The parking lot was weeds winning out over cracked concrete. The words in the window flashed FIRE BREWED STROHS ON TAP. The building was weathered wood that had been once a rich red color, now fading fast to nothing at all.
I parked beside the Corvette and locked the car door. We had the lot to ourselves. I assumed that the bar would be close to empty, that there would be no Norm in living memory, and that none of the customers would care much what a nook is or was.
I pushed the door open and was blasted with stale beery air and near total darkness.
Gradually my eyes made the adjustment.
George Tait evidently liked to drink fast. He was in the act of pushing an empty beer glass across the bar toward a pale woman in a man’s white cotton shirt and black jeans standing in front of him. His glass was still frosty. I sat down at the stool beside him and waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom and my body to get used to the chill.
The floor was cheap wood-patterned parquet. The walls were a darker paneled wood punctuated by fake knots, posters of girls with blue eye makeup and cutoff jeans and yellowed paper advertising events long past. The bar had once boasted its own softball team. They had even won a trophy, which now stood dust-covered beside the television set mounted behind the bar. An old Beatles movie was playing, and an unnaturally innocent looking John Lennon was singing an acoustic song to a girl with long dark hair in unbecoming pigtails.
George Tait picked up his fresh drink without saying anything. He looked at the glass. “This is a ways off the tourist map, pal. You must be seriously fucking lost.” He spoke loudly.
“Not really,” I said.
“Get you something?” The woman behind the bar spoke quickly.
“A beer sounds fine,” I said.
“Light or regular?”
“Regular.” It truthfully didn’t much matter.
“That rain. It let up at last. I thought it never would. Figured the day was shot all to hell.” She spoke between us as she poured the beer.
Tait stared straight ahead, his eyes tracking the dusty bottles on the shelves behind the bar.
“Can I buy you one?” I asked him on impulse.
He snorted. “Do I need to buy you one back?”
I shook my head. He laughed once. It wasn’t a nice laugh.
“I’ll take a draft then.” His last was close to empty.
A minute later, the woman placed the drinks on the bar. When I gave her a ten and told her to keep the change, she smiled sweetly at me.
“Well, check out Mister Money.” His smile was ugly and I heard a threat in his voice for the first time.
George Tait was a tall man shaped like a pair of scissors. Sitting down, he looked squat, short in the arms and torso, but standing up the long legs knotted beneath the barstool would telescope out beneath him. There wasn’t much hair left on the top of his head—what there was had once been blonde and was now swept back in hair-creamed strands that left a widow’s peak but did a respectable job of covering the spot in back. You wouldn’t actually call him bald yet.
He wore old Levi’s jeans and new basketball shoes and a red T-shirt from a crab cafe in the Florida Keys, that was too small for him. He didn’t have a gut but his chest was shapeless, like a young kid’s, the muscle slack and undefined. He was probably lucky not to be fat.
His third beer was fast becoming a thing of the past. He paused before drinking the last inch.
When it was empty he spoke. “So now what happens, pal? You followed me here. You pissed my lovely wife off. And you’ve got that sensitive fuck of a neighbor of mine Will Sanders all fired up.” He turned toward me and spat the last words out. “So what the fuck is it you want from me?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“The tramp.”
“He’s a friend.”
“That’s nice. He’s still a tramp. And a pervert.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“No? Why should you? Like you say. He’s your friend. He tried to show his dick to my daughter.”
“You believe that?”
He smiled. “Maybe. My kids don’t lie in general. Not if they figure they’ll get caught. Who knows? I really get off on beating the piss out of weak people, so I don’t truthfully give much of a fuck one way or another. I wasn’t real thrilled to have him hanging around our place, that’s for sure.”
“He wasn’t doing any harm.”
“True. He wasn’t doing any harm. That’s very true. But then, so fucking what? He made the place look real shitty.”
I sensed that the barmaid was no longer close by. I heard a voice on the TV set murmur a weather forecast. More rain was apologetically promised. The cooler behind the bar kicked in loudly. A car driving fast on the wet road outside came and went.
“You sent him away.”
He shrugged. “It’s a free country. He chose to vacate the premises before we kicked his sorry ass.”
“We?”
“The townspeople and I.” He laughed.
“He’s missing now.”
“That so? Fuck of a shame.” The fresh beer in his hand, number four, vanished in one long swallow.
“Listen. You’ve got as much out of me as one beer entitles you to. I understand you got the jump on Will. Big fucking deal. That’s no big thing. Will’s damn good with his mouth. Fucking worthless with his fists.”
“You hurt Keith?”
“A little. We told him to kindly get the fuck away from our lake. Maybe we had to hit him gently a few times to make our point. He was soft. We did nothing real unpleasant. He’s pretty much a worthless runt. He ran like hell away from the place. I never saw him again.”
“Did the police ever ask you about it?”
