Hair-Trigger (4 page)

“I wasn't even back from court yet. The bail shouldn't have been that high; the duty counsel should have gone for less.”

When they got to the Firebird, Lofton waited for Rowe to unlock his door. As he settled into the front seat he put his cigarette in the ashtray, and pulled a red bandanna from his jacket pocket. “All right, let's go get a fucking drink.”

5

A
fter Marva Jones collected ten dollars for the table dance, she slipped into her bra, hooked the front clasp, and then stood with one hand on the edge of the table to aim a spike-heeled pump through the leg-hole of her thong. Picking up her small platform, she walked through the bar in an easy strut, showing off her long legs.

At twenty-nine she figured they were her best asset. Any weight she'd gained didn't show much on a toned, big-boned, five-eight black frame, though she could see the evidence in her driver's license picture. Her face was still striking for its cheekbones, but seemed broader than it had in the publicity glossies five years earlier.

She had sultry eyes and a smile she knew could raise the motherfucking dead. Her shoulder-length extensions complemented her boobs and the jut of that money-making booty. So what if size D tits made more money; they were the first to sag.

When Marva passed the washrooms and DJ booth, she stopped to talk to Vicky, a slender blonde with bad teeth leaning against the brass rail near the bar. It was then that she noticed the burly guy with the bandanna and spiky jacket she'd danced for the other night checking her out again from a table on the west side of the stage. Though she'd wondered from the earrings and tattoos if he was a biker, the older man he was with looked more like a cop, except maybe for those cowboy boots with the steel-capped toes.

“I see somebody,” she said.
“See you later.”

“Yeah, later.”

Marva picked up the platform and started walking. He raised his hand to catch her attention.
She took a leisurely right between some tables and chairs, pausing briefly to brush off another customer until the next song. “Hi,” she said, putting down her prop. “How are you tonight?”

“Good. How're you doing?”

“Okay. One of you want a dance?”

When Mr. Steel Toes suggested she perform for both of them, she gave him a smile and told him no, just one, so he said, “I guess Jack, then. He seems to have taken a shine to you.”

“Yeah?” She sat between them and crossed her legs, glancing at the bearded one. “He looks kinda mad to me.”

Her guy deflected attention by looking around the bar with a sneer as the smoke curled up from his cigarette. “They ought to turn on a few lights. You can hardly see a fucking thing in here.”

“Like me, you mean?”

“No, you know what I mean. Everything.”

“Well, you businessmen like to sit in the dark.
You don't want to be seen in a place like this, right?”

He snorted. “Hardly.”

“I'm Derek,” the other one said. “I think you know our friend here.”

“I'm Marva.”

She made small talk while waiting for the next song to start, sniffing periodically to try to clear her sinuses. Although this Derek had a hardened sort of face with pockmark scars, the white shirt and short hair made him seem professional or at least more respectable. He also seemed easier-going.

She suspected from Jack's attitude that he was trying to impress her with his toughness. He was staring over her shoulder with a disgusted expression when he said, “Look at that guy there in the leather coat. Those aren't real handcuffs on the epaulets, just fag shit.”

“What are you drinking?” Marva asked, reaching for his glass. “Can I have a sip?”

“Vodka-tonic. Go ahead.”

The next song was “New Orleans is Sinking” by The Tragically Hip. She got up and stood on her platform. It was the second number for Candy-O on the low stage; she shed her bikini top, twirled on the pole, smudged the mirrors, and looked between her legs at the first row. Derek's attention was divided between the main act and a polite interest in Marva's limber movements beside him, apparently trying not to stare into someone else's ten dollars' worth. Once she was naked she noticed he was harder to distract.

With her hands on Jack's chair, she pressed her breasts within an inch of his stony face and slowly turned around, swinging her ass low and bending her knees to graze his lap with a light bounce, bounce, bounce, then up again, peeking at him between her thighs. She got down and pulled the next chair closer as she sank back on it, putting her legs on each of his armrests. Showing some pink. A black girl in a dark room had to work.

