“Let her rip!”
Mitch throws it as hard as he can, but his aim is off and the ball heads straight for his mom’s new lamp. Jack’s eyes get big and he almost falls out his chair trying to protect the lamp. He barely catches it, grins and says, “You’re dad just saved your butt!”
Mitch runs toward him and jumps into his lap. They start laughing and Mitch acts like his father: big eyes open, stretching out to protect the lamp. Jack acts like his son: winding up off balance, tilting, throwing a wild pitch.
Mitch squeezes his father’s bicep. “I know I’m not THAT spasmodic. Hey Dad, let me ask you something. When you were little, were you like me? And did you wanna grow up to be like Grandpa?”
Jack McAllister is caught off guard. He hesitates, unsure how to answer. On a spring afternoon when Jack was a boy, he found his father passed out in the backyard hammock. First he called out to him, and then he clapped his hands above his father’s face. His mom could see this from the garden and hurried over to explain that something was wrong. “Your father has a problem,” she said. “He drinks too much, but he’ll wake up soon.”
Jack walked away from her not wanting to listen. On the side of the house, he climbed up a tree and pulled himself onto the roof. He crawled to the top and sat against the chimney so he could see the entire neighborhood.
“We’re the same, right? Like teammates,” Mitch says and holds his hand up to compare it to his father’s.
Jack tells him, “Sure we are, and Mitch, you never let your teammates down.”
. . .
“Bobbie-Ann’s Bistro. This is Bill Nelson, how may I help you?”
“Mr. Nelson, it’s Mitch McAllister. I’m moving to California.”
Trapper and Grady Myers are in San Diego partying their asses off. I’m still in Palm City chasing Kim. I sent my friends a letter. “What it’s like,” I asked, “the chick situation and all?” They sent me a postcard of a bikini biker chick straddling a Harley-Davidson. The caption read, LOOKIN’ FOR ADVENTURE? On the back they wrote, “McAllister, hustle out to California as soon as you can. Plenty of jobs, plenty of babes, and a beach where you can run naked.”
Kim needs to know about my new plans, so after a quick shower, I knock out twenty push-ups and put on a tight fitting Hobie t-shirt, a pair of white, Miami Vice slacks and Topsiders. I debate over which cologne to wear, Ice Blue Aqua Velva or Drakkar Noir. I smell each one several times, focusing on the scents, and eventually splash Aqua Velva on my face and Drakkar Noir on my crotch.
Kim answers her door barefoot with black painted toenails. Her apartment is about the same as I remember: a box of baculms under the kitchen table, a Turkish water pipe in the corner, and Spike, her dog. There’s more books in her bookcase now and a Nagel print above the couch. Sitting with her at the kitchen table, I tell her, “Kim, I’m tossing around the idea of moving to San Diego.”
She thinks it’s an awesome idea. She says the move will be good for me, help me get over this slump. I ask if she’s sure, because if I leave, I might not come back.
Kim says, “Mitch,” and then she pauses a second, “Yes, I’m sure.”
. . .
The entire time I worked with that bitch she was screwing the maître d’. It didn’t make sense, but none of that matters anymore. You reach a certain level of acceptance, and you move on. So I’m moving on— Gave my furniture to Goodwill, my television to my sister, and when my bicycle wouldn’t fit in the trunk, I left it on the driveway.
On my way out of town, I stop at Mom’s house to tell her goodbye. She gives me an ice-chest loaded with sandwiches, milk, hard-boiled eggs and cold drinks. “Love you, Mom. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
On the floorboard I have a bag of potato chips, road atlas and Playboy magazines for jacking-off. Driving over the I-10 Bridge, I’m optimistic and whistling with the radio. Everything will be great in San Diego, the perfect city with perfect beaches and perfect weather.
It’s liberating to have finally gotten over the past, to be in total control of my destiny, my future success. “Kim, who?” I say out-loud. “I don’t know any Kim.” Thirty minutes later I cross the Sabine River into the great state of Texas dreaming of wild times in California. The hard-boiled eggs are good. I have two with potato chips and a can of root beer. It takes almost three hours to get past the Houston traffic, to where the flat farmlands continue mile after relaxing mile. There’s an occasional fence running beside the highway with horses and grain silos, plus endless fields of cotton and soybeans. Nothing all that special, really.
