Western Swing (13 page)

“Okay, genius, let's work out a truce. We both like Ann, right? We both spend a lot of time in her apartment. I think we should try to be friends.”

Thamu Kamala tossed her hair as contemptuously as a woman twenty years her senior. “I'd
rather
be dead.”

“That's a possibility.”

“What's a possibility?” Ann asked, coming in from the bedroom. She wore her best long skirt and a white blouse with strings tied around the sleeves. Her earrings were gold dangles that I hadn't seen before.

“Your boyfriend threatened to kill me.”

“Don't threaten to kill Thamu Kamala.” Ann bent to pluck Buggie from the couch. She held him high and swung him around and across her shoulder. Every time I saw those two together I turned all emotional inside.

Joyce came in the door dressed like a Gypsy fortune-teller. “Who'd you threaten to kill, Loren?” Her eye makeup was excessive and the black fingernail polish overstated the style a bit, but I liked Joyce. I admire any single mother who's cheerful.

Thamu Kamala hid behind her mother's sparkly, full skirt. “He threatened to kill me. We should call the police and have Loren hauled away.”

“I didn't threaten to kill your daughter.”

Joyce smiled, open and friendly, as if she believed me instead of Thamu Kamala. “Her father's been reading her a book on child abuse among the nonspiritual,” she said.

“That explains everything.”

Joyce laughed and turned to Ann. “You sure look pretty tonight, that's a beautiful skirt.”

Ann straightened the waistline. “You really think so? I've been deciding what to wear all week. Every stitch I own is clean and ironed in case I change my mind at the last minute.”

I wished I'd been the one to say Ann looked nice, but by then it was too late. My only recourse was to play the efficient young family man. “We'll be home by two at the latest. Numbers are next to the phone. If he cries give him juice, bedtime is seven-thirty, and…and…” I ran out of instructions.

Joyce looked impressed. “My, my,” she said to Ann, “you've trained this one well. Thamu Kamala's father was too cosmic to be bothered by bedtime.”

Ann came up and put her arm around me. “I've got a winner, all right. Pop's in the refrigerator, cookies in the cookie jar.”

“We'll be fine. Where are you two lovebirds planning to dine?”

Ann smiled at the word lovebirds. “Los Gatos. I heard they have a band. Wouldn't that be nice? Live music makes a place feel so fancy.”

Single moms will talk all night if someone doesn't put a stop to it. I looked at my wrist, pretending I wore a watch. “Ann, hon, my birthday will be over soon.”

As we walked out the door, I heard Thamu Kamala say, “Jesus, that guy's got the astral aura of a goat.”

• • •

All the way across town Ann worried that I didn't like Mexican food and was just being polite to humor her.

“Why would I do that?” I asked.

“You always sacrifice what you want in order not to hurt my feelings. Are you sure you wouldn't rather try the Grinning Greek downtown? I don't mind. I like them both.”

“I have never sacrificed anything not to hurt feelings, and how do you know you like them both if you haven't eaten in either one, and it's my birthday. If I didn't like Mexican food, believe me, I'd say so.”

Ann twisted a button on her peasant blouse. “I wish I could be sure.”

“Be sure. I'm exactly where I want to be, doing exactly what I want to do with exactly who I want to do it with.”

Ann sighed and reached under the gearshift to put her hand on my upper leg. “You're sweet, Loren. You treat me so good.”

I wasn't aware of that. We passed a billboard that showed a seductive woman lying on a black satin sheet, wishing someone would ply her with Cutty Sark. I fantasized what it would be like to ply the woman. It made a nice fantasy that I revised several times in the next few miles.

“Do you think Buggie will be all right with Joyce?” Ann asked.

From the Interstate, Los Gatos looked like a big, stuccoed armory under attack by a twenty-foot neon tower. As we swung into the parking lot, “The Lonely Bull” by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass blared from speakers mounted on top of the building. I circled the lot twice, passing empty spaces in hopes of getting closer, then when I gave up and returned, the spaces were taken. We ended up parking a quarter mile from the restaurant. Before I killed the engine, Ann jumped from the car, ran around, and when I stepped out, she grabbed and kissed me.

“This is going to be far-out,” she said.

