You’d think they would have a pool table. When you walked into a joint called the Side Pocket, you expected a pool table. Maybe something smaller than regulation, maybe one of those dinky coin-operated Bumper Pool deals. But something, surely, where you poked a ball with a stick and it went into a hole.
Not that he cared. Not that he played the game, or preferred the sound of balls striking one another as background music for his drinking. It was just a matter of unfulfilled expectations, really. You saw the neon, “The Side Pocket,” and you walked in expecting a pool table, and they didn’t have one.
Of course, that was one of the things he liked about his life. You never knew what to expect. Sometimes you saw things coming, but not always. You could never be sure.
He stood for a moment, enjoying the air-conditioning. It was hot out, and humid, and he’d enjoyed the tropical feel of the air as he’d walked here from his hotel, and now he was enjoying the cool dry air inside. Enjoy it all, he thought. That was the trick. Hot or cold, wet or dry. Dig it. If you hate it, then dig hating it. Whatever comes along, get into it and enjoy it.
Right.
He walked over to the bar. There were plenty of empty stools but he stood instead. He gazed at the light glinting off the shoulders of the bottles on the top row of the back bar, listened to the hum of conversation floating on the surface of soft jazz from the jukebox, felt the cool air on his skin. He was a big man, tall and thickly muscled, and the sun had bronzed his skin and bleached blond streaks in his brown hair.
Earlier he’d enjoyed being in the sun. Now he was enjoying being out of it.
Contrasts, he thought. Name of the game.
“Help you?”
He’d been standing, staring, and there was no telling how long the bartender had been right in front of him, waiting for him to order something. A big fellow, the bartender, sort of an overgrown kid, with one of those sleeveless T-shirts cut to show off the delts and biceps. Weightlifter’s muscles. Get up around noon, pump some iron, then go lie in the sun. Spend the evening pouring drinks and flexing your muscles, go home with some vacationing schoolteacher or somebody’s itchy wife.
He said, “Double Cuervo, neat, water back.”
“You got it.”
Why did they say that? And they said it all the time. You got it. And he didn’t have it, that was the whole point, and he’d have it sooner if they didn’t waste time assuring him that he did.
He didn’t like the bartender. Fine, nothing wrong with that. He examined the feeling of dislike and let himself enjoy it. In his imagination he drove two stiffened fingers into the bartender’s solar plexus, heard the pained intake of breath, followed with a chop to the windpipe. He entertained these thoughts and smiled easily, smiled with genuine enjoyment, as the fellow poured the drink.
“Run a tab?”
He shook his head and drew out his wallet. “Pay as you go,” he said, riffling through a thick sheaf of bills. “Sound fiscal policy.” He plucked one halfway out, saw it was a hundred, tucked it back. He rejected another hundred, then found a fifty and laid in on top of the bar. He drank the tequila while the bartender rang the sale and left his change on the bar in front of him, returning the wallet to his side pocket.
Maybe the bar’s name had nothing to do with pool, he thought. Maybe the Side Pocket meant a pocket in a pair of pants, not the hip pocket but the side pocket, which could have made it an unhip pocket, but in fact made it a more difficult target for pickpockets.
They had a pool table there once, he decided, and the owner found it didn’t pay for itself, took up space where he could seat paying customers. Or the bar changed hands and the first thing the new guy did was get rid of the table. Kept the name, though, because he liked it, or because the joint had a following. That made more sense than pants and pickpockets.
He kept his own wallet in his side pocket, but more for convenience than security. He wasn’t much afraid of pickpockets. Draining the drink, he felt the tequila stirring him and imagined a hand slipping artfully into his pocket, groping almost imperceptibly for his fat wallet. Imagined his own hand taking hold of the smaller hand. Squeezing, breaking small bones, doing damage without looking, without even seeing the face of the person he was hurting.
He saw the bartender was down at the end of the bar, talking to somebody on the telephone, grinning a lazy grin. He waited until the kid looked his way, then crooked a finger and pointed at his empty glass. Get it? You got it.
A pair of double Cuervos gave you a nice base to work on, got the blood humming in your veins. When the second was gone he switched to India Pale Ale. It had a nice bite to it, a complicated flavor. Sat comfortably on top of tequila, too. Not so comfortably, though, that you didn’t know it was there. You definitely knew it was there.
He was halfway through the second IPA when she came in. He didn’t exactly sense her presence, but the energy in the place shifted when she walked through the door. Not that everybody turned to look at her. For all he knew, nobody turned to look at her. He certainly didn’t. He just stood there, his hand wrapped around the base of the longneck bottle, ready to refill his glass. He felt the shift in energy and turned it over in his mind.
He caught sight of her in the back bar, watched out of the corner of his eye as she approached. One empty stool separated the two of them, but she showed no awareness of his presence, her attention directed at the bartender.
She said, “Hi, Kevin.”
“Lori.”
“It’s an oven out there. Sweetie, tell me something. Can I run a tab?”
“You always run a tab,” Kevin said. “Though I heard someone say Pay As You Go is a sound fiscal policy.”
“I don’t mean a tab like pay at the end of the evening. I mean like I’ll pay you tomorrow.”
“Oh,” he said. “The thing is I’m not supposed to do that.”
“See, the ATM was down,” she said.
“Down? Down where?”
“Down as in not working. I stopped on the way here and it wouldn’t take my card.”
“Is Jerry meeting you here? Because he could—”
“Jerry’s in Chicago,” she said. “He’s not due back until the day after tomorrow.” She was wearing a wedding ring, and she fiddled with it. “If you took plastic,” she said, “like every other place...”
“Yeah, well,” Kevin said. “What can I tell you, Lori? If we took plastic the owner couldn’t cook the books as much. He hates to pay taxes even more than he hates to bathe.”
“A wonderful human being.”
“A prince,” Kevin agreed. “Look, I’d let you run a tab, the hell, I’d just as soon let you drink free, far as it goes, but he’s on my ass so much these days...”
“No, I don’t want to get you in trouble, Kevvie.”
He’d been taking this all in, hanging on every word, admiring the shape of it even as he’d admired her shape, long and curvy, displayed to great advantage in the pale yellow cotton shift. He liked the way Kevin had quoted his pay-as-you-go remark, a sure way to draw him toward the conversation if not into it.
Now he said, “Kevin, suppose I buy the lady a drink. How will that sit with the owner?”
This brought a big grin from the bartender, a pro forma protest from Lori. Very nice, little lady, he thought, but you have done this before. “I insist,” he said. “What are you drinking?”
“I’m not,” she said. “That’s the whole problem, and you, kind sir, are the solution. What am I drinking? Kevin, what was that drink you invented?”
“Hey, I didn’t invent it,” Kevin said. “Guy was drinking ’em in Key West and described it to me, and I improvised, and he says I got it right. But I never tasted the original, so maybe it’s right and maybe it isn’t.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what to call it. I was leaning toward Key Hopper or maybe Florida Sunset but I don’t know.”