Someone To Crawl Back To

by Phillip Gardner

  “Damn, you’re something, BB,” Pete said to her. “Where does she come up with that stuff?” he said, looking at Coach. “If I could find me a woman like that, I’d give my ole lady the house, my truck, and my best hunting dog.” The other men laughed. Pete lifted his glass, nodded to BB, and together they threw back their drinks.

  Coach slid off the barstool, leaving the glass, reached back for his beer, then slowly walked over to the jukebox. He stood with his back to everything. He pressed the arrow button on the jukebox and looked at the shadow of his own reflection in the glass. The CD selections folded open like pages. He heard BB’s voice, followed by another round of laughter.

  “Play that slow Vince Gill song, would you, baby?” she called to him.

  Coach found the selection and fed a dollar into the machine, then pressed the buttons for the song. BB was telling a joke.

  “…and then the cop says, ‘Okay, we’ll help you find your car, mister, but you got to put that thing back in your pants’, and the guy looks down and screams, ‘They stole my girl, too!’”

  Coach turned. BB tossed back the drink that he’d left on the bar as the men watched.

  “Um, umm.” She ran the back of her hand over her mouth. “That’s my song. You boys will have to fend for yourself while I dance with the man I love.”

  She made a slinky path toward him as if she were in the center of a spotlight. Coach saw the looks on the men’s faces. She put her arms around him and pulled him close, pressing her breasts against him, smiling at the men at the bar. She sighed deeply and closed her eyes. “Thank you, baby,” she whispered. “I’ll call you when I think I’m about done. Wait up for me?” Coach didn’t answer. She was never insincere when she asked him to wait up, and she was never home when she said she’d be. “Hold me, baby,” she said, pressing against his thigh. Coach closed his eyes and held her still for a second. He could smell the perfume she’d asked for. Opium, it was called. When he looked up again, every man at the bar was looking at her.

  “It’s getting too hot in here for me,” Pete said when the song ended. He was standing beside his barstool holding open his wallet. He tossed two bills on the bar. “If you want to know why I tip so good,” he called to BB, “it’s cause you’re worth it.” He shook hands all around.

  “That’ed be half the phone bill,” she whispered to Coach, then pushed away from him and walked back over to the bar.

  “Thank you, Pete,” BB said, scooping up the two tens.

  “You welcome, Vivacious.”

  Coach watched from the patch of dance floor in front of the jukebox. BB laughed a little choked laugh and looked up at Pete. It was a look that fourteen years earlier had kept Coach awake at night, the look of a sixteen-year-old cheerleader in his History class who could read his mind and who told him so with that very look. It was no fake look and not coyness either. It was seeing herself in your mirror.

  Coach stood at the urinal in the toilet at the back of the bar. The sounds of jagged conversation, muffled music, and his wife’s laughter rose and fell like distant surf from the other side of the door.

  He raised his hand to check the time, and his eyes came to rest on the V-shaped scar on his middle knuckle.

  After two years the thought of that single blow still sent an am-phetamine rush through him. The image was as clear as assassination footage replayed a thousand times before his eyes: the jerky, puppet-like rhythm in the kid’s shoulders and wrist, the body bent forward at the waist, the head waving from side to side, the finger pointed into his face, the intimidation factor as practiced and perfected as a beautifully timed pass play—“You can kiss my mu-tha-fuckin’ass”—and the light spray of spit.

  And then that frozen instant of realization in the kid’s eyes when Coach’s fist landed and the kid’s blood and teeth covered his knuckles. He had pushed aside images of the bandit lawyers and the ambitious judge, the kid’s weeping mother at the trial. Despite the thousand tiny disappointments he’d seen in BB’s face over the past two years, that moment of savage satisfaction and exhilaration was solid and fixed.

  Coach waited at the end of the bar to say good-bye while his wife blended margaritas. The telephone rang. BB held the receiver between her shoulder and jaw as she poured. She smiled into the receiver, glanced over at Coach, then turned her back as she spoke. He lifted the six-pack in front of him and walked out to his truck. As he turned the key to the ignition, he looked up at her through the wide window. She was standing on the bar, inventorying the mini-bottles. He saw the eyes of the men working her over.

