Western Swing (36 page)

I circled the off-ramps until I realized Los Gatos no longer existed. The big rock armory building had been transformed into a country-western nightclub. As a rule, I wasn't much interested in cowboy music. The words swung back and forth from self-pity to smug, and I don't much care for that pair of emotions. No one admires the crap he wallows in.

However, I wasn't familiar with any other nearby bars, and I'd developed a sudden craving to be around people. From the Chevelle, I watched the crowd of men in long-sleeve shirts and women in tight jeans with wide belts as they milled in and out of the horseshoe-shaped front door. They certainly qualified as people—not the sort of people I'd ever talked to, but, by then, I was pretty well out of people I'd ever talked to. Anyhow, whether they would speak to me or not, I could always kill the craving with Jim Beam.

• • •

I spotted Lana Sue Goodwin while she was paying the cover. She'd gained some weight and her hair was styled like a grownup—all swirls and differing lengths. Her eyes were tight, as if the skin had stretched. Much alcohol had been processed since high school, but this was definitely Lana Sue. How could I forget a woman whose name I'd carried on my butt for eighteen years?

She beelined for the back bar to an empty stool three or four down from where I nursed a Jim Beam on the rocks. In the mirror, I watched her order a double something, a single something, and an empty glass. She held the double glass the way people do who need what they're holding, not the offhand way of a woman at a cocktail party. Same with her cigarette. Something since graduation from Bellaire High had made Lana Sue nervous.

The cowboy on her other side asked her to dance, but she shook her head no without looking at him. When he got up to ask another woman, I slid down the bar and stole his stool. I don't think Lana Sue recognized me. She didn't even see me. As she mixed her drinks, then swirled the glass, Lana Sue appeared totally oblivious to her surroundings. For a moment, I thought nothing mattered to her except for what she was thinking about, then I realized her eyes weren't foggy at all, they were fixated on the band way down at the other end of the room.

It wasn't a bad band as far as cowboy music goes. I didn't know squat about country western, but the tune was kind of catchy and familiar. I caught myself tapping my sneaker along to the violin's melody.

They were an odd-looking group—a pretty girl in a Dale Evans outfit stood out front holding her acoustic guitar way high in front of her, several inches higher than most rock and rollers hold their guitars. Three guys in matching cowboy shirts played behind her and what looked like two old winos held down the sides of the stage. The winos had on clothes like I would wear to shoot pool.

The pretty girl sang a song I recognized called “Echo of an Old Man's Last Ride.” It's about suicide. The words are interesting—outside your usual country-western theme.

Lana Sue turned sculpture behind the veil of wispy blue smoke curling up from her cigarette. Her hands didn't move. She didn't blink. I watched closely, but saw no sign that she even breathed until after the last note of the song. Then, as the crowd cheered and applauded, Lana Sue exhaled a monumental sigh. Her eyes went all slick and she used both hands to bring her drink up for a sip.

I was staring at her face from about eight inches away, yet she never noticed me. She chewed the corner of her lower lip for a moment, then touched her tongue to the midpoint of the upper lip. As the girl singer gave a little speech introducing the next song, Lana Sue's face changed. First there was distress, pain. Then her face lit in a smile. Then she chugged down the rest of her drink.

I used the same line I'd tried so many years earlier when she walked me into the stop sign. “You look dejected.”

She stared at me, still not remembering. “I am dejected. That's my daughter singing that song.”

I looked at Lana Sue's daughter onstage. The resemblance was a hoot. Same dark, thick hair, same wide mouth and high cheekbones. Same long neck. “You should be proud of her,” I said.

“She ran away from home. That tall sucker on the pedal steel is my old boyfriend and her new one. You ever hear anything so sick?”

What I did next was a cheap shot. I took all the pain and tragedy and realism of Ann and Buggie and turned it into a line. There's no defense except to say that I really wanted to talk to someone that night.

“My son disappeared and my wife killed herself.”

Again her face changed. The lines beside her eyes softened, her forehead momentarily relaxed. “That's awful. I'm so sorry, I must sound terrible complaining about my daughter.”