He tried to look bored and amazed at the same time. “A missing tramp and a sicko? Pal, you’re clearly unaware how law enforcement works around here. We form committees here, we eat pancake breakfasts, we dig each other out of the snow in a storm. We’re one big happy fucking family. The police chief’s name is Andy Borland, okay? His daughter Maggie goes to school with my Tammi. We ice fish the lake in the winter. He stops by here sometimes. He’d shoot you straight through the fucking head if I asked him quietly. You’re pretty much all alone here, pal, asking your smart questions, getting your ashes hauled by the Weller woman cause you’ve got a fancy car that for some weird reason you ain’t driving right now, baby-smooth skin, and no dick to speak of. Now get the fuck out of here because that’s all I’m saying to you.”
I swung my fist at him. He saw it coming. He smirked and moved to one side. He was supposed to. The real punch came a split-second later and caught him hard in the cheek. He tried to laugh through it.
“Very fucking clever.”
“That’s for shooting at me.”
He made a weak effort to look surprised. “Oh yeah? Heard the shots out on the water. That was you? Gotta be more careful out there, pal. That’s our own personal island. You must have been trespassing on private property.”
Then he pushed himself off his stool and charged at me.
We fell awkwardly onto the floor. As he rolled on top of me I grabbed the remains of his hair and smashed his head into the bottom of the bar. He hit it hard. I did it again. And again. When he had all but passed out I got to my feet. The room was still empty.
I reached behind the bar and found a sharp wooden handled knife still wet from slicing limes for mixed drinks that no one would ever order in this shithole of a place.
It was time to leave.
In the parking lot, I slashed the tires of his Corvette. The sky blue leather seats were pristine, baby-soft leather, and the blade went through them like wet tissue paper. I left the knife embedded in the driver’s seat about where his dick would be.
My bid for anonymity was drawing to an end, and my list of enemies was gettin
g a little out of hand.
I drove away from Norm’s on a road still slick and wet, the heat forming a thin mist that rose a foot above the surface. I headed back into town in the rented Escort, which cornered like a plate of rice pudding on an ice rink.
The rental office was closed. I parked in back and left the keys in the ignition. The gas tank was half empty. I would be charged for a full tank of gas. It was a truly shabby business practice.
Snug inside the Mercedes, I let out the breath I felt like I had been holding since I was still inside the bar, and I started the engine. The car purred reassuringly. Like an addict I stabbed my finger at the CD changer and Bruce Cockburn began to sing.
I gave in to a mad impulse and picked up the mobile phone. Information got me the number of the bar. It rang three times before someone picked it up.
“Yes.”
“Is he coming around yet?”
“Oh, no. It’s you, isn’t it? You can’t actually be calling here. This is just way too wild.” Was she laughing a little or just scared silly?
“So?”
“He’s in the can.”
“Put him on when he gets out.”
“Listen to me. He’s not a nice man. That tip you gave me is more than I’ve gotten out of him in five years. You should be real careful.”
“I’m afraid it’s much too late for that.”
“Here he comes now.”
There was a rustling sound. Tait didn’t say anything. Still, I could sense him there. Holding the phone. Silent. And hating up a storm.
“How’s the head?”
Still he was silent.
“You shot at me. I think you hurt a friend of mine. Maybe you even did worse. You think you’re a hard man. You’re not. You’re just an inbred, white-trash fucker used to dealing with people nearly as retarded as you.”
Then he hung up on me.
The tarmac on the parking lot and the tennis court was almost dry, and the rain clouds had rolled out across the sky and far away to the west. Paddle Lake lay mirror flat, and everything looked safe and welcoming.
I wasn’t fooled for a second.
I risked the radio and found an all-oldies station playing Badfinger’s “Baby Blue.” I turned up the volume tentatively. Oldies stations were always dangerous. Let down your guard for a second, and old clunkers by bands like Kansas and Styx are suddenly ravaging your ears.
Power-pop guitars jangled and suddenly mid-period David Bowie was hollowly lamenting the endless pitfalls of “Fame.”
So far, so good. I had Victoria Williams ready on the CD changer in case things turned ugly.
The inside of the car was warm, and I rolled the window down. I thought about turning the music up louder. Bowie’s voice was sliding the word fame through several octaves using fancy studio technology.
I chanted quietly along until Bowie got too low for me.
My soon-to-be ex-wife had hinted at the inherent selfishness of my trip up north and she was no doubt accurate.
I had pursued Keith Pringle to, I now felt certain, his last spot on this earth, always knowing that he was dead, even from the outset of my travels.
He had been on the island. The bike borrowed from Bridget Cassidy proved that. He had sat on this beach. My talking to Connie Alexander had authenticated that.
I was certain things had gone badly here for Keith from the reactions of Will Sanders, George Tait and his flighty wife, Sylvie. They had expressed fear and anger and terror, respectively.
It was the terror aspect that was perhaps the most frightening of the three.
Bowie was done and Free was singing “All Right Now.” It wasn’t much of a favorite of mine, but I hung on, praying that the station would have the long version on the turntable, and that they wouldn’t cut short the guitar solo by the late Paul Kossoff in the middle of the song.
My prayers were answered. They had, and they didn’t.
