for myself at the doctor’s office, I had the test done. When it came back positive, I decided to have the vasectomy.”

  “Because you needed to make sure that you didn’t pass it on to anyone else,” she said.

  “Not exactly,” he answered. “It was more than that. It was taking control of what I could control. Because there was so much that I could not.”

  Red sat beside him in the dim light of the van’s interior and tried to straighten up her world that had so unexpectedly tilted.

  “So you carry this gene,” she said. “But you’re not sick.”

  “I’m not sick today,” he said. “That’s what I try to stay with in my life. You accused me of being the grasshopper who fiddles away all summer instead of being sober and working hard like the ants. I’ve always had a different take on that story. They put it out as if the grasshopper doesn’t survive because he didn’t do what the ants did. But for me, the grasshopper knew that nature did not mean for him to survive the winter. It was his fate to die with the first hard freeze. So why shouldn’t he choose to fiddle as long as he could still hold the bow?”

  The moment was neither silent nor still as the traffic picked up. Red was completely speechless. She could hardly get her thoughts into coherent framework, let alone utter a statement.

  “Every day that I wake up fine is not something that I’d take for granted,” Cam said. “They have treatment for symptoms and there’s research being done, a lot of promise with stem-cell therapies. People have hope on the horizon. But right now, the straight deal is that if I don’t get hit by a bus or shot by a jealous husband, I’m probably going to die of this disease. I’m probably going to die fairly young and it’s not going to be a very easy death or one I’d ask a lesser woman than you to watch. You’re a survivor, Red. You make the best of the worst blows the world can dish out. That’s the kind of woman I need by my side. And I’m a very lucky man to have found that in somebody that I also love.”

  30

  Red was very groggy the next morning, drinking coffee at the bar. She hadn’t gotten much sleep. After picking up Olivia and getting the kids washed up and tucked into their own beds, she’d found Cam still waiting in the living room. He looked as nervous as she’d ever seen him. She hadn’t said anything and she didn’t know what to say.

  He gave her a little peck on the cheek as if he didn’t trust himself to actually kiss her.

  “I’m not going to push you on this,” he said. “I know you’ll give me an answer when you have one. You’ve got the whole story on me now. You know where I’m coming from and what I want from you. Take your time and think about it. Think about us in terms of us. Don’t bring up the past or worry about the future. Try to think about how good we are together now and how much that could bring to both our lives.”

  “I…uh—”

  “Think!” he commanded. “Just think. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow was now here, but having lain awake most of the night, she was hardly in a mood to appreciate it.

  When Cam came breezing in a few minutes later, he appeared to be his usual happy, rested, enthusiastic self.

  “You’re here early,” he said to Red as she poured him a cup of coffee.

  “I called a contractor last week after I signed the lease agreement,” she said. “He’s supposed to meet me here this morning about getting the patio fenced and up to code.”

  He nodded. “It’s good to get that started,” Cam said. “The worst months for the patio were always January and February. If you could get it ready for a big reopening around the first of March, that would be great.”

  Red nodded.

  “What are you looking so sharp about this morning?” she asked him.

  “I’m subbing for a friend who’s supposed to play in a Christmas chamber concert,” Cam answered. “He’s got the flu and I’ve got the gig. Rehearsal starts in a half hour.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “Well, we hope I will,” he joked. “I’ll see if I can get tickets. It might be something the kids would enjoy.”

  They drank their coffee together, as companionably as ever. Red marveled at how easily they could act as if everything was the same, when inside she felt such an intensity of upheaval.

  The contractor showed up right on time. Cam only had time to shake hands with the man and offer Red a hasty wish of luck.

  Outside on the patio, Red tried to restate what she’d already told the contractor on the phone. The man wasn’t interested in a lot more talk. He was a get-down-to-business kind of guy, which Red really appreciated.

  He walked around the patio for more than a half hour, taking measurements, checking angles and inspecting what was there.

  At first Red shadowed him, expecting questions. But the man did what he did silently and without comment. So eventually she wandered to one of the patio tables and took a seat. It was colder sitting than walking around, but her jacket was warm and the chill on her face kept her alert.

