Last Call Lounge (11 page)

ELEVEN

Tim Cole was at the bar, drinking a beer and a shot. He turned away when I walked in. Tracy was behind the bar. Her hair was pulled back in a loose pony tail, wisps fell across her cheek as she made drinks. Mitchell was behind the bar, too, holding a clipboard. It was slow and he was starting the night's inventory. He gave me a cursory wave and went back to the storeroom. A hipster couple shot pool, swaying a little between shots, drunk and silent. Frank was sitting at the door, checking ID's. The music and the lights inside were loud and jarring after the darkness of the parking lot. I sat down next to Frank and let my eyes adjust.  The thought of Worm, the worry about my house, crept in again, but I pushed it down.  I wasn't ready, not yet, to move back into that world.

“I just blew a keg and Mitchell's in the back,” Tracy said, leaning over the bar. The full kegs were too heavy for Tracy to change by herself.

“I'll change it,” Frank said, standing up.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Mitchell showed me how to do it.” 

Tracy told him which beer she needed and he practically skipped down the length of the bar, happy to be of help. She started to turn away.

“Listen,” I said. She turned back, pivoting on one toe and raising the other a little. “About the other night. And Ruby.”

“Little John,” Tracy said, leaning her elbows on the bar and cupping her chin in her hands. “Do you know how many times you have called me in the six months that we have been messing around?”

“Tracy,” I said.

“None,” she said. I frowned and scratched my cheek. She smiled. “I always understood what we were doing.” 

“I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,” I said and she laughed.

“Are you listening to anything I'm saying?” she asked. “You didn't hurt my feelings. Don't flatter yourself.”

“Okay,” I said, smiling now.

“Mitchell told me all about Ruby,” Tracy said.

“Oh,” was all I could think to say.

She leaned back against the beer cooler, tilted her head to look at me.

“Do you wonder at all why she came back, John?”  Tracy asked.

I bit my thumb.  “I don't know,” I said. “It had been a long time. Maybe she just thought it had been long enough.” 

“In my experience,” Tracy said, “ex-girlfriends don't just show up.  Plus, who comes to Houston during a hurricane?”

My stomach tightened.  Tracy raised her shot glass in a toast.

“To tough love,” she said.

I clinked my glass to hers. She downed her whiskey and I took a sip from mine. I looked at her, looked at her eyes, and for a moment she looked tired.

“Tracy,” I said and her eyes flashed and the weariness was gone.

“Shut up and drink your drink, Little John,” she said. Then she turned to Frank, who was hefting the new keg into the cooler. I lit a cigarette and watched the muscles of her perfect back as she helped him twist it into place.

I moved a few stools down to sit next to Tim Cole. He smiled at me, a hesitant smile with squinting eyes. He was bent over his pint, both hands were curled on the edge of the bar.

“Doing all right, Tim?” I asked, settling into the stool.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, nodding with his neck. “Oh, yeah.”  Tim was drunk, but he was calm. His hands stayed still on the bar. His eyes stayed on his glass and his cigarettes were nowhere to be seen.

Tracy was at the credit card machine, adjusting her tips. She leaned back and over her shoulder to tell Frank something, something that made him laugh. A shift behind the bar together builds an easy camaraderie. Frank said something back and Tracy playfully threw a towel at him. Frank came back up to the front.

“Stay back there,” I said. “Help Tracy. I'll watch the door.” 

“You sure?' he asked.

“Sure,” I said. Frank looked pleased and bounded back behind the bar. I lit a cigarette.

The door flung open and Oscar came in. His face was tight and his eyes were flat and black. He had a cigarette clenched in his teeth. He gave me a nod and sat at the bar a few stools away. Tracy moved down to get his order. Oscar barked something at her. I couldn't hear what he said, but by the expression on her face I could tell that Tracy didn't care for it. She put a draft beer in front of him and walked away.

Tracy walked over to Frank and said something to him. He looked up, looked at Oscar. He swallowed hard, then wiped his hands on a bar towel and came around to stand next to me.

“Sorry, can you show me where the extra bar towels are?” he asked. I looked down at the towel in his hands, then back up at him.

“They're in the storeroom,” I said. “Mitchell can show you.” 

“He’s busy,” Frank said. “Besides, I don't think he likes me very much. I don’t want to bug him.”  He gave me a long, tight look and hurried behind the bar. I got up and followed.

“Pancho’s gone, Pancho’s gone,” Tim Cole said as I passed.

Frank stopped at the bar gate, his back to the front door. He wanted to look over his shoulder but didn’t.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“That guy,” he whispered. “Oscar. I know where I know him from.”  Tracy was watching us, gaging if I needed her. I shook my head, just slightly, and she went back to making drinks.

“Oh, yeah?  Where’s that?”

“I saw Worm with him a couple of times,” Frank said. His voice was thin and pushed. My cheeks got warm and now I resisted the urge to look at Oscar.

“You think he buys coke from Worm?” I asked.

“I think he sells it to him,” Frank said. Anger and fear mixed in my throat. My chin itched and I could feel sweat drip under my arms. The bar felt unusually loud and bright. I scratched at my cheek. Frank was watching me.

“Did he recognize you?”

“No,” Frank said. “I don’t think so.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I said, although I didn’t know how. “You help Tracy.”  Frank turned to the sink, to the pile of glasses that had built up on the bar while he was at the door. “And thanks,” I said.

He looked up and grinned, a lopsided grin under his lopsided nose. I lit a cigarette and walked out from behind the bar.

I was thinking about Dad’s technique for throwing a guy out as I walked to the front door and stood behind Oscar’s stool. I stood close, not crowding him, but close enough that he’d know I was there. I put my hand on his shoulder. He turned in his chair and smiled, but it was an empty, black smile.

