by Cooper, Doug
“You got it. Great to meet you. Can’t believe I’m finally here. Only problem now is that I have to find a job. Any suggestions?”
“Stop back later. You can get paid to stand here with me. You may not make the big bartending bucks, but there are plenty of other fringe benefits. You could probably even start tonight, if you want.”
I extend my palm like a crossing guard. “Slow your roll, turbo. I’m not in that much of a hurry. I just want to find a job; I don’t necessarily want to start working today.”
“Who said anything about working?” Cinch says. “This is the Round House.”
I hop down the steps and head right along the park to the Boat House. It has an open front with sliding glass doors that allow the sights and sounds of the restaurant, which appears to double as a nightclub, to flow into the street and through the park. Suspended canoes and ice boats hang in the rafters and oars, nets, and other nautical paraphernalia cover the walls to round out the theme.
Except for their blue polo shirts with gold sleeves, the workers at the Boat House wear a similar uniform to everyone else I’ve seen working on the island: gray rag wool socks bunched around ankle-high boots, khaki shorts held up by a brown leather belt, and often sunglasses in situations where they’re not entirely appropriate. A stunning waitress with jaw-length blonde hair pushed behind her ears approaches. “Just one for lunch?”
Her crisply defined eyes and mouth contrast with smooth, creamy skin that I’m compelled to touch. Her neck melts into a collarbone and shoulders that I make a conscious effort not to stare at. “No, I’m here about the job.”
“Which one?”
“What’s available?” I ask. She has the frame of a girl who was probably thin and often overlooked throughout her youth, but now, in her mid-twenties, she’s blossomed, retaining her thin frame but swelling in appropriate areas.
The coy smile on her lips reveals she is onto the fact that I’m taking in every detail of her. “Cook or bouncer?” she asks.
I look left, striking a stoic pose. “Which do you think?”
With one eyebrow raised, she scans me up and down. “I’m going with cook.”
“Ouch.” I laugh, dropping my head forward in feigned shame.
She winks. “I’ll get the owner. Would you like a beer while you wait?”
I shake my head. Drink a beer while interviewing? So that’s how they do it here. Never heard a guidance counselor recommend that job search tip before.
A man wearing a grease-stained apron emerges from the kitchen and asks if I’ve ever cooked in a restaurant or worked as a bouncer. I explain that I worked construction in college and spent the past years teaching high school math. I don’t reveal that I was a failure at both.
“If you’re trusted with kids,” he says, “you must be responsible. The rest you’ll pick up as you go. I can offer you eight dollars an hour and housing for forty a week to cook during the day and work the door at night. When can you start?”
“Um, well, I just got here this morning, and I have a few other stops to make. How about I let you know tomorrow?”
“No guarantee the job will be here.”
I accept the risk and cut through the park on the way to the next place on my list.
Seated cross-legged on a blue and black Navajo blanket under an oak tree in the park, a man in his fifties plays a mandolin. He wears a black baseball hat that reads “Wine, women, and walleye—South Bass Island, Ohio.” A beard conceals his tapered face, and scraggly, mostly gray hair extends from under the hat.
The comforting music floats through the air and draws me in. I deposit a few dollars in the tip jar. He nods in appreciation. I’m envious of the ease with which he lives. Why can’t my life be so simple?
The other places I stop for interviews go like the first: a five-minute discussion followed by an offer. I return to the hotel with three opportunities, not including the Round House. Since I cashed out my five years of teaching retirement, I’m not in that much of a hurry to start working. Do I want to be a cook-slash-bouncer, a bartender, or a T-shirt salesman?
Questions from earlier circle like buzzards. Am I running away or moving forward? There was no way I could’ve stayed in St. Louis. My parents would just nag me about getting another job. They never understood why I quit without a fight. They had a hard enough time understanding the week in Key West with Birch’s band. Having a master’s degree and moving to an island to work some meaningless job for the summer was a complete waste of time in their eyes. We had already had two fights about it when they stopped by the night I was packing up. If I wanted to go away peacefully, maybe litigation with the school district was the better choice.
