Through the smoke from other patrons and his own he keeps a watch on the bar counter. An old hag with bad hair is tending bar tonight. There is a big black dude cracking jokes and a few other losers sitting at the bar, laughing, probably the regulars ' cause they look too relaxed, like if they were watching TV in their living rooms and scratching their balls. Billy cannot relax. His jail mindset still runs through him, the natural mistrust of anybody and everybody. Even at the halfway house he sleeps with an eye open.
Where is that bitch, Debbie? he asks himself. His info is good. The ex works at this joint. Billy wants to talk to her, wants to get laid. The fact that she got a divorce after his conviction means nothing to him. It is up to him to decide when she has had enough of him, not the other way around. What was the little one-legged cunt thinking? Does she believe she can just dump him like a dried up dog turd and watch him crumble into dust and be blown away by the breeze?Fuck her. He came to get what was his.
His beer is gone and no Debbie yet. The nice ass waitress stops by his table.
"Another one?" she asks when she picks his empty.
"Is Debbie working tonight?"
"No. She' s off."
"Oh," says Billy. "I don' t need another one. I better hit the road."
"You know her?"
"Sure I do," he says. His smile is more of a sneer. "She knows me too."
Nice Ass says nothing. She can feel that the guy is up to no good, and she is happy when his back disappears through the door. She makes a mental note to tell Debbie, just in case he' s some wacko but by tomorrow she won' t remember to tell her anything.
The bastard left a dime for a tip.
Doubts
Dr. D' Angelo, the shrink, seems like a smart lady and I say that because I think that she is getting the idea that my relationship with Helen is hopeless. Sure, she has talked to both of us one on one and together, probing, advising, and doing the things she is supposed to, but I' m sure we are not fooling her. The patient is way past dead and no amount of cajoling and science is gonna resuscitate the corpse. The doc got the signal and I think she is waiting for the right time to tell us that we fools don' t belong together.
Helen and I are going through the exercises that are supposed to heal our marriage, but I know Helen is doing it half ass and I' m not too far behind. I would like to make a better effort but Helen doesn' t seem to care; yet, she won' t talk about divorce. What the hell does she want from me? Am I supposed to stay by her side like some sort of wooden Indian, lip tight and expressionless but always there to ...to what? I don' t get it, and I think that Dr. D' Angelo is trying to get to the bottom of the same puzzle.
I also think it is time to call it quits but I don' t want to give up without at least trying, but simulating that we are when we are not doesn' t do anybody any good. Helen and I still watch TV on opposite ends of the couch, nary a word between us, and I continue to sleep alone in the guest room.
We are not fooling anybody but ourselves. Perhaps even Helen knows that there is no hope and I' m the only one dumb enough to stay in the field holding a pair of pom-poms after the game is over and lost, the ball, the players and the spectators gone. What a pathetic figure I must make standing by myself.
Nasty Surprise
Debbie is running a few glasses through the sink: dip, scrub, rinse, dry, on the shelf upside down. She is drifting into the sounds of tinkling glasses and water dripping between her arms and the anonymous conversation behind her and cannot hear the voice calling to her on the other side of the counter.
“ Yo! Debbie!” the voice says aloud. There is a hint of lost patience in it.
Debbie turns around drying her hands on a rag and freezes when her eyes connect with the face that had spoken. For a few second she is paralyzed with surprise, a feeling that turns to disgust. Billy is sitting across the counter, smiling like he were king of everything, so full of shit as always. While continuing to dry her hands Debbie tries to figure out how in hell she ended up marrying the bastard.
“ Did they let you out or you jumped the fence?” asks Debbie with a hard voice. No dimples for Billy.
“ I’ m glad you’ re so fucking happy to see me.” He sneers.
“ I’ m not. I divorced your ass, remember?”
“ Yeah, what’ s up with that?”
It is Debbie time to reciprocate with a smile of scorn. “ You almost got me involved in your mess. I don’ t need that kind of shit ... and I don’ t need you.”