Keith stood accused of exposing himself to the Taits’ young daughter Tammi. I wasn’t especially keen on giving credence to George Tait’s accusations. Sylvie Tait wasn’t believable, either, and a brief exposure to Oprah and her talky ilk had given me a strong sense that children could be rather easily tutored in deception.
Yet Will Sanders had struck me as an essentially honest man. His side of the story would be worth hearing.
I would never get to hear Keith’s own side of the story.
But the trip was for myself as much as it was for Keith. And in that regard it had produced results. How else to explain the discovery of my flair for violence and for tenacity? There was also the fact of my fundamental loneliness, witnessed in the desperate emotional reactions unknowingly elicited by Sandy Weller and Bridget Cassidy. It was clear I was in serious danger of falling in love with every woman I met. At the same time, the one woman already in my life was very close to becoming a total stranger.
Awaiting my longed-for moment of epiphany, I sat and looked out across the water toward the island.
But there was nothing more.
On the radio, my fears soon proved to be founded as Bachman-Turner Overdrive commenced singing. I quickly turned them off and started the engine.
My vigil hadn’t produced dramatic results. George Tait hadn’t come home. But he would drink off his pain at Norm’s and come looking for me sooner or later. He would come with friends, or he would come in secret. Perhaps he would come at night. He would only come in such a way that he would have some sort of sneaky advantage. He wouldn’t freely choose to play on a level ground.
There was no sign of life in the Tait household. There was no sign of life in the Sanders homestead. Yet I felt scared eyes behind the blinds, watching me, as I, in turn, watched them.
On the beach, the rain and wind had conspired to manufacture a fake tide line, washing a slick film of green dirt up onto the soft sand.
I was wasting my time.
I pushed the gearshift into drive and pulled away.
* * *
I found a neglected piece of pizza still sulking in the back of Sandy’s fridge and resuscitated it in the microwave. It tasted like playdough. Nevertheless, I was very hungry. I sat on the porch and ate it.
When the pizza was all gone, I sat back in the chair, checked my wristwatch (it was close to six-thirty), and shut my eyes for a second. When I opened them again, two-and-a-half hours had passed, and darkness had wrapped itself around the house. All my remaining energy was expended climbing the stairs, brushing my teeth, pulling the white sheets back on the bed and falling face down into the pillow.
A series of explicit and frenzied grunts from the floor below woke me later, where Sandy had apparently succeeded in capturing the young hunk of her dreams, and was putting her aerobic expertise to good use.
It was for me a sad and apt end to a hard day, and I felt the multitude of ironies crashing down on me like ocean waves as I once again closed my eyes.
It was with both the squeals of the pummeled bedsprings below, and the stray and unmistakably country-song corny thought that I was definitely giving my heart away too cheaply, that I fell asleep again.
SIXTEEN
The sun soaked the billowing lace curtains as I got out of bed, bug-eyed, far from rested, with a marked absence of pep and a great deal of apprehension. Perhaps the weather should have appeased me, as outside it was sunny and freshly dry; quite impossible to guess that the day before had been so wet and stormy.
I had half expected George Tait and a posse of sheepish cretins to show during the night with a rope and a reservation at the nearest hanging tree, and while it hadn’t actually happened, I wasn’t out of the fire just yet.
The house was almost soundless except for the breeze poking through the open windows, gentle against the wind chimes that hung on the back porch, making them tinkle like a bad noir movie scene, softly hissing through the
leaves on the tall trees that circled the unkempt backyard.
Sandy and her young man were doubtless resting the sheet-defiled sleep of the young and the fit and the wicked, which I naturally envied them very badly.
But instead of wallowing in self-pity and thwarted lust, I showered quickly, packed my one bag with my customary efficiency, and found myself feeling much better with the careful placement of each folded shirt and compartmentalized personal accessory.
After putting my bag at the bottom of the stairs, I made instant coffee in the microwave and poked around in the kitchen. In a drawer in the kitchen table, I found the machine used for credit card transactions. I ran my card through the machine, signed at the bottom and left most of the boxes blank. I didn’t know the exact rate, or the tax in this state offhand. I wrote what I thought was a ludicrously large amount in the box designated for tips and used the leotard girl magnet to attach the invoice prominently to the center of the refrigerator door.
Sandy Weller would only charge me what was fair. I was utterly certain of that. I briefly considered appending the invoice with a short note. Either petty, or else fawning, or more likely a schizophrenically deranged blend of both.
I hastily abandoned that idea.
So there had been a brief and pleasing attraction between us. Anything else, anything beyond that, had existed only inside my head, or inside whatever warped portion of my fevered body was claiming responsibility. She had never hinted at or promised more.
There had been no betrayal, only an absurd amplification, my misguided notion of where our relationship was headed. It hadn’t reached anywhere. And it never would. I was quite certain she would tell me all this if I asked her, her face no doubt smiling uncertainly, embarrassed, quizzical at the patent absurdity of my romantic projections.
There wasn’t any room for subterfuge in her well-disciplined body and spirited mind.
I pulled the screen door gently shut behind me, breathed in a balmy lungful of the fresh new day’s air, and climbed into the car with an unforced jauntiness that made little kind of sense at all.
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