My mom immediately took out a cigarette when she saw the empty apartment and the small collection of belongings that I planned to take with me. She hadn’t smoked in years, so I knew things were not going to go well. I said, “If you want to smoke, you have to go out on the terrace. I don’t want the place to smell like smoke and lose my security deposit.”
She fumbled with the cigarette trying to put it back in the pack, eventually breaking it. She said, “I still don’t understand why you’re leaving.”
My dad took the pack from her. “It’s just for the summer. He’ll be back.”
I couldn’t believe we were talking about it again. Did they really think they could come over and change my mind? The deal was done. It wasn’t a matter of if I was going but how long I was staying. I said, “Not sure what I’m going to do at the end of the summer.” I close up a box and stretch tape across it. “Maybe I’ll stay there or maybe go down to Key West for the winter.”
My mom stomped toward the window and stared outside, unwilling to even look at me. “I can’t believe you’re giving up so easily.”
I made the same “What other choice do I have?” argument I had for the past month. “I tried,” I said. “I really tried to fit into that world. But how much of myself am I supposed to sacrifice to blend into my surroundings? At some point, I have to mold my environment to reflect who I am.”
My dad accused me of being a drama queen. “No one is asking you to be something you’re not,” he continued. “You’ve worked hard to get where you are, and we just don’t want to see you throw it all away to go live on some island and become a drifter.”
I said, “You know the best part about my life? It’s that it’s my life.”
I wanted to take these words back the second they came out, but it was too late. Tears began streaming down my mom’s face, and my dad contorted his to hide the pain they caused.
My mom wiped her eyes. “We didn’t come here to fight. We just wanted to say good-bye and wish you well.” She kissed me on the cheek and headed for the door.
My dad didn’t say anything, just began to follow her.
“Trust me. I know what I’m doing,” I said. “I’m just taking a vacation.” It was what I had been telling everyone who challenged my decision or asked questions that I didn’t want to answer. On vacation you can be and do whatever you want—exactly what I needed.
“You didn’t have to be so mean,” my dad said, and my parents left.
A waft of barbecue chicken greets me as I approach the hotel. On the side of the building next to the Round House on the patio in front of the Park Hotel, there’s a sixteen-by-four-foot gas grill half full with quarter chickens sizzling and glistening with barbecue sauce, which a sign next to the grill divulges is made with island wine. Patrons sit at round stone tables ravenously tearing meat from bone. The sauce covers their hands and clings to their chins. The picture is more reminiscent of medieval times than a resort destination.
Cinch is there by the Round House. “How’d you make out? Are you employed?”
“I’ll decide tomorrow,” I say.
“Add another one to the list,” he says. “Haley gave me the go-ahead to hire you. Come upstairs and see where you might be living.”
“We’ll have to do it later. I’m supposed to meet her at eig
ht.”
“No one’s on time here. Come up and have a beer.”
Cinch and I walk behind the Park Hotel to a decaying red wooden building that leans slightly to the right, creating rhomboid rather than rectangular sides.
“People live here?” I say.
“The bands stay below and I stay upstairs. We call it the red barn. There’s plenty of room for another.”
I close one eye, further examining the geometry of the structure. “Is it, um, safe?”
“A lot of good years left. The red barn is always the last place open on the island. We’ll pack fifty people in here some nights. The downside is that there’s no privacy.”
The ripped screening on the door at the top of the stairs flaps in the wind, calling us. I bound up the steps. The sway in each aging plank offers extra bounce.
Cinch holds the door for me. “If you’re a private person, this probably isn’t the place for you, but then again neither is the island. There’s no hiding here. The truth always comes out. You can make it a short time on bullshit, but if you’re going to last, you have to be nice and tell the truth.”