Jack raised his glass solemnly. “You're beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

Afterwards, as she was putting on her lingerie, Derek said, “When you finish tonight you should come out with us for a drink. If it's after hours we can hit a booze can in Chinatown.”

“Well, I don't know about that.” She gave them a noncommittal smile as she walked away.

Marva was talking to a bald regular across the aisle, waiting for Randy to start the next set with another record, when Jack got up and walked past her in the direction of the washroom. She swivelled in her chair and said to the other guy, Derek, “Hey, what up with your friend? Is he always mad at the world?”

“He's a pussycat.”

“Yeah? He looks kinda scary.”

“You're the reason he wanted to come here tonight.”

The opening of that ZZ Top song she couldn't remember the name of was on the sound system as the DJ introduced Ginger, who strolled out of the semi-darkness towards the stage. There was some applause from the back. Marva turned to her customer as she slowly got to her feet, and then stood on the platform in front of him.

Later, after her own final set, she was fixing to call it a night and go change when she paused to talk to Jane behind the bar.
Anthony, the bouncer, asked if she wanted to go to his place for a drink.

“I thought you were coming out with us.”

Marva turned around. That man Derek was standing behind her with kind of a smile, a thumb hooked in his pocket. She found herself blanking as she tried to concentrate.

“Um, yeah,” she said, turning to Anthony. “They did ask me first.”

He was kind of pissed off, but he was a dead end anyway. As she opened the door to the dressing room she could see it was probably stupid to go with them, but sometimes the Lord led you down mysterious paths. Or maybe it was the four Bacardi-Cokes.

She paused on the wet sidewalk outside the heavy wooden doors of Cheaters, and did up her jacket. “So, where are we going?”

“Somewhere there's a band,” Jack said.

Derek unlocked some kind of muscle car at the meter with a pissed off Woody Woodpecker sticker in the back window. “Well, we haven't much time.” After he got in and reached over to open the passenger side, Jack opened the door and climbed in after her. Marva noticed the full ashtray in the front, and the pair of furry dice hanging from the rearview mirror.

South on Yonge a band called The Meteors were advertised on a large sign by the parking lot of the St. Louis, a white bungalow made transparent by huge windows lit by neon beer insignia. It looked like a sports or country bar. “We don't have to line dance or anything, do we?”

“It's R 'n' B,” Jack said.

As they pulled in crooked between two parallel white lines, she could see the group playing inside. Derek shifted into park and turned off the ignition. “All right, we'll still be able to get a drink.”

They went in. Customers on the right side of the room were sitting at a long horseshoe-shaped bar. Marva followed the men around the corner to a table in the smoking section by the front window.
It seemed to be after last call, so she took a seat while they went up to try to get served. After taking off her jacket, she checked herself in her compact and was annoyed to see that she hadn't covered her spots very well.

The singer, who looked Hispanic, was playing trumpet to what sounded like James Brown. She never got into that funky brass shit. Some of the older white people dancing looked like they could have been cowboys if they had the hats.

Jack set a rum and Coke down in front of her as he took the next chair. Derek sat across from them and said, “The bartender knows us.

“So, you're regulars.”

“The guy's worked at a lot of bars around town,” Jack said. “Before this he was at a place called Flick's.” He turned to Derek. “You remember that place down the alley, north of Eglinton?”

“Now it's got the pool tables.”

Jack offered Marva a cigarette but she declined. Leaning forward to be heard over the music, Derek asked her if she played pool.

“Sometimes, but I'm not that great.”

“You should play with us sometime. We're not that great either.”

Jack scowled. “Speak for yourself, homeboy.”

“
Home
boy? Damn,” she declared, “you two gangstas?”

“I just bailed him from jail for pushing his grandmother down the stairs.”

Jack almost smiled. “Right.”

Marva laughed. “Were you really in jail?”

He glanced at his friend with an exaggerated frown and waved it off. “It was just a misunderstanding.
I'll tell you about it another time.”

Marva looked around the room. There were a lot of things on the walls about sports and chicken wings, and a big red pepper hanging from the ceiling on the other side of the dance floor by the nonsmoking section. She wondered if any of the other girls from work came here.

