It didn’t matter. He was already late for work.
Chapter 51
There was a crash. Daniel flinched and poured bourbon over the back of his hand instead of into the drink he was mixing. He shook his head, embarrassed. He used to be able to ignore crashing sounds. People dropped glasses all the time, or trays, or plates. People make a lot of noise in a bar. Somehow, though, the sounds of construction were affecting him differently than the usual noises. Maybe because it was coming from the wrong side, from the normally quiet end of the bar, the dark corner where the big corner booth was. Or where it had been, before.
He served the drink and wiped his hands on the towel, watching the workers who had torn apart the big booth continue by dismantling the one next to it. All of them had to go: no more booths on that side. It had been the quietest area of the bar, rarely used. Only really secretive lovers ever found their way over there, and when they did the wait staff often didn’t see them sitting there, hiding out on the quiet side.
The formerly quiet side. The workmen fired up the saw again and it screamed through a nail on its way down. Well. It was rarely used, so maybe this made sense, tearing it out, trying something new. Daniel lost himself for a moment, envisioning how it was going to look when finished, and jumped half out of his skin when boards clattered on the floor a minute later. Jumpy, jumpy. Not enough sleep was probably half of the problem, he thought. Maybe all of the problem was just that one simple thing.
“What fresh hell is this?” Margie tied on her apron and looked at Daniel, openmouthed.
“It’s your new music venue. Hadn’t you heard?”
“Well… I heard, yeah. Jesus, you can hear that for a mile. What the hell are they doing?”
“Putting in a stage.” Daniel poured Margie a cup of coffee and passed it across to her. “He told us about it, remember? See, they’re building a platform. He had electricians in, too. See the wires up there?”
“Speakers? This place is too small for live bands.”
He shrugged. Maybe so, maybe not. “Whatever.”
She made her way down the bar toward the construction, looking from the men, to the platform, to the growing pile of rubble on the side. Construction always begins with destruction. Daniel walked with her. They stopped at the end of the bar, where Margie began picking through color chips that were piled there.
“Which color are they using, he say?”
Daniel pointed to one of the squares, an eggplant shade. “This.”
“That’s dark. For the whole bar? Or just there?”
He didn’t know. “Did you see the new uniforms?”
Margie gawped at him. “I’m… aren’t I wearing the new uniform?” She tugged at the shirt. “I hate it.”
Daniel closed his eyes slowly and shook his head. “No. The new, new uniform.” He reached over the color chips to grab the catalog, opened it to the marked page, and handed it to Margie. “He’s ordering these. To go with the shirts.”
“No,” she said, looking at the pictures. “Shorts? No… oh, come on. Seriously?”
Daniel held his hands up in surrender but said nothing. Margie flipped the pages back and forth. “Now, these would have been nice,” she said, pointing. “Or, those. I like those. But… these?” She turned back to the other page, where circles and notes confirmed that this was the uniform Billy had been interested in. “Do we have to wear it?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“Even the guys? You’re going to wear little skimpy shorts?”
He made a vague gesture and looked away. Not the guys. The guys were still allowed to wear jeans. These shorts were just for the women. For the ladies, was how Billy had put it. Daniel didn’t dare tell Margie that.
“I can’t buy new uniforms every week like this. God. The shirt was bad enough, but… well, maybe he’ll say it’s optional.” She looked at the construction area again for a minute, then she threw the catalog down and picked her tray back up. “We’re way too small a bar for a stage like that. I mean, a little acoustic guitar or something or maybe piano… but…” Her eyes were drawn back again to the uniforms. “God. I hate this.”
Daniel nodded. So did he.
Chapter 52
Daniel tried to find items to sell at Ellie’s yard sale. He’d brought home a couple of empty boxes from the bar, planning to clean out his closets and maybe get rid of some clutter in his own small garage. So far, he’d only come up with one t-shirt and three paperbacks. They sat in the bottom of one big box like ridiculous orphans. He’d been surprised by how little he really had; he’d forgotten how much he’d lost interest in things. The clothes he’d intended to sell turned out to be so old and ragged he’d have felt like a fool even giving them away. He shoved at the box with his foot. There must be more than this. Sweaters, maybe; in the back of the closet there were some he hadn’t worn in years.
