PIGGS - A Novel with Bonus Screenplay (4 page)

"Yes, sir," Jack said.
 
He wondered where this was going, if he'd maybe have to stand there all night.
 
It could happen easy, Cecil had made him do awful stuff before.
 
Cecil and Grape one night, drunk and betting twenty dollar bills, betting on how much water Jack could drink before he had to pee.
 
Cat Eye standing there, interested or not, you never knew for sure, maybe still back in l966, stuck in Round Two.

And Jack, recalling this event, was too slow again.
 
Cecil looked up from his beer, turned around and caught Jack looking right at him, looking at his face.

"What you think, Jacko, I look okay to you?"

The pain in his belly nearly took him down.

"Yes sir, Mr. Dupree, you look fine to me."

"I'm pleased I do, Jack."

"Yes, sir," Jack said, and wished he hadn't said it twice.

"Well good.
 
We got it all settled now?"

"Yes sir, Mr. Dupree."

"Then get this goddamn Chink food out of here and get the fuck out of here yourself.
 
I would like you out of my fucking sight."

Jack didn't answer, Jack knew better than that.
 
He picked up the shrimp, looked across the table at the guy in the blue and white shirt.
 
The guy was trying hard to be anywhere else.
 
It was clear that he didn't care for Piggs.
 
He liked what the girl was doing fine, but he didn't have to drive up to Texas for that, they could do that in New Orleans.

J
ack went straight to the john and flushed the garlic shrimp.
 
Stuck his head in the sink and turned the water on.
 
 
Blotted his face with paper towels, ran his fingers through his hair.
 
The guy in the mirror looked back.
 
Whoever it was, it wasn't him.
 
No big surprise.
 
The dope in the mirror hadn't been him for some time.

Jack McCooly had never had Hollywood looks, but he wasn't the ugliest boy in town.
 
He knew, though, he was maybe the toughest, which worked out fine in Shawnee, Oklahoma, for a flat-nose Choctaw-Irish kid.
 
He'd had the weight then, and the muscle tone as well.
 
Jack could take care of himself, handle any trouble, anyone that came along.

Huntsville prison had taken care of that.
 
The ache in his gut had taken off the weight.
 
Black dudes and skinheads had taken off the tough, shown him what tough was all about.

Nothing had ever shaken Jack like that.
 
Not even his daddy leaving when he was ten.
 
Before they locked him up, Jack would have crippled an asshole like Grape.
 
Back then he would've plowed into Cat.
 
Cat would have killed him, but Jack would have never backed down.
 
Now, all he had was a hollow inside, a gut full of anger and rice.
 
They'd taken something from him that was hard to get back.

He'd do it, though, he was certain of that.
 
Work out, get himself in shape.
 
Get a haircut, a nice pair of pants.
 
Get a good sport shirt, a yellow or a red.

In his head he had a four-fold goal:
 
Get his gut in shape, get his body back.
 
Get some real money somehow.
 
Kill Cecil and Grape, possibly the Cat.
 
And Four, pull it off so you didn't get caught.
 
That was a must, because he sure as shit wasn't going back inside again.

He had to pull it off.
 
Gloria was special, she wasn't some bimbo off the street.
 
You had to prove yourself to a woman like that.
 
A woman like that, she wouldn't give her body and her heart to any wimp.
 
You want the very best, you got to be the best yourself...

M
innie Mouth was coming off, Wilda Hare was going on.
 
Minnie would move to pole two.
 
Laura Licks would go to three.

Which meant that Gloria was in the dressing room.
 
Which wasn't a dressing room at all, just four by eights slapped together off the ladies' restroom.

Jack knocked, didn't wait for an answer, opened the door and went in.

"Jesus, Jack, we are naked in here!"
 
Maggie Thatch glared, plucked a Kleenex and covered up her parts.

"You maybe didn't notice," Jack said, "but you're naked out there."

"That is professional naked, that is the entertainment portion of my life.
 
It is personal time back here."

"I'm not looking."

"Hell you're not, you're looking right now."

"You smell like garlic," Gloria said.
 
"I wish you wouldn't bring it in here."

"I had to see you.
 
Before you got off."

"I don't ever get off.
 
What for?"

Jack looked at Maggie.
 
"Forget it," Maggie said, "I'm not going anywhere, just pretend I'm not here."

Maggie Thatch wasn't Jack's ideal.
 
Jack didn't like girls with shitty attitudes.
 
She billed herself as a Brit, but got off the bus from Fort Worth.
 
Short, sassy, redhead all over and wiry as a squirrel, she took it all off except a tiny Union Jack, which somehow emerged at the end of her act and began to wave about, Maggie, meanwhile, standing on her head, the music shifting from Tom T. Hall to God Save the Queen.
 
She did this six times a night, and it never failed to bring the house down.

"Jack, you don't look good," Gloria said, leaning in close to the mirror, sketching a tiny red line at the corner of her mouth.
 
"You feeling all right?"

"Cecil, you know how he gets, he's got a business guy.
 
He's got a guy in, he's got a deal going it gets him upset."

"Cecil isn't upset," Maggie said.
 
"Cecil is crazy as shit, babe."

"He said, Jacko, take the food back, then he said don't, leave the food here.
 
You said take it back, I said.
 
He said, I never said that.
 