On the other side of San Antonio, I pull in at a souvenir store to call Kim. I had forgotten to give her my brass wine bottle opener, and if she wants, I’ll drive back to Palm City and drop it off, maybe spend the night at her place and get a fresh start for California in the morning.
The souvenir store has Texas puzzle maps and plastic Bowie knives. Dialing Kim’s number at the payphone, a lady and her little boy wait behind me. The boy is swinging an Indian tomahawk with feathers. It rings a long time, Kim’s phone, and I can feel the lady behind me staring, wondering why I haven’t hung up yet, so while the phone rings, I act like Kim answers:
“Hey babe, how’s it going . . . I miss you too . . . No, it won’t be much longer . . . Okay, we’ll see each other soon.”
Scooping quarters from the slot, I smile at the lady behind me. “Free call, my lucky day.”
Screw that bitch, I don’t need Kim. Heading west on I-10, burning through the end of a perfect afternoon, I’m spitting sunflower shells in a plastic cup. Later, when my thoughts turn from California to food, I park at a rest stop and watch the setting sun from the hood of my car while eating a peanut butter sandwich.
Grady and Trapper live three blocks from the beach. There’s an outdoor gym, a secondhand bookstore and a Mexican restaurant with cheap burritos. Everything I need is in San Diego. Add a few surfer girls into the mix and we’re talkin’ paradise.
Back on the interstate, the traffic has pretty much thinned out. I slip in behind a eighteen wheeler with large round taillights and follow it all night, passing mile after mile with no sense of time. The truck exits I-10 onto Interstate 25. I follow it all the way past Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the Sandia Mountains, where the morning sun rises over the peaks. It’s is only a slight diversion from California, a chance to close a door or two in Santa Fe, Kim’s hometown.
. . .
La Fonda is a historic hotel in the old section of the city called the Plaza. My room has pastel yellow walls and a brown tile floor with a high, soft bed in the center. A basket of dried herbs provide a pleasant scent. I stick my nose in the basket, inhaling deeply to see if the herbs will give me a buzz. Nope. I open my suitcase on the bed, grab a thick sweater and hit the streets on foot.
Tourists stroll the town square, taking pictures of Pueblo style architecture, window shopping at art galleries. Under a long adobe veranda, Native American women squat on colorful Navajo rugs, selling handcrafted silver and turquoise jewelry. I stroll past art galleries not sure where to go. Three blocks behind the square, I find a secondhand bookstore with record albums on a discount table, books stacked on the floor. One of the employees, a girl with black rim glasses, is looking at a Sex Pistol’s album with a guy wearing army pants.
“Excuse me, do you have Notes From Underground by Dostoyevsky?”
“It’s in with the classics,” the girl says. “On that wall.”
“Thanks— Oh, by the way, did you happen to go to SF High with Kim Sanders?”
“Don’t know her.”
I knew her.
Under streamers at a used car lot, there’s a red ‘65 Mustang fastback with a cowl induction hood. I open the door and drop into the bucket seat, one hand on the automatic shift, my other gripping the wheel. The salesman steps out of his trailer office, slicks back his greasy hair and saunters up to the car wearing snake skin boots, his polyester slacks riding below his beer gut. “One hundred percent cherry,” he says. “Spoke hubs, du
al exhaust, Pioneer stereo. A giveaway at four grand.”
Along with all the bullshit, he slips in a mention of his kids and the church he goes to. Says he’s a Christian.
“Really? You’re a CHRISTIAN? Well, you certainly have offered me a lot to consider.” I hightail it away from that jackass as quickly as I can, cut through a construction site and make a beeline behind the Antiques Warehouse. If someone starts talking religion, they either want to convert you or rip you off.
A cold north wind sends me inside the Hilton Hotel. The bar has mahogany paneling and thick maroon carpet. The thin bartender has a bouncing Adam’s apple. At three-thirty in the afternoon, it’s just me and him. I order a tequila sunrise.