  The acorns under his tires made popping sounds as he pulled the truck up the drive and into the yard of the small yellow house. Her bar money kept the house and the truck from the finance company. His minimum wage job at the garden and lawn shop went to pay the settlement, always would.

  Coach opened the truck door and sat with his feet hanging free from the cab. He felt for another beer. The October sunset was streaked with red and purple daggers like inverted flames. He drank. The wind picked up and the smell of his youth—squirrel hunting and half a life of football seasons—made rapid, fleeting pictures in his mind.

  He collected the mail, separated it—his and hers—and set it on the kitchen table. He didn’t look at the bills anymore. BB still received three or four catalogs a day, ones for clothes and gifts, department stores up North and out West, specialty catalogs, and he always stacked them neatly for her. He knew that she liked looking at them when she got home late from work. To him they were a painful memory of their happiest years, when she drove the red Camaro convertible and they went out for good meals together; when she was all tanned and he had won a state championship and married the high school’s former homecoming queen; when she had bought little surprises for him from exotic catalogs. After she looked through them, she dropped them in the trash before coming to bed.

  Coach filled the sink with scalding hot water and liquid soap and eased in the dirty dishes. He folded the laundry from the dryer, gathered hangers from the floor where BB dressed and hung what needed hanging in her closet. He collected her half-full coffee cups and the clothes she’d stripped off the night before, stacked her dirty ashtrays, deposited the clothes in the washer, emptied the ashes in the trash, and put the dirty glass and cups in the dishwater. He turned on the radio, took a beer from the refrigerator and sat at the kitchen table watching the steam rise from the sink. It dawned on him that he spent more time cleaning up after his wife than he spent with her.

  He went in at eight, got off at five; she went in at three and got off at closing—whenever that was. He worked and she slept on Saturdays. On Sunday mornings they made love, and in the afternoon they drank together.

  On the nights after work when he couldn’t stand it, he’d drive back to The Paradise Lounge and sit with the other men at the bar, drink, watch, and wait for BB to get off work. She parceled herself out among the customers. The longer he waited, the less there seemed of her.

  The later the hour, the more impossible it became for him to leave her there. Some mornings he was too tired or hungover to get out of bed. Lately, his boss at the garden shop had warned him about calling in sick.

  After finishing the dishes, Coach stripped the dirty sheets off the bed and put on clean, crisp, pleasant smelling ones. He made the tucks at the corners with military precision and creased the fold before arranging the pillows. The smell of the clean sheets crept inside him like a cold shadow.

  He sensed her growing power over him, her expanding sense of prerogative.

  Coach opened a beer and wandered slowly, circling from room to room. He switched on the TV in the small den, then walked out before the sound came up. He reached for the porch light, opened the front door, and stood looking up into the clear autumn night. He could smell the coldness coming. First frost, he thought.

  Inside the bathroom, he set his beer on the back of the toilet, took off his shirt and ran hot water. He shaved slowly, holding the razor under the steaming w
ater after several strokes, watching the blade until it was clean, then lifting it to his face. He undressed, dropping his clothes in the plastic basket beside the washer. Maybe he could sleep. If he slept now, the night would be over and he would wake early. He would make coffee first thing, maybe even wake BB for a cup before he left for work. Some mornings after he dressed he’d sit at her dressing table beside the bed and have his coffee while she slept.

  He checked the front door making sure it was unlocked for her, switched off the TV, and stepped into the bedroom, to the bed with crisp, clean sheets, into the smell of her dressing table powder and Opium perfume. He had smelled her perfume as he danced with her—as men watched her.

  Topping the bridge on the interstate, Coach dimmed his headlights and saw the tall The Paradise Lounge sign ahead. He reached for the blinker, took the exit. The lot was full. Coach circled until he spotted a parking space in the steakhouse lot beside the lounge. Another late closing for BB, another morning when he’d barely make it to work. He pulled open the lounge door.