Billy’ s angry eyes try to bring Debbie down a notch or two but they fail. She is staring right back at him. Billy now knows that Debbie is not buying his bullshit anymore; he has lost his power over her. But he is going to try to reassert his control on her, not because he cares for Debbie, or needs her, but because the cunt is too uppity and needs to be taught a thing or two.
“ Give me a beer, ” says Billy in a commanding tone. Debbie points to a sign behind her, under the jar of pig feet, the one that says that the bar can refuse service to anyone at any time. “ Besides, ” she adds, “ if you ain’ t a escapee then you’ re on parole and shouldn’ t be drinking anyway.”
Billy leans over the counter. “ Give me a fucking beer, now.” His eyes are ablaze.
“ Fuck you Billy, I ain’ t your wife no more, ” says Debbie. The bar has fallen silent and all the eyes are on them. She is scared of the man but she is not showing it. She is tired of running from assholes and she has no intentions of running from this one. The law says she owes him nothing, and it is going to stay that way.
Every time something goes sour with a loser boyfriend she ends up packing up and moving away with her clothes and a handful of cash but this time she has determined that she is not going anywhere. She thought about Billy coming back some day, not this soon though, but someday, and he being the asshole he always was. She had already made her mind not to run away. Fuck that. She was getting too old and tired to move to a new city and start from scratch, and for what? To meet another loser and end up in a bus running away again. Not this time. Billy and his kind can fuck themselves, and she means it. She is scared and she is also mad. She has built herself a little life of her own, a little miserable life, with her two cats and her tiny place and her beat up Geo, but all hers, with nobody sponging off her, using her as a private whore, using her labors to live like bums. This time she is staying put.
Billy reaches across the counter and grabs Debbie by her hair. “ You little shit, ” he says in a low but angry voice. “ Don’ t you talk to me like that, ever.”
Debbie answers by grabbing a bottle of Don Q rum by the neck from below the counter and swinging it against the side of his head. Billy sees it coming, releases Debbie’ s hair and jumps back just in time to see the bottom of the bottle whoosh pass his face. Debbie is standing with the bottle raised over her head.
“ Come on you mother fucker! Try to touch me again, you asshole.” Debbie’ s heart is beating so hard it’ s coming out of her mouth. Her hand and the bottle are shaking but she stands her ground and her eyes are set on Billy who stands on the other side of the counter, aware that the bar regulars are now around him, and they don’ t look like a friendly bunch. He surmises that Debbie must be a popular bar wench. A half crooked smile comes across his lips.
“ I want no trouble honey ...”
“ No, you don’ t, ” retorts Debbie. “ You’ re on parole. A phone call and you are back in fucking jail.”
“ Don’ t you threaten me, you ...”
“ What? Get your ass out of here before I call the cops.”
Billy looks around. The regulars are around him, some of them holding long neck beer bottles in their hands. Debbie has put her bottle down but now is holding a cell phone, her thumb on the keypad. Billy knows when it is time to fold them; this is not his hand. Maybe next time around.
“ I will be seeing you, ” he says a she leaves. There is scorn in his voice.
“ I sure hope not, ” says Debbie. “ I don’ t want to see your ugly
mug ever again.” Her voice is full of bravado but her knees are shaking.
After Billy leaves, followed by a few patrons that want to make sure he is indeed gone and not just sitting in the parking lot, the rest of the patrons gather at the counter in front of Debbie and ask who the jerk was and Debbie says he is her ex just out of jail. Free advice dispensed over a bar counter can cross it either way and Debbie hears all kinds of solutions to her problem, from hiring a hit man to getting a restraining order and everything in between. But not a single of the drunks and down in their luck hard cases in front of her tells her to pack her things and run. Maybe she is not off the mark in her decision to stay where she is. Or maybe that is why they sit on the other side of the counter every night, because once upon a time they had decided to stay put and fight, and they had lost the fight.