I looked away. “I finished a book about them today. I don't know what to do next.” She sat staring at me while I watched her daughter sing. I didn't recognize the song. Lana Sue's daughter looked young, seventeen or eighteen years old at the most. I started counting the years since high school. How old would Buggie be now—eight and a half, going on nine. How much younger than Lana Sue's daughter?

“Listen,” Lana Sue said, “you want to go somewhere quieter and have a drink?”

• • •

I have a confession to make about that tattoo. I thought a tattoo would make me look tough. At first I was going with a picture—a lightning bolt or a snake—but then I decided a woman's name would give me a tragic past that girls in Bellaire High would lather up over. For a week, I was torn between
Roberta
for Roberta Nesslebaum, the girl who sat in front of me in civics, or
Zelda
for Zelda Fitzgerald. Still not knowing which one to choose, I made an appointment and waited a couple of days for inspiration to strike, which it did in the form of a stop sign on Bissonnet Road. The truth is, I was on my way down to the tattoo parlor when I met Lana Sue. It wasn't love at first sight or precognition of the future. Lana Sue was a name more or less pulled out of a hat.

Not that I hadn't thought of her often over the years. In the shower, I'd soap down her name and wonder where she was and whether or not she remembered me. I used to make up stories about her. For years I had her as an exotic dancer in Las Vegas. Then I gave her a job studying chimpanzees in Zambia. Never in my wildest fantasies was Lana Sue ever a washed-up country singer or a mother.

• • •

Lana Sue took me on a jukebox tour of Denver. She said the wino pervert who stole her daughter was the foremost authority on jukeboxes in the Central and Rocky Mountain Time zones.

“The man's brain is a Wurlitzer filing cabinet,” she said. “It's his one redeeming quality.”

“He has good taste in women.”

“Mickey runs on a take-what-he-can-get system. Cassie and I were dumb luck.”

We zipped her Avis rental up Arapahoe to a tavern with the Fontella Bass version of “Rescue Me.” Then down Sheridan to an all-night cafe owned by a guy claiming to be Gene Pitney's cousin. “Town Without Pity” played three times while we polished off fried chicken blue plates. Then back to the bars for more rusty nails and obscure 45s. A live recording of “Lovesick Blues” on Columbus. “Mack the Knife” at a gay bar on Speer. Lana Sue drove us way the hell up some canyon to a dirty dive that served nothing but Pabst Blue Ribbon and had a jukebox of trucker singles, all by men named Red. Check out this list: “Neon Playboy” by Red Steagal, “Nytro Express” by Red Simpson, “Truckin' Trees for Christmas” by Red Sovine, “Pin Ball Boogie” by Red Foley, and the last one, my favorite, Red Rubrecht singing “Hold On, Ma'am, You've Got Yourself a Honker.”

After the Red inundation, she brought us back all the way from the Speedway to the Coliseum on nothing but Patsy Cline. Lana Sue claimed a spiritual connection to Patsy—said they'd both suffered on their knees before the Nashville cocksuckers. I had trouble picturing the metaphor.

About the fourth version of “I've Got the Memories But She's Got You,” I realized we were both blasted out of our gourds and the situation was shaping up as a definite score. Lana Sue had been singing along with the jukeboxes for forty-five minutes. Between songs and bars, we held hands and she told me about her lousy husbands and darling daughters. She said if I'd find an all-night Eckerd's she would buy a golf ball and a garden hose and show me a neat trick.

We wound up driving way off down Santa Fe almost to Castle Rock, where she pulled into a nice little motor court featuring a coffeepot in every room and paper cutouts you were supposed to cover the toilet seat with before you sat down. Lana Sue jumped on with an enthusiasm I'd only dreamed of, but I took forever in coming. I guess I was too drunk.

We stayed in the motor court for four days. On Sunday, I suggested we transfer over to my duplex, but Lana Sue said that pain fucks don't work in a private residence.

“Too much history in a home,” she said.

“But I've got a refrigerator.”

Several things Lana Sue said—like “pain fucks”—let me know she was using me as a form of grief therapy, that it wasn't my wisdom she was after. I don't mind being used if it'll get me fucked the way Lana Sue fucks. Jesus, she was an experience.

