The Zodiac Bar and Grill
by
HL Montgomery
Copyright © 2001, Helen L. Montgomery
This book is offered for free and as such, may be shared freely as long as writing credit and contact information are left intact. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidences are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead or existing in some weird half-life, is entirely coincidental.
WELCOME TO THE ZODIAC
The Zodiac Bar and Grill sat empty on a lonely stretch of highway, its once lively facade streaked with the grime of abandonment and neglect.
Overhead, the faded sign that bore its name creaked lifelessly in the ceaseless plains wind. Inside, tables and chairs lay overturned on the floor, collecting dust. An old jukebox sat on one side of a dance floor, its rainbow-hued front cracked and lightless. Here and there, small rodents darted through dark corners foraging for remnants of food while a white marker board, propped on a tripod just inside the front door, announced Fried Chicken, Mashed Potatoes and Garden Peas as the last meal to have been served.
The silent afternoon dragged on until the sun fell below the western horizon, pulling night along behind it. For one frozen instant, the world hung suspended in the twilight void between night and day. The plains wind ceased. The air fell still.
Lights flickered on inside the old Zodiac. Neon coughed, then hummed to life in vibrant tubes of color. A subtle blue glow whoofed in the darkened kitchen as the grill fired to life, licking spider webs and mouse droppings from the rack with bright yellow tongues of flame.
With a dusty cough and a flicker of nacreous light behind its vibrant plastic cover, the jukebox revved up to speed into a song that had last been silenced mid-note. Light and sound splashed the interior of the Zodiac from one end to the other. From deep inside the recesses of the kitchen, a jolly voice cried:
“Company’s coming! Let’s get cooking!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bob Clayborn, known affectionately around the office as “Mr. Manly,” rolled his comfortably cushioned office chair back from the mahogany conference table and rose to his feet. The three business men seated with him followed suit, shaking hands all around. Bob modestly lowered his eyes, straightening the lapels of his expensive Evan-Picone jacket as his three associates congratulated him warmly on his latest acquisition.
Notepad and pen in hand, Brandi, the corporate secretary, beamed adoringly at him, touching her chin to her shoulder in a gesture of purely seductive flirtation. He returned her smile, a star glinting off his perfectly white teeth as if he were the centerpiece of a toothpaste commercial.
Lifting an eyebrow at her, Bob stroked his jaw as Brandi wiggled over to cling possessively to his arm, her smile shining. He ran his free hand over his hair, smoothing the distinguished gray just above his ears. Later, he’d take her for a spin in his new red convertible. He envisioned the wind making free with her golden blonde tresses, the way he would soon be making free with her luscious, melon-sized-
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said for the last thirty miles, have you?”
Clarisse Clayborn’s shrill voice exploded Bob’s daydream like a killer whale torpedoing a shark. He started guiltily.
“What? Why, yes, dear, I—”
“‘Yes, dear?’ Yes, you haven’t heard a word I’ve said for the last thirty miles?”
“Yes. No. I mean, yes, I—I heard you…dear.”
Panic welled as Bob realized he didn’t have a clue what his wife had been saying.
“Then what did I say, hm? Tell me that. You sit there like a wart on a frog’s rump when I’ve asked you the same question five times.” She held up five perfectly manicured fingernails and Bob cringed, ducking his head as her voice grew even more shrill. “So if you’ve been listening to me, what did I ask you five times while your dull, insensitive mind was plodding along a million miles away?”
Clarisse’s voice, oh, so familiar after twenty years of marriage, drew the whip yet another time across his soul. Bob dug a finger inside his shirt collar and tugged at his tie, trying to loosen the choke-hold it had on his throat. He groped blindly for a response.
“I—um, believe that you were asking me where I’d like to take you and your mother for dinner.”
“Oh, that’s beautiful. Just beautiful. And why, pray tell, would I ask you a stupid question like that, when I’d only get a stupid answer like…like Whopperville, or Sir Onion Ring? Do you think I’m stupid? Is that it?”
Flustered, Bob glanced timidly at his wife. Clarisse had more in common with a killer whale than her ability to ram helpless daydreams. She was also as big as one. She sat in the passenger seat of the mini-van with her butt overflowing the sides like bread dough swelling over the rim of a bowl too small to contain it. Garish red lipstick on pouty lips emphasized the size of her mouth, which snarled as she addressed him again.
“I said, do you think I’m stupid?”
Bob felt the nightmare that was his life slip sideways.
“No, dear, I really-”
“Hmph. Mama warned me,” she said, patting her teased, lifeless hair. “I don’t know how many times Mama said to me ‘Clarisse, you can do better than a mouse for a husband. You’ll rue the day you marry that little toad!’ And she was right. My mama was right. You’ve amounted to nothing-nothing at all, do you hear me? In spite of all my attempts to encourage you to go after promotions, pay increases-why, you haven’t even been able to-”
Bob shuddered as her crocodile tears commenced to flow.
“-give my Mama the grandchild she deserves. Oh, Mama, you were right, and now here I am trapped in a dull marriage with a worthless man who can’t even take us out to eat more than once a week!”
Bob’s spine shriveled and he hunched in on himself, thrusting his shoulders up to his ears defensively while Clarisse snorted snot and rummaged through her oversized purse for a hanky. She whipped out one as lacy and delicate as the undergarments his imaginary Brandi would have been wearing and daubed daintily at her eyes. Heavy layers of electric blue eye shadow and midnight black mascara had begun to run with the tears, etching dirty black gullies through her pancake makeup.
