CHAPTER FOUR
The first of many reunions
He walked down to room number seven and slid the card into the slot. The little red LED flickered and then turned green. He pocketed the key, pushed the door in and felt around the wall to his right for a light switch. Finding it, her flipped the switch and a lamp in the corner came on illuminating a queen-sized bed with a white comforter. Next to it was a night stand with a telephone and an alarm clock. Opposite the bed there was an odd piece of furniture that looked like a desk on one side with a rolling chair. The other side held a small flat-screen television and a cable converter box. It wasn’t Chicago, but it wasn’t a dungeon.
Rusty dumped his belonging on the bed and pushed down on it with one hand to test the mattress. Firm enough, he thought. He flipped another light switch and got a good look at the décor as he inspected the rest of the place. The walls and trim were bright white and the carpet was navy blue. There was a painting on the wall. A green parrot perched next to a bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch, black label. It was hideous and hilarious. The bathroom had a stand-up shower and a toilet. Both appeared clean. In between the bedroom and bathroom there was a sink with a large mirror over it. Tiny bottles of shampoo and lotion and a boxed bar of soap sat next to the sink along with an empty ice bucket and two individually wrapped plastic cups.
“Class to spare,” he said. He looked at his face in the mirror, pulling down each eyelid to check his state. Not too bloodshot, not too bad. He splashed water on his face and dried it with one of the rolled up hand towels. Rusty patted his back pocket to make sure his wallet was still there. Feeling for the keycard, he reached into his front pocket. The credit card shape satisfied him and he left the room, back out into the heat and humidity, back out into the odd, hidden smell he couldn’t place. He wasn’t even sure if he truly ever noticed that smell, or if his tired mind and body had manufactured it.
The restaurant looked exactly the same. A small hostess stand with a hand painted sign which read PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED greeted him as he entered. Ropes, fishing nets, buoys and dried starfish adorned the lobby. The rest of the establishment was to his left. It smelled like fried seafood and he loved it.
A woman who looked familiar came from behind the bar. She had dark hair which was pulled into a bun and a pretty face with green eyes that sparkled. Jeans and a t-shirt with the motel logo printed on the breast pocket completed her uniform. Her stature was small and sturdy like an athlete. Maybe she’d been a dancer or a gymnast at one time, but not any longer. Her eyes folded into crow’s feet on the corners as she smiled at him.
“Just you tonight, hon?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Are you hungry or just here for the bar?”
“A little of both.”
“All right then. There’s not much of a view after the sun goes down. How about I put you up here where I can keep an eye on you?” she said with a wink. A mischievous, Santa Claus wink.
“Fine with me,” he said.
“It’s not actually you I’m worried about, hon. It’s this rabble over here.” She motioned toward two men who sat at the bar nursing beers. One of them reminded him of a guy he’d gone to high school with, but he couldn’t place the name.
“Easy, Robyn,” the familiar man said. “You’d shut the doors if it wasn’t for our bar tabs.”
Robyn. The name when added to the face also struck a familiar chord.
“Tabs don’t pay the light bill, cash does,” she said. She stopped at a table set for two just past the end of the bar, waited for Rusty to sit and handed him a menu.
“What’s on draft?” he asked.
“Miller Light. Bud…” she began.
“Miller is fine.” He flipped into the menu and found what he wanted on the first page. “And if you don’t mind, the Fried Shrimp Feast.”
“Well, okay then. Makes my job easy. I’ll get your beer and some bread. Back in a jiff.”
He smiled at her and looked to the bar. Both men watched him. There might have been a bit of territoriality in their gazes, like a curious pair of wolves. Don’t get too comfortable with our Robyn, the looks said.
The younger one nodded and Rusty nodded back. Blonde curly hair and a clean-shaven baby face. He was tan and had strong, but thin arms poking out of his sleeveless shirt.
A construction worker maybe? Definitely a surfer. I should get a weather update.
Robyn finished entering his order into the bar’s computer and ducked back into the kitchen.
Rusty stood up and walked to the back. The outside walls of the restaurant were mostly glass. He remembered when he was a child and his parents would take him there he always wanted to sit near those windows and watch the birds. Those birds were seagulls and pelicans when he was little. The pelicans would glide in formation, skimming—sometimes actually touching the water with their wingtips. When he was older—a teenager—watching the birds was code for gawking at bikini-clad tourist girls.
