Last Call Lounge (9 page)

Redmond came in and sat at the far end of the bar. I opened a Lone Star and put it in front of him. He smiled his empty smile. I turned on the TV and found a baseball game, then poured a cup of coffee and sat down next to him.

These were my favorite times at the bar, the Saturday afternoons, and even the break-in didn't do much to dampen my mood.  These were the hours when I could enjoy the bar as a place, not a business, not a hassle.  I could play the jukebox, run my hands on the worn wood of tables, feel the creak of the wide pine floorboards. It was when I would feel closest to Dad. Not just because these were his things, but because it was when I felt the most like him. Without any effort on my part, my habits were like his habits had been. When the cleaning and the other little projects were done, I would sit at the end of the bar, sipping coffee, like he had, joking with the customers. I imagined that, at those moments, maybe I kind of looked like him.  The sun poured in through the front windows.  The windows were clean.

Twenty minutes later, Mitchell came back, carry a large tool box and two boards.  He set them down near the back door, then marched back out the front door.  When he came back in, he was carrying a stack of papers.  He put them on the bar in front of me.

It was a flyer. “Missing” was in large type at the top, above a color picture of the mask. Then below, it read “Reward!” Anyone with information was asked to please contact the bar management. I held it in one hand.

“I made it on my computer,” Mitchell said.

“What's the reward?” I asked.

“Whatever you can afford,” he said.

I put the flyer back on top of Mitchell's stack.

“God damnit, Mitch,” I said, rubbing my eyes.  “Don't you understand? I was just fucking robbed.  Do you really expect me to spend money trying to get back an ugly hunk of plaster?” 

Mitchell stood, arms folded across his belly.  I tried to wait him out, but he stood, silent. 

“Fine,” I said.  “I'll put up the fucking reward.  Just give me a while to figure out what I can afford.”  Mitchell didn't move.  “I was just robbed,” I said again, but that didn't budge him.  “And I don't make any money on this Saturday shift, you know,” I said. 

Finally he nodded, picked up his papers, and loped to the end of the bar.

The streets were busy with activity that seemed random.  I’d asked Mitchell to watch the bar while I ran to the bank for change for the till.  A line of cars was snaked around the middle school.  I turned down a side street, one of those streets cluttered by its own randomness – graffiti-tagged street signs, fences strapped with cheap lattice. 

Half of the buildings on the street were old houses that had long ago been converted into space for businesses, the kind of businesses that get pushed off busier and more popular streets.  Accountants, thrift stores, frame shops.  The doors of these businesses screeched open and slammed shut as people hurried to finish straggling errands before they evacuated.  A yellow and blue bungalow at the corner housed a psychic/card reader; its gravel parking lot out front was full.

The line at the bank drive-through was long.  The ATM was out of cash, so I parked and went in to the lobby.  There were four tellers working and the line of waiting customers wound through the rope maze.  People were chattering, talking to each other about their evacuation plans, their past hurricanes.  I kept my head down and was left alone.

“We're out of twenties,” the clerk said when I handed her my withdrawal slip.  She was a motherly-round woman with dark skin and chocolate eyes.  “Is it okay if I give you ones and fives?”

“That's fine,” I said.  “That's what I need anyway.”

“Why?” she asked as her fingers clacked over her computer keyboard.

“I run a bar,” I said.  “We need the change.”

Her fingers stopped.

“You're going to be open?” she asked, turning her eyes to me.

“Yeah,” I said.  “We never close.”

“But what about your employees?”

“I'm not making them stay,” I said.  “They can leave if they want to.”

“You're in charge.  Something like that is your decision,” she said, her voice thick with disapproval. She held the envelope with my change in her hand.

I glared as best I could.

“I just need my money, please,” I said.

She slid the change across the counter and gave me a shake of her head.

“You need to take responsibility for your decisions,” she said.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way back, not because I needed anything, but because I wasn’t ready yet to be back at the bar and to deal with the break in.  It was a chain store, normally big and clean and air-conditioned.  But panic had set in.  Shopping carts were abandoned across the parking lot.  Inside, the floors were dirty and the aisles scattered with trash.  Half the shelves were empty.  People had moved on to hoarding the things they could find to substitute for those they needed.  Shoppers waiting in line with carts full of cranberry juice and paper towels.  The lines weaved back into the aisle.  I watched for a moment, from just inside the front door, then went back out and drove to the bar.

Frank was sitting outside when I pulled up, sitting on the curb ten feet from the front door.  I lit a cigarette and smiled to myself.  I closed my eyes for a second, felt the hot sun burn through my eyelids, then walked up to Frank.  He stood, stretching his body up.  His hand flicked through his spiky hair and he gave me half a grin. 

“What are you doing here so early?” I asked. 

He shrugged and looked down at his hands. The same cracked shoes, same stained work pants.

“Saturdays I usually clean up around here,” I said. “Feel like helping?”

“Okay,” Frank said quietly.

Frank followed me through the front door, into the brief cool blast.  Mitchell looked up from behind the bar and surprise flash across his face when he saw Frank. I tossed the ones and fives to him.

“Mitchell,” I said.  “You remember Frank.  He came back.” 

Mitchell tilted his head toward Frank, then nodded a sort of hello.  Frank waved.

“Help Mitchell first,” I said to Frank.  “Then I've got some other things you can do.”  Mitchell studied me, then led Frank toward the patio.  I could hear his drone as he explained to Frank what had happened, what they had to do.  Frank listened with a serious scowl and helped Mitch carry the tools out the back door.

I took the brass polish out from under the counter, folded a couple rags next to it.  A couple of oil workers came in, wiry guys in jeans and golf shirts.  They eased into stools next to Redmond.  They'd been off-shore.  The oil company had cleared all the workers off the rigs in the Gulf, helicoptered them back to Houston ahead of the hurricane.

