PIGGS - A Novel with Bonus Screenplay (7 page)

Jack sat up straight.
 
Gloria stepped out of Piggs.
 
Nikes and jeans, black T-shirt.
 
My, she looked fine, just as fine as she could be.
 
Jack started up the Plymouth.
 
It coughed and came to life.

A big car took the corner fast, headlights swept the empty street.
 
The car swerved over to the curb, jerked to a halt.
 
 
Someone got out.

Jack's heart stopped.
 
Cecil said something to Gloria.
 
Gloria stood there a minute, talking to Cecil, then got in the car.
 
The door slammed shut, the Caddie took off, a lizard-green monster roaring through the night.

The street was still again.
 
It was over quick as that.
 
Jack could scarcely believe it had happened, but it did.
 
The lightning flashed again, closer now, thunder rolling overhead.
 
Two fat drops struck Juan Ortega's car.

Seeing her get in Cecil's Caddie shook him up, shook him up bad.
 
He knew, though, knew in his heart, that Gloria's actions were mostly his fault.
 
He had known this was so for some time, that this was a failing in himself, a failing he must now face squarely, bring up to the light.
 
He had been too gentle, too easy, he had not asserted himself.
 
He vowed that he would start doing that.
 
Gloria had to quit stalling, had to let him take her out.
 
They would never get anywhere until she did that.
 
Then, they would get a lot closer, get to know each other well.
 
They could talk about the future, make plans to settle down.
 
Jack wished there was some other way, some way besides the dating part, which was such a fucking hassle every time, but he didn't see how he could get around that...

S
he wasn't real mad.
 
Wasn't real happy, either, sitting in back of the green Cadillac with Cecil R. Dupree.
 
Cecil, absolutely gross, straw hat and overalls, not even wearing a shirt, for Christ sake, white socks and Li'l Abner shoes.
 
Hoping, Gloria and everybody knew, that some poor jerk would take him for a rube.
 
Say something to him so Cecil could have Cat pound him into mush.
 
Or if the guy wasn't too big, do the job himself.

It happened now and then, on the street or in a store.
 
It happened in Austin, Waco or Dallas somewhere.
 
Where it never happened was in Mexican Wells, because everybody knew better there.

"This is real good," Cecil said, "this is sure fine.
 
You and me are busy all the time, we never get a chance to talk."

"I don't guess we do," Gloria said.

"I was just thinking, Gloria and me, we don't get a chance to talk.
 
What I ought to do, I ought to give her a ride sometime, we could have the time to talk."

"It's very nice of you, Mr. Dupree, you didn't have to do that."

"'Course I didn't, I wanted to.
 
And Lord, not Mister Dupree."
 
Cecil gave a little laugh.
 
"I feel old, a young lady calls me that.
 
'Mister,' is something you don't want to hear, you get as old as me."

"Oh, I don't think I could."

"Do what?"

"Call you that.
 
I feel it would be a presumption on my part, me being in your employment and all."

"Well as your employer, I say it's Cecil, I say it's all right."

"If you say so."

"Well I do."

"All right."

"Say it."

"Do what?"

"Say it.
 
Say 'Cecil.'"

"You mean, just come out and say it?
 
Nothing else with it, just by itself?"

"Just say it."

"All by itself."

"Jesus Christ, all by itself'd
 
be fine."

"Cecil."

"What?"

"Cecil."

"Now see, that sounds real nice.
 
And you are not presuming a thing, all right?
 
I assure you of that."

Cecil assured her.
 
A pat on the knee, a tiny little squeeze an inch or so above that.

Oh shit, here we go, Gloria said to herself, none of this coming as any big surprise, a road she'd been down once or twice before.
 
A guy runs a club, runs a place like Piggs, he figures ladies of the unclad persuasion are inventory, like peanuts and beer.
 
You take a little sample now and then, make sure it's all right.

Cecil hadn't ever hit on his girls.
 
If he had, Gloria would know in about a minute flat.
 
Which didn't mean he wasn't starting now.
 
Guys like Cecil, he was halfway done.
 
One little feelie, that was the foreplay, that was romance.
 
Onto the good part, bingo!
 
 
Roll on off and take a nap.
 
It is plain irritating, she thought, that I got to be first.
 
How about Laura and Maggie, why's he got to start with me?

There was no way out, she knew that.
 
Jump out the door, Cecil would get her right back.
 
Gloria Mundi, both legs broken, crawling down the road.
 
Back in the car, Cat Eye and Grape, putting on a splint, Cecil feeling her up again.

C
at Eye was driving, Cat Eye who scared her half to death, a mean-ass grizzly with a minus IQ, the wheel buried somewhere in his lap.
 
Grape there with him, squeezed in somewhere, crushed against the door.

The A/C was high as it would go, cold enough to freeze an Eskimo.
 
Not high enough, in Gloria's mind, to mask the ghastly essence, the stink and the stench, that hung in heavy layers in the car.
 
All it did was make the Frito farts and the taco breath, the belches and the sweats, the day-old doughnuts and cigarette butts, smell cold.

Jack McCooly had told her once:
 
"Gangsters smell worse than anyone else.
 
The Learning Channel did a whole show on it, that's a scientific fact."

