“You should do both hands like that,” she says. “Think of it as glitter.”
I take another few chips, filling my mouth to keep it from asking the inevitable.
“So,” says Lindsey, while I’m still chewing, “what about JJ? Is something going on with you guys?”
The question takes me by surprise and I cough. “Ack!” Bits of chewed chips spray out of my mouth, splattering everywhere.
“Geez, spitfire!” Linds holds up her hands and ducks for cover. “Back off. I’m not Todd.”
“Sorry,” I say, swallowing. “But God no! Jared and I are friends… or not even friends. He’s just around sometimes.”
“But we’re going to see his band tonight.”
“Yeah, but,” I say, picking a wad of chip out of her hair, “Jared isn’t the only one who’s going to be there.”
“Hmmm,” she says. “Who else are we looking for?”
I think about saying “no one” or “anyone in cowboy boots” or whatever, but I’m so glad to have Lindsey back, I just tell her the truth: “Charlie.”
“Charlie?” she asks, like she can’t think who I mean. And then it dawns. “Charlie Hunt? CHARLIE!?”
I bite my bottom lip and squinch up my face, like that will somehow hide me.
“Okay,” she says, “this is starting to make sense. I always wondered if somewhere deep down you had a thing for Charlie. But dude, that’s tough. I mean, Jamie…” She drifts to silence, like her name says it all.
“I know,” I say. “I know. What am I thinking? I’m not going to act on it. I just, I just like being around him, that’s all. I’m not stupid.”
“You’re kidding, right,” Lindsey says, more a statement than a question.
“Charlie is off-limits. I know it,” I say.
“Not off-limits, but it could be rough,” she says. “Especially with the whole sentencing thing coming up.”
And there goes the inevitable.
“They called you?” I ask.
She nods. “I’ve been kind of freaked,” she says. “I never thought I’d have to see his face again.”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking of Kyle’s bland round face—the owl with the wolf hidden inside. “I know what you mean.”
The Operators
Bobby’s Barn is dark and cavernous and stinks of fried food and vomit—not to mention an industrial-strength musk intended to cover up the stink of fried food and vomit.
The front entry hall is carpeted, but most of the floor is a flat yellowish linoleum tile, like in park bathrooms or the kitchen of the homeless shelter where my parents volunteer. The first thing I see when I go in is a long bar. A half-dozen slump-shouldered guys with beers are scattered among the dozen stools. A wiry guy in a corduroy shirt and two middle-aged women in V-necks and tight jeans are pouring drinks. The wiry guy bobs his head to the blare of old rock music as he pours.
Beside the bar, a windowless, wood-paneled room stretches out like a yawn. There are maybe ten blocky tables, a dance floor, and a side room with an electronic dart board and a huge flip-flop on the wall. In the corner where the band is setting up, a handful of guys shuffle around, plugging cords into big black boxes and saying things like “test one two, test test” on the mic. It’s not really a stage because it’s on the same level as the rest of the room, but still it’s pretty cool.
Lindsey and I claim one of the back tables. In my magenta peasant top and Lindsey’s hot-pink glamour-slashed T-shirt, we stick out like a pair of flamingos at the duck pond.
A waitress comes over and asks us what we want. Only different words. She says it like this: “What can I do you for?”
She must be nearly fifty, with chalky lipstick and a silver skunk streak running down the edge of her thick black hair.
What I really want is water, but it sounds so babyish. I look at Lindsey and she looks at me. “Um, do you have food?” I ask.
“I’ll get you menus,” the waitress says, and ambles off toward the bar.
While we wait, two burly men in trucker hats come in and scan the room. The first one wears a dirty frayed jean vest with a patch over the chest that looks like a snake engulfed in flames. The second man, heavier and if possible dirtier, wears a camo T-shirt and has a thick silver chain between his belt loop and the wallet in his back pocket.