“I never heard you use that term before.”

“Far-out's what the Maharaj Ji used to say about Mexican food.”

• • •

I held Ann's hand as we threaded through a cluster of concerned-looking people bunched up in front of the shiny blond hostess. “We'd like a table near the orchestra.”

The hostess had the cheekbones of a Comanche warrior. “What orchestra? Name.”

“I heard you have a band.”

“We have a band. No orchestra. Name.”

“Loren.”

She glanced behind me at Ann. “Two?”

I nodded. The hostess wrote
Loren
and
(2)
at the bottom of a long line of names. “It'll be an hour. You can wait in the bar.”

“Where's that?”

The blond woman stood up and kept going, up and up, way over my head, I couldn't believe it. She was the tallest blond woman I've ever seen. “Through that curtain.” She pointed. If I owned a restaurant, I'd put a hostess out front who smiled now and then, but I hate to judge personalities.

Rooster piñatas and bunches of dried peppers hung from the bar's ceiling. Much of the wall behind our table was covered by a weaving of the sunrise over an extinct volcano with a little mud hut and a profiled donkey standing at the base. All the colors used in the weaving were shades found naturally in the desert.

Ann couldn't let herself relax. “Did you see a phone? I forgot to tell Joyce Buggie likes a glass of kefir at bedtime.”

“I told her he'd drink apple juice.”

“Loren, that's all wrong. He drinks apple juice in the afternoon and kefir at night. Now I have to call her.”

I knew better than to disagree. “I saw a phone in the waiting room.” Ann left, searching for a dime and a telephone.

The customers all looked either drunk or bored—which I guess is what you get when you sit in a bar for an hour, hoping a table will open up. My entire adult life has been dedicated to the policy that it's better to be drunk than bored, so I waved the cocktail waitress over and ordered a pitcher of margaritas. The waitress was cute, in a young and restless sort of way, but I wouldn't say she had any characteristics of Spanish blood. She looked more Colorado Presbyterian sorority sister, the sort of woman who drove a Mustang 2+2, permed her hair, and thought sex was a sin but committed it anyway.

The bartender now, he was authentic—swarthy, dark mustache and sideburns, purple ruffled shirt, sneer. Sex wasn't sinful to the bartender.

Ann arrived moments behind the Presbyterian waitress with our pitcher. “Joyce says Buggie's okay. He's helping Thamu Kamala put a puzzle together.” Ann sat and poured herself a drink. “You don't think Joyce would lie, do you?”

I used the cocktail napkin to wipe salt off my glass rim. “Why would she lie?”

“I don't know, but she sounded odd. She said Buggie didn't want to talk to me.”

“He can barely talk.”

“She said he was having too much fun throwing puzzle pieces.” Ann sipped and made a face. “What is this?”

“Margarita, it's good.”

She sipped once more. “Is it tequila? I don't think I like tequila.”

For someone drinking something she didn't like, Ann sure polished off that pitcher in record time. Whenever I drink or smoke pot or have sex or anything relaxing, I like to think about something other than what I'm doing. Who wants to think, I will now chug this tequila before chugging tequila? It takes away the spontaneity. I'd rather dream about fishing or dead writers or what deeds of valor I would perform if a small plane crashed through the ceiling and cut the bartender in half. But when Ann drank, which didn't happen often, she forced as much alcohol as possible into her body in as short a time as possible. The only way I could keep up was to concentrate on not daydreaming and pay attention to the rise and fall of margarita in the glass. Every few minutes the shiny blond woman came through the curtain and everyone perked up until she called the name. On the average, though, more waiting people came in the bar than called people went out. Two costumed Mexicans carrying an accordion and a guitar pushed through the crowd, singing, “Girl from Ipanema.”

Ann was shocked. “That's the band?”

I was mystified. “Isn't Ipanema in France?”

“California.”

“Are you sure?”

Ann nodded. “Suburb of West Covina. One of my sisters lives there.”

“I didn't know West Covina had suburbs.”

Ann laughed, not her normal laugh, this laugh was definitely tequila-inspired. “That makes my sister the girl from Ipanema.”

