Western Swing (27 page)

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Too many cigarettes, I guess. Tonight's her last gig. Monday, the doctors take her voice box out.”

“Poor woman.” I wasn't thinking poor woman. I was thinking, What in hell does this have to do with me?

“She'll be okay. A senator over in Louisiana's been after her to marry him for years. Now's his chance.”

“It's still awful.”

Mickey nodded a couple of times. He put his other hand on my door and stared down at me. “We need us a singer, Lana Sue.”

My heart did a four-inch drop. The unfaced dilemma of my married life was about to be faced. “So?”

There it was. I looked at Cassie, trying to guess what she thought of the situation. “I'm too old for Nashville.”

“We're not going back to Nashville. Choosie and me're gonna stick with Western honky-tonks from now on. No more rhinestones and record contracts bullshit, Lana Sue. It'll be just like it was when you were with us before.”

I thought about before, the six bodies in a bed and the diet of soft drinks and candy bars. That might have been fine for a high-school junior, but I was a grown-up now. I'd become accustomed to clean bathrooms and sleep every night.

“You didn't need a girl singer before me. Why not go all the way back to the old days?”

Mickey shook his head. “Choosie's about whiskied his voice to death, and none of the new Bobs can sing for shit. You know how I am with a microphone. Besides, all our material goes with a girl singer. I kind of got used to it after you.”

I didn't say anything for a while. The only ambition I'd ever had was to sing country music. But the idea of running out on Ron and the girls was ridiculous. I'd never for a moment thought of leaving Ron. Who'd fix his after-work Cape Cods? Not to mention what Daddy'd do if I took off with Mickey again. And it probably wouldn't last any longer this time than it had in 1963. Did I want to give up everything we'd worked to build for another three-month fling at the grubby life?

“No,” I said.

“Lana Sue.”

“No. Get in the car, Cassie.”

“You want to grow old eating lunch at the country club and picking new drapes for the den? This is your chance not to die bored.”

“Get in the car, Cassie.” I stared into Mickey's eyes. His irises had picked up some gray flecks over the years. “Having a home and family and some money doesn't make a person bored.”

“Does you.”

“Let loose of my door. Cassie, are you getting in the car or not?” She shrugged and moved around to the passenger side.

“At least come hear us tonight. You owe yourself to see what you're giving up.”

“I'm giving up lice, hunger, alcoholism, and sex with a child seducer.”

“Who said anything about sex. I'm offering you a job.”

“Bullshit.”

Our eyes locked in a battle of furies. I was pissed. The bastard didn't want me. He wanted to save the band the trouble of finding a new singer. There'd be sex all right. I knew Mickey well enough to count on us sleeping together as a fringe benefit, but to Mickey, I was an interchangeable clit. He'd sleep with whatever female singer the band hired.

“I'm going home to fix Ron's supper.”

Mickey released my door. “I'll leave your name with the guy up front. They'll let you in without a cover.”

“I can pay the damn cover charge.”

• • •

The part about fixing Ron's supper was a lie. He ate dinner that night at the Holiday Inn with three other doctors who wanted him to invest in a Biscuitville franchise in Beaumont. They told him it was a colored gold mine. After dinner, Ron called to say he was watching a basketball game in the lounge and I shouldn't wait up.

“Did you pick up my sweater?”

“Sorry. I'll drive over as soon as I feed the girls.”

“You know I need my sweater.”

“I'll have it tonight.”

A little after eight, I knocked on the girls' doors to tell them I was going after the dry cleaning and I might stop by Roxanne's for a visit. Connie ignored me, an attitude she'd adopted for almost a week since I told her she couldn't sail on a boat with a college kid. As soon as I said no and we went through the “all the other girls get to” routine, Connie ran to Ron, who gave me half-assed backup.

“I don't see why you shouldn't but your mom said no and she's the boss.”

At Cassie's door, I hesitated a moment before knocking. She'd know what I was really up to, and I'd know she knew. What if Cassie called me a liar to my face? I sure as hell couldn't deny it.

Cassie lay sprawled across her bed, watching a portable TV and reading a Judy Blume book during the commercials. She had on a black T-shirt that said BUY A HORSE across the back in red letters.

