by Joe Connelly
29
Rob parked the car in front of the bar, his nose pressed against the wheel, waiting for his breathing to return. “Get a hold of yourself,” he said, and slammed the door. Out front the painters were gone and the window a mess. He made a note in his head to call scenery. Inside, the new office equipment had arrived, and he checked over his new desk and computer, and the table behind the wall, which held the new fax printer and phone, and behind that, in the new chair in the corner, his new assistant, already complaining about the cigarettes.
The desk was too heavy to move so he arranged his monitor and chair as best he could, to face the window, away from the bar, away from Rita. He’d been driving around Crumbtown for an hour, one dead end after another, thinking about Rita. He needed to forget Rita.
Rob turned on the computer and pushed in his disk, and when the script came up he clicked on EDIT. In the box next to FIND WHAT, he typed RITA. In the box next to REPLACE WITH, he typed MARIE, his mother’s name, any name for now, a new start. He had to finish this scene. “Okay, let’s go,” he said, staring at the screen. Minutes passing, wordless. Then an image developing, from his earliest memory, of his mother dancing. He must have been three or four or five, and he was sitting on the toilet, his mother dancing in front of him, singing “I’m a little teapot, short and stout . . .”
Rob’s assistant rang his phone, “Mr. Landetta,” she yelled, “Mr. Landetta,” she had to shout like this even though she was sitting three feet away. “You’re supposed to be at the hotel, to pick up Little Eddy. You’re showing him locations this afternoon.”
“What about Don Reedy? He arrived this morning, right, I need him there.”
“He’s not in his room and I can’t get through to his cell. The interference is much worse today.” She pushed some buttons. “It’s ringing. You have to speak really loud.”
Rob picked up the phone, trying to hear through the static, voices fading in, music, what sounded like a Russian talk show. “Hello?” he shouted. “Are you there?” He slammed it down. “I can’t work this way.” He walked out the door.
30
Don was ready this time, the phone out of his pocket and the proper button pushed before the first ring was over. “Hello,” he said, a buzz of clicks on the other end, a woman’s voice in the static, speaking another language. More men talking, he couldn’t understand. Was it Russian? He looked to the front of the bar, the man who had been sitting at the computer, who Rita said was his director, must have just left, the secretary with him. Don should have introduced himself when he had the chance, asked for a new phone. He’d been having such a good time with this bartender, forgetting why he was here. “Rita,” he said, waving her close, “do you know what they’re saying?”
She pressed her ear next to his, listening, “It is the taxi radios,” she said. “They are in all the phones, and the music stations when the cars are passing.” She pulled her hair over her ear, laughing. “How do you say it, the dispatcher, she wants car thirty-eight to pick up a woman’s cat, to take it to the barber. Hahaha. And now the driver says I always get the cat. I don’t want. Give it to twenty-four. He loves the cat. He has sex with the cat.” Rita laughed again. “And the driver twenty-four says yes it is a beautiful cat. Twenty-four is very funny. And now the thirty-eight says he is in love with the cat of the dispatcher.” Rita shrugged, “It is always like this.”
Don leaned into her, “What is the dispatcher saying?”
“It is a game. She curses him but I have seen them together, here, listen, now they are passing.”
The voices faded quickly, leaving only a distant buzzing, Don and Rita still listening, waiting, the phone pressed between, who would get off first. The buzz going into his arms, the bar in his side, cutting out the air. Just to turn and they’d be kissing. He turned.
She stepped back, into the register, “Music,” she announced, anchoring her skirt, “the jukebox,” walking around the bar to the machine behind Don, bending down to plug it in, pushing buttons like she was playing the notes.
At the first beat Don was off the stool, saying, “That’s Al Green.” Four steps toward the jukebox when the voice came in, stopping him in the middle of the floor. “Turn it up, Rita. Can you do that?” He closed his eyes and flattened his palms on his head. “I haven’t heard this song in so long. You know Al Green, right?”
“I just played,” Rita said. She walked behind the bar and reached under the whiskeys and turned up the volume. Except for them, the room was empty.
