Probation (26 page)

The cashier is bored and passes the time watching the clock, counting down the ninety minutes until the cafeteria closes. She knows me well by now and smiles. We’ve never spoken, not even hello, not once in the past many weeks. She’s never asked why I’m here or how the patient’s doing. She knows one day I’ll disappear and never return, replaced by another just like me. She and I are familiar, intimate even, and totally anonymous. Like all my relationships. Perfect. Right? That’s what I want. Isn’t it?

I sit in the cafeteria, alone, staring at a roomful of tabletops, counting the napkin dispensers, the salt and pepper shakers. I should have brought a newspaper so I could disappear into the world outside the hospital, where skirmishes break out in unfamiliar parts of the globe, Republicans and Democrats argue, scandals erupt, celebrities mate and separate, box scores are tabulated, highs and lows are recorded, barometers fall. What if someone walks in here? What would they think if they saw me in this far corner, alone, mashed potatoes untouched, gazing into space? They’d grab their coffees and doughnuts and hustle out the door. There’s something terrifying about a man sitting alone. People avoid him, run and hide, spooked, afraid, not because he’s a psychopath or pervert, but because he’s ordinary, just like them, an unwelcome reminder of how alone we all are.

I jump up, nearly knocking over the chair, and walk away quickly, with purpose. I leave the tray and the tuna-to-go on the table. I don’t hesitate as I pass the elevator and pick up the pace as I enter the main lobby. The automatic doors open and I run smack into a brick wall of heat. It kisses my bare skin, taunts me, starts an erection stirring in my pants. The temperature’s a cock tease. I stink. My clothes are dirty. My hair is sticky and matted. I don’t care. I need people. I run a red light. Thank God the cross street is empty and no patrol cars are lurking nearby.

I
turn left at the interstate bypass. Gastonia and home are to the right. The sun is dying; the last blue streaks of light are fading to black. The radio announcer predicts a break in the heat, expect more typical seasonal temperatures tomorrow. Ahead, nearly at eye level, a full moon is emerging. In a few minutes, its bright light will dominate the heavens.

Buck Moon. I remember its name from Boy Scout Indian lore. It’s the first full moon of summer, the full moon after young bucks sprout their antlers. A lunar celebration of raging hormones, impulsive behavior, and the excesses of youth. The moon’s power controls the sweep of the tides. How can a puny thing like me resist it? It’s the only possible explanation for my abandoning my mother and sister tonight.

I’m entitled to one night’s dispensation. After all, I’m the one who’s been here throughout the whole ordeal, phoning in reports to my sister poolside in Boca Raton. I’m the one who’s had to make all the decisions, be second-guessed, have my judgment challenged, be resented. I deserve one night out. But why didn’t I tell Gina I was leaving? She wouldn’t have begrudged me one night. Of course she would have. She doesn’t realize this has been really hard on me. No one realizes how hard this has been on me. I’ll call her as soon as I get home. First thing. I’ll tell her I felt sick. It’s true. I think I’ve swallowed a tarantula. My throat is scratchy and the glands behind my ears are hard as rocks. I’m infectious. I’m sure of it. The flu maybe. Can’t risk contaminating my mother’s room.

Thank God it’s dark and no one can see me babbling to myself. An hour or two reprieve is all I need. A Thursday night at the Carousel in the dog days of summer. I don’t expect more than a couple of lonely drunks nursing drinks, waiting to get flagged, maybe a hairdresser or two who couldn’t swing a cheap beach share. What a shock to walk through the door and find the place is packed to the rafters! Maybe the buck moon’s raised the testosterone levels of Mecklenburg County. Maybe it’s the heat, all that prickly rash needing to be scratched. Or maybe all of Charlotte has turned out in full force for Elvis Karaoke (full costume encouraged, but not mandatory).

The crowd is middle aged, overweight, attached. Everyone’s out to have fun, more interested in singing than cruising, no reason to feel self-conscious about big bellies, no need to monitor a partner’s wandering eye. The costumes keep it camp; no one’s taking it seriously. I don’t see any Hillbilly Cats, but there are at least three Vegas Legends in white sequins and tinted aviator glasses. The final contestant in the Dueling “Don’t Be Cruel” Competition is wailing away. Our hostess, Miss Priscilla, vintage 1966, dressed for her wedding day with mascara-drawn Cleopatra eyes, asks the finalists to join her on stage. Contestant Number Two must have come with a group, his softball team or bowling league. They scream and whistle and stomp their feet until Miss Priscilla declares him the winner. The Grand Prize is a toilet brush and a bottle of bathroom bowl cleanser, presented on a velvet pillow by Little Miss Lisa Marie.