“I’ll just put this right here, hon. You holler if you need anything else,” he heard Robyn say. He looked back just long enough to acknowledge her, then watched out the window, finding the lighthouse on the island just off the coast. For another moment, that feeling of home came back. Like homesickness, but in reverse. He was back home, and he was torn.
I’m a city boy, have been for years. Shit, I didn’t even know I missed this place until now. I shouldn’t have come.
Back at the table, he gripped the sweating glass and swallowed half of his beer. It felt good on his throat. He ate a hushpuppy from a basket of a half dozen and washed it down with another large swallow of beer. The men at the bar laughed out loud at something spoken between them. At Rusty’s expense? He didn’t care. There were fresh hushpuppies and cold beer. Whatever the joke was, it was all right with him. Rusty flagged Robyn down for another beer and she brought it with a grin. Her smile felt genuine, like an old pair of jeans. It just fit her face and it made him feel comfortable.
“You here for the reunion, Russ?” she said.
She’d called him by his name. It didn’t dawn on him right away. He nodded. He nodded and something on her face gave away the mystery. A quirk or a gleam in her eye. He was back in high school and sitting in English class for just a second.
Robyn Scott.
That’s who she was. She was a blonde in school, but the face looked the same. They hadn’t been close—not even friends, really, but they had shared some classes. Suddenly he felt embarrassed.
“Robyn. I’m so sorry. It’s been a really long day and I was having a tough time placing you. Twen…”
“Don’t say it, hon. Don’t I know how long it’s been.”
He held up his beer and nodded with a chuckle. Then he took a drink.
“You know what?” Robyn said. “This deserves a drink. You remember Thomas as well, don’t you?” She looked to the bar. The younger man squinted a moment, recognition blooming, and then grinned ear to ear.
“Holy shit,” he said and strummed an air guitar. “Rusty Clemmons. Strings, man, how you been?”
The older man at the bar sipped his beer and watched, unimpressed. Rusty knew the younger man’s face, but couldn’t place a name. He walked to the bar and held out a hand to shake.
“I know you don’t remember me, man. It’s cool. I was a freshman when you were a senior, but I’ll never forget that talent show. Some wicked playing. You inspired me to pick up the guitar.”
“Really?” Rusty asked.
“Yep. Of course I put it right back down again, but at least you inspired me to pick it up.”
The four laughed.
“Thomas Bledsoe,” the younger man said and the handshake broke.
To Rusty, the name didn’t ring a bell either, but the face, he knew. Bledsoe was a family name around that part of the world. They had owned a fleet of fishing boats or something back in the eighties.
Robyn lined up four shot glasses and filled them with tequila. “Drink up, boys. It’s go
ing to be one helluva week.” Each of them tossed back their drink. Afterward, there was a strained silence lasting a full minute.
Rusty finally nudged the older man. “Rusty Clemmons,” he said.
The man looked at him, at Thomas, Robyn and finally back at Rusty. He wore filthy bib overalls and a dirty white t-shirt that might have said Metallica or Megadeth on it. The lettering was mostly obscured by denim. His work boots were black and horribly scuffed. Thick black hair—graying on the fringes—grew on his head and curly sideburns crawled down his cheeks into a full beard. His nose was prominent and wide and his eyes were cold blue, but kind.
“Folks around here call me Shrimp,” he said. “Since you’re from ‘round here, I guess you should do the same.” There was no joy in his words, none of the slight celebration the other three felt. They were just words.
“Shrimp?” Rusty asked.
“Yup. The food you about to eat come from my boat. So I get drunk here instead of by myself. Hate the smell of the ocean, the smell of them damned shrimp and fish and the whole vile lot.”
“Don’t pay him any mind, Russ. Shrimp’s just as grumpy as the day he was born,” Robyn said.
“Order!” was shouted from the kitchen.
Robyn tapped the bar. “I’ll be right back, Russ.”
He smiled and widened his eyes, unsure of what to say but glad his food was coming out. It would give him a reason to leave the awkward conversation, if that’s what they’d been having. Robyn appeared with a pair of plates and set them on the table in front of him. One was piled with fried shrimp and a baked potato. The other was smaller and held a heaping mound of cole slaw.
“Looks great,” he said.