On the television, a woman with two heads and four arms spoke to an effeminate robot. “What's this?” I asked.

“New show called
Quark
. It's not very good.” The robot scooted across the room, bumped into a doorframe, and fell on its side, beeping. The laugh track thought this was hilarious.

“I'm going out for a while. To pick up Dad's sweater and see Roxanne. Can I bring you anything?”

Cassie looked up at me and smiled. “No, thanks, tell Roxie I said hey.”

“Sure.”

As I left the room, Cassie spoke again. “Mom. You're going to be okay.”

I turned back. Cassie's eyes were on the woman with two heads, not watching me. “Thanks,” I said.

“No sweat.”

• • •

I paid the cover on the notion that it wouldn't do to let anyone know I'd been there in case I changed my mind and fled. Might as well have used my connections, though, because Choosie spotted me before my eyes even adjusted to the bar light. He came scrambling over, hugging and leering, carrying on in the been-too-long vein.

“My God, Lannie, you're beautiful as ever.” He stuck a finger in my ribs. “See you've filled out some. You was too skinny before.”

“Didn't you have teeth the last time we met?”

Choosie grinned, showing off two banks of brown, liver-spotted gums. “Yep. I sing better without 'em. Gives me resonance.” Choosie had lost more than his teeth. If Mickey hadn't aged a day in sixteen years, Choosie'd grown old for the both of them. By my figuring, he couldn't have been much over forty, but sagging, bleached-out skin and a gray to balding head made him look sixty. His posture was more in the eighty range.

“You must have processed a lot of Dr Pepper and Jack Black since I left the band, Choosie. You look pickled.”

He laughed and launched into a “same old Lana Sue” routine. I think he was under orders to be lovable so I'd rejoin the band. In the old days, a crack like that would have been answered with spit down my jeans leg.

“Not a big crowd,” I said, checking out the general mill of cowboys and beauty-operator types grouped around two pool tables and a Space Invaders game.

“Early yet,” Choosie said. “Rodeo ain't done for an hour. They'll be crammed in the rafters by midnight.”

He led me by the hand up front to a round table surrounded by band members and two or three Houston snuff queens. An enormous woman with chins to her chest and boobs to her belt buckle scowled as if I'd been committing unnatural acts with her boyfriend.

I leaned to Choosie. “You always liked 'em big, but this is bizarre.”

He grinned, showing gums again. “You should see her naked.”

Mickey stood and pulled a chair over for me. “Real glad you made it, Lana Sue. I was afraid we lost out. What you drinking?” He had on a white T-shirt with a picture of Patsy on the front.

“I'll take a rusty nail.”

A cocktail waitress who'd appeared at my elbow laughed at me. “Honey, we sell whiskey, scotch, or gin, on the rocks, with water, or Coca-Cola. Or beer. We don't serve pansy drinks.”

“You got Jim Beam?”

“You bet.”

“Pour me some in a glass.”

I sat between Mickey and Choosie's fat queen. Lacy Rasher slumped on Mickey's other side with her head down on her folded arms.

“Is she drunk or crying?” I asked Mickey.

“Which would you be in her situation?”

He introduced me around to the band members, none of whose names fit the Bob game very well. “Warren Bob, Charlie Bob, and Felipe Bob, meet Lana Sue. She might be our singer next week.”

At that, Lacy's head came up and she stared through unfocused eyes and stringy hair. “Already replaced me, you bastard.”

Mickey put his hands over hers. “Life's gotta go on for the band, Lacy. You know that.”

“Bastard.” She leaned across Mickey and brought her face six inches from mine. Her breath was awful, her eyes frightening. Lacy studied me for thirty seconds. I didn't know how to come on. Normally, I would have said, “You push and I'll shove, bitch,” but the woman had cancer. I could hardly blame her for hating me.

Finally she twisted to look up at Mickey. “She's a dog. An old woman. What you replacing me with an old woman for?”

“There's no call to take your problem out on Lana Sue.”

Lacy shook her head wildly. “I don't have no problem. You got the problem.” She hiccuped. “You guys'll fall apart without me. I can do fine without you.”

Lacy fell back in her chair. “Whole damn band'll starve six weeks after I'm dead.”

