I got into the car and drank my second bottle of water. I called Pen on her cellphone but it was switched off, as was her habit. I hooked another bottle into the holder on the dashboard. The road was dead as Yolanda’s pets and I made good time before pullin into Earl’s Roadhouse, the bar where Pen was playing. It was still pretty damn early and I could feel that ol lush pull tuggin at me, insistent as a mall brat beggin his momma for candy. Surprisingly, for a night owl, it was always in the daylight hours when the draw was strongest. But I guess there’s nothin like walking sober into an evening bar full of drunks to convince you that you’re makin the right lifestyle choice.
I ordered a soda water with lime from Tracey the bartender. I liked her. She had a very cold dykey thing going on with the guys who came in. It just intrigued them and made them hit on her all the more. And hit on her they did, cause that gal always dressed like a million bucks. Not in an obvious way, cause she wasn’t one for puttin much flesh on show, but pretty damn classy all the same. She liked me, approved of the way I treated Pen. She told me as much one time, when she was a little drunk. Not in that hittin on you type of way, just in a mature sense of genuine appreciation. Tracey put Pen up on a pedestal. I reckoned I knew that pedestal well enough and once told Pen that I thought Tracey might be a girl’s girl.
She just laughed in my face and said, — Baby, she’s as straight as they come. For an older guy, you still ain’t got much of a clue about women.
She wasn’t too far wrong. Reckon all the women in my life had kinda said the same thing at one time or another. Jill made that point frequently, and much less charitably than Pen. My agent Martha had recently said similar stuff about Julia, the heroine in the first draft of my screenplay Big Noise. Or maybe she was a bit more blunt: ‘She isn’t a cardboard cutout, honey, she’s a little paper-thin for that.’
Sure enough, a few days later we spotted Tracey throwin gutterballs at Big Bucky Boy’s Bowling with some strike-hittin real-estate-sales type of guy who was probably married, but definitely fucking her. I felt like even more of a sleazeball than this asshole looked.
It was more than just women. I guess I outta have known a whole heap more about people than I did for a fella with my ambitions. And my crazy, conceited ass thought that by doing this book and a possible documentary on Halliday, I’d grow to understand the master’s mind, and somehow be able to unblock the writer in me, and become the great auteur that he was. But it was fanciful bullshit, and Yolanda Halliday was proof of that. After a couple of meetings I still didn’t know what that ol gal’s thing was.
The bar started to fill up, nine-to-five sorts who looked like they’d put in a hard day’s work; forklift drivers, grease monkeys, retail clerks, and office types, all lookin for what everybody has looked for in places like this since folks first sat down and chewed the shit together.
Pen came in dressed in a leather jacket and tight jeans, her hair tied back in a blue ribbon lookin kick-ass rock chic. She’s seventeen sweet years my junior, and her perfume smells good as she greets me with a melting smile and throws her arms around me. We kissed long, hard, and hungry, then softened it up a little and it tasted real fine and I could measure the goodness in life in the sweetest drips from those big red lips. And I knew I was lucky cause every guy, every sweaty workin stiff in that shithouse of a bar wanted to be me at that point in time and if they didn’t then they goddamn well should have.
Tracey saw her come in and set her up a beer.
Sure enough, one of the ol boys caught an eyeful of that divine denim-cased rear and darn near tumped his beer. Then his mean ol eyes took their register of my own weather-beaten face, and seein that it wasn’t much younger than the battered-lookin thing that greeted him in the mirror each mornin, fixed me a bitter scowl. I just gave him back a shit-eatin grin that said: Yeah, I know I’m maybe a little too old and these days definitely a load too straight for her, but it’s me she’s goin home with, so fuck you, buddy.
Then I ignored that sorry old fool and held up my cellphone to Pen in a playful reprimand.
— Yeah… I know, she said, tilting her head to the side, — I forgot to charge the bastard up.
— But I’m the possessive type, honey, I gotta have you on call, twenty-four/seven.
She opened a couple of pop-out buttons on my shirt and put her hand inside, rubbin at the hairs on my chest. — Yeah, I know, and I love it.
— Not as much as me, baby, I told her.
She raised a sculptured brow. — But you got another woman in your life right now, the one you’re spendin all this time with, she teased. — How’s this Halliday woman then? Bet she was a looker, huh?
— As she keeps tellin me she was once Miss Arizona.
— Before they started keepin records, right? Pen laughed and took a big suck on her Pabst.
I felt somethin rise in me a little and forced it back down, smilin back thinly at Pen. She didn’t mean nuthin by it, cause that gal ain’t got a bad bone in her body. All she was doin was repeatin my own silly jokes back at me. But somehow disrespectin Yolanda just didn’t sound right no more.
Funny thing was that I guess that I was kinda gettin to like that old gal. The woman had shown me great courtesy and hospitality, but desire, no sir, no way, you have got to be jerkin my wire. Why, Miss Yolanda had at least a good thirty years and a bad eighty pounds on me. Having undergone every plastic surgery procedure known to man, her face was almost paralyzed; the last time I saw something that looked like it, it was perched on the side of Notre-Dame cathedral over in Paris.
And to my shame, I had said somethin along those lines to Pen after I first met her, set that ol gal up as a figure of fun. I dunno why. Always tryin a little too hard to be a smart-ass, I guess, then regrettin it after when the folks you shit-talk don’t turn out to be so bad after all. But then the static thump of tubby fingers on a microphone head interrupted me from my thoughts.
Earl was a big and feisty ol boy, always wore those two-button brocade vests of the type JR used to sport, so damn snug you wondered how they stayed fastened, and I never saw him without his big Stetson hat. He was up onstage and he introduced Pen to a great big cheer. Then she got right up there and just blew them all away. I’m darned if that gal couldn’t rock the hell out of a joint. It might have only been a sleazy little dive bar where if somebody left the door open the throatful of heat and dust that followed them in made everybody suck down another cold one quickstyle, but she was headin for bigger things, no doubt about it. But I liked it best when she put down the Gibson and picked up the twelve-string acoustic and set her sweet ass on that stool and sang those soft honey-sugar ballads of hers. They broke this old wreckage’s sorry heart and made me want to set up just one little beer to cry into. But I knew where that would lead and as long as I had her in my arms I sure didn’t need me none of that.
I loved this dirty little dive so much and the only damn reason was her. I’d first come in to Earl’s six months ago, just after I’d moved to Phoenix, to try and start this damn book on Halliday. It just wasn’t happenin up in that lonely apartment, so I got out for a while and drove around a little, endin up just out of town, in this place. I found it was always better to pretend to write in the corner of some bar rather than in an empty apartment. Sometimes a face or a comment overheard could lay down the bones of a character or a snatched conversation trigger an idea for a plotline. Even though I wasn’t drinkin I still couldn’t break that particular habit.
I hadn’t been in long when she sat down next to me at the bar and asked me for a cigarette. I told her that I was sorry but I didn’t smoke, and was moved to add that right now I wished more than just about anythin that I did. She laughed and said that maybe I could buy her a drink instead and I was delighted to do so. After takin note that I was passin on the liquor, she looked deep into my eyes and said, ‘Well, you don’t smoke, or drink, but do you…’ and she skipped a beat, took a long drag on the cigarette that Tracey had given her, those big brown eyes full of mischief and asked, ‘… listen to rock n roll?’