He crouched on the floor of the closet and drew out the box of sweaters, and tore off the tape that sealed it shut. He felt a sting of nostalgia when he pulled out the first one, thinking about when he wore it last: happier times. It smelled faintly of cologne, the one he used to wear. Then he pulled out the second sweater and the snow globe rolled out.
He’d forgotten all about it. Well, he’d get rid of that, too; he never should have packed it in the first place. He picked it up and looked at the little men inside. Tiny men, tiny horses, tiny trees. A whole world, so quiet in the snow. He shook the globe and watched the blizzard he created; snowflakes the size of kittens if they were to scale. He smiled at the thought of a snow globe being real: sudden earthquakes followed by blizzards of giant snowflakes.
There was a knock at the door, which was such an unfamiliar thing that Daniel actually continued to look into the snowglobe – briefly – as though the sound might have come from there, before realizing it was, of course, his own door, and scrambling to his feet to answer it.
Ellie stood before him, and he stared at her in much the same bemused way he had the globe. This, too, was so unfamiliar. “Ellie,” he said. It had been so long since he’d opened a door to someone, he didn’t think to step back and invite her in. Her striped dress came all the way to her ankles, and Gringo stood with her, panting.
“I’m sorry to bother you... I hadn’t seen you in a couple of days, and I wanted to make sure you were… You’ve been so kind to me, you see.” She assessed him quickly. “Did I wake you?”
Daniel shook his head. “No, no. I was just… I’m sorry. Please, come in.”
She stepped over the threshold and Gringo came with her. Daniel made a half-hearted effort to prevent this, but Gringo easily sidestepped and Ellie appeared not to notice. “You look unwell,” she said. “You work too hard, I think. I see you coming home at all hours, and somehow I imagine you’re not out partying. Right?” Ellie looked Daniel over again, more carefully this time. “It is work, isn’t it?”
Yes, he agreed. It was work. But he knew it wasn’t the work that was too hard, it was… it was the situation. The whole situation. “It’s just not like it was, is all,” he said. “It’s like starting all over.” He described the stage, and the noise. He told her he felt like an outsider.
“Ah, the new regime.” Ellie winked at him and stepped to the side to view the painting of roses. “That looks lovely there, really. I’m so glad you have it. You appreciate it, that’s what counts. That’s what counts most in everything.”
Daniel watched Gringo sniff around the baseboards and vanish around the corner into the living room. “I guess so. I mean, I do appreciate it, I don’t mean that. I just… I don’t know if appreciation counts that much.”
“You know it does, though. You said it yourself just now: it’s like you, being cast aside at work. All the things you were before, everything you did… Imagine if you were a work of art, and someone painted you. For days and days they paint, or weeks, and then they frame you and hang you up and admire you. And then one day…they aren’t admiring
you anymore. Art’s alive, I think. It has a soul.”
He felt guilty now, standing before a captive painting that he could choose to admire or not at his whim. “It’s too much power,” he said. “To think I might affect artwork with my feelings about it.”
“But you do, you see.” Ellie nodded as she moved past him down the hall. “Why do you think the Greats are so great? It’s not the paint, Daniel. It’s the bits of soul they leave on everything they touch. That’s what makes them Great… and that’s why they suffer so much. For the art, so it will have a soul. They have to give up some of theirs.”
He followed her into the small living room. The place was a mess; he didn’t feel shame as he expected, and Ellie didn’t seem to care. Gringo lay down nearby and watched them languidly.
“Can I get you something? Some…” he tapered off, helpless. He had nothing to offer. “Are you thirsty? I could make a pot of coffee. Or… I think I have tea.”
She laughed. “I’m fine, Strawberry. You serve enough drinks, don’t fret over me. I just wanted to see your home, since you see so much of mine. It’s bigger inside than it looks from the street, isn’t it?” She walked through to the kitchen and stuck her head in. “Blue. That’s pretty. Did you choose it?”