Vest starts toward the bar, but Camo holds him back, nodding toward us. The men nudge each other; the gruffness of their voices carries over the dull strains of “Born in the U.S.A.” I can’t make out what they say, but it must be about us because the men laugh in that way men do, and instead of keeping on toward the bar, they prowl down the length of the room, their faces lit with predatory grins.
I intentionally look away, first at Lindsey, then at the band. Suddenly, the most interesting thing in the world is the sight of Randy Keaton hiking up his pants as he carries a coil of wires. Jared, who is at the mic, tunes and re-tunes his guitar. When he sees us, he grins and waves.
I return a small wave, but I’m not sure he even sees it because at the same moment a guy in a baggy orange T-shirt comes up and starts asking Jared something. Jared takes off his guitar and the pair walk together to a complicated-looking sound board on the far side of the room.
Without looking, I can feel the press of Camo and Vest as they near us and sit at the table beside ours. There’s the clatter of chairs and the overwhelming stink of gasoline. Like one of them bathed in the stuff.
“School must’ve let out early,” Camo barks, then gives a whistle that almost sounds like a sigh.
I am suddenly glad both Lindsey and I decided on jeans tonight instead of skirts.
When the waitress returns with our menus, I hold up the white laminated sheet in front of me like a shield.
She stops at the men’s table on her way back to the bar. They hoot and flirt with her and demand something called the Draft Horse.
Lindsey, who has been watching the pair as brazenly as they’ve been watching us, snorts and rolls her eyes. “So.” She taps the menu, turning to me. “What do you think’s edible here? Mozzarella sticks? Curly fries? Nachos?” She flicks her hair carelessly. “It’s hard to screw up nachos.”
“I don’t know. Pool nachos, ballpark nachos,” I say. “Nachos at the fair.”
“Point taken,” she says, plunking down the menu like she’s punctuating her sentence. “They have fried pickles.”
“Ugh.” I make a face. “No thanks.”
“You girls never had fried pickles?” Camo cuts in. Loud, like the conversation belongs to him.
“Never had fried pickles?” Vest echoes. “You ain’t lived till you try you some.”
“We can’t have that,” Camo booms. “Let’s get these gals some pickles.” He bangs his table like Henry VIII calling for the head of one of his lesser wives. “Darlene!”
Lindsey fakes a smile. “Thanks, but we can take care of ordering for ourselves.” She angles her chair away from their open mouths, their table, their universe.
“No need to get all uppity,” Vest says, a dog with a flat tail.
“Come on, now, we won’t bite.” Camo scoots his chair closer to our table. “Least not much.” He guffaws like he’s his own stand-up comedy routine.
Lindsey turns back to face him, this time with acid in her expression. “Maybe you have trouble understanding the Universal Language of No, so let me translate: WE”—Lindsey pauses, pointing her index finger back and forth between the two of us—“want YOU”—she jabs a finger at Camo and Vest—“to LEAVE. US. ALONE.”
And when she turns her back on him this time, it’s a closed door.
“Well, ain’t that some Grade-A bullshit,” Camo snarks to the empty air. “You try to be nice, and this is what you get.”
“Some people too uppity for their own good,” Vest mutters.
“Bitch… on the rag,” Camo growls.
It’s a fine line, I realize. You want them to go away, but not to get so pissed they wait for you in the parking lot with th
eir shotgun or pocketknives or a random screwdriver.
I keep my face blank, like I don’t notice the exchange. Like I’m just watching the band do its band-setup thing. No disrespect. No rubbing salt in the wound. I’m invisible.
It’s the same thing possums do, I think, when they get caught in a car’s headlights: pretend they’re not there.
Which may explain why there are so many dead possums in the road.
After a minute more of grumbling, Camo and Vest get up and move to the bar.
I make sure they’re as far away as they’re likely to get before I lean over and whisper in Lindsey’s face, “You’re my hero.” Her eyes are still tense, but she grins.
The waitress, Darlene, comes back with two frothy beers in huge glass mugs. “Huh,” she says, when she spies the men across the room. She clunks the beers down on the empty table and turns to us.
“What’ll you girls have?”