A closing time she has a few of the regulars escort her to her car. She goes home using a convoluted path, constantly checking on her view mirror for suspicious headlights. She circles the police station parking lot and stops there for a few minutes but no car with Billy in it drives by. At her place she parks under a light and then runs with a limp to her apartment, closes and dead bolts the door behind her. Ernie and Munch greet her. She grabs them and sits on her worn out couch and she cries.
She has so little, why can’ t she live in peace?
Crossroads
Ken parks his truck on the new parking lot. The sun has just sunk behind the Rockies and the saffron sunset lights that had been filtering through the DTC buildings and trees had gone off as if somebody had pulled a switch. The shadows to follow infuse a gloom to the surroundings as he walks into the lobby of the just built concrete and glass structure, the home of a new dot com venture.
He’ s wearing a sport jacket and a shirt with no tie. Before entering the building he turns back and inspects the grounds and the landscape that his crew and he have created. A smile of satisfaction lights his face; a job well done. Grass, shrubs, trees, sprinklers and drainage, those are the only things he looks forward to these days, and he is grateful he has something to look forward to other than going home and having to deal with Helen.
The developer has invited him to the inaugural bash. It is good for business to do some networking with architects and builders who can see his handy work right out of the window. There will be free food and drinks, and some pleasant conversation, and that may include talking to females. He is not looking for a relationship, but he feels that talking to other women is uplifting after not being able to communicate with his wife. It gives him proof that he can still talk, and be understood, by the opposite sex, qualities he comes to doubt when in Helen’ s presence.
He enters the lobby and walks through marble hallways to reach a room full of people. He puts on his best smile and jumps right in, ready to mingle, leaving his worries at the threshold. This is the time to look perky.
Time passes by Ken, a pleasant going of minutes devoid of marital preoccupations. People praise his landscaping. He knows his art is only dirt and shrubs and water pipes bundled by a carpet of grass but the good words uplift his spirit, and it doesn’ t take much to do that because his spirit has hit skid row in the last weeks. Not even Dr. D’ Angelo with her wisdom and science has been able to fix things. But he doesn’ t want to think about that so here focuses on the people at hand and relights his smile.
“ Do you want a lime with that Corona, hon?”
The female voice comes from behind him, where the wet bar is. The honchimes in his head like reverberations of things past. He turns around and there is this woman in a white shirt serving drinks behind the bar. Her hair is in a pony tail. She smiles at the man in front of her and pretty dimples form on her face. So pretty they are, Ken thinks, they make her look so cute ...
And they are walking on the beach again with the surf licking their feet. The breeze blows her hair across her face and she smiles, the pretties of smiles he has ever seen. So young and so carefree both are, walking side by side as if the beach could go on forever and they could do likewise, laughing and just enjoying each other in a silly way ...
Fear
There is the fear of eminent confrontation, a fear drowned by adrenaline, and a short lived fear it is. That fear is manageable as far as Debbie knows from her experiences. The fear of being jumped from behind, of being stalked like a deer in the woods, that fear doesn' t get her heart thumping like a drum major in a parade but disturbs her every minute of the day. Living looking over her shoulder is as unpleasant as living atop a dynamite factory that mayor not may blow up and the constant fear wears her out, frays her nerves and makes them hypersensitive to things that didn' t use to bother her before, like noises in the night outside her door.
She is sure that Billy is a parolee, even if he never admitted to it. Dropping a dime on him may work. Grabbing her hair and threatening her in public amounts to physical assault and harassment. That would be enough to get his parole revoked. On the other hand, she doesn' t want to piss him off and make things worst. If he runs out on his parole officer and there is a warrant for him, he will have nothing to lose and he may become more dangerous.
She is on her cell phone on her way to work. Coming out of her place and walking to her car had been frightening. She senses that Billy is up to no good. A jilted man like himself will want to reassure his manhood by force; Debbie knows the type well, but damn it, she is not going to run away this time. She has called Glyn, a thing she has never done before even though she has had his phone for months now. She doesn' t like to use the phone to chatter; if she has something to say, she would rather see the person face to face. Glyn knows it too so he understands right away that something must be amiss for Debbie to be calling him on his cell.