I'll tell you what, I'm tired of putting up with this crap.
 
I had a mind to toss that shrimp right in his face."

"Ho-ho, you wish," Maggie said.

Gloria gave her a look, painted another little line at the other corner of her mouth.
 
She was wearing a robe, a sheer black number you could nearly see through.
 
Most of the girls brought ratty robes from home, robes that looked like old bedspreads, but Gloria had more class than that.

That was how she danced, too, in the classic style, no dumb gimmicks like Maggie and her flag, or Whoopie LaCrane, who hopped around the stage till her feathers came out.
 
That wasn't Gloria's style.
 
Gloria got up there and danced.
 
Danced like a whisper, flinging her long hair about, letting it wash across her body like a spider web veil, closing her eyes like she wasn't even there, like the dance was all a dream.

Every man wanted her, wanted to take her to bad motel, take her to a trailer, take her anywhere.
 
Every man who saw her had the same hunger, the very same need.
 
But nobody loved her, wanted her forever, nobody cared like Jack McCooly did.

"Cecil's got Alabama out there," Jack said.
 
He'd thought about not saying anything at all, but Alabama was Gloria's friend.
 
"I don't know if you saw her, but I thought you ought to know."

"I saw her," Gloria said, looking past the mirror, looking through her image there at nothing at all.

"She don't have to do it," Maggie said.
 
"You don't ever have to do it, you can always tell 'em no."

Gloria gave her a killing look.
 
"You don't have to work, either, you don't want to eat a whole lot."

"I would walk out of here before I'd do that."

"Girl, Alabama has been about everywhere else, she hasn't got anywhere to go."

"I'm just saying," Maggie said.

"Well don't."

"Excuse fucking me, okay?"

"You're fucking excused.
 
Now shut the fuck up."

Maggie made little words with her mouth but she didn't let them go.
 
Turned away, slipped into a G-string and a bra.
 
The music shook the walls.
 
Helen Reddy did I Am Woman, which was Laura Licks' song.

"I was thinking," Jack said, "maybe, you feel like it when you get off, we could get a coffee somewhere.
 
I mean if you feel okay."

Gloria ran a brush through her hair. "God, Jack, that's going to be about two."

"I know it is.
 
Everything'll be closed in town, we could go up to Denny's on I-35."

"Denny's."

"You don't like Denny's, we could go anywhere else."

"I don't mind Denny's, they got a good pie."

"You like the ice box or the hot?"

"I kinda like the hot."

"Me too. So you think it'd be all right, we could maybe do that?"

"I am real tired, Jack."
 
She reached back and squeezed his hand.
 
"Some other time, okay?"

Jack felt it going, felt it slip away. "I'm off on Thursdays, how about then?"

"I can't, hon. Thursday's not good for me.
 
We'll do it some time, hear?"

Jack thought about Sunday, didn't want hear no again.
 
Helen Reddy quit.
 
Tom T. Hall came on with Jesus and Me.
 
Maggie got up, grabbed a sequin gown, wriggled into red spike heels.

"I hate to leave we're talking pie," Maggie said, "someone's got to work around here."

"Do it to 'em," Gloria said.

Maggie winked at Jack, slipped out the door.

"I better go too," Jack said.
 
"Rhino'll be pissed, I don't get back."

"I'm awful sorry, Jack.
 
Both of us working, it's real hard to work something out."

"Yeah, I guess.
 
If we were doing something else, it wouldn't have to be like this."

"Like what?"

"You know.
 
Some kinda work wasn't here.
 
I expect you think I been washing dishes all my life.
 
I can do something else.
 
And you wouldn't have to do this."

Gloria put down her brush, turned and looked him in the eye. "I like doing this.
 
I am a professional dancer, you ever notice that?
 
Why would I want to be doing something else?
 
You are talking awful funny, Jack."

Jack saw it in her eyes, saw he'd backed himself in a corner somehow.
 
Wondered just how he'd done that, just how he'd get out.

"It wasn't anything; I was thinking is all."

"Well don't, okay?
 
I don't like you doing that.
 
You get to thinking, you act real creepy sometimes.
 
Just be yourself, Jack."

Gloria stood, her back still to Jack.
 
Didn't say a thing, just let the robe slip from her shoulders, fall down her back, down past her hips, past her ankles with a sigh.

Jack felt his heart stop.
 
He could see her, he could smell her, he could reach out and touch her if he dared.
 
He was inches from a woman without a single blemish, a woman airbrushed at birth, a woman who was perfect everywhere.
 
He'd seen her like this a hundred times before, and so had everybody else.
 
Still, every time it happened, it seemed like a personal private thing, something she did just for him.

Gloria turned to the left and then the right, watching herself in the mirror, watching herself with a critical eye.
 
She brushed dark hair across her shoulders, down across her breasts, wet her lips and blinked her eyes.

"You look real good," Jack said.

"Shoot, tell me something I don't know, hon."

J
ack nearly bumped into Ricky Chavez.
 
Chavez was standing by the door.
 
Bay Rum and Listerine.
 
Salt and pepper hair.
 
Heavy but solid, two-twenty-two.
 
Fringed leather jacket, big gold buckle on a tooled leather belt.
 
Python boots with gold across the toes.
 
A dozen red roses in his left hand, chocolates in his right.