“No, it was that way.” Daniel hadn’t changed anything in the house, not the carpet or the paint, none of the colors, nothing. He hadn’t even thought about it. “I think they call it ‘cornflower’ blue.”
“They do, you know your colors. Are cornflowers really that blue, you think?”
He said he didn’t know.
Ellie ran her fingers along the countertop, picking at stray bits with her thumbnail. One edge of the laminate was loose and her fingers found it, pressed at it repeatedly as though to put it back in place. “They say, if you want people to think you’re a good cook, you should paint your kitchen orange. It makes people hungry, you see, so they have more of an appetite. Orange, isn’t that odd? I read that somewhere.”
Daniel nodded. He’d heard that too. He became aware he still held the snow globe and felt self-conscious about it. He hoped she wouldn’t notice the damned thing, but she did, of course.
“I had an aunt who collected those,” she said. “She called them her ‘snow scenes.’ She had dozens. May I see?”
He held it out for her. “Ah, little men. They look cold, don’t they? If those were real men, they’d be freezing their patooties off. They need to hurry with that tree so they can get back inside where it’s warm.” She shook the globe furiously. “Avalanche!” she cried, laughing. Daniel wanted to laugh with her, but it was too close to his earlier thoughts and it disturbed him. Ellie saw it on his face as she handed the thing back to him.
“You look like you just saw a ghost, Daniel. What is it?”
He explained about his earthquakes, about the blizzards. “I wonder if the real world is someone’s toy, and when it snows we look like this. No clue someone’s watching, no idea where it came from; just sudden disturbances in the… void, I guess.” He held the globe up and shook it again. “I had this packed away for a while, so it was peaceful and quiet. Dark. Now… light everywhere, shaking. Avalanches.”
“You think like an artist. A poet. The little men in there don’t have time the same way you have time. The darkness wasn’t so long for them, it was just the blink of an eye. We are all just the blink of someone’s eye. That’s God, maybe. If He’s real, we could be like those little men—just an amusement he thinks about a little once in a while, or maybe puts away for a while, and brings out when he’s cleaning house.”
“The blink of an eye.”
“I think so. How can time pass if God isn’t watching? They must all have been on hold. Waiting.” She took the globe back from him, and shook it. “See? I am their God now, and they all wonder about my nature. Will I be wrathful? Will I be kind? Merciful?” She handed the globe back to him. “What sort of God are you?”
He peered into the globe, and tilted it from side to side. It had been a gift for his girl, but he’d never given it to her. She’d seen it in the window of a shop. A shoppe, actually: Ye Olde-Timey Gift Shoppe or some such nonsense. She’d said the little men reminded her of him, hauling trees around in the snow. He’d gone back the next day and bought it for her, as a surprise for her birthday.
But a few weeks after that – and two weeks before her birthday – he’d found out she was sleeping with Sal. When he’d packed his things, he’d packed this too. Like hell he was giving it to her after that. But he found he couldn’t look at it; the little men in the snow. There were two of them, and all he could see when he looked at them was a betrayal.
Now, he was their God. Ellie watched him as he shook the globe gently, and let the snow settle. He felt sorry for the men, or at least for one of them: he couldn’t be sure which one. He could never look at them without anger. He should get rid of it. But now he knew he couldn’t take it to the yard sale. Ellie would see it. She might ask why he didn’t want it. Worse, she might buy the thing and he’d have to see it every time he was over there.
He sighed and set the snow globe on the kitchen counter. “I make a lousy God.”
On the way back to the front they passed the painting again.
“Do you think your grandmother gave up some of her soul to paint those roses?”
“Of course. So did I; everyone involved in art gives something of themselves. Even you: when you caress the painting, you leave part of yourself there.”
“How did you know I touched it?”
Ellie didn’t answer.