“Don’t have seafood where you’re living? Where are you living?” she said.
“Chicago. Sure, plenty of seafood, but most of it is expensive and snobby. Or it’s frozen. Hell some places in the Midwest call catfish seafood.”
“Yikes,” she said. “Sounds like some educatin’ is in order.” Her smile was infectious.
“I know. I’ve been looking forward to this the whole drive,” Rusty said.
“You drove here from Chicago? That’s a haul,” Thomas said.
Rusty popped a shrimp into his mouth and grinned. “Yep. My car broke down about fifteen minutes outside of town. It’s sitting over at NAPA.”
“Hey, at least it’s here. Bill Shockley will take care of you tomorrow. He always seems to find the right part. There’s a mechanic a block up from his place if you can’t fix it yourself,” Thomas said.
“I can fix it. Had that car a long time,” Rusty said and popped another shrimp in his mouth, then followed it with a fork full of coleslaw and a swallow of beer. The flavors made him grin in spite of himself.
“Are you staying in town?” Robyn asked.
“Right next door,” he said, beginning to feel the welcome buzz of alcohol.
“At the Admiral?”
He nodded and hummed a positive response while he chewed. Robin wiped the bar top as they talked. “Well then, you met my daughter, Kelly. She’s working over there tonight.”
“That’s your daughter? You’re much too young to be that woman’s mother.”
Robyn smiled and patted Rusty on the hand. “Flattery will get you just about anything you want.” She winked. It was a flirty wink, not slutty, just playful. He wiped his mouth with a grease-stained paper napkin and blushed a little, although he was sure she couldn’t tell through his sunburn. “I’ll get you another beer,” she said and dashed away.
She’s adorable. She is just adorable. Adorable and…and what, Russ? Has anyone called me Russ since high school? Did anyone ever call me…Tanya, pronounced like can ya? She called me Russ.
Rusty Clemmons had thought about Tanya Ellis more than he had thought about anyone in his entire life. She’d gone to the prom with him. She’d been his first girlfriend, his first blow job, his first honest-to-Christ sex. When he left town and joined the marines, he said he would come back for her, and he would have if she hadn’t moved on. If she hadn’t found another man and had a baby at nineteen.
Rusty served his four years and moved to Chicago. He wanted big city, not small town. He wanted nothing to do with Tanya pronounced like can ya and knew if he ever went home, he might cause some trouble, might start something he couldn’t finish and end up in jail for killing the asshole who stole her away. She was on his mind often, even there, twenty years later with a pretty waitress who was feeding him alcohol and winking at him. Tanya was the whole reason he jumped into The Bat and drove eight hundred miles. She was the catalyst behind the daydream where he saw himself running into Miss Ellis and having the best sex he’d had in his life. The same one in which he carried her back to the great city of Chicago and they pumped out some perfect kids. He would never admit the fact to anyone, but it was still a fact.
Robyn returned with his beer and sat across from him, full of questions. “You married?” “Dating?” “Kids?” “What do you do for a living?” “What was the marine corps like?” and on and on. He batted answers back at her while Thomas and Shrimp argued pro football, then college football, and then college basketball.
“Say, you have an older sister, right? How is she doing?”
Rusty coughed on the beer he was swallowing. He hadn’t expected to think about Laura. Not that she wasn’t on his mind often, but at that moment, he hadn’t expected her face to pop into his head. Laura was killed in a car wreck in town the summer after her senior year. Rusty was between his sophomore and junior years at the time. He coughed again as some of the beer went down the wrong way. Not enough to choke him, but enough to sting a little.
“Laura was killed just after she graduated high school. A drunk driver ran her and her boyfriend off the road out by the…” he started.
Rusty wondered if the Gates House—the old log cabin—was still there. It wasn’t the house that had bothered him, but there was always something off about the Gates woman. Something the kids in town felt even though their parents said you’re imagining things, she’s just an old woman or his favorite from the hypocritical masses, mind your business.
Robyn finished his sentence. “The Gates place. I remember that. That was her? Jesus, I’m so sorry to bring it up.”
Rusty swallowed some of his beer to ease the burn in throat. “It’s fine, really. It was a long time ago.”
They sat in silence for a minute while Shrimp and Thomas finished their game of cards on the bar.
“You’re a filthy cheat,” Shrimp said.
