Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  He read the letter aloud to the four walls of his studio apartment:

  "Darling,

  I truly enjoyed our recent night of passion. I am itching for another weekend alone with you. When I think of you, your hard-muscled body, the way you hold me, how you drive me over the edge "

  Howie paused, feeling heat rising in his loins. "Good Lord, Betty, what you do to me, if only you could see!"

  He continued reading:

  " like a wild animal in heat." ("Owee!" Howie whistled.) "No one else can do what you do to me, what I want you to do to me. I am writing this letter wearing nothing but that special peekaboo bra you like and your favorite flavor candy panties: Mango. I wish you were here to take me like this, right here, right now. Please call soon, because I don't know if I can stand the agonizing wait until we're together again.

  Sex and Passion,

  Betts."

  With a groan and a stiffening of his legs, his toes curling, Howie came across his candy cane boxers. "Whew, Betty, Betty "

  He put the letter down with the two others he'd been sniffing.

  Howie McCormick reached for the phone and dialed a number.

  Betty Henderson's number.

  3

  8:00 p.m.

  The two main hangouts in town were coming alive. Folks had been home from work, showered, maybe caught a little shut-eye, reapplied makeup, shaved away that five o'clock shadow, and hit the streets. Pontefract's class divisions could best be seen through those two places, the Henchman Lounge and the Columns. The Henchman Lounge was the place you went to get stone drunk, to play Patsy Cline on the jukebox, to start a fight with somebody, or to hustle a drink. The Columns was more of a restaurant, round wooden tables covered with red-checkered tablecloths, the menu written on a blackboard as you entered, soft Muzak playing in the background. You could still get stone drunk there, but you did so with the implicit understanding that all fights and vomiting must be done out back in the alley. The dress codes said it all: in the Henchman you could wear just about any unwashed thing you owned, whereas the Columns at times looked like a spread from Town & Country magazine.

  When you entered the Columns you were reminded of genteel Southern living. When you strode into the Henchman you might wonder if you were going to get out of there alive.

  In the Henchman Lounge, Friday night:

  Warren Whalen had, within his first ten minutes of arrival, polished off three shots of Johnny Walker Red with beer chasers. He hunched over the bar, trying to get a look down Francie Jarrett's amply filled blouse. "Dolly Parton's got nothing on you, Francie," he said. Warren snapped his fingers several times. "Hey, baby, how about just selling me the bottle." He pointed to the end of the mirrored wall behind the bar. "I'll take that one."

  Francie flashed her infamous grin of gold-capped teeth. "Mr. Whalen, for a man who is a disciplinary counselor at Peepee, you sure do lack discipline yourself."

  "Oh, Miss J., why don't you come on over and discipline me? Whip me, honey, beat me, make me write bad checks." Warren aimed his fingers at her like a gun and pulled his thumb-trigger back between his teeth. "Bang-bang."

  "I think," she said, sliding the bottle of scotch in front of him, "that's the only way you're ever going to bang me."

  Some guy was laughing down at the end of the bar. "Good one, Francie."

  Warren glanced down the bar, around the two redheaded girls giggling and the man with the long black beard. A man leaned against the rail, lifted his glass to Warren, smiling. He wore a cowboy hat and a string tie, his shirt was a shiny robin's egg blue. "Cowboys in Virginia?" Warren asked sarcastically. "What'll they think up next? Feel a little out of place, Cisco?"

  The cowboy's grin faded. "Look in the mirror, jackass."

  Warren, feeling warm and agreeable, faced front and stared into the mirror at himself. He looked like hell, his white suit was a mess, his face looked like he'd slept on it funny, and his dark hair was a greasy bird's nest. "You win, Destry." He took a swig from the bottle; much of the whiskey ran down his chin. Warren began singing "Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie," but he didn't know the words after the first line, so this faded to a hum.

  Then he called the barmaid over to him again. Reluctantly, she went over and leaned across the bar. "Yeah?"

  Warren's voice shrank to a whisper, and she had to strain to hear him. "If my wife comes in here looking for me tonight, don't let her you know I'm here, okay? I'm just going to get one of those booths in the back, and sit down and enjoy this bottle in silence, okay?"