  BB was at the far end, up on her toes, bent forward, way out over the bar, her elbows flat on its surface. He couldn’t see her from the shoulders up. Three young, professional salesmen stood huddled tightly above her, their ties hanging low, nearly touching her face. Everybody was watching.

  Coach took a seat at the corner of the bar nearest the door. He saw now that BB held something cradled in her hands. Two of the young men exchanged looks, smiled and looked down again at BB’s face. Then she dropped what she was holding, a piece of paper Coach thought, pushed away from the three, turned her back and slowly shook her head from side to side. The shining eyes of the three men watched her fingers slowly circle then caress the fashioned, wooden tap handle. As she pulled the draft beer, BB tilted her head way back and made a wolf call, “Aoooooooooow!”

  The men laughed. “You put that thing away, you dirty boy,” she called back to one of them. The blonde man picked up the paper on the bar and, exchanging smiles with the other two, tucked it into his wallet. Turning with the glass of beer, BB spotted Coach, and the smile left her face.

  “Beer?” She mouthed the word.

  “Something brown,” he said in a voice that made the three men turn and look.

  They watched her dip the glass into the ice, open a mini-bottle and pour the bourbon. They were waiting for her next reply.

  BB set the bourbon in front of Coach.

  “What was on that piece of paper?” he demanded in a voice that surprised him.

  “It was a picture.”

  The three men were laying cash on the bar, watching BB, knowing what she’d seen.

  “What is it,” BB went on, “about a woman fucking a dog,” her voice trailed off. “This is turning into the night from hell,” she said. The men were walking toward the door, their eyes on BB as they came closer. The blonde one slid a small rectangular piece of paper on the bar between BB and Coach without breaking stride. The other two watched BB’s reaction from the door. It was a gold-embossed business card. When Coach looked back, the men were gone. BB lifted the card, carried it to the far end of the bar, and glancing back at the door set it on top of the cash register.

  Coach leaned forward until his head rested against his knuckles.

  When he opened his eyes, Coach realized how deeply he’d been in- side his own head. The narrow bar area was suddenly packed with men. Cigarette smoke hung like gray cirrus just above the blasting music and shouted conversations. He watched BB move up and down the length of the bar as if it were one long see-saw, picking up empty glasses and dirty ash trays, her eyes always in motion, every beer replaced with a fresh one before it was quite empty. She lifted his empty glass and set a bourbon on a new napkin in front of him.

  “You looked asleep with your eyes open,” she said. Then she worked her way to the other end of the bar. Coach had sucked his lip until now he tasted blood.

  When he stepped up to the urinal, he recognized the face of one of his former quarterbacks, a kid whose name he’d forgotten. Hammer or Hatchet, a nickname his teammates had given him. Hatchet. Something about his throwing arm. When the guy recognized him, Coach would call him Hatchet. He’d like that. He was sure it was Hatchet. The man zipped his fly and reached for his beer. He looked down at the floor as he flushed.

  “Hey, old man. In case you haven’t figured it out, you’re pissing on the floor,” he said. He finished off the beer and dropped the glass beer bottle in the plastic barrel beside the door.

  Coach’s seat at the bar had been taken. The man who held it looked somehow ageless, maybe sixty, but lean and tanned, with a well trimmed white beard and the cheekbones and perfect nose of an actor. His eyes were a soft blue, so pale they seemed to emit light in the dim room. The man looked up at Coach, who looked from him to the bourbon on the bar.

  “Yours?” the man said. “Thought that someone, they maybe left the drink to go dance.” The old man stepped down from the stool. “Hey,” he said, studying Coach’s face, “I know you.” Coach took the stool and reached for a cigarette.

  Behind the old man, a couple who had occupied the adjacent corner of the bar, stood to pay. The husband tunneled a path through the crowd toward BB at the cash register.

  “You can have this one,” said the woman, motioning for the old man to take her stool.

  “Is it still warm?” the old man said with a mischievous smile.

  “If you don’t think so, you can ask my husband when he gets back.” She laughed.