Inside, the dominant decorating theme is no theme: mismatched furniture, 1970s efficiency sink, stove and refrigerator unit plastered with stickers and decals, beer signs on the walls, and pallid green carpeting that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in thirty years. Beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays decorate the coffee table. When was the last time coffee was even on that table?
Cinch picks up two Heineken bottles from the floor, spinning them in his palms before sliding them into imaginary holsters at his side. “Actually, this mess is only from last night. That’s pretty good for here. Sometimes two weeks pass before we clean after a party.”
“At least you drink good beer.”
He tosses the bottles in the trash. “Nothing but the best. Got a twelve from the cooler last night at four a.m. Birch and I sat here until six.” He reaches behind the couch and pulls out a two-foot Graffix bong.
“Gooood morning,” I say.
“I hope this doesn’t offend you.”
“Not at all. It’s your place.”
“Well then, don’t mind if I do,” he says, as if he had ever considered otherwise.
Instant comfort and understanding soak the room. Our banter flows as if scripted. The flame glows, darting in and out of the bowl. A thick cloud emanates from the green skull-shaped base and climbs the clear tube that has yellow and purple stains streaked along its surface from extensive use. Cinch lifts his finger from the carburetor and easily clears the tube. He extends the bong toward me.
“No thanks,” I say. “That’s not one I do.”
He exhales his hit. “More for me, then.”
“Hold on,” I say. “I’m on vacation, right? It’s not like I’ve never smoked. I just reserve it for special occasions, sort of a ceremonial peace pipe kind of thing.”
“Then wrap your lips around this, Tonto.”
I mimic Cinch’s actions. The skunky smoke tickles my nostrils but scorches my untrained lungs. With each hack Cinch laughs, straining to hold in his hit. I chug half of my beer. “I think one should do it for now,” I say. “You going out tonight?”
“Wouldn’t miss it. Consider me your personal tour guide to thrills, chills, and spills. Well, maybe not spills, and probably not chills. But plenty of thrills.” He sparks another pull off the bong. “Will you grab me another beer on your way out? I had a rough day at the office.”
CHAPTER TWO
HALEY EMERGES THROUGH THE RED SATIN CURTAIN THAT COVERS THE DOORWAY BEHIND THE BAR. With the exception of the tan RHB baseball cap, she has traded in her Round House gear for civilian attire, permitting her to receive drinks rather than serve them. She spots me perched at the bar and ducks under the opening at the end to belly up next to me.
Whiplash kicks into the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues,” and people push to the front like children looking for free candy at a parade. Haley barks an order for four Red Snappers. If mixology were a major, she probably would have breezed through her college curriculum. Her arm wraps around and pulls me close. “This isn’t even busy. Wait until the weekends. A lot of people arrive Thursday night to secure dock space and enjoy the island before it gets busy. Unless we’re working, most of us don’t come in here from Friday to Sunday. But on Sunday night, the island is ours again.”
A green fluorescent light flashes by the front door. Cinch enters, wearing an Australian roughrider hat and twirling a glow stick on a string above his head. Baleful emerald eyes punctuate his priestly face and communicate that I could be in for a night of trouble. The bouncer at the door makes a move for him but, recognizing Cinch, returns instead to talk to the female who has been occupying his attention.
“Christ,” Haley says to the bartender. “You better make it five.” She turns to me. “Only Cinch can get away with that shit. It’s good to be him.”
Cinch doesn’t question the contents of the shot Haley gives him. He just says, “God bless you,” and throws it back like communion.
When Whiplash takes a pause for the cause, Haley suggests we go to the Boat House between sets. Our tribe has grown to eleven. Everyone seems to know one another, but then again, it doesn’t matter. Etiquette is not really a priority. Tonight is about feeling good; the more, the merrier.
The walk to the Boat House is a tempering break and a sobering lift. The air is both warm and cool, alternating as it blows. The beacon of the monument flashes in the near distance. I turn my face to the stars.