I drain my beer and order another. I’ll nurse it, then leave. This is fun enough for tables of friends who cheer the talented and make snide remarks about the shrill and off-key. But alone, I feel as sad and pathetic and obvious as in the cafeteria. And then, an aging choir boy steps up to the mike and sings “Love Me Tender” in an achingly beautiful tenor. It’s one of my mother’s favorites and she’ll never hear it again. Maybe I made a mistake, pulling the plug. I must be a heathen, not believing in miracles. The bartender is staring, wondering if I’m drunker than I appear. I should down a large black coffee, suck a pack of Pep-O-Mint Life Savers, head back to the hospital, and fall asleep in a chair in my mother’s room.

Which is what I decide to do. But first, I need to hit the head before I hit the road, Jack. Standing at the urinal, shaking the last dribble of piss, I feel a surge of energy next to me. He’s shuck-and-jiving, trying to find his pecker in his baggy nylon warm-up pants. Hey, he says, looking up at me. He’s got a broad, friendly face and just enough baby fat to make him cuddly. He grins like a naughty schoolboy and leans over the modesty panel to check me out. I’m a grower, not a show-er, I say, embarrassed by the sorry state of my flaccid penis. We’ll see about that, he says. He steps back, proud to be a show-er. He shoves himself back into his noisy pants and says, excited, that he’s up next.

“Promise you’ll clap for me,” he pleads. “Promise!”

“What’re you singing?” I ask.

“It’s a surprise. Promise you’ll clap!”

“Okay, I promise.”

He’s on stage when I get back to the bar. I order another beer, all best intentions postponed for the time being.

“By special request, the King’s gonna leave the building for our next performer,” Miss Priscilla announces. “But don’t any of you tired old queens get any ideas and ask to sing ‘Over the Rainbow.’ Y’all ain’t as cute as Douglas, and he’s promised to massage my feet when I ditch these fucking heels.” She shoots the boy a lascivious grin and growls into the microphone. “Grrrrrrrr…” The kid blushes, dissolving into giggles.

“Okay, let’s have a big hand for Douglas!” she shouts.

A drumroll rumbles, followed by a three-chord progression. Douglas grabs the mike and dances along.

He’s got rhythm and enthusiasm to burn. His joy is contagious.

Everyone knows the words to the chorus. Everyone sings along, even the shy and self-conscious. Even me.

Douglas jumps off the stage and dances around the tables, doing a funky little backstep and waving his free hand above his head. It doesn’t hurt he’s a little drunk, maybe a little stoned. He goes from table to table, pointing, challenging everyone to sing
louder, louder!
The queens are out of their seats, pumping their fists in the air.

People are pounding the tabletops. The bartender has stopped serving and is singing along. Douglas rips open his shirt, freeing his little belly and budding love handles to bounce along to the beat. The boys are going wild, shoving dollar bills in the elastic waistband of his pants as he builds to his climax.

The Carousel goes crazy. Wolf calls and whistles and cries of Encore! Encore! Douglas’s an astute showman. He smiles shyly and shakes his head no. He leaves them begging for more.

“Did you clap? You promised!” he gushes, flushed and happy to find me still at the bar.

“Naw,” I say, acting coy, “you didn’t need my measly claps.”

He looks crestfallen.

“But you promised!”

Disappointed, he looks even younger, jailbait almost.

“Lemme make it up to you,” I say, ordering him a beer.

“Yeah, but you still broke your promise.”

He recovers quickly, seeing he hasn’t lost my interest.

“You were great!” I say.

“Think so?”

“Know so! You ought to go on tour.”

“I do!”

“Huh?”

Is there a tour for pudgy Joan Jett imitators?

“I mean, I used to before I got my new job.”

Douglas tells me he used to tour with bands as a gofer, the lowest rung on the roadie ladder. He spent a year on the road with the Dead, right before Garcia died. He loves rock’n roll. Put another dime in the jukebox, baby. He pulls off his baseball cap and his thick, sandy hair falls over his face.

“I’m sweating,” he says. “I must smell gross.”

He smells like a boy, all keyed up, racing through his youth. He could talk for hours about his days with the Dead. Garcia was a god, aloof and quiet, usually on some other planet in a distant solar system. Jerry never actually spoke to him. No one in the band bothered to learn his name. Everything he needed to know the other roadies told him. They’d call him over, give him a list—guitar strings, picks, amp fuses, all the little essentials that constantly needed to be replaced—and make sure he wrote it down, send him off with a pocket of cash, tell him not to return until he’d collected everything they needed, and, for Christ’s sake, don’t dawdle and don’t call to say he’s lost.