“A basket of fries, a Dr Pepper, and… What do you want to drink?” Lindsey asks me.
“Water,” I say.
“Got it.” The waitress picks up the abandoned beers and heads off to the bar just as Jared comes up on the other side of the table. He sits in an empty chair.
“What’s the word, Thunderbird?” he says, looking at me.
When I don’t answer right away, Lindsey asks, “You ready for your gig, JJ?”
“Ready as I’m gonna get.” He cracks his knuckles and leans back in his chair.
“Aren’t you guys supposed to have started?” I say. “Where is everybody?”
There’s none of the people who seem to show up at every First Friday concert or civic center headliner. No short guy wearing Viking horns. No whirling dervish in a hippie skirt. No dad playing air guitar.
And yeah, no Charlie either.
“We don’t start till nine,” Jared says. “It’ll fill up soon.”
One of the older guys in his band comes up behind Jared and flicks his head. “What you doing, jawing with these girls? Come give me a hand with the speakers.”
“Duty calls.” Jared winks before he walks away.
Feathers
By the time Charlie shows up, Bobby’s Barn is thumping with sweaty bodies and electrified sound. The dance floor is packed with the bar’s regulars, plus a bunch of friends of Jared, Randy, and Tyrell.
I’m surprised how good the band is. Randy plays bass, Jared guitar, one of the old guys is on drums, the other sings and plays guitar, Tyrell is on keyboard and (for a few songs) saxophone. They’re way too loud, but decent. Better than decent.
Lindsey and I are on the floor with a group from school. Mostly girls dancing in a clump. The burly bar guys are leaving us alone now. Safety in numbers.
The waitresses have marked a big Sharpie X on the hand of anyone who can’t show her an ID, so we’re all hyped up on caffeine instead of stumbling drunk.
I see Mark first on the fringe of the dance floor. His fine black hair splays out as he bops up on the balls of his feet and then down, then up again, which I think is Mark dancing. I look around for Charlie and find him in a shadowy spot near the wall, his face turned away from me. There is a pretty dark-haired girl in front of him, and he’s moving his head the way he does when he talks. Judging from the numbers of nods, he’s having a longish conversation with her. Either they are shouting over the band or reading each other’s lips.
She is not a girl I’ve seen before, but she’s much too young to be one of the bar regulars. Probably somebody’s friend from another school. A school where they know nothing about Charlie. And if they’ve heard of Kyle or Jamie at all, it’s some urban myth version with Jamie visiting a psychic a week before the murder or ending up buried alive.
The anonymous girl suddenly laughs, then grabs his hand and tugs him out into the middle of the dancing. The music is grinding, pounding, more angry than romantic. Charlie stands there, stiff, for a few seconds, then slowly—like an egg cracking—begins to dance. You can see the music moving up his body. His feet, knees, hips, shoulders—finally his head is banging, fist pumping.… a regular poster boy for teenage rebellion.
He seems so… un-Charlie. So free.
With that other girl, who doesn’t know his sadness.
I need to take a minute alone.
“Hey,” I yell to Lindsey over the music, “I’ve got to go pee.”
She cups her ears.
“Pee,” I yell again, then leave.
Beyond the far edge of the bar, a short hallway leads to the bathrooms. Two women are already ahead of me in line.
Beside me, a small hawkish woman with a feathered cardboard crown is eyeing the men’s room, which stands empty, door open.
“It’s not that bad,” she says to the woman in a red miniskirt at the front of the line. “I’ve been in there before. The ladies’ is just as bad.”
“Should I?” the woman in the red mini asks, squirming and flapping her hands in that I’ve gotta go so bad way. “Will y’all stand guard?”
“Sure, go ahead—” the feather-crowned woman starts to say, but they are interrupted by another woman, one who hasn’t been waiting in line at all. The new woman brushes past the three of us and enters the men’s room. She flips her glossy black hair and gives us a wet smile. “I’m just gonna go in here,” she says as she closes the door.
“What in holy hell was that?” Crown-woman asks. “Did you see her? She just waltzed on past like Cleopatra parting the Red Sea!”