“You evacuating?” one of them asked me.

I scratched my chest.  “Hadn't really thought about it,” I said.

“When Carla hit, I had just built a house,” Redmond said. I turned to him. He was still smiling his loose, toothless smile, but his eyes were focused. He nodded at the memory of the house in the hurricane. “The wind pulled the window frames right out of the walls.”

“You gonna evacuate this time?” the oil worker asked him.

“No, no,” he said. “My father always said, 'you hide from the wind, you run from the water.' It doesn't flood at my house, so I'm gonna stay. Always seemed strange to me to leave your house when trouble was coming.” 

“You'd be one of those last hold-outs,” the oilman said. “One of those people they have to pull off their roof with a helicopter.”

Redmond laughed.

“Maybe, maybe,” he said. “But I'd rather be there in my house, knowing what was going on, then sitting somewhere else hoping everything was gonna be okay.”

The oil workers stood up.

“Well, you be careful,” the first one said. “I'll be watching the news, looking for you up on your roof.”

Redmond laughed again.

“I'll be sure to wave,” he said.

The offshore workers laughed and carried their beers to the pool table. Redmond turned his empty gaze and empty smile back to the TV. I watched him for a moment, to see if he was going to say anything else. But he stayed silent, so I moved away.

Out on the patio, Mitchell was wearing dusty safety goggles. He stood up, drill in hand.

“Because the door opens out, all we can really do is screw it shut from the outside,” Mitchell said to Frank. “We'll screw it shut after closing tonight.” He pushed the goggles up onto his forehead.  Frank was standing next to him. Both had yellow pine saw dust speckled on their pants.

“Thanks, Mitchell,” I said.  “Thanks for coming up here on your day off.”

“I used deck screws,” he said, holding one out to me.  “You need a special drill bit for these.  That way, you won't be able to take it off with just a screw driver.”

“Cool,” I said.  “I'll come back up at closing and board it up.  And thanks again.”

Mitchell grinned, a tiny, embarrassed grin at the edge of his mouth. “You're welcome,” he said with a shrug.

Back inside, I handed Frank the brass polish.

“Here,” I said.  “Take a rag, rub it on.  Anything brass.  Let it dry, then buff it off.” 

He grabbed a rag and started on the rail at the end of the bar.  He leaned in close to the rail, his face tight with concentration. Mitchell sat at the bar with a cup of coffee and his folders.  He mumbled to himself and made notes on his chart.  I went back behind the bar and started dusting the bottles on the shelves, one by one.

As I fell into the routine, the comfortable sameness of my Saturdays, I had to remind myself not to smile.  As far as Mitchell and Frank were concerned, I should be pretty upset about the break-in.  I sighed and grimaced a little on occasion, but I felt pretty light.

The only concern I had, the only thing that nagged at all, was the idea that the guy who had broken into my bar would probably break in to my house next. My thoughts wound back to this idea, away, and back again.  Still, I finally convinced myself, there was nothing I could do about it now.  I'd call Worm as soon as my shift was over and get the money back to him.

Frank was finishing the brass. I went to the register and took out twenty dollars.

“Here,” I said to Frank. He wiped his hands on a towel and took the twenty. “There's a taco truck at the corner.”  I told him what I wanted, told him to get a few for himself and Mitchell and Redmond. He bounced out the door. Redmond and I shot a game of nine ball, then Frank came back with the tacos. We all sat separately at the bar – Mitchell, Frank, Redmond, and I and ate our lunch in comfortable silence.

The silence stayed around us like some sort of happy pact.  Mitchell and Redmond were generally quiet anyway and Frank seemed to sense it. After lunch, he kept the coffee pot full and kept finding small tasks to keep himself busy. He cleaned the grime behind the sinks, wiped the bugs out of the pendant lights. Now and then he'd ask me a question – where the glass cleaner was, how to change a mop head – but he seemed to understand that the quiet was part of the afternoon and he kept his questions to a minimum.

About three, the door opened and Sugarland Richie loped in. He wasn't wearing his denim shirt and it took me a long second to recognize him. He was wearing a black t-shirt and had his mess of hair pulled back in a pony tail.

“Jesus,” I said, jumping up. “Are you okay?”

Now it was Richie's turn to look at me like I was an idiot.

“I just spent two nights in jail,” he said. “I had to call my dad to bail me out again.”  He shuffled over to the bar and flopped onto a stool. I ran behind the bar and poured us two shots. He downed his immediately and I poured him another one.

“What the hell happened?” I asked.

He shook his head mournfully.

“It was fucked up,” he said. “You know how it is over there. I mean, there were some guys selling coke or whatever, but nothing different, you know?” He shook his head and the stray strands of his black hair bounced around his face. “Somebody must have been, like, wanting revenge or something. Fuck. Can I bum a cigarette?”

I took a pack off the shelf and gave it to him. He took his time, packing it into his palm, then slowly unwrapping the cellophane.

“I haven't had a cigarette in two days,” he said. He pulled out one cigarette, turned it around, and stuck it back in, tobacco-end facing out. An old superstition. He would smoke that one last. Then he took out another and lit it.

“It was fucked up,” he said at last. “There were dealers all over the place, but I was the only one they took in. The cops didn't even frisk anybody else. I think they were just doing it to scare the dealers into bribing them, you know?”

“Were they bribing them?” I asked.

He shook his head at my ignorance.

“Fuck yeah they were bribing them,” he said. “The cops were just walking around, shaking hands with all these guys. Then I'm the only one that gets arrested.”  He took a drag. “Then some dude gets his fucking head blown off outside and not one cop sees it. And I’m the one who goes to jail because I got some shit in my pocket.”  He jammed his cigarette out in the ashtray, then tilted his head back and swallowed the shot.