One glass into the second pitcher and Ann started to talk. Her diction came out fine, no slurs, no stutters to speak of. I only knew she was drunk because her eyes glassed over and she talked more than usual about things she didn't normally talk about.

“My dad would really hate you,” she said. “If the two of you ever met, I think he would shoot you with his pistol.” Every father of every girl I so much as took on a Coke date has hated me.

Ann tossed down half a glass of margarita. “Whoa,” she said, “that really slakes the thirst.”

“Slakes?”

“He would shoot you because you smoke drugs and wash dishes instead of working. But mostly he would shoot you because you have a penis.” At the word
penis,
Ann had a giggle fit. She scrunched down and checked out the neighboring tables to see if any eavesdroppers showed offense.

“Does your father hate everyone with a penis?”

“Only the ones who know me.” She stared into her glass a moment. “Or maybe he hates me because I don't have one.” As Ann's mind temporarily dropped into a remembrance trance, I took the opportunity to catch up on my drink and look at the cocktail waitress again. She wore a short skirt and bloodred hose. Her posture seemed contrived to accentuate the bust area.

I wondered what my mom would think of me if I weren't related to her and Kathy brought me home. She'd probably give me instant iced tea and Wheat Thins and ask me what my parents did for a living. She'd talk about her younger years, then, as I stood up to leave, she'd smile and say, “Hurry back.” Afterwards Mom would scream at Kathy and take away her phone privileges until she promised never to see me again.

Ann came back with a jolt. “Dad mails out a family newsletter every Christmas. It's mimeographed with a list of where all us kids are and what we're doing, who we've married, how many children, that kind of thing, but after my sister told him about Freedom, he stopped sending me the letter. Isn't that sad?”

I hadn't followed the sequence properly. “What's Freedom?”

“A hippie I cohabited with. He made turquoise jewelry and sold barbiturates.”

“I've heard of him.”

“Did I ever tell you I used to take barbiturates sometimes.” Ann giggled again. “I may not act it now, but I was one wild little teenybopper.”

I tried to picture Ann as wild or a teenybopper, but neither concept would flesh out. To me, she had always been a young mother who had to be drunk to say
penis.

“I didn't shave my legs or pits for four years,” she said, as if to prove her decadent youth.

“Neither did I.” The giant hostess pushed through the curtain and called a name. The people sitting at the next table stood and followed her away.

“Didn't those people come in after us?” I asked.

“When Daddy found out about Buggie, he took my name completely out of the newsletter. Someone reading it now wouldn't even know I exist.”

“I could have sworn those people came in after we did. I think the frigid beanpole skipped us.”

“When your own dad denies your existence, it's hard to believe in it yourself,” Ann said. She looked ready to cry. I'd never seen Ann's entire alcohol progression, so I didn't know what to expect. Most women slide smoothly from happy to thoughtful to sad to playful to sexy, but every now and then I'd met one who went happy-thoughtful-sad-hysterical-angry-unconscious. That's the type you don't want to take into a fancy restaurant.

“Loren.”
The blond tower clamped a hand onto my shoulder. “I called your party three times. Once more and I give away the table.”

“I'm sorry, we were talking and didn't hear. Ann, you take the glasses, I'll carry the pitcher.” I never seem to go anywhere without apologizing to somebody about something.

The hostess led us through two or three dining rooms, past the roving Mexican duet who still played “Girl from Ipanema,” to a small, round table under a gory bullfighting painting.

“Here,” she said. “The special is chicken tacos. Your waitress's name is Toni.”

“Miss,” I asked politely, “I don't mean to pry, but do you have a personal problem that is affecting your attitude toward me?”

That was a mistake. Her lower lip trembled, then her forehead wrinkled. The lake-blue eyes filled with tears and, as the hostess folded into the chair she had intended for me, she broke into mournful sobs.

Ann said, “Now look what you've done.”

The hostess lay her head on the table and wept—loudly. I never know how to act around crying strangers. Everywhere I turned diners stared accusingly back at me. A few even muttered ugly comments. The only comment loud enough to understand came from a cowboy two tables down. “Hostessing is tough enough without assholes giving her a bunch of shit.” He wore a fringe jacket and a gray felt hat, obviously a man who ate meat three times a day and thought anyone who doesn't chew is a sissy.