Catching Heaven

by Sands Hall

  1) TIME TO LEAN. TIME TO CLEAN. LEAN ON YOUR OWN TIME.

  2) THEY’RE WILL BE NO CONVERSATIONS OF A PERSONNEL NATURE BETWEEN EMPLOYEES WHILE ON THE CLOCK. TALK ON YOUR OWN TIME—WORK ON MINE! IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY TO EACH OTHER—DO IT AT HOME—DO IT ON THE PHONE—NOT ON THE FLOOR!!!

  3) UNIFORMS ARE YOU’RE RESPONSIBILITY. NO RUN STOCKINGS OR DIRTY LEOTARDS TOLERATED AT ANY TIME. NO EXCUSES!!

  4) IF YOUR CUSTOMERS DON’T PAY, YOU DO.

  5) NO FRATERNIZING WITH THE CUSTOMERS.

  6) VIOLATIONS WILL BE PERSECUTED!!!

  Ginger had balanced the cigarette pack on her stomach, and it moved up and down as she breathed.

  “Hey, Ginger.”

  Ginger opened one eye, flicking ash onto the floor with a bright orange fingernail. She took another drag and squinted at Maud through the smoke. Maud wished she hadn’t bothered her. But Ginger was staring, waiting.

  “I particularly like that last rule.” Maud pointed. “Just how does Barney do his persecuting, do you know?”

  Ginger looked at the sign. With a sinking feeling, Maud wondered if Ginger had ever noticed—or knew about, or cared about—the incorrect use of the word. She changed the look on her face from one of sardonic amusement to a very real interest in how Barney might, if pressed, persecute an erring waitress.

  “Well,” Ginger whispered, which seemed unlike her. Maud had to lean across the space between the benches to hear. “If he can’t get the state courts to agree he has a right to fine us for slapping a man who fondles our butts, well, then crucifixion just isn’t good enough for us.”

  Maud laughed, but Ginger’s eyes stayed hard. She held a finger to her lips and pointed to a speaker in the ceiling.

  “Barney?” Maud mouthed, disbelieving.

  Ginger nodded. “What a night, eh? Fucking boots!” she said, loudly, to the ceiling. She closed her eyes again.

  Tonight, Maud told herself, as she told herself most nights, tonight for sure she’d stick around and have that after-shift beer with her fellow employees.

  Four minutes.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Jeep slammed the door behind her. “I hate men,” she said. “I just hate them.”

  Ginger kept her eyes closed. “No, you don’t,” she said. “And you’d better hustle your little ass right back down where you brought it up from. If Barney finds two of us up here at the same time we’re in double dutch and it’s my break, not yours.”

  Jeep stuck her tongue out at the intercom system on the wall. “He’s talking to Bart anyway,” she said. “Bawling him out for overpouring a drink by about a sixtieth of an ounce. And if I stayed down there one more second that shithead at table fourteen was going to have his hand all over my ass again. Fucking men!”

  Ginger waved at them as they left. “Good luck.”

  “Luck I need,” Jeep said as they went down the stairs. “It’s no good complaining. If we get mauled Barney assumes we’re doing something to deserve it. Men. They just assume we want them to fondle our butts. What a privilege!” She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and waved her rear end in the direction of an imaginary spectator. “Oh, please, baby, baby, just put your hands on me. Anywhere, baby. A touch from any old member”—she winked—“of the male sex will do.”

  She looped her tongue out of her mouth, running it around her lips, which glistened in the dim light of the stairwell. Maud was reminded of the Cheesios audition and at the same time, like a cinematic overlap, of Driver—the color of his bare shoulder, how the light from the fire he’d built in the kiva emphasized the red in his skin. Jeep tugged at the back of her leotard. “They just want one thing. All of them. You know what I mean?”

  “Not all of them.”

  Jeep snapped her gum. “Wanna bet?”

  Maud tried to laugh, but the light in the stairwell made Jeep look like something out of the pages of a porno magazine. “How can you be so cynical? At your tender age.”

  “Try my life.” Jeep leaned against the door. It opened slowly, as if moving the wall of sound inside the bar. “Here goes nothing!” She waved a hand and disappeared into the mass of bodies shouting and holding glasses.

  Maud waved to Bart behind the bar to turn off the canned music, wove her way through gesticulating arms to the piano, and began to play.