“Well, maybe she didn’t—” the woman in the red mini starts to say.
“You’re damn right she didn’t!” Crown-woman is clearly drunk. She puffs out her cheeks like she’s holding her breath.
The women’s restroom door finally opens and a large lady with round glasses lumbers out. The miniskirt woman who has been holding herself squeezes past her into the bathroom and slams the door.
At the same moment, Cleopatra scoots out of the men’s bathroom and back toward the bar. Crown-woman glares laser beams in her back.
“Line breaker!” Crown-woman yells, though the woman is long gone. “You best not mess with me! I’m wearing feathers!”
She turns my way, I suppose since I’m the only one left in line. “Did you see, she got on these leggings like they was pants!”
I nod, though in fact I didn’t notice the woman’s leggings at all.
“They’re not pants, lady; they’re leggings!” she fake-yells after Cleopatra.
I try to figure out what kind of expression I can put on my face without pissing Crown-woman off. The best I can do is something that feels like confused.
“Here.” She points to the men’s bathroom. “You go ahead, honey. I’m not so rude as to break line.”
“But you’re ahead of me,” I say. Ignoring me, she takes my shoulder and presses me toward the men’s room.
“It’s just like the ladies’,” she says again, then grins and waves like she’s just sent me on my first cruise.
I shut the door. The room is small and dirty. A bare bulb on a cord hangs from the ceiling. The yellowish light makes everything look like a photograph from the 1970s. I cough and cover my nose, certain I have smelled that particular combination of rot and wetness somewhere before.
It is not quite so loud here—the bass line, a muffled throb; the drums, a distant thump. Leaning back against the door, I close my eyes. The room may be disgusting, but at least there is no one looking at me, and there is nothing I have to see.
The muscles in my face relax, my waxy attempt at a smile melting away.
I don’t want to go back to the dance floor, with the leering men and the pretty anonymous girl and Charlie dancing like something’s unraveled inside him.
I wonder where Twin Me is now. Is she in a bathroom somewhere, thinking about a boy?
Is she in Paris? In the back of a truck? On a rooftop somewhere, counting stars? At Tattoo King in Roanoke, picking out a flute-playing raccoon in a tutu for her shoulder?
The handle rattles at my back.
Apparently I’ve had this grungy oasis all to myself for long enough.
I straighten, prepare my face, and open the door—to find Charlie.
Of all people in this crappy little bar in this crappy little town in this crappy little world. Charlie.
There is still a line for the ladies’ room, though Crown-woman is nowhere to be seen.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” says Charlie. He nods at the door I just came through. “This is the guys’, right?”
“Yeah, sorry, there was a line for the other,” I say, feeling the redness rise in my face.
I scooch out of his way, but he touches my arm.
“Hold up. You have something. There.” His hand hovers at my temple.
I comb my fingers through my hair.
Charlie’s smile is a question I can’t interpret.
A blue feather—it must have come from the woman’s cardboard crown—drifts off my shoulder and onto the floor.
For You
When I get back, the band is between songs. The old guy who plays guitar is propped up on a stool, jawing in the microphone. He tells a convoluted story about how he used to be a heavy drinker, and then one night he was working in his shed, drunk, and he cut off the tip of his pinky with a saw.
“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says, holding up the offending finger and waving it patriotically. “I lost some bone, but I found Jesus. And Jesus, praise Him, gave me this guitar.”
He sounds kind of drunk—slurred and light on logic—but since the whole story is about how he quit drinking, I’m hoping he just talks that way.
Lindsey is still on the dance floor. Instead of joining her, I sit at our table. I’m thirsty, but my water is empty, so I eat a few fries, which only makes me thirstier. I could use a soda, but our waitress is nowhere around, and I’m not sure how to order something at the bar. Do you squeeze between people on the barstools or is there some particular place you’re supposed to stand? Do you pay when you order? How much are you supposed to tip?
It’s possible I’m overthinking this.
How She Died, How I Lived Page 9