“Yeah,” Don said, “that’s good. I haven’t heard this song in ten years. In Creosote we aren’t allowed to listen to music, except what you get on TV. But I tell you Rita: Damn I feel good. A couple of beers in a dark bar on a sunny afternoon, and a pretty bartender to talk to, and the right song comes on the jukebox. I want to dance. Hey Rita, do you want to dance with me?”
Between each line that he said, Don took a long step toward her, a sudden stop, around the bar and behind, until they stood exactly two arm’s lengths apart. She didn’t answer, only waited with her hands holding two ends of a towel, and that same smile she’d had on since they met, that he couldn’t figure out even this close up. He took another step.
She had wanted to slow things down. A slow song, she thought, when everyone knows that the slow songs only speed things up. And of all the choices she could make, “Let’s Stay Together.” What was he supposed to think? He was coming toward her, around the bar, talking too fast, she couldn’t understand. He was behind the bar. Customers were not supposed to be behind the bar. She was not going to dance with this man behind the bar. “Wait,” she said, pointing him to the jukebox. “Over there.”
Don had never liked slow dancing, but now he understood that the slower you go the better it gets. After about fifteen minutes, Rita had stopped moving; for a while he thought she’d stopped breathing. Don had danced himself down to a slight tremor in two fingers and one foot that his heart was racing to control. He’d forgotten where he was; who he was. His fingers stilled, only the foot was left, the breathing next.
She was going to kiss him. The signs were clear, shaking in her legs, thumping up her back, echoing through the chest, making one noise at the top, like a stadium cheer. Too loud to keep still. She had to move, one centimeter to the right, that’s all it took, just a word in her chin and he was moving too, no way to stop, the ears kissing first, then the cheeks, their mouths in the middle.
“Wait,” she pushed him off, Don stumbling into the gap. She turned around the bar, out the window, “Not here.” She grabbed his hand, pulling him to the back, “Downstairs.”
Eight
SCENE 31
Rob searched the hotel lobby and around the front desk, the corridor of slot machines to the elevators in the back, his production assistant hiding behind the ATMs. “I’m sorry Rob, but Little Eddy’s not in his room. Nobody knows where he is.”
“What was your job?” Rob asked. “You were just given one job.”
“To keep an eye on Little Eddy at all times.”
“So where is he?”
“This is not my specialty.”
A voice called from the lobby, “Mr. Landetta,” the woman behind the desk. “Are you Mr. Landetta?” Rob could only see the top of her head. “There’s a Mr. Don Reedy waiting in the driveway.”
Rob walked outside, Little Eddy getting into the driver’s seat of a Dingo Sport, “Get in Rob,” slamming the door closed. “Get in quick.”
“Where’s Don Reedy,” Rob looked up and down the street. “Where’s my car.”
“I’m Don,” Eddy pushed open the passenger door, “get in the car.”
Rob got in, Eddy pulling at the lights and flashers, flipping the signals. He put the car in reverse, ramming the concrete fountain. “Where’s forward,” he cried, before dropping them into drive, the little Dingo leaping at the street, the crashing of horns, running feet, a parking attendant banging on the trunk. Rob fought with his belt, “Wait, Eddy,” sea
rching for the clip, “Wait, please.”
Eddy cut right, then left, his face bleached in sweat, “Before I say anything, Robby, we got to talk,” sweat in his eyes and out his chin, over the wheel pressed into his ribs, “we got to talk right now.” He pointed the car at a mother and stroller, missing as if by accident.
“Stop the car, Eddy.”
Two more blocks, a bus, a parking meter, a tractor-trailer, Eddy shaking the wheel the way a child would, driving in the driveway, or an actor might, with the car on a trailer being towed around the city. Rob ducked as they passed under a red light.
Eddy had promised he’d stay clean, it was in the contract, drug screenings once a week, counselors on call, the long list of rules: Eddy would stay in his room. Eddy would not use the phone. Under no condition would Eddy be allowed to drive. It had been a bad day, and now Rob was going to die, “Please Eddy.”