  “ ‘You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille’!” a man shouted, and Maud nodded, modulating chords on her way into the introduction. Voices in the bar joined in on the chorus. She played a few more sing-along types until the voices lost interest, and then sang some Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt. Jeep wandered by and leaned against the piano.

  “Barney says don’t get too artsy.”

  “This is artsy?”

  “You might try moving your repertoire forward about twenty years.”

  “Impossible. Does Shawn Colvin count?”

  “He says give it another half hour and then you can go.”

  “Maybe I’ll stick around for that after-shift beer.”

  “I hope you do! It’s fun. We’ve missed you. Bart says maybe you think you’re too good for us.”

  “That’s terrible!” Maud said. “Of course I don’t.”

  “He’s joshing. I told him it’s because you don’t sleep and then you’re tired. But he says, ‘If she can’t sleep, she should stay up late with us delightful types. We’ll not only bore her to sleep, we’ll bore her to death.’ ” Jeep tried to balance her tray on one finger, and caught the pile of cocktail napkins before they spilled off. “ ‘Time to lean, time to clean.’ ” She imitated Barney’s nasal voice, dabbing insincerely at the piano with her bar towel before she sashayed away.

  After Maud punched out and changed she went back down to the bar. Two men sat at the far end, silhouetted against the pink neon outside the window. For a stomach-dropping moment she thought one of them was Miles, until he drawled, “Nice playing, ma’am. Buy you a beer?”

  She shook her head. “But thank you.”

  “So you finally decided to join us.” Bart slid a coaster in front of her. “What’ll you have?” He was very handsome. Jeep had told her he was part Cherokee. When he smiled, deep crevices ran from the edge of his mouth to the edge of his nostril. Like Driver, though Driver hadn’t smiled much. “First one’s on Barney.”

  Jeep appeared beside Maud. “You can have Coors, Bud, Bud Dry, and Miller Lite. The cheapo, American ones.”

  Bart put his elbows in the little trough on his side of the bar. “Imports, Barney says you buy. You want hard liquor, you don’t drink it here.”

  “Miller Lite,” Maud said. Lizzie would have paid for an import rather than drink what she called horse piss.

  “I’m just heading up.” Jeep patted her bulging apron. “I’ll do my checkout and get changed and then I’ll be down.”

  Bart gave her the beer and began to wash glasses. “How you liking it here?”

  “It’s fine.” She wondered what it would be like to date him, what it would be like to go on a date at all. “What I do is so different from what the others do.” She gestured at Ginger, who was walking around the almost empty bar picking up glasses. “Easier than that, I think.”

  “Barmaid’s one of the hardest jobs in the world. They put up with a lot of bullshit, keep a smile on their face, and still manage to believe—most of them—in the basic goodness of hu-man nature.” Bart looked at her. She felt her cheeks go hot.

  “Sometimes I wonder if they hold it against me,” she said. “I just sit up there playing the piano, while they have to deal with booze and customers.”

  Bart shook his head. “You’re talking about Ginger. She’s tough as they come. Pay no attention. She gets paid, they all do, with tips, a whole lot more than you do. Jeep, on the other hand—same job, same hours, same number of men coming on to her—she adores you.” Bart expertly fanned a pile of cocktail napkins into a circle. “She’s a funny, lonely little thing,” he said. “Proof that lousy family life equals lousy love life.”

&
nbsp; Maud pondered this. Her own parents were still married. To all intents and purposes they seemed to hold each other in deep—if somewhat distant—affection and esteem, but this hadn’t translated into healthy marriages, even relationships, for either Lizzie or herself. “I wonder if it’s fair to blame everything on family.”

  Bart stopped wiping the bar. “Ah. So you’re one of those transformational types.”

  “Transformational?”

  At a signal from the men sitting at the other end of the bar, Bart moved off. Maud swiveled on her stool to look at who was left in the room: the other waitress, Veronica, had gone upstairs to check out. Ginger was mopping down tables, in a corner a man and woman murmured, and near the piano, two couples laughed boisterously, chewing margarita straws.

  “All done.” Jeep slid in beside her. “I ended up getting stiffed by table fourteen. Barney made me pay. Bastard. Fifteen-plus bucks. Thanks,” she said as Bart set a Coke in front of her. “Just because I told the asshole to keep his paws to himself. Are all men assholes, Bart?”