He ran for cigarettes and rolling papers and herbal essences. But mostly he made calls from pay phones, dialing numbers the head roadie passed him on matchbooks and hotel message pads, getting an address and scribbling it in ink on his wrist while he juggled the receiver, hailing a cab, ringing the buzzer of some tenement flophouse, exchanging thick rolls of hundreds for a discreet-looking package. He had to be very careful. The head roadie threatened to break his neck and dump his body in a landfill if the tour manager, who was paying a small fortune to a Zen master watchdog to keep you-know-who clean and sober on the road, ever discovered their little operation. I tell him it sounds dangerous and ask if he ever got scared.

“Naw,” he said, puffed up with bravado. He was terrified, probably pissed his pants more than once, until, like everything, it became dull, a routine, just like any other job.

I ask where he grew up. The question makes him uncomfortable and he winces. He says his father is an ordained minister with a small fundamentalist congregation in the Florida panhandle. He left home after his mother died. He went back last year, thought maybe he’d stay a while this time. He lasted six weeks. The old man accused him of terrible things, of being a criminal, just because his friends would call and he’d have to go out in the middle of the night. He left in tears at three in the morning. The preacher’s not his real father anyway. Douglas is adopted.

“So, you gotta work tomorrow?” he asks.

“No. Naw. I have to be somewhere, though. I can be a little late.”

“Good. I’m gonna set us up here for another round. Let’s get real drunk!”

“What about you? You have to work tomorrow?”

“Hey, man, I’m working all the time!” he says.

“So you’re working now?” I ask, skeptical.

“Always!”

He fishes in the pocket of his warm-up suit and snags a ball of rumpled bills. He flattens them on the bar with his fist, scowling at all the George Washingtons. But, hey, bingo, hello, President Jackson, jackpot!

“Hey, another pair of shots this way!” he calls out to the bartender.

“Lemme buy this round,” I say.

“Naw, my treat.” He sees me looking at the bills on the bar. “Plenty more where that came from,” he insists. “Cheers!” he shouts, downing a shot.

“So this job must pay pretty well,” I say, trying not to sound facetious.

“You bet!” he swears. He’s says he’s working for a major recording label. On the creative side.

“Artist and repertory?” I ask, skeptical.

“Wow!” he shouts, slapping the bar with the palm of his hand. “Cool. How did you know that?” he asks, impressed.

“Come on,” I say, teasing him, urging him to come clean. I’m hard-pressed to accept that any major label would entrust the nurturing of its precious investments, its stable of artists, to a baby-faced kid in warm-up pants and a baseball cap.

“Okay. Okay. You got me,” he says. “I’m a college rep.”

Douglas swears Columbia Records is paying him a living wage and a car allowance and an expense account to hit every tiny club on every campus across Tennessee and the Carolinas. He says it’s his job to learn the names of every new band as they emerge from suburban basements and garages, to schmooze local radio marketers and program directors, to hit frat parties with live music, to collect “alternative” weekly presses and clip every review of a Columbia record, to make the scene, listen to the buzz, to funnel leads to the real A&R people desperate to sign the Next Big Thing.

Sounds plausible enough. Only one way for me to be sure.

“So how much do they pay you for all that?” I ask.

The figure is too high, confirming my suspicions. The label could offer peanuts, or no pay at all, and still turn away hundreds of kids for a job like this, if it exists at all. Maybe he knows a connection or two at the label from his touring days and maybe, at best, Columbia Records picks up an occasional bar tab and reimburses him for show tickets. I’m pretty sure those bills on the bar are going to have to last him a while.

Yeah, it’s a great job, he says, not so enthusiastic now, but not throwing in the towel either. He’s looking for a place to live. He thinks he’ll be able to cover a thou a month, maybe twelve hundred. Maybe I know a place? He’s going to lease a car. Something with a little muscle. A Mustang. Red.

Elvis has returned to the building. The queen on stage is singing “Suspicious Minds.” Thanks for the warning, buddy, but I’ll have none of that tonight. I like the boy, appreciate his fumbling, guileless attempt to impress me. The fibs, the little white lies, they’re harmless, easy to swallow, warm honey to soothe my scratchy throat. It feels good to have someone care about what I think, to talk to someone who likes me.

“So Columbia must think there’s a market out there for fat fruits who look like Elvis the day after he bit the bullet?” I ask, sitting back down and dropping a twenty on the bar.

“Huh?” he asks, confused.

“You said you’re working now,” I say, pointing at the stage. “Guess you’re here to check out the talent.”

He bursts out laughing. I order another round and offer him a Camel filter.

“Naw, I came with a friend.”

“So where’s your friend?”

“Dunno,” he says. “Ain’t seen him for hours.”

“So you’re stranded?” I ask, knowing he doesn’t have a car.