And Gloria thought:
 
Jack McCooly doesn't have a lot of sense, but he is dead on right about that.

T
he rain passed quickly, leaving scarcely any mark behind, moving on south to disappoint a hundred Texas towns.
 
The night began to fade, giving way to pale bands of lavender, peach and dirty gray, worn and tattered colors, washed too many times,
 
left out to dry in the hot and unforgiving summer day.

A traffic light blinked on Crockett and Main.
 
Cat Eye ran it, drove through town in a minute and a half.
 
Dark farm houses after that, the single harsh glare of a 7-Eleven store.
 
Two more miles down the empty highway.
 
Cat Eye made a hard left, stopped too fast, gravel snapped beneath the tires.
 
And, for an instant, the headlights swept across a sign, hanging, dangling at a tilt, battered, sun-peeled, weathered and cracked, rusted and pocked by shooters passing by, the words so faded they might have been purple, red or black, a sign, if you took the time to read it, said:

BATTLE OF BRITUN

FAMILY FUN PARK

A gate blocked the way.
 
Cecil leaned up and said, "Grape, get out and get that."

"Now you don't need to," Gloria said, "I can do it just fine—"

Popped the door and slid out fast, one foot quickly on the ground.
 
Cecil stretched out a hillbilly hand, gently pulled her back.

"Hey, I won't have that.
 
I don't see a lady home, leave her walking in the dark."

His fingers felt cold and the dark was just fine.

"It isn't any trouble, I do it all the time."

"We haven't had a chance to talk."

"We ought to do that.
 
We ought to set a time."

"Right now's just fine for me."

"It is awful late, all right?"

"It's awful early's what it is.
 
You got any coffee up at your place?"

"I am real tired, Mr. Dupree."

"Cecil."

"What?"

"You were going to call me Cecil.
 
We talked about that.
 
I said, you don't have to call me Mr. Dupree.
 
You said, all right, that'll be fine."

"It is awful early, Cecil, could we do it some other time?
 
Don't take offense I am simply too tired."

"You'll feel better," Cecil said, "you get off your feet a while.
 
The dance is a demanding profession, you don't have to tell me that.
 
I've known dancers all my life.
 
I know how much you're giving of yourself."

She didn't look at him, didn't try again.
 
Knew there wasn't any use in that.
 
The way his words came out said Cecil was tired of being nice.
 
Tired of acting like someone had a say but him.

She stepped out on the road.
 
The days were too hot to let the night cool down.
 
After the car, the hot smelled clean.
 
Dry yellow grass, the dusty scent of summer trees.

Cat Eye turned the lights off.
 
Grape and the Cat stayed in the car.
 
The stock gate was rusty metal pipe that could swing open wide to let a cattle truck in.
 
There weren't any cattle inside, and the gate was second hand.

She opened the padlock and slid off the chain.

"Now this is interesting," Cecil said.
 
"I been by your place a hundred times, but I never been in."

"Isn't much left for anyone to see," Gloria said, and walked off toward the trees.

H
e walked behind her through the pale morning light, the day still cloaked in muted shades of night, bleak enough still through the stand of ancient oaks to hide a dark array of ghosts.
 
He knew they were there, an angle and a shape, nothing real clear.
 
Dim and blurry phantoms, lost and indistinct, lost until one of them hit him in the head.

"Whoa!" Cecil said, threw up his hands, touched cold metal and ducked beneath a wing.
 
Passed on quickly, kept the girl in sight.
 
Didn't know what he'd nearly hit.
 
Didn't know the ghost was a Hawker Hurricane, didn't know its foe, twenty yards ahead, was a riddled Messerschmitt, the pilot a blur under faded plexiglas, dying, now, or already dead.
 
Didn't know the pilot had served once before, served in the window of Flicker's Men's Store.

Didn't know the Mustang he passed, didn't know a Storch.
 
Didn't know a Stuka in desert coloration.
 
Knew, though, it used to be a snow cone stand.

Cecil didn't know and didn't care.
 
He'd passed the place before, scarcely glanced at the hollow relics then.
 
Knew it had closed down many years before.
 
Knew, later, that one of his dancers lived there, learned who it was when Gloria Mundi caught his eye.

Cecil Dupree didn't waste a lot of time on anything that didn't have tits, anything without a dollar sign.
 
Didn't care what happened outside the walls of Piggs.
 
Didn't read the papers, didn't keep up with world events.

He knew, though, that Gloria Mundi was a honey and a half, that she had a certain something the other girls lacked.
 
He didn't know what, but he meant to find out.
 
And, if he had to follow that fine-looking ass through a maze of rusty scrap, well he could handle that.

As long as she didn't put him off.
 
Mess around yakking an hour and a half, all the preliminary shit a woman had to do before she quit.
 
Cecil hated that.
 
Hated walking through the fucking woods.
 
Hated being outdoors everywhere you looked.

He was walking so close he nearly ran her down.

"Hey, whoa," he said, grabbing her shoulders tight, "what we stopping for, babe?"

Gloria gave him a weary look.
 
"We're here, Mr. Dupree.
 
This is where I live."

"Where," Cecil said, "I don't see a thing."
 
He made a big deal out of stomping around, shading his brow, peering like an Indian through the stand of trees.
 
"You live in a hole, got a tepee somewhere?"