Debbie recites the happenings at the Night Owl two nights ago, and the history behind Billy. She swallows and says," Glyn, the shit is going to hit the fan sooner than later, and I need your help."
"Sure. I can get a few of my homies and we can roll him pretty good, if that is what you think will work."
Debbie laughs. "Oh please, don' t get yourself in trouble. He isn' t worth it."
"Listen," Debbie says after a pause. "Other than hiring a bodyguard, I have no way of protecting myself."
"Yes ...," says Glyn to follow Debbie' s silence. Debbie hesitates but then speaks again.
"I need a piece Glyn. The fucker is gonna jump me when I' m alone. That' s the way the bastard operates."
"Babe, that I can get."
"I' ll pay you for it but you need to make sure it cannot be traced back to you, and I mean that."
"Hey, if you ain' t gonna stick up a liquor store with it, it will be no problem," says Glynn. "You know, self defense is a valid reason for shooting somebody."
"It' s not that Glyn ... I' m a ... I' m a convicted felon and I cannot own a gun. If something happens I don' t want the cops knocking on your door asking why you gave a piece to a felon."
After a short pause Glyn comes back on the phone," Good Lord girl! I knew you were a tough case and now you' re gonna be packing heat." He laughs loud and long.
"Glyn, just don' t piss me off," says Debbie, also laughing."And please, get me a snub nose revolver or a small semiautomatic but not twenty-two' s. I got small hands and I can' t shoot a big gun, plus it has to fit in my purse or under my shirt."
"Jesus, you even know your weapons," says Glyn. "Iain' t messing with you again." His laugh is the last thing Debbie hears befores she hangs up.
Debbie puts the cell phone away in her purse and prays that she will never have to use the gun, that Billy will go away and never return, that her little life can be hers again. Still, now she will have to carry an unlicensed concealed weapon on her, into a bar. Fucking Billy, she is getting set up for trouble, she thinks, but she ain' trunning again. If the shit hits the fan, let most of it fall on him, and she doesn' t mind a little splatter on herself if it comes to it.
The Smell of Old Things
I got up that morning think
ing that my so called life with Helen was the center of my universe and I went to bed that same day with my head filled with the idea that the woman serving drinks at the DTC party was Debbie, and Helen and her bullshit took a step back and sank into the darkness where things of no consequence rot into oblivion.
But all things are relative; I’ m sure that many people got up that same morning with their own problems and by bedtime they were dead. At that point their former problems were truly irrelevant. I wasn’ t dead so I can be thankful for that. This may seem like a extreme comparison but it is one that works for me and lets me handle what seems to be unsurmountable problems by realizing that to the next guy, they mean nothing, that to the world they mean squat, that only in my head do they amount to anything.
I took a good look at her; hell, I just stared at her in a way that could be considered rude. I know she caught up with my abnormal and unprovoked attention but she did a good job of ignoring me, busy as she was doing her job.
She had to be Debbie, I don’ t know why, but she had to be.
The moment that I linked the stranger to Debbie, my life ceased to be like it had been until then and I cannot explain why. I want to say this though, I’ m not sure if she was Debbie. Come on, the last time I saw her was over twenty years ago, and she had a swollen face from the beating she took in Atlanta. but the face at the party had those Debbie like smiling dimples, and that face, older of course but yet the same, was the one that I remember from walking on the beach and cheap motel rooms and having dinner atAl’ s Dinner.
Until that moment, I could have not told a sketch artist what Debbie looked like even if my life had been at stake, and the excuse that I haven’ t seen her in over twenty years would have been a reasonable one. But seeing her that night was like the smell of old things, that smell that shocks the brain into a explosion of memories fulls of images and textures that until then had been buried so deep in the archives of time that they may as well never existed.
Snapshots of Modern Love Page 12