“Whereabouts do you live?” Derek asked.

“About ten minutes from downtown.”

“How long have you been dancing?”

“About a year,” she answered, gazing past him to the band.

“You're good,” Jack said.

“Thanks.”

He downed the rest of his drink and went to the bar. When he came back he put another rum and Coke in front of her, and sat down with what was presumably a second vodka-tonic. “You drink too slow.”

“You trying to get me drunk?”

Five minutes later, Derek finished his beer and said he had to work in the morning, which didn't make much sense after the trouble he'd gone through to get them there. Maybe the invitation had been a setup for Jack. She wasn't sure how she felt about it, but didn't think she could suddenly leave, not with a new drink sitting there.

After he was gone she said, “Your friend's really been watching out for you, hasn't he?”

“What do you mean?”

“Inviting me to go out after work, then getting us to the bar and leaving us alone. . . . When you went to the washroom before, he was talking you up and telling me what a nice guy you were.”

Jack smiled slightly. “Yeah, well, he's kind of a mother hen sometimes.”

Marva squeezed the lime into her drink, then dropped it in and twirled the ice cubes with her swizzle stick. “What did he really bail you out for?” She put the pink plastic sword in the ashtray, and took a sip.

“Well . . . basically, this woman was getting hassled by a guy, and I got into it with him and ended up getting charged with assault.”

“You came to her rescue and had to go to jail?”

“Well, I sent him to the hospital and—I have to get a lawyer. I'm not sure what the legalities are just yet. He wasn't beating her up, but she was obviously scared and trying to get away from him, so I guess my defense would be that I thought she was in danger. I don't know if that'll hold up in court since I hit him first.”

“Well, cops bust or shoot people all the time, and then ask questions. What'd you do to him?”

“Oh, he had a broken nose and lost a couple of teeth.”

“So you're, like, a hero.”

Jack's expression might have been suspicious. “No, sometimes I just help the less fortunate.” He studied the band and then turned back at her. “The other day I got off the subway at
Yonge and Bloor, and there was a Coke can on the platform which this student-looking guy accidentally kicked into the leg of this weird, reprobate type, who exploded into a rage. He was shoving the guy and screaming, ‘What the fuck?!' or some shit like that, and the other guy was saying, ‘I'm sorry! I'm sorry!' The system was really crowded, and all these people were ambling by pretending not to notice.

“I felt sorry for the student so I intervened and said, ‘Hey, man, he's said he's sorry about fifty times. What's the problem?' Now the fucker was in my face. He shouts, ‘You wanna box?' Fists clenched but not raised. I put myself into the ‘ready stance,' as I was taught in martial arts, feet planted shoulder-length apart, arms loose. I said, ‘Do
you
?' Just then a couple of uniformed TTC guys happened to come down the stairs, and the guy took off, yelling, ‘Fuck all you faggots!' He was obviously wasted on crack or something. A minor incident, but things like that get the adrenaline pumping.”

Before she could respond, he continued. “And with animals especially—I fucking
hate
it when anybody abuses them. A couple of months ago, right, I was walking along St. Clair, and just before Yonge Street, outside the Scotiabank, there was this dog tied up to a parking meter—right out in the direct sunlight. It was really hot. He was panting fit to beat Jesus, and wandering around as much as he could, and whimpering. I went into the bank and pointed out the window at the dog and asked the lady at the service desk, ‘Do you know who the owner is?' She was very nice, and said, ‘Well, I'm not sure, but I think he's in the bank somewhere.'
I said, ‘Okay, well, I'm going across the street for a minute, and if he's still out there when I get back I'm calling the police.' Just then this guy comes trotting past us from the teller counter, and the service lady asked him, ‘Is that your dog out there?' He said, ‘Yeah,' and I said, ‘That dog is really suffering, man.' He wouldn't look at me, and he ran out and untied the dog and went on his way at a distinctly brisk pace. Sometimes I forget how intimidating I can look. I've heard it said that I look like a Hells Angel whose Harley is in the shop. Anyway, that was my good deed for the day.”