Robert had chosen the prestigious photography school in Santa Barbara because it was reputed to be the best. As photographer for the high school yearbook he had gained a reputation as one of the best photographers in town, but in Santa Barbara he was just another teenager among hundreds of students who were, if anything, more skilled than he.
He took a job in a grocery store, stocking shelves from midnight to eight in the morning. He had to work full-time to pay his exorbitant tuition and rent, and soon he fell behind in his assignments. After two months he had to leave school to avoid flunking out.
He found himself in a strange town with no friends and barely enough money to survive. He started drinking beer every morning with the night crew in the parking lot. He drove home in a stupor and slept through the day until his next shift. With the added expense of alcohol, Robert had to hock his cameras to pay rent, and with them went his last hope for a future beyond stocking shelves.
One morning after his shift the manager called him into the office.
“Do you know anything about this?” The manager pointed to four jars of peanut butter that lay open on his desk. “These were returned by customers yesterday.” On the smooth surface of the peanut butter in each jar was etched, “Help, I’m trapped in Supermarket Hell!”
Robert stocked the glass aisle. There was no denying it. He had written the messages one night during his shift after drinking several bottles of cough medicine he had stolen from the shelves.
“Pick up your check on Friday,” the manager said.
He shuffled away, broke, unemployed, two thousand miles from home, a failure at nineteen. As he left the store, one of the cashiers, a pretty redhead about his age, who was coming in to open the store, stopped him.
“Your name is Robert, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You’re the photographer, aren’t you?”
“I was.” Robert was in no mood to chat.
“Well, I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “but I saw your portfolio sitting in the break room one morning and I looked at it. You’re very good.”
“I don’t do it anymore.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I have a friend who’s getting married on Saturday, and she needs a photographer.”
“Look,” Robert said, “I appreciate the thought, but I just got fired and I’m going home to get hammered. Besides, I hocked my cameras.”
The girl smiled, she had incredible blue eyes. “You were wasting your talent here. How much would it cost to get your cameras out of hock?”
Her name was Jennifer. She paid to get his cameras out of hock and showered him with praise and encouragement. Robert began to make money picking up weddings and Bar Mitzvahs, but it wasn’t enough to make rent. There were too many good photographers competing in Santa Barbara.
He moved into her tiny studio apartment.
After a few months of living together they were married and they moved north to Pine Cove, where Robert would find less competition for photography jobs.
Once again, Robert had sunk to a lifetime low, and once again Dame Fate had provided him with a miraculous rescue. The sharp edges of Robert’s world were rounded by Jennifer’s love and dedication. Life had been good, until now.
Robert’s world was dropping out from under him like a trapdoor and he found himself in a disoriented free-fall. Trying to control things by design would only delay his inevitable rescue. The sooner he hit bottom, he reasoned, the sooner his life would improve.
Each time this had happened before, things had gotten a little worse only to get a little better. One day the good times had to keep on rolling, and all of life’s horseshit would turn to circuses. Robert had faith that it would happen. But to rise from the ashes you had to crash and burn first. With that in mind, he took his last ten dollars and headed down the street to the Head of the Slug Saloon.
9
THE HEAD OF THE SLUG
Mavis Sand, the owner of the Head of the Slug Saloon, had lived so long with the Specter of Death hanging over her shoulders that she had started to think of him as one might regard a comfortable old sweater. She had made her peace with Death a long time ago, and Death, in return, had agreed to whittle away at Mavis rather than take her all at once.
In her seventy years, Death had taken her right lung, her gall bladder, her appendix, and the lenses of both eyes, complete with cataracts. Death had her aortic heart valve, and Mavis had in its place a steel and plastic gizmo that opened and closed like the automatic doors at the Thrifty Mart. Death had most of Mavis’s hair, and Mavis had a polyester wig that irritated her scalp.
She had also lost most of her hearing, all of her teeth, and her complete collection of Liberty dimes. (Although she suspected a ne’er-do-well nephew rather than Death in the disappearance of the dimes.)
Thirty years ago she had lost her uterus, but that was at a time when doctors were yanking them so frequently that it seemed as if they were competing for a prize, so she didn’t blame Death for that.
With the loss of her uterus Mavis grew a mustache that she shaved every morning before leaving to open the saloon. At the Slug she ambled around behind the bar on a pair of stainless steel ball and sockets, as Death had taken her hips, but not before she had offered them up to a legion of cowboys and construction workers.
Over the years Death had taken so much of Mavis that when her time finally came to pass into the next world, she felt it would be like slipping slowly into a steaming-hot bath. She was afraid of nothing.
When Robert walked into the Head of the Slug, Mavis was perched on her stool behind the bar smoking a Taryton extra-long, lording over the saloon like the quintessential queen of the lipstick lizards. After each few drags on her cigarette she applied a thick paste of fire-engine-red lipstick, actually getting a large percentage of it where it was supposed to go. Each time she butted a Taryton she sprayed her abysmal cleavage and behind her ears with a shot of Midnight Seduction from an atomizer she kept by her ashtray. On occasion, when she had rendered herself wobbly by too many shots of Bushmill’s, she would shoot perfume directly into one of her hearing aids, causing a short circuit and making the act of ordering drinks a screaming ordeal. To avoid the problem, someone had once given her a pair of earrings fashioned from cardboard air fresheners shaped like Christmas trees, guaranteed to give Mavis that new car smell. But Mavis insisted that it was Midnight Seduction or nothing, so the earrings hung on the wall in a place of honor next to the plaque listing the winners of the annual Head of the Slug eight-ball tournament and chili cook-off, known locally as “The Slugfest.”
Robert stood by the bar trying to get his eyes to adjust to the smoky darkness of the Slug.
“What can I get for you, sweet cheeks?” Mavis asked, batting her false eyelashes behind pop-bottle-thick, rhinestone-rimmed glasses. They put Robert in mind of spiders trying to escape a jar.
He fingered the ten-dollar bill in his pocket and climbed onto the bar stool. “A draft, please.”
“Hair of the dog?”
“Does it show?” Robert asked in earnest.
“Not much. I was just going to ask you to close your eyes before you bled to death.” Mavis giggled like a coquettish gargoyle, then burst into a coughing fit. She drew a mug of beer and set it in front of Robert, taking his ten and replacing it with nine ones.
Robert took a long pull from the beer as he turned on the stool and looked around the bar.