“It’s getting cold out there, damn cold.”
“Wait till the sun goes down,” he says. “It’ll be cold as a witch’s teat.”
“A what?” I ask.
“A witch’s teat, or tit, however you prefer to say it. Haven’t you heard that expression before?”
“Maybe a long time ago.”
My tequila sunrise lasts about two minutes. While he’s making another, I ask, “Not that it matters, but did you go to SF High?”
“Oh my Lord, we just met and you’re already making me re-live that tragedy.” He rolls up the sleeves on his tuxedo shirt and tops my drink with a cherry. “Hmm, let me see, I graduated from Santa Fe High about seven years ago. We called it ‘So Fucking High,’ because we were, believe me! . . . Anywho, does that answer your question?”
“Did you know Kim Sanders?”
“Kim Sanders? Sure, I remember Kim. She was a freshman when I was a Senior.”
His answer surprises me and some of my drink goes down the wrong chute. I cough to clear my throat. “No kidding, you knew her? What was she like?”
“She was sort of a loner, if I had to pick one word, although my younger sister was chummy with her—too chummy, my parents said. They eventually put an end to the love-fest. Before that, Kim would sometimes spend the night at our house. She had “complications” at her own.”
I pivot my stool closer to the bar. “Wait, what do you mean by love-fest and complications? What kind of love-fest?”
The bartender fills a collins glass with ice and White Zinfandel. “Mind if I partake?”
“Go ahead,” I tell him.
“Why all the third-degree about Kim?” he asks, sipping his wine. “Did she trample your heart?”
“Can you remember anything else about her?” I ask.
“I know the girl was stuck-up, and I know she never had much to say to the guys. She wouldn’t go to any of the school dances with them— Of course, not swinging that way myself, I wasn’t bothered by it.”
“It sounds like you’re calling her a lesbian, and I know for a fact she isn’t.”
“Excuse me for answering your questions!”
“What about her family? You said she had problems at home?”
“When you’re of a different persuasion, you automatically have problems at home—and everywhere else for that matter. Believe me, I know what of I speak. Not everyone is a hottie-heterosexual whose father taught him to shoot guns and kill things.”
“I don’t kill things.”
The bartender places another drink in front of me and refills his pink wine. “Here’s some information for you,” he says, “so you won’t think I’m a total bitch.” He grins his thin lips. “Everyone went gaga over this. Kim became a legend when she told the music teacher, Mr. Kolvachi, to kiss her ass.”
“No shit?” I say. “That’s interesting because she still does that. She still tells men to kiss her ass.”
“See?” the bartender says. “You just made my point for me.”
A few people drift in and drift out. Nobody lasts for more than a drink or two except me. I have one after another and get smashed listening to the bartender tell me his whole boring life story. Eventually, I interrupt him. “Let’s get back to something you said earlier about Kim in high school. You said loner, remember? I’d have to agree with you about that. She is a loner. Here’s something else though, something you may or may not agree with. You can tell me after you hear it: When you try to get intimate with her, she pushes you away.”
The bartender adds a scoop of ice to his collins glass. “Based on what I know of her, we can agree on your statement, although I certainly never approached her like that.”
“I know. I’m not saying YOU tried anything with her, I’m just making a general observation, like this next general observation. Tell me what you think about this. This is something else that’s weird about Kim. She’ll touch you, but as soon as you try to touch her, she’ll tell you she’s not into getting touched.”
“The question arises,” he says, propping his penny loafer on a box of wine. “Why are you attracted to such behavior?”
“Attracted to what behavior? I’m not attracted to any behavior.”
He fixes me another drink and places it on a fresh napkin. “Listen to your friendly bartender,” he says, “You had a thing for her, right?”
“Nope, HAD a thing for her. Not anymore.”
He juts his skinny neck toward me. “That’s what I said, HAD. You were attracted to someone without any chance of making a happy connection.”
“A happy WHAT? Listen man, I’m not going to sit at this damn bar and let you analyze the shit out of everything I do.”
Instead of leaving though, I sit for another hour, while he complains about Santa Fe—his bouncing Adam’s apple going into overdrive—telling me that he needs five-hundred dollars to fix his what-cha-ma-call-it before driving to Key West, Florida.