“You aren't gonna die.”

She shook her head again. Her long hair swung like ropes. “Might as well. Gimme another drink.”

Mickey held her glass under the table and poured a couple inches of Yukon Jack from a bottle. She sucked it down like a baby on a nipple. No one at the table except me would look at her. The guys mostly stared into their drinks, embarrassed. The women faked oblivion. Or maybe they weren't faking. Hell, I don't know.

When my Beam came, Mickey paid the waitress. So many names and stupid sayings were carved on the table that I had trouble finding a flat place to set my glass. The tables nearest the stage began to fill as people filtered down from the long bar. I had no trouble separating the construction workers turned Saturday night cowboy from the authentic rodeo circuit followers. The rodeo cowboys showed more confidence in their cowboyism. They didn't look at each other. Most limped and the inseams of their Levi's didn't rub. No one in the place looked like he actually worked with cows.

I felt shy around Mickey all of a sudden and he seemed to feel the same way about me. I don't know what we expected, the years not to matter or something along those lines, I guess. But things had changed. I was playing at being real folks now. My cowgirl shirt came from Neiman-Marcus. I bought my jeans prefaded.

“Can Lacy still sing?” I asked.

Mickey raised a Lone Star to his thin lips. “Sure, why not?”

“How can she perform in her condition?”

“Voice box don't come out till Monday. She'll do fine tonight.”

“She's too drunk to walk.”

Mickey glanced at Lacy next to him. Her head was back and tears dribbed down her cheekbones, leaving little trails of mascara. “She don't have to walk to sing. Lacy's a pro. She's not gonna screw up her last gig.”

Lacy mumbled something I didn't hear as her head fell to one side. She didn't look anything like the beautiful, peppy woman in tight pants and the sequined top who stood next to Mickey on her last album cover.

“'Bout time,” Felipe Bob said. Nobody moved.

Mickey finished off his beer and reached over for a swig off Lacy's Yukon. “You coming to Lubbock?”

“What's in Lubbock?”

“Next job. We open Monday in a county-line club out in the boonies somewhere. Won't be much fun without you.”

“That's a nice thing to say.”

Mickey's skull face turned to me. “You coming?”

“No.”

His long fingers tightened on Lacy's glass. She moaned once and burped like she was fixing to dry-heave. “Why come here tonight?” Mickey asked.

“I was curious. All those years I've remembered our time together in a certain way, and I wondered if that way was real or I'd built up a romantic sham.”

“So which is it?”

My eyes circled the table from Lacy to the big woman on my left. “Seems kind of desperate to me.”

One of Lacy's eyes opened. She muttered, “You can't take my place in his pants either.”

Mickey touched one of her hands. “Time to work, hon. Go find the can and make yourself pretty.”

Choosie's friend helped Lacy out of her chair and led her off to the bathroom. As Lacy stumbled away from the table, the fat queen looked back at me and snarled. I stuck out my tongue.

Mickey play-poked me in the shoulder. “Coulda been great,” he said. “We could of blazed a country-western trail they'd sing about for a hundred years.

I blinked a couple of times. “I know, Mickey. But I'd rather be happy and secure than famous and wasted.”

“Your choice.” He stood up. I'd forgotten how much taller Mickey was than Ron. “Mount up, boys. Let's take her out with class.”

The guys straggled onstage, picking up guitars and drumsticks, flipping on amps. They'd changed the order since my days. Mickey and Choosie still held down the sides, but Lacy's vocal mike was in the center between the bass and lead guitars. Mickey looked right at home behind his steel, stuffing his mouth with gum. He'd mounted a circular whiskey-glass holder off the tuning end of the board. Other than that, he was doing things exactly as he'd done them that New Year's Eve so long ago. I could have walked onstage and been sixteen again.

I thought about how it would feel to be sixteen again—to stand up there and sing through the smoke and barroom odors of sweat and beer. I thought about my girls. They didn't really need me anymore. Lord knows, Ron could get by fine without me, but if I jumped ship and abandoned Cassie and Connie now, wouldn't that be just cause for long-term mother hatred? I'd been through way too much trouble the last fourteen years to grow old hated by my own children.