  "Mr. Whalen " Francie was about to say something else, but sighed when she saw him wink at her.

  "Just a little ha-ha," Warren said.

  Francie smirked and, raising her eyebrows, whispered to him, "You be careful tonight, you hear? And if you need a ride home, I'll just get Jim to run you back. And I'd watch what you say to the man in the hat, Mr. Whalen, he's a trucker from out of state and I heard him talking like he was just itching for a fight."

  "Gotcha," Warren winked. He picked up the bottle, got off the bar stool, and headed for the red booths back near the pool table. As he passed the cowboy, he said, "Francie and I have this bet going, and I think I'm going to win."

  The cowboy grinned again, pushing his hat to the back of his head. "I might like in on that bet, dude."

  Warren, swinging the bottle carelessly, splashing it across a couple necking while they slow danced to "I Can't Help It If I'm Still in Love with You," kept walking by. "Well, she says you're a steer and I say you're a heifer, and, like I said, I think I'm going to win."

  The first fight of the evening broke out at the Henchman Lounge shortly after eight o'clock.

  In the Columns, Friday night:

  Shelly Patterson said, "I've been starving myself all day on this Ultimate Diet." She sat at the table farthest from the door, her red hair brushed back from her face, dark circles under her eyes, and when she spoke her large front teeth caught the light from the little candle in the center of the table. Clare Terry sat across from her, while Debbie Randolph was on her right.

  "Diets like that can't be healthy," Debbie said, fingering her silverware. She wiped water spots off her knife with her red napkin.

  "No, really," Shelly said, looking for the waitress, "a doctor wrote the book."

  "Hah, doctors are a dime a dozen when it comes to diet books. As far as I'm concerned the only ultimate diet is cancer. Which reminds me " Debbie set her fork back down, leaned to the side and fished around in her purse. She brought out her cigarette case and said, "Anyone for coffin nails?"

  Shelly gasped. "Oh, Debbie, I don't think you should talk like that, 'cause, you know, it could happen to you—cancer—like I had this cousin who always made fun of bald men, and when she turned thirty, she started losing her hair. Just like bad karma."

  Debbie laughed and lit her cigarette; she passed the cigarette case to Clare who seemed eager for a smoke. "Well, if what goes around comes around, all three of us are in big trouble." Both she and Shelly laughed; Shelly kept repeating, "Oh, Debbie, you are just so—just so—"

  But when Shelly stopped laughing, she noticed Clare had remained quiet. "You okay?" she asked her.

  Clare attempted a smile, but her mouth became a horizontal line. "I was just thinking of Daddy and his sitter tonight. And do you think that's true? What goes around, you know, comes around?"

  Debbie caught the waitress's attention. The girl came over, and the three women ordered. "And a big carafe of Chablis," Debbie added.

  "It really bothers me," Clare said. She had a faraway look, and Debbie rolled her eyes for Shelly's benefit: here she goes again.

  "What does?"

  "Things going around, coming around."

  Debbie tamped her cigarette out in the ashtray. "You've been listening to your dad too much. Could we get off this topic? It's getting spooky."

  "I know," Shelly said, slapping the table, "let's see a movie after dinner."

  "Our choice within a thirty-mile r
adius is either one of those Friday the 13th movies or a Disney cartoon."

  "I'll see either one," Shelly said. The carafe of wine arrived, and Debbie poured out three glasses. "Or we could take a drive over the hills and cruise Roanoke."

  Debbie sipped her wine. "Shelly, really, Roanoke."

  "It's Friday night and I'm closing in on the amniocentesis years, let's have some fun." Shelly looked over to Clare for her reaction.

  "That scares me," Clare said.

  "Amniocentesis or Roanoke?" Debbie asked dryly.

  "No, I mean what goes around, coming around coming back. It really gets to me like the way my father always talks about "

  Debbie lit another cigarette. "Just where is dinner?"

  Clare thought Debbie had said: Just what are you afraid of? But when she looked at them, Shelly and Debbie, they were chatting away about the slow service tonight, about the new store opening up in the mall in Newton, about maybe renting a video.