Smashed, having trouble focusing, I can’t pretend to listen to this guy any longer, so I pay the tab and drop six bucks in his tip jar. “Here, put it toward fixing your what-cha-ma-call-it.”
. . .
Near the reception desk, a young lady wearing a baseball cap and khaki pants is leaning against the wall talking on a payphone. She has a casual, no makeup style that I go for. In the restroom I splash water on my face, crunch on a peppermint and check my look in the mirror.
Exiting the restroom, finger combing my hair, my timing is perfect. As she hangs up the phone, I go into my Richard Gere, American Gigolo mode. I amble in her direction, confident and cool, certain a brilliant pick-up line will flow forth from my silver tongue at any second, one of those killer lines that make jumping in the sack hard to resist. Inevitable even. “Where did you go to high school?” I blurt out.
She checks the coin return for quarters. “Germany.”
Fuck! I’m an idiot! “Oh, Um, Germany? Well, do you live here now?”
“Wherever I am is where I live,” she says, “so yeah, I’m living.”
Shit! Fuck! Disaster! I can’t think of anything to say, think, think, think! . . . “Would you like to live with me?”
She grins. “I doubt it.”
I walk beside her as she angles around a large plant. “We should immediately proceed to the tavern of your choice and discuss this matter over cocktails.”
“What matter?” she says.
“Our living arrangements, you and me. We need to establish a line of communication.”
She stops and tilts her baseball cap, brushing her hair under the rim. “We?”
“Yes, WE. Like Benjamin and Elaine.”
“Who?”
“The Graduate. I know you’ve seen The Graduate.”
“That was a movie, not real life.”
“Okay, then we’ll be teammates like Bonnie and Clyde, just the two of us takin’ on the world, shootin’ anyone who gets in our way.”
“Bonnie and Clyde were shot.”
“Yeah, that’s a good thing, right?”
She smiles and thinks about it before saying, “Come on. I know a place.”
I tip my imaginary hat and stumble along beside her as we exit the Hilton. In my best Southern accent I say, “This Cajun boy is down-right honored to share his first drink of the day with
a beauty such as yourself.”
“First drink?” she laughs. “Maybe tenth.” She offers her arm and leads the way, my arm looped in hers to keep me from stumbling, although I bump into her a few times. “I’m a little inebriated, in case you didn’t know.”
“I knew,” she says.
She takes me behind the School of Fine Arts building. I follow her up the concrete steps holding on to a steel railing, watching her cute ass in khaki pants. We enter the bar through a short black door with a diamond shaped window. The ceiling is low, not much higher than my head, and there’s a circle of red neon sunk into a clear dance floor. We sit on black chairs at a small metallic table with a purple light hanging above it. She orders a Long Island Ice Tea. I ask the waitress for water.
Her name is Erica. She’s twenty-two with short brown hair and blue eyes. She’s lived on U.S. military bases all over the world and ended up in Santa Fe because this is where her artist fiancé wanted to open a gallery. When he decided to go somewhere else, she stayed. I’m glad she did.
Erica sips her drink. I sip my water. A slow song comes on and I ask her to dance.
“Not yet,” she says.
“Not yet? What does that mean?”
“You asked me to dance.”
“No, I said you look fat in those pants.”
She punches my shoulder and removes her baseball cap. “Avoid trampling my feet if you can help it.”
Damn, I’m way too drunk. Offering my arm, I escort her to the dance floor. Her body relaxes into mine, goes soft and wraps around me. Her hair smells like strawberry shampoo. I complement her figure, a thin athletic figure with just enough female curves, and her face, I compliment that too. She stands on her toes and whispers in my ear, “You can charm a girl for about ten minutes, then you better have a big dick.”
“Yes ma’am!” I tell her.
Erica blushes and buries her face in my shoulder. “I can’t believe I just said that. I hope you know I’m kidding. It’s from a movie.”
When the song ends, and the other couples walks off, we keep holding on to each other moving in slow circles without music. “This may surprise you, but did you know there’s a beach in California where people run naked?”
Leaving Allison Page 6