“Call me Don. I got a problem with the new script, Rob, the bank robbery scene. I say ‘This is a stickup’ and then the lines right after that, to the teller, the same word that Don says over and over, to all the tellers and the managers.”
“The gimme gimme gimme line.”
Eddy punched the horn, “I won’t do it,” standing up on the gas pedal. He released the wheel: a van, a schoolbus, another red light.
“Oh my God it’s out of the script that’s no problem I’m taking it out it’s gone. And you’re slowing down now that’s so good. You’re stopping for the light.”
“How about some music,” Eddy said. He reached down and turned on the heater, banging the knobs with his hand, “I’ve gone a lot of research, Rob: I read all the papers; I talked to the people at my AA. I know this guy better than myself, all right, and that’s just not something he’s gonna say.”
“You’re right, and look, there’s Gloria’s bar up ahead, just steer into that space, now push down on the brake, the brake,” the Dingo banging into the curb, bouncing up and into the new awning, dragging it twenty feet.
32
Tim and Tom stood outside the bar, taking turns at the window. “Rob’s in there,” Tim said. “And that’s got to be Little Eddy, they’re sitting at the bar.” He opened the door.
Tom closed it. “Is Don in there?”
“I don’t see him, anyway I don’t care. It’s not a life worth living if a man can’t go to his local and have a beer.”
“Especially if that’s where he lives.”
“Don’t worry, brother, I brought some insurance with me.”
“What’s that?”
“What does it look like. It’s a gun.”
“It doesn’t look like a gun. It’s orange. When did you get this?”
“I don’t want to say, because it’s a gift. Here.”
“Put it away, Tim. I don’t want it.”
“You said we needed a gun.”
“It’s all rusted. It’ll explode.” Tom pushed the gun back toward Tim’s pocket; Tim fought it back to Tom’s, and fighting that way, they went in the door.
33
Don kissed her down the stairs to the basement, his mouth never leaving, his hands in her hair, her neck, kissing the buttons down her shirt. Nothing else existed, no boxes, no kegs, no footsteps overhead. He’d never robbed a bank, never been to prison, never been born until this basement, half an hour before. The world was a circle, his back to hers, and in its center, the knot at the bottom of her shirt that he’d been trying to untie for nearly every moment of his adult life. It was a Russian knot, unlike any he’d seen, tied so tightly he couldn’t get underneath. He tried to pull the shirt over her, slipping the sleeves down her arms, but her hands at his back were as tight as the knot. He tried to forget, he moved to her skirt, but the knot kept growing.
Then it happened, a pull and a pop and the knot came apart, like a gunshot. There was a gunshot, in the bar above. He looked at the ceiling, and back to Rita, eyes closed, waiting, she hadn’t heard. He kissed her again, seeing with his hands, under the shirt now, up and up, and pop, another gunshot. “The hell,” she said, turning around to tie her shirt. Running up the stairs. “Rita, wait.”
He caught her at the door, the two of them peering around, a man in the middle of the bar, a short man, pointing a gun at another who was crawling on the floor, someone who crawled a lot like Tim, his half twin Tom not far away, hiding under a stool. “Where’s my money?” said the man with the gun, shooting another round into the floor.
Tim crouched behind his brother. “There was no money, Eddy.”
Don had never planned on this. That he’d have to wait in line if he was going to shoot the twins.
“Please Eddy,” said a voice from the corner, the man who’d been in the bar before, the director, kneeling behind his computer. “Just put down the gun okay this is not in the show.”
“Shut up,” Eddy said. “It was in the newspapers, fifty thousand dollars was missing from the last robbery. That’s them, right. They’ve got Don’s money. How else am I supposed to play this?”
A pause followed, the men stumped by the question, all except Rita, who marched up to the man with the gun, holding her hand out like an angry schoolteacher, and told him to put it down, now.
“Hi,” Eddy smiled, the entire width of his face. He reached up to shake her hand. “I’m Don.”