  She needed to think about the future of the bar. But the memory of Cam’s voice kept crowding in. And along with that, damning reminders
of things she had said to him. How she’d whined about the uncertain fate of the bar. She winced as she recalled her words.

  How did a person live like that? she wondered. How did Cam muster the courage to get up every morning, not knowing what was going to happen?

  As that thought wound its way through her brain, it caught her up short and she almost laughed. Did she wake up every morning knowing what was going to happen? Did anyone ever really know what the future was going to bring? Not at all.

  Red realized that she’d spent so many years trying to avoid the most dangerous of life’s roads that she’d lost sight of the truth about driving. Nobody gets out of this world alive.

  Cam was completely right. The river that used to calm her hectic life was to be an amusement ride for tourists. The business that she poured all her time and energy into would someday be gone. And she and everyone she ever knew or loved would someday be nothing more than dust.

  But that day wasn’t today. Today, the sun was shining, her grandchildren were in school learning, the bar was scheduled to open on time and the guy she loved was still in love with her.

  It was almost selfish to expect anything more.

  The contractor sat down across from her at the table. He spent several minutes writing things down, comparing notes and making calculations before he finally spoke.

  “I’d want to make some more calculations before I put it all in writing,” he said. “But I can give you a pretty close estimate of what you’re looking at here.”

  Red and the contractor talked for several minutes. They walked around the patio together. Finally, they shook hands and agreed to speak again later.

  She walked him back through the bar and unlocked the front door to let him out. Checking her watch, she decided it was close enough and proceeded to getting the lights on and the place completely open for business.

  The phone rang. It was Sarah, wanting to hash out the rest of Winter Festival in Daniel’s class. Red wrote down where she was supposed to be and when. Then mostly she just half listened as Sarah gave her details about the particulars that Tasha had insisted upon, as well as Sarah’s personal opinion of those choices.

  “Shootfire!” Sarah said suddenly in the middle of chatter about a planned craft project on making penguins from paper plates.

  Red laughed. “You’re hanging around with me too much, Sarah,” she said. “Now you’re beginning to sound like me.”

  “I forgot your letter.”

  “My letter?”

  “Remember the letter you gave me the day we went shopping? I was supposed to give it to Brad, but I just found it here still in my purse.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” Red said. “Brad told me I might be hearing from other lawyers. That’s probably one of them. We’ve already signed the deal. It’s done. I don’t know what else could be said about it.”

  “Well, whatever,” Sarah said. “Still, I’m taking it out of my purse right now and setting it on the table in the front hall. This is where Brad puts his keys when he walks in the door. He’ll be sure to see it.”

  “Great. Thanks,” Red said.

  Around three-thirty, just after she made her usual after-school call to make sure that the kids were home and Aunt Phyl was in charge, Cam returned from his rehearsal.

  “How was practice?” she asked him.

  He grinned at her. “I think I’ve earned myself a beer,” he answered.

  “That good, huh?”

  He sat down across the bar from her.

  “How did the meeting with the contractor go?”

  “We’ll see what the man says,” she told him. “He’s going to get back to me with the hard-and-fast dollar details. I like his ideas and he seems knowledgeable enough about the construction and the city codes.”

  Cam nodded. “So it’s really just a question of whether you can afford it.”

  “I have to afford it,” she said simply. “It’s reinvesting in the business. If I want to have a business, I’ve got to put money back into it.”

  “Do you have enough money?”

  “Maybe,” Red answered. “It depends upon how much the contractor needs up front.”

  “You know I’ll lend you anything and everything that I’ve got saved. Or I’ll go with you to try to get a loan. I’ll bet we could get Brad to go with us, too. I’m sure he does that kind of thing all the time.”

  “I’d rather not go into debt at all,” Red admitted. “It’ll be really tight around here, but if I can pull the funds out of operating expenses, it would put me in a better place in the long run…or the longer run.”

  Cam gave her a nod of understanding.

  Red leaned forward on the bar, getting close enough that her words were almost intimate. “I guess I’m beginning to get used to the idea of a living with an uncertain future.”

  “I think James Dean said it best. ‘Dream like you’ll live forever and live like you’ll die today.’”

  “Good advice,” Red said thoughtfully.

  “It’s always worked for me,” he said.