Chapter 53
The bar still smelled of paint fumes. The stage was finished. Daniel wiped out glasses on the back shelf and looked at it out of the corner of his eye. It hulked there, dark like a bruise. Billy flipped a switch and it became a well-lit bruise.
He was showing it to someone. Daniel struggled to appear as though he wasn’t listening while Billy showed the man around the edge of the little stage and pointed out the waffle-like foam backdrop he’d had installed.
“Acoustics.”
“Yeah, buddy. That’s key. So you want us this weekend?” The man patted his fingers over the waffle gently, his bald head shining in the spotlight.
“You got it.” The men clomped off the stage and moved toward the kitchen, talking about the times and the advertising, and then Daniel couldn’t hear them anymore. A few minutes later, the back door slammed shut and Billy returned without him and sat down at the bar.
“That was Shotzy. He’s an old friend. He has a band.” Billy pointed at the stage with his thumb, as though Daniel might not remember it was there. “They’re gonna come play for us.”
“Ah,” Daniel said, nodding. “What kind of music does he play?”
“This and that. They do rock mostly, they do some covers, some of his own stuff.” Billy reached for a bowl of pretzels. “Lemme have a beer. I told him to keep it sort of easy until he got a feel for the crowd, you know. If they seem into it, he can metal it up some.”
Daniel selected a mug and drew a beer, passing it to Billy. Metal it up? For the crowd? “It’s a pretty small bar, Billy. Our night crowd is mostly older guys.”
“I know. That’s the whole problem here.” Billy sipped at his beer and slapped his hand on the bar surface for emphasis. “We need to draw in some younger people. We’re only a few miles from the university. Those kids want to party, they want to drink and spend money.”
Bud’s Tavern was at least five miles from the university, maybe more. And it wasn’t west of it, where the fashionable downtown drinking activities began – it was east, closer to the used car dealerships and the old hooker district and what the news liked to call the War Zone. It wasn’t exactly swarming with vibrant youth. “There’s probably twenty bars closer to UNM than we are.” Nicer ones too, he wanted to add. Don’t hold your breath.
Billy’s beer was half gone. “I’m running ads in the Lobo, and I’m gonna have girl
s pass out flyers for this weekend. For the music. We’ll get the kids in here, make it a fun place. You’ll see. Don’t resist change, Danny.”
Daniel bit his lip literally for a moment, figuratively for another moment, then said, “We’ll see, I guess.”
“Shotzy’s been playing a long time. He’ll know what the crowd wants.” Billy threw back the last of his beer and slid the mug back across to Daniel. “What kind of music do you want? Country for the old guys?”
Daniel refilled the beer and smiled. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just…it’s a small bar. I don’t know how ‘wild’ it can get.” He plucked a cocktail straw from the bar and chewed on it, thinking about what sort of music would be most fitting. He looked over at Billy. “Some people just like it sort of quiet.”
Billy shook his head. “Everyone likes music. You have to forget your personal preferences, think like a businessman.”
“I am.” He tugged at the straw with his teeth. “I just think we need to be careful. At least stay… neutral.”
“Sure. Hey, neutral’s where we start, right? And then we do whatever.”
Do whatever. Metal it up. “Sure.” Daniel threw his straw out and busied himself restocking the garnishes and tidying up. He wasn’t looking forward to the music, whatever it ended up being. He didn’t enjoy music much anymore. It reminded him of his ex. She had been really into music, too much into it. Drove him crazy, playing it, selecting it, talking about it. Music and art, art and music. At least the art was quiet. Daniel fiddled with the sugar packet dispenser, now full. He straightened the packets and tapped them to make them even.
Billy looked over at him. “That reminds me,” he said, pointing. “You took money from the register last week for sugar packets?”
“Yeah. We were out, and the order—”
“No, no. I know. That’s alright, I guess. I mean, it’s better to wait for the order, but if we were really out, then…” Billy spread his fingers and frowned at them. “You know. You made that call, and that’s OK. But I noticed you got a candy bar.” He lowered his eyebrows and gave Daniel a look of deep concern. “What was that about?”
Gringo Page 17