“What’s up, John?” He pushed the cuffs of his sleeves up, a little further up, revealing more tattoos. On the inside of his right arm was a twisting double-L in an elaborate Gothic script. A shot of adrenaline ran through me. I looked up and looked him in the eye.

“You a Latin Lord?” I asked. The Latin Lords were a prison gang, a group that was always ending up on the news, busted for something or suspected of something. Oscar looked down at his arm and nodded thoughtfully.

“That’s a pretty old tattoo,” he said. “How’d you recognize that?” he asked. “You been in prison?”

“Not long enough to get a tattoo,” I said.

He looked at my eyes, my hair, the way a thousand people had in my life.

“You Mexican?”

“Not really,” I said.

“But you got some Mexican in you.” It was a question I’d been asked forever. My stock answer came out of my mouth before I gave it much thought.

“Just what I had for lunch,” I said.

He laughed and took a sip of his beer.

“If you’re Mexican and in prison, it ain’t a bad idea to be a Latin Lord.”

“It’s a better idea to stay out of prison,” I said.

He laughed again, but his eyes were taking me in, measuring me.

“Fair enough,” he said.

I could feel my pulse in my eyelids. I took a deep drag of my cigarette and held it in.

“Can I ask, Oscar?” I said.  “Are you looking for something in here?” 

He tucked in his bottom lip and looked at me with dark eyes. He shifted his weight and put one foot on the floor.

“I told ya,” he said. “I just like this place.” 

“I don’t want any of this in here,” I said, picking my words.  It occurred to me to hide the fact that I knew anything about the money. “This is my business – it’s everything I have. I can’t have dealing going on in here.”

Oscar’s face turned dark. He moved slightly in his stool and looked down along the bar to where Frank was standing.

“What that boy tell you?” he asked without turning to me.

“It wasn’t him,” I said. My hands were sweaty and shaking, so I tucked my thumb into my pocket and took a drag off my cigarette. “I figured some things out.”  Oscar didn’t turn – he was studying Frank, squinting at him through the bar smoke. “Look,” I said. “What you do doesn’t bother me. I just can’t have drug dealing going on in my bar. They could take away my liquor license.” 

Now Oscar turned to me, his eyes flashing.

“What I do doesn’t bother you?“ he asked, his voice now a shadowy growl. “Why the fuck should it bother you?”  He gestured to himself and then to me. “We do the same thing. You just got a license, is all.”  Then he stood up and stepped close to me. His mouth was open slightly, showing his teeth. “Just like a fucking cokehead. You wanna buy my shit, but you don’t want me in your neighborhood.”  He grinned but his eyes stayed angry. “Besides, I wasn’t here to sell drugs, pendejo. I was looking for a friend of yours.”  He stayed inches from my face. His breathing was calm and steady, his eyes still. I stepped back and turned a little, holding my arm out toward the front door. Oscar nodded, then prodded me in the chest with his finger.

“You talk to your friend Worm,” he said. “You tell him I was looking for him.”

The door slammed shut behind him. I sat down in my stool slowly, supporting my weight with one hand. The music was brash and I rubbed my temples. When I looked up, Mitchell was standing across from me, behind the bar.

“You need a shot,” he said and turned to pour one. I watched him without thinking, feeling my heart beat in my chest, my breath pulling through my nose. Mitchell poured himself one, too.

“Frank told me what was going on,” he said, setting the shot in front of me. We looked at Frank, who was standing at the register, reading the notes that were taped to the mirror. Notes from me, about cleaning or cash drops, notes from the bartenders to each other, about covering shifts.

“Pour him one, too,” I said.

Mitchell moved to pour another shot. He tapped Frank on the shoulder with the back of his hand and, when Frank turned, handed him the shot, then shrugged in my direction. Frank followed him to my end of the bar. Mitchell and I picked up our shots.

“Thanks for pointing that guy out, Frank,” I said. Mitchell nodded in agreement.

“Is everything all right?” Frank asked. “What did he want?”  I turned to Mitchell.

“He was looking for Worm,” I admitted.

Mitchell’s shoulders dropped and he shook his head.

“Fucking Worm,” Mitchell said, and drank his shot.

I asked Frank to take over the door again, then took a beer and my cigarettes and went into the office. Through the wooden door, the noise of the bar was just bass thump and muddled voices. I sat in the swivel chair and put my head down on the desk. For a minute, I just sat there, listening to the sounds of the bar and to my breathing. Anger came up in my throat. I grabbed my phone out of my pocket to call Worm. But, then I thought about it and I decided against it.  Fuck him, I thought.  It’s his fucking fault I’m in this shit.  I dropped the phone on the desk and opened the drawer to get the bottle of Blanton's.  Somehow, though, it didn’t seem like the right time, so I closed the drawer again.

I went back out into the bar when I heard Mitchell and Tracy yelling last call. Mitchell and I walked out back to the patio and screwed the door shut while Tracy and Frank started closing.  The four of us finished up quietly. We had a shot and Frank washed the glasses. When we walked out to the parking lot, Ruby was leaning against on the hood of my truck. She had an overnight bag at her feet and she bounced her purse on her knees. Ruby was there and everything else was gone.  Even in the pale glow of the sodium lights, she looked like an absolute, like she had been built just to be standing there, like that, waiting for me. Mitchell and Tracy and Frank walked away without a word.

I stood as close to her as I dared. She took my hand. She leaned forward, her chest just touching mine. I looked down into her green eyes, eyes that I had thought about for six years.

“I thought maybe we could pretend for a little while longer,” she said.

I knew I was forgetting something and I just didn’t care.  I stared into those eyes and I knew I was forgetting something, but it wasn’t until the next morning that I remembered it was Worm.