  “I’m glad they’ve got one,” Bart said, and laughed.

  It took a moment for Maud to realize what this meant. Jeep took a sip of her Coke and said, “I mean, do you get that shit? Men leering at you and even feeling you and stuff, when you go dancing at the Mine Shaft?”

  Bart shrugged. “Sometimes. The difference is that’s one reason I go there, you know?”

  “We should go to Farquaarts sometime. All of us. Hey, Ginger!” Jeep flagged her down. Ginger paused, her tray resting on a cocked hip. “Let’s go to Farquaarts sometime.”

  “Sounds good,” Ginger said, and moved off.

  Maud watched her go, black fringe swishing. No wonder men thought of “tail.” She turned back to Bart. “What’s transformational?”

  “What?” He did an imitation of a cartoon version of a dazed bird. “What you say?”

  “That thing you said, about being a ‘transformational type.’ What is that?”

  Jeep groaned. “Don’t get him started. Bart’s had more therapy—”

  “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Bart said. He began to wipe down the bar. “You never know what beasties you could stand looking at, little girl.”

  Jeep shrugged. Bart said, “You allow yourself to be abused, missy, one way or another, and after getting dumped by one asshole you take right up with another.” He twisted the towel forcefully, although no water came out, and then slapped its end against the edge of the bar. “Blow, or whatever your biker boyfriend’s name is, is nothing to write home about, you know. You were probably better off with Ol’ Cowboy Hat himself.”

  “Forget it.” Jeep shoved her empty glass away from her. Tears glinted in her eyes. “And anyway, I’ve broke up with Blow. Just forget it.”

  “I will say this.” Bart got her another Coke. “Whatever you said to Ol’ Cowboy Hat worked. He’s been keeping himself scarce. Hasn’t been in here in two whole weeks. At least.”

  Jeep looked somewhat mollified. Bart winked at her. “Transformational psychology,” he said to Maud, “offers the understanding that not everything is traceable-backable to some trauma in your childhood. Sometimes we just go through dark nights of the soul. That’s what they are. If you take the right attitude towards them they’re learning experiences. Or something like that. I may have it all wrong. As Jeep so sweetly pointed out”—he smiled a big false smile—“I’ve done a lot of therapy.”

  He stuck his tongue out. Jeep, chin on her hands, stuck out her tongue in return. “Just for the record,” she said, “Rich was a bigger shit than Blow. At least Blow had a heart. Maybe I’m making progress.”

  “Maybe you are.” Bart’s head was in the cooler beneath the bar. Bottles clanked as he stowed Heineken, Bass, Corona. “We’ll see, won’t we. Now, me?” He stood up, holding an empty cardboard six-pack. “Me, I don’t like that transformational shit. I like being a victim, I like to blame someone for the mess I’m in.” He held his hands out to either side, a crucifixion pose, head lolling to one side, tongue hanging out.

  Maud laughed, since that seemed appropriate. Bart bowed. “I gotta restock. Anyone needs me, I’m back in a jiffy.”

  “Jake’s Blakes plays at Farquaarts a lot,” Jeep said. “If I can get a sub on a night you’re off too, we’ll go.”

  Since moving to town Maud kept expecting to run into Jake. She wasn’t sure what to say if she did see him—she’d pried the nasty details of their breakup from Lizzie. She wondered if Lizzie would be okay about her going to see his band. As if Jeep had followed something of this train of thought, she said, “Think we can persuade Lizzie to join us?”

  Maud’s chuckle was as realistic as she could make it. Bart came back and offered her another beer. “You have to pay this time. But it’ll help you sleep, maybe.”

  “Sure,” Maud said, wondering how long a dark night of the soul had to last.

  Maud invited Lizzie and the girls to trick-or-treat in her neighborhood, their own being so far from town. Ever since the episode with Summer and Luna, Lizzie had been cool. She refused to talk about it, but Jeep said it was simple. “Think about it. You knew where to find Summer.” Maud hoped the hours of passing out candy on Halloween would ease the tension, that she could invite Lizzie to Farquaarts with her new “gang.” But the barbed-wire fence Lizzie set up around herself was powerful. They spent a pleasant if shallow evening discussing the cleverness of various costumes. The invitation to Farquaarts was never proffered.