  And if she were to answer that questioning voice, she knew that the answer would be: I am afraid of everything. But I am mostly afraid that when they put you in a box and bury you six-feet-down it is not always enough to keep you there. That there are ways out, avenues of escape. There, I've thought it. I don't have to believe it, but I will allow that thought.

  What goes around, comes around.

  4

  While Clare excused herself from the table she shared with Debbie and Shelly, saying that she was worried about her father and should get home, and while the first punch of the evening was swung at the Henchman Lounge, and while Cup Coffey sat down to dinner with Dr. Prescott Nagle, Howie McCormick had dialed a number and hung up the phone six times. For a while the woman he was calling took her phone off the hook. But now, less than forty minutes after first calling her, the phone was ringing at the other end again. Howie held the phone to his ear in anticipation.

  Finally, she answered. "Yallo." Betty Henderson sounded tired and annoyed.

  Howie remained silent.

  "Who is this, anyway?"

  Howie didn't say anything. Not a word.

  "Joe?"

  Howie bit his lower lip, trying to contain himself.

  "Is it you, Joe? Who is this? Dammit, what kind of asshole pervert is doing this? You want a thrill, whoever the hell you are? Okay, you got your little wiener in your hand, sonny? Picture me sucking on it, you'd like that, wouldn't you? You hot? Huh? Does that get you hot?"

  Howie was. He felt his body temperature was up to a hundred five. No woman had ever talked to him like this before.

  "Yah," he said, trying to disguise his voice, making it vaguely foreign.

  "Good, that's a good little boy, because now, picture this: I am biting down on your goddamn prick and tearing it out at its roots! Now fuck off!"

  Howie hung up the phone. He felt like a thousand-volt shock had gone through him. Like he'd just stuck his penis in a garbage disposal and turned it on. "Oh, m'God," he said, clutching himself down there to make sure everything was still in working order.

  It had withered like a worm on a hot plate.

  But it was still there, twitching.

  He heaved a sigh of relief.

  That Betty Henderson is some wildcat.

  A girl who wrote letters like the ones he'd been reading every Friday, to all her boyfriends (Joe, Stan, Josh, Luke, Randy, and three different Steves), you'd think that kind of girl wouldn't mind helping a guy get off over the phone once in a while.

  "Well, Betty, you can go straight to hell," he muttered.

  Howie frantically tore up all the other letters. "These'll never get where they're suppose to go."

  He glanced over at his clock—it was almost nine, and Gonzo still hadn't shown up with the pizza. Howie got up off the sofa bed and went over to his TV. There on top of the VCR were the movies he'd checked out from the video store in Cabelsville. Eat Me Raw, I Got Something for You, and the sequel, I Got Something for You, Too, and Skin Dance. Although Howie knew he could've found those videos here in town, he was too embarrassed to go back into the adult section of the video store on Main Street. What if somebody saw him? He picked up I Got Something for You and looked at the cover. A pretty blonde named Norma Vincent Peel pouted at him from the picture, and beneath it was a quote: "Norma's got a soft spot for men. If you ask, maybe she'll show it to you."

  "Hot dog," Howie grinned.

  5

  From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:

  Dr. Nagle prepared a wonderful dinner of southern fried chicken mashed potatoes with gravy, green peas, spoon bread, and apple brown betty for dessert. By the time we'd shoveled our ways through all that, we'd acquired what Nagle referred to as "Dunlaps disease."

  "That's when your stomach dunlaps over your belt," he chuckled.

  I'd never been inside his place before. When you're a sixteen-year-old kid, professors have very little to do with you after school hours. And with good reason. When I was a student and just getting involved with the Tenebro, we all set our alarms for 3:00 a.m. one night and snuck out of the dorms with as much toilet paper as we could carry. The seniors drove us out to Nagle's barn. We proceeded to teepee the place.

  I mentioned the episode to him after dinner.

  "I remember the night well, Coffey. I was coming down with the flu, and it was in the middle of a grading period. Work was piled up and I was tired all the time. This strange noise outside my bedroom window woke me up. Like the Huns descending."