  The old man turned to Coach. “You have to love’em, don’t you.” The old man took the seat. The husband re-joined his wife. “Night folks,” said the old man. Then he turned to get BB’s attention. “Uhm,” he said, looking from BB over to Coach. “My, my, my. The view from here is better anyway.”

  “That’s my wife.” Coach waited for the old man to look at him. “Not some piece of meat.” He could feel his pulse in his temples. The old man looked down into his folded hands on the bar.

  When BB saw the look in Coach’s eyes, she dropped the wet rag she held.

  “I’ll have a scotch on the rocks,” the old man said to BB, “and I’d like to buy my boy here—by way of apology—a bourbon whenever he’s ready.”

  BB gave Coach a precautionary look, then turned to make the drink.

  “It’s a good thing you’re here on a night like this, son,” he said to Coach, looking around at the crowded room. “She’s something to look at. That’s why this place is packed. I’ve often thought about opening my own place. Find myself some beautiful women to work it, treat’em right, and rake in the money. You got beautiful women, treat’em right, the customers will come.”

  “You a fucking genius, ain’t you?” Coach said in a tired, low voice. He lifted his drink. “You fuckin’ Sam Walton come to walk with Elvis, ain’t you, you old fuck.”

  “You don’t have to be a genius to figure that out,” he chuckled, watching BB walk back toward him with his drink.

  BB saw the look in her husband’s eyes. “Please,” she whispered.

  “I’ll have that bourbon now, courtesy of the son of god here, knower of all fucking things big and small.”

  BB turned slowly and walked away, glancing back over her shoulder.

  “Must be hard for you to sit here night after night, huh?” asked the old man, tasting his drink. “I wouldn’t do it if I were you.”

  “You about one breath away from having your sorry ass knocked off that stool, bub.”

  The old man looked down and didn’t speak. BB placed the drink in front of Coach, then laid her hand against his face, until finally his eyes looked up to her. He could see the tears forming there, welling up, begging him.

  “When you kiss me,” she whispered, “you make the moon roove.” It was a verbal miscue from long ago, from their private language.

  He gently pushed her hand away, looked down at his drink and lifted it to his lips. He heard her sigh. Then she was gone.

  “I know how you f
eel, son,” said the old man apologetically.

  “Tell me this,” Coach said. “Are you just into getting your ass stomped, or what?”

  “I worked second shift at Dixie Cup for over thirty years, from the time I graduated high school, three to eleven shift. My wife, she worked for a doctor. She wanted to be a doctor in high school.”

  BB was pouring shots.

  “I knew she wanted to, you know, be with her friends sometimes, and I told her it was okay if she went with a group of her girlfriends dancing sometimes. I didn’t see any harm in that at the time. I wanted her to be happy.”

  BB slid the shots forward, laid down the change, a stack of bills, beside the drinks. A man’s hand from across the bar covered hers. When she looked up, a tall mustached man wearing a cowboy hat stood smiling at her.

  Coach saw the look, knew instantly its meaning. BB whispered something to the man, turning her eyes away.

  Coach saw her lips, her eyes.

  The static roar that filled the bar turned white, was sucked from the room. Only the image of the tall, mustached man, the look on BB’s face, and the old man’s voice remained.

  “I paid the price,” the old man continued. “Still do.” He lifted his drink. “Sometimes she didn’t come home until one or two. I’d lay awake, then fake sleep when she came home. I could smell the after-shave of the men she’d danced with. I wanted her to be happy, but I couldn’t take it after a while.”

  “Do I look like a fucking shrink?” Coach threw back his bourbon.

  The old man gave a small, embarrassed laugh. “You want another drink?” He took a sip of his scotch. “It’s loneliness that is the Devil, you know.”

  The cowboy followed BB up the bar. Coach could see the fucker’s lips moving. He set down his glass and slid from the barstool.

  The old man caught hold of his sleeve. Coach looked back at him with rising fury. “I told her no more going dancing.” Coach looked down at the old man’s hand on his sleeve. “And she agreed,” he said softly. Coach looked again for the tall man. He had disappeared. BB was lighting a cigarette.