  So Maud went alone. The plan was to meet Jeep, Bart, and Ginger there. As she left her house to walk downtown, Noah waved to her from a tall stump. Yelling something bloodcurdling, he leapt to the ground. A lamp fastened to a tree above the dead lawn highlighted his flying cape and black cowboy boots. He galloped towards her.

  “I got so much candy. Mom’s put some of it in the freezer. I like Summer. Will she come over again? How come you have eye stuff on?”

  Maud watched him jump off his stump for a while, not wanting to arrive at Farquaarts too early. By the time she got there, the place was jammed. Shiny tables sprouted pitchers of beer and baskets of tortilla chips. On a raised stage, the band, leaping and bouncing, filled every inch of space with sound. She felt as if she were bumping and sliding her way through that mass of instrumentation as much as through the maze of chairs and tables.

  She recognized Jake immediately, though she’d only met him that one strained time she and Miles had come to the Southwest. He was on guitar, head bent over some complicated maneuver of chord changes. She stood still, struck by how different Jake’s performance style was from Miles’. Miles rarely performed. When he deigned to do so—“deign” was how Maud felt he thought of it; performing was beneath him; he was waiting to be discovered through his recordings—his charm was wrapped in blond aloofness. On stage he barely touched an instrument, although in fact he played piano, bass, rhythm and lead guitar, and some horns. For his live performances he used synthesized backgrounds against which a drummer drummed and he sang. He seemed untouchable, unreachable; it was terribly attractive.

  Jake was short and wiry, dark and intense. He bounded about the stage as if it were a squash court. As Maud watched he carried his guitar, trailing a long cord, over to a huge man who bounced before a rack of keyboards. There were two percussionists—a drummer as well as a man surrounded by congas, shells and bells, rattles and tambourines. A black man gyrated with a saxophone to his mouth, switching from saxophone to flute as Maud watched. Other horn instruments sprouted beside him, gleaming and glinting in the stage lights. The bass player was female. She wore an impossibly short skirt, and her long blonde hair, a waterfall in the light, swung with her every move.

  Jake stepped up to the mike. A deep voice wove its way through the cacophony of chords and percussion.

  “Earth to Maud,” Bart said, snapping his fingers in front of her eyes. “Earth to Maud.” Holding her hand, he plunged through the crowd, leading her to a crowded table. Bart raised Maud’s
hand in the air as if she’d just won a prizefight: “Maud!”

  Ginger moved to make a space for her. A big man with a beard shouted. Maud nodded and smiled, pretending to understand. He reached for her hand. “Ron. Old friend of your sister’s!” Like Ron, the other two men at the table wore plaid shirts and the ubiquitous cowboy hat. Their names were vacuumed up in the onslaught of sound.

  Ron poured her a sudsy half glass of beer and raised his mug to her, wiggling his eyebrows. “How’s Lizzie?” he shouted. Maud nodded enthusiastically. Since she’d arrived in Marengo, Lizzie had introduced her—in a grocery store, a bar, walking down Main Street—to at least a dozen men with whom it was clear she had at one time enjoyed intimate relations. They all seemed to be terrific friends, but Maud’s mouth grew dry and her vagina contracted at the idea of entertaining that many cocks inside of her. In the time warp that was Marengo no one seemed to pay attention to the concept of sexually transmitted disease. She thought of her own unexpected night with Driver.

  The bass player was seldom still. Ornate cowboy boots emphasized an amazing length of leg between their decorated tops and the fringed bottom of her skirt. She picked her way over the black coils of cording, stopping by the keyboard player, who nodded at something she said, then strutted towards the man on saxophone. He closed his eyes, angled his pelvis forward, and blew a long wail of appreciation. She grinned, swinging her hair. Cheers went up all over the room. She stepped up beside Jake, swinging the bass expertly out of the way to whisper something in his ear. Jake looked at her, then out at the room. He raised a hand from his guitar. For a moment, Maud thought he was waving at them, and moved her arm in a confused way as if to wave back. But he was signaling another time through the chorus. She was impressed with the way the band went right with him in spite of what was clearly an unexpected change in what had been rehearsed. They came to a resounding syncopated finish of drums and chords, a rat-tat, rat-a-tat-TAT that pulled half the people in the bar to their feet, clapping and cheering.

  The band took a break. Maud took advantage of the relative silence to ask where Jeep was.