Monday we drove back to the bar to pick up my Chevelle and see if her daughter was around. The car was okay, but the band had moved on down the road. Lana Sue didn't seem too distressed. Other than that trip and a couple of lunch breaks at Arby's, we stayed in the room, mostly in the bed. It was my first shot at marathon sex. I loved it.

• • •

I also didn't think the sex was quite as impersonal as what Lana Sue had in mind. Sometime Tuesday afternoon I mentioned this fact.

“I think you're starting to like me.”

Lana Sue gave me a light nip to the ear. “Honey, to me you're just another dick in the night.”

“That wasn't my dick you were talking to at six-thirty this morning.”

We were lying naked, side by side, with our heads at the foot end of the bed. A Domino's Delivers pizza box was on the floor and
Wheel of Fortune
played on the silent TV screen.

Lana Sue fed me the tip bite off a slice of Italian sausage pizza. “You figure out the puzzle yet?”

“Admit it, Lana Sue. I'm having a good effect on you.” The puzzle was T _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ T _ _ _ _ T _ _ .

“Of course you're having a good effect on me. We're setting a Colorado record for orgasms per entry.”

I took another bite of her slice. “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”

“What?”

“Tippecanoe and Tyler too. That's the saying.”

“What's it mean?”

“Something to do with politics.”

On the show, a contestant got the C. He looked like the old janitor we had back in junior high.

“You were smoking three packs of Larks a day before you met me.”

“So what. Look at this sauce on the sheets. The maid will think we're perverts.”

“Today you smoked less than one.”

“We've either been asleep or screwing all day. When would I have had time to smoke?”

“A true addict would have found the time.”

“Bullshit, Loren. Are you certain it's Tippecanoe?”

The N came up. “And we're drinking Dr Peppers right now.” I pointed to the evidence on the floor. “Three days ago it would have been scotch.”

Lana Sue dropped a fat chunk of crust back in the box and rolled onto her side to face me. “What's the point here, Loren?”

I retrieved the crust. “You talked about your past and your problems for hours last night. You listened when I talked back.” I rubbed her third eye with my thumb. “Your forehead is starting to relax for the first time in days. You should have seen your eyebrows that night in the Powder Keg.”

“Sex relaxes me. It has nothing to do with you.”

“I think it does. Fondness is hard to hide.”

“Watch me.”

“I caught you smiling when I came out of the shower this morning. You were glowing.”

“I don't glow.”

“Admit it, Lana Sue. You're beginning to fall in love.”

Lana Sue rolled on over to face the ceiling. Her breasts rose once and fell. I've always liked Lana Sue's breasts. They aren't very large, but they don't sag a bit. They look energetic.

“Do you realize the implications of what you're saying?” Lana Sue asked. “If what you claim is true—it's not, but if it was—I'd have to get dressed and leave right now.”

The stupid janitor got both P's but still couldn't solve the puzzle. “Why?” I asked.

“Why? I'm a married woman. I don't have affairs.”

“You've never done this before?”

“I've done
this
plenty times.
This
is a crotch form of morphine. What you're proposing is heightened sensitivity, which is the last thing I want.”

“I can make your life better.”

“Don't confuse me, Loren. When I get confused I go home.”

• • •

One thing I admire about Lana Sue, she doesn't use the door as a power play device. She has never once threatened to leave me that she didn't actually wind up leaving. Sometime that night, Lana Sue must have finally realized a growing fondness for me. Nothing was admitted aloud, but I know she felt something strong because the next day she had me tail her to the airport where we put ourselves through an emotion-packed good-bye scene and Lana Sue flew off to Nashville. I moped around the loading lounge awhile, worked out a reasonable that's-that attitude, then drove home to my duplex and Buggie's manuscript.

• • •

I don't know if Lana Sue would have returned to Denver on her own impetus or not. She had this falling-in-love-and-splitting-up-is-all-timing theory that I don't, as a rule, buy. My opinion is she would have created the timing and come back anyway. Hell, we were in love. Love is great compared to lonely nights and scotch.