  They just stayed where they were for a long introspective moment. Then, controlling the edge of her lip that was so tempted to grin, Red asked, “James Dean? Now is that the guy who makes sausages or the Rebel Without a Cause guy?”

  Cam gave her a long-suffering look, then leaned closer. “For a comment like that, woman, I ought to swat that armadillo until he’s blushing red.”

  And then he kissed her. He really kissed her.

  Red heard the regulars hooting and applauding, but she didn’t pay any attention.

  To: buildabetterbridge@citymail.com

  December 14 3:30 p.m.

  From: Livy156@ABrats.org

  Subject:

  Mom I am SO excited about u coming home. Nayra and I went shopping and I bought us something that you are gonna like SO much. But I am not gonna tell u what it is so that you will be surprised. Course u r gonna be surprised anyway cause Daniel and I are a lot grown up while u were gone. And when u hear us play violin your gonna freak!

  Red told us that u may not be here at Christmas but that it will be Christmas when you’re here. So I am trying to be ok with that. Daniel asks every day how many more days. That is annoying but I don’t get up in his face about it cause I understand how hard it is to wait.

  I remember last time u came home and we were SO excited then to. And then you came and it was our regular life. But then you had to go back again. Daniel doesn’t really remember that. I guess he was to little. Course he knows u were gone but he doesn’t think it was then like it is now. I have not told him that it is that way and that when you get home and we are regular again it will only be a while until you are gone again. I think that is just too much for a 1st grader. Maybe by when u leave next he will be in 3rd or something. And I will be older to so u wont have to worry so much about us when your gone. And now we know Red and she is not so bad at all so it will be ok. It is like Cam told me not to waste good time today by worrying about tomorrow.

  So I wont. I will just be happy tomorrow and the next day and next and next and then you might be here. YEA! I luv u Mom and when u get home we are not going to worry about you any more.

  Livy

  31

  Olivia and Daniel were in the final throes of going-to-school chaos when Cam showed up, interrupting the last-minute search for homework and jackets and whatever. He immediately pitched in, proving he could both have a serious discussion on the relative merits of Batman versus Hulk while locating a picture book on insect larvae. He found the latter beneath the couch cushions.

  Finally the two Lujan children were on their way to school. Red and Cam stood together on the porch and watched them to the end of the street and onto the school grounds.

  “So why are you stopping by so early?” Red asked.

  “Just hoping for a cup of coffee with a good-looking grandma,” he answered. “And I need to dig my tux out of the back closet and see if it’s ready to go or if I have to drop
it by the cleaners.”

  “You have a tux?”

  “I’m a musician,” he answered. “That’s like asking a cowboy if he’s got a saddle.”

  “Hey, cowboy, have you got a saddle?”

  He grinned and raised a suggestive eyebrow. “I prefer riding bareback, ma’am,” he told her.

  “That’s right, I remember that,” she said. “But it’s been such a long time, I can hardly recall.”

  This flirtation might have headed to its logical conclusion had the phone not begun to ring.

  She went inside and he followed her. She answered the phone, while he went past her and into the kitchen. By the time he brought her back a cup of coffee, she’d finished her conversation.

  “That was Brad,” she said. “He’s on his way over here. He’s got something to tell me that he didn’t want to say over the phone.”

  “Is there a problem with the lease?”

  Red shook her head. “He said it wasn’t about the lease, but he wouldn’t say what it was. Maybe he’s decided that he doesn’t want me around Sarah and his kids. I’m probably a bad influence on her.”

  “Oh, please, that’s ridiculous,” Cam said. “It can’t be that.”

  “Well, whatever, stall him,” Red said. “I’ve got to get a shower and put on some makeup.”

  Red raced through her morning ablutions, but she could already hear the two men talking in the living room before she was quite presentable.

  When she finally joined them, Brad was sitting on the edge of Cam’s favorite chair, nervously sipping a cup of coffee. Cam was seated across from him on the couch. Both men rose politely to their feet as she walked in.

  Red stifled a grin at their Alamo Heights manners, vowing just to enjoy it.

  “So what’s up?” she asked Brad as she took her seat.

  He pulled the thick envelope that she’d received by certified mail a week earlier.

  “I just opened this today,” he told her. “It was not meant for me. It’s not about the building. I’m…I’m so sorry…I…”