Cinch says, “Over by the monument, I guarantee you’ll see a shooting star every night. It’s remarkable how much you can see when you’re in the dark in the middle of nowhere.”
Nightlife has replaced the diners at the Boat House. On the right a traveling piano bar has been set up where patrons gather while the performer plays. The musician behind the keys acknowledges our arrival with “Copacabana.” He’s in his late forties and resembles Ronnie Milsap, but he wails with the animation of Meatloaf.
While most of our party sits at the piano, Cinch and I go to the bar. He says, “We need to make a pit stop when we—hey, Astrid!” Cinch rises to greet the hot waitress I met earlier. “Come meet the newest member of the Round House staff.” He turns to me. “Right? Come on. You know you want to.”
Although I still haven’t officially accepted the job offer, I don’t refute him. I’m too captivated. Astrid has also changed costumes. Her dangling golden hair is now held back by barrettes that match her cotton sundress, which hangs from her shoulders, cups her breasts, and falls straight to the ground, stopping just past her thighs. I love sundresses. If I were a woman, I would wear nothing else—no underwear and no bra—just the sundress, a piece of free-flowing cotton between the rest of the world and me.
As she approaches, the muscles in her thighs tighten and flex with each step. Her shoes are open-toed sandals made of hemp that strap only around her ankle and around the balls of her feet. The cork sole is four inches thick by the heel and slopes downward to an inch in the front, causing her to lean forward, almost shuffling, when she walks. She says, “You guys seem to be headed for trouble.”
“Why?” I ask. “Are you looking for some?”
“It usually finds me.” She punctuates the comment with a coy tilt of her head.
Cinch says, “Don’t worry, we’ll protect you.”
“Who’ll save me from you two?” she asks.
I return a sportive smile. “Guess you’ll have to take your chances.”
Cinch tosses some money on the bar, which is the first time I’ve seen anyone pay for drinks at any of the bars I’ve been to today. “Want to join us for a pit stop at the red barn?” he asks.
“You boys go do your thing,” Astrid replies. “I’ll catch up with you later at the Round House.”
She leaves. I motion at the piano bar to Haley doing shots with some customers. “What about her?” I ask Cinch.
“She won’t even notice we’re gon
e,” Cinch says. “She’s always popular when she goes out. People attempt to befriend her, hoping she’ll come through for them when there’s a line halfway down the street to get into the Round House.”
On the way out of the bar, he jabs me playfully in the back. “Are you ready to take it up a notch?”
“Bring it on. I’m not afraid,” I say. “Time to smoke again?”
Cinch breaks into an exaggerated skip. “Greens were the appetizer. Dinner comes on a plate.”
In the red barn, Cinch disappears down the hallway and returns with a brown paper bag. Thrusting his hand into the sack, he reveals a white chunk. “La Blanca Dama.”
The responsibilities of my former life trigger my answer. “Cocaine? Count me out.” Things are moving too fast. Drinking, the pot, and now this? I have to slow down.
“Embrace the Lady. Be the man you always wanted to be.” Again leading the ceremony, Cinch retrieves a plate with a plastic hotel key card and a three-inch straw on it from under the couch and crumbles the rock into smaller pieces. Pushing the fragments into a pile, he covers the mound with a twenty-dollar bill, repeatedly scraping the card over it. “This shit is so hard, it flies everywhere if you try to chop it first. This gets it to a pretty fine consistency.” He lifts the bill, exposing a flat, off-white pancake.
“Oh, the things you learn. I try to learn at least one new thing a day. I guess the pressure’s off for today,” I say, still unsure what to do.
He chops the card through the flakes, never lifting his eyes. Saliva forms on the corners of his mouth. His nose runs. He sniffs, pulling back the drops before they fall into the focus of his concentration.
Small talk is all that comes to mind. Anything to hide my fear. I say, “Is it good stuff?”
“Only the best.” He separates the gram into four thick rails. “Time to board the train, baby. One for each nostril.” He extends the straw toward me. “Guests first.”