“Easy, old guy. You’re just mad because the next round is on you.”
“Bah,” Shrimp said and then dropped a ten dollar bill on the bar. “Another pitcher here, kid.”
“Just a sec, hon,” Robyn said, still looking at Rusty. That earned another “Bah!” from the bar. She started to stand and stopped. “Russ…What was her boyfriend’s name? Did he survive?”
“Jackson. Everett Jackson,” he said. “He survived. I hated him for a long time back then. I hated a lot of people back then. If it wasn’t for Tanya, I might have done something…well, things might have ended up in quite a different way, that’s all.”
“Oh, I remember Tanya. She’s back in town, too, you know. Divorced. Her kids are grown and moved out. She’s selling real estate or something.”
On the surface, he shrugged as if the news was no big deal, but he felt a twinge in his chest. Was it nerves, anxiety, lust, love? He couldn’t pinpoint it. It was probably just heartburn. That or it was his daydream-self getting a mystical hard-on for a woman he hadn’t seen in two decades. It had taken years of life therapy to get past her and what she had done to him.
“I need more than just a voice on the phone, Russ. I need someone who is here in the flesh,” Tanya had said. It was after 10:00 pm on a Wednesday night. He’d called her from base with the news he’d been granted a ninety-sixer—four whole days off. He’d called her to say he was flying in to surprise her with all the
money he’d saved. He was going to ask if she wanted to move out there with him and she had shit in his bowl of ice cream.
“You’re a selfish bitch,” he had replied.
It had taken him years to be able to admit he was okay with her and her fucking needs. They were so young. He was a marine. He was constantly busy, but he still thought about her often. She was eighteen. She had nothing but free time. He often wondered if she’d thought about him at all. Three months after the phone call, she was pregnant. Rusty found out from his mother.
Robyn’s hand was on his wrist and for a moment he wasn’t sure if he hadn’t been speaking the flashback out loud. Robyn was staring at him with the look of a mom whose child had just scraped their knee and was crying.
“Huh,” he said.
“Go on,” she said.
“Anyway, that’s all part of why I joined the Corps. I couldn’t get over it. I wanted to kill and I wanted to destroy stuff. I might have destroyed myself.”
“And the corps saved you?” she said.
“Hardly. But it did take my mind off of things. It gave me perspective…a much bigger perspective than I ever got living here in this little armpit.”
“This armpit is my home,” she said.
“I know. I’m sorry. To tell the truth, now that I’m back, I realize I sort of missed this place.”
She smiled again, a smile that said it was all right. “Jack Everett is the minister over at the Methodist Church on Nash Street now. Did you know that?” Robyn asked.
“I didn’t. My parents went to that church. Maybe I should go talk to him while I’m here and let him know I’m not holding a grudge anymore. I said some pretty terrible things to him back then. It wasn’t his fault.”
“That would be real nice,” Robyn said. She gave a quick smile, the one that made her look younger, and then went off to fetch Shrimp’s pitcher.
Eventually, Rusty finished his meal and moved to the bar with the other men. Robyn cleaned his table and flipped the letters of the OPEN sign around so it read NOPE.
Three of the four of them played cards into the night on one of the round family-sized tables. Rusty was a happy drunk and Thomas proved to be full of jokes. Robyn poured drinks whenever they asked for them and laughed along with the boys. Shrimp slept with his head on folded arms at the bar.
At the end of the night, Rusty’s sides hurt from laughter. His heart felt good, his stomach was full and his mind swam with a half dozen pints of beer. He hugged Robyn at the door as she locked up and although it was quick, her body felt good against his.
“See you around?” he asked.
“You can count on it,” she said.
He stumbled once, heading up the walk to room number seven. Robyn waved as she walked into the lobby to see her daughter. He waved back and his daydream-self wondered if they might have spent the night together and what she looked like underneath those clothes. Tanya like can ya be damned.
She’s adorable. She’s…
His mind trailed off as the lobby door shut and Robyn disappeared, at least for the evening. Rusty concentrated on getting the keycard into the electronic lock that was keeping him from his bed. He was glad to be in Smithville and for the first time, he was glad he decided to go back for the reunion. It felt almost like home. Home, with something just a frog’s hair off, like a week-old cat box someone tried to dummy up with Febreze.