  Dr. Nagle and I were drinking sherry in what he called his "club room." This consisted of three large comfortable chairs with high, plush backs that you could sink right into and that made rather embarrassing noises when you moved around too much in them. There was a wall shelf lined with dusty, arcane-looking books, above a Danish modern coffee table, also dusty. This was buried in magazines: Smithsonian, National Geographic, Virginia Country, American Heritage. The club room looked the way I assumed Nagle was on the inside: dusty, intelligent, comfortable. It was all him, and smelt of hickory smoke.

  Nagle continued talking about that teepeeing episode. " I figured it was either a comet or God trying to punish me for my wanton ways. I went outside the next morning assuming I'd find a burnt meteor in my tomato patch, but of course, all I found was enough Charmin to last me a lifetime. Not wanting to waste it, I spent most of the day, even with the flu, rolling up toilet paper. More sherry, Cup?"

  I nodded and held my glass out while he poured. "We only did it because we liked you."

  "Liked me? Old Bagel?"

  I was surprised that he knew his nickname.

  Nagle smiled, patting his stomach. "We teachers are never as slow as you boys think. Mind if I light up?" He picked up a mahogany-red pipe from beside the sherry. He cupped the pipe bowl in his hands as if it were a delicate baby bird. He brought out a tobacco pouch from his jacket pocket. Then he began patting his various pockets, looking for something else. I felt like I was watching a Japanese Tea Ceremony. "I can never find my whatchacallit, you know, pipe thing, the thing." He snapped his fingers as if that would help him recall what a whatchacallit was.

  "Lighter?" I volunteered.

  "Quite right, Cup, lighter. The way my memory is going it's as if my mind is leaking." He finally found that he was sitting on it. He lit his pipe and heaved smoke. The room filled with a delicious aroma. "Remind you of anything?"

  I tried to identify the scent. "Hershey Bars?"

  He nodded, his eyes widening with a childlike delight. "Chocolate-flavored tobacco," he informed me as if this were one of the great secret luxuries of the universe.

  I felt mildly high from the huge dinner and all the sherry I'd been drinking. The room seemed to possess a warm, fireplace-like glow. That's about the point I realized I was getting drunk and feeling very antisocial. Alcohol has the unique effect of bringing out all my inhibitions

  "Now, Coffey," Dr. Nagle said, sinking back into his chair, puffing like a steam engine on his pipe, "let's stop being so evasive about why yo
u're here. You've told me you were fired, that you might like a teaching position, you need advice. Both you and I know what kind of rubbish that is."

  I felt very self-conscious. I pretty much clammed up. "And you told me you knew—were afraid—I'd be back this winter."

  Nagle nodded his head and said, "Fair enough. I'll lay my cards on the table, if you will follow suit." He tamped his pipe into the ashtray that sat precariously on the arm of his chair. "It's Lily Cammack, isn't it?"

  This took me somewhat aback. I'm not sure if my eyes popped out of my head or if my tongue suddenly dried up in my mouth. I could not find my voice. I had no idea that Dr. Nagle knew anything that would connect her to me. After several moments, I finally managed a thin, "Yes."

  "Good lord, good lord," Nagle sighed, a worried look crossing his face, as if he had briefly hoped that Lily was not the reason I had returned to town. "Not exactly after-dinner conversation, is this, Coffey?"

  6

  Howie McCormick Blows Bubbles

  His pizza had finally arrived.

  Howie munched on the thick pizza crust while he fast-forwarded the video tape to the first sexy part. This one was called Eat Me Raw and featured the bountiful Veronica Lay. Howie was drunk and sleepy, but he just had to see what this girl could do. He'd already watched Norma Vincent Peel perform pelvic tricks for the US Marines, and Lana Turnover on her knees for some garage mechanics in Skin Dance. Now he wanted to see what Veronica could do.

  "How do you think they get those girls to do that?" Howie asked the video store owner in Cabelsville when he'd gone in to get the films.

  "Look," the man said, "it's Hollywood. All those pretty young girls going out there thinking they're gonna be the next Sally Fielding or Mariel Streep, and they just don't know the ropes. You never heard of the casting couch? Don't you watch Benny Hill?"