Don was across the bar in five steps, punching the gun with his right, grabbing it down and away, then hitting Eddy with it, twice in the ear, Eddy staggering into the door, bursting out to the street. Don turned to Tim, still on the floor, another gun, hands shaking with it. Don kicked it away, under the chairs. “How you doing, Tim? What’s it been, ten years?” He turned to Tom, hiding in Rita’s skirt, “Come on out,” the twins fighting for space beneath her legs. “I got a question to ask.”
Rita reached down, grabbing the gun in Don’s hand, “That is enough.” Don slow to let go, like they were still dancing. She pulled harder, Don staring at her shirt, a new knot. “No, Rita. I’m not finished.” Then a gale of car horns blew in from the street, followed by a scream, tires skidding, another scream and a thump, like a bird hitting the window. Everyone turning to the front. “That is enough,” she said, the gun in her hand, Tom and Tim running out the door.
34
Dyan Swaine tapped her fingers on the headrest, waiting for her driver, King, to return with a report, but all he did was stand in front of the car, staring at the man lying at his feet. She lowered the window, “Well, how is he?”
“It’s Little Eddy,” King said. “They’re gonna send me back to prison for this.”
“Yes, but how is he?”
“You saw. I hardly touched him. He’s fine.” King kicked the body on the ground, then bent down and lifted Eddy in his arms. “Except he’s not waking up.”
Dyan got out and closed the door. A crowd starting to gather, fishermen and postal workers, Chinese deliverymen on scooters. “All right everybody,” she said, “this ain’t a circus.” She was still wearing her police uniform, and she pointed them up the street, “I said move it,” until they were all out of the way except Rob Landetta, the man she’d come here to meet.
“Look what you did,” Rob said. He poked Eddy in the rib. Eddy didn’t move. “You killed him.”
“We hardly touched him,” said Dyan. “He ran out in front of us and we just tapped him and he fell down. Eddy, wake up.”
“You killed him,” Rob said, and sat on the curb and dropped his head in his hands. Dyan had taken over his script. Now she’d killed his main character.
Dyan lit a cigarette. She scratched her elbow, “I heard Buddy Dillinger’s available. He’d be great for this.”
Little Eddy opened his eyes, “Buddy Dillinger’s a junkie.”
“I told you he was fine.”
“You saw,” King said, “he ran into me.”
Eddy jumped to his feet, apparently standing. “Where’s my gun?”
35
Rita was still holding the gun as she poured the vodka, her back to Don, �
�I do not understand.”
“Rita, I wasn’t going to shoot them.”
She drank the glass, gasping, then raised the gun to her lips, as if to drink that too. She pushed it across the bar. “I don’t want this.”
He pushed back, “I don’t want it. Here, keep these too.” He pulled his jacket off the stool and took out two more guns, setting them next to Eddy’s. “And this one,” he walked over to Tim’s gun on the floor, laying it next to the others.
“You are carrying three guns?”
“I only came in with two,” he said, “and one of them’s not even real, and this one’s all rusted, look,” he spread his arms around the pistols and made them into a pile. “Just put them in a box or something, and I’ll put on the music, okay.”
“What is wrong with me? What am I doing?”
Don ran to the jukebox, “Music’s going on right now.” He dipped his face in the glass, “Uh-oh, you got Etta James.”
She picked up an empty box, dropping the guns in. “I have a degree from the university. I speak three languages, and look at me, this place so much like where I was born, you cannot believe.”
“I believe,” Don said. “Do you have four quarters for a dollar?”
“All of you are giving me a headache, and I’m tired of this language, and you are not different.”
“I am different, Rita. I just need some change.”
“It takes bills,” she said.
“Oh?”
“They all take bills,” she yelled, his back to her now, arms wrapped over the machine. It was her bad luck, because he was not a bad person, she could tell these things, the way he held her, the way they kissed. But she was not going to bed with a man just out of prison. Well, maybe, but definitely not someone who in the one day he was out of prison had picked up three guns. She could understand one gun, and yes, she knew that wasn’t the wise thing to say, but this is where she lived, and he was the first guy in a long time that she even considered kissing, and she could always tell her mother, “He had only one gun.” But three guns was not a joke. Wherever you’re from, whatever you’ve done, three guns was a bad sign.