“Yes, dear,” he mumbled, hoping she wouldn’t notice, frightened that she would, and not even knowing whether or not a response was appropriate.
Turning off the faucet, Clarisse tucked the hanky back into her purse and pulled out a compact, spackling over the damage.
“I honestly don’t understand why you’re so cruel to me,” she said, sniffling. “Are you going to continue to treat me like this when Mama comes to live with us?”
Stunned, Bob could only gape speechlessly at his wife as sick fingers of dread clutched his stomach.
Louise Fletcher was as much of a terror as her only child: a scrawny, thin-necked woman with hair the color of Grecian-formula and a severe expression permanently etched on her face. Dinner one night a week was all he could endure of the two of them together. Clarisse goaded endlessly while Louise, her head cheerleader, spurred her daughter on to greater heights of ridicule. They tag-teamed against the one ounce of spirit he had left as if they knew it was there and were utterly determined to root it out and destroy it.
Clarisse’s pocketbook snapped shut.
“You’re ignoring me again, Bob.”
“Y-y-your mother’s coming to li-li-li-”
“You stuttering dolt. Yes, Mama’s coming to live with us. That’s what I’ve been telling you for half an hour.”
“But, honey, your mother-”
“Mama’s getting old, Bob. She’s nearly eighty. She shouldn’t
be living in that house all alone.”
“Sh-she’s only seventy, Clarisse, and she gets along just fine.”
“She’s seventy going on eighty. What if she were to fall, break her hip? What would happen to her then? She’d die, that’s what. Do you want her to die?”
Bob thought he’d prefer to hold that pleasure for himself.
“No, dear, of course not-”
“Then it’s settled. We’ll tell her tonight at dinner. She’ll be perfectly comfortable in the spare room. We’ll move in whatever furnishings of hers we can. It may seem a little crowded at first, but we’ll adjust.”
Numb with shock, Bob imagined the bloated horror his life would become, living with both Louise and Clarisse. Louise was hard of hearing, and kept the volume on her television set to a yammering level comfortable to her. Loud as it was, it still wasn’t loud enough to drown out the sound of their endless harping, harping, harping-
“What’s that ahead? What’s causing that glow?” said Clarisse.
Grateful for the diversion, Bob squinted at the zircon glow in the distance. The only thing that came to mind was the old bar and grill. It had been abandoned for years, though, ever since the state had put through a new highway, leaving the few businesses along it to wither and die as stores and shopping malls blossomed along the new interstate. Bob hadn’t noticed any sign of refurbishment going on anywhere along this road, much less at the Zodiac. Surely he would have noticed such a thing, especially as they drove this way on their weekly trek to take Mother Fletcher out to dinner.
“I-I believe that’s the Zodiac, dear,” he said falteringly.
“Why, I believe your right for a change,” said Clarisse. “It must have opened under new management.”
Encouraged, Bob dared a response.
“I hardly see how they could have reopened it in a week, dear, the Zodiac-”
“Well, obviously they have, dummy. Look at the way it’s lit up! Are you blind?”
Bob wasn’t blind, and as they drove closer, he could see that the Zodiac was indeed lit up like a neon lollipop. But for all the light, the sparkle, and the glitter, Bob didn’t see a single car in the parking lot.
“Looks like they’re doing a booming business,” said Clarisse. “Pull in and let’s check it out.”
Bob looked stupidly at his wife.
“Wh-wh-what do you mean, a booming business?”
Clarisse regarded him as if he were a despicable little bug.
“Well, just look at all the cars and people! Pull over, I said, and let’s check it out.”
Bob gulped, his throat suddenly dry as he stared, dumbfounded, at his wife.
“NOW, Bob, before we pass it!”
Bob hit the turn signal and the brake and pulled off the road into the deserted parking lot. Carefully, so as not to hit any of the cars or people that Clarisse apparently thought she saw. He angled into a parking spot and stopped.
For all the improbability of it, the Zodiac did seem to have been refurbished. The paint was new, the chrome sparkled, and the cracked front window had been replaced with glass that gleamed like crystal. Inside, floors gleamed and the rainbow-bright jukebox belted out a sweet little dance tune.
Bob read the dinner menu on the white marker board just inside of the front door. Tonight’s special was Southern-Style Pig Pickin’ with Sweet Potatoes, Baked Beans and Cole Slaw. All you could eat for $12.95.
“Oh, Bob, dinner sounds delicious!” Clarisse was literally bouncing with excitement. “And look, they have a dance floor! You can dance with Mama and me. Won’t that be fun?”
“Y-y-you want to eat here, tonight?” Bob stammered.
“Of course, you nit!”
Clarisse opened the door to the mini-van and stuck one elephant-sized leg out. Twisting awkwardly in her seat, she snapped pudgy fingers and held out her hand.
“Give me twenty dollars, Bob. I’ll go in and save us a seat while you go get Mama.”
“You’re going to wait here while I-”
“Yes, I’m going to wait here and have a drink while you go get Mama.” Clarisse snapped her fingers impatiently. “Twenty dollars, Bob, it won’t break you.”
Bob shifted in his seat. With a perplexed sigh, he pulled his wallet from his hip pocket and handed his wife a twenty. She snatched it from him. Grunting with effort, she heaved her bulk out of the van before turning to him with one more instruction.
“Now hurry, Bob. I don’t want to be left waiting forever for you two.”
“Uh, yes dear,” Bob murmured, as Clarisse shut the car door on any further conversation.
He watched her waddle around the front of the van. The evening breeze tugged anxiously at the hem of her dress as she made her way ponderously to the door of the Zodiac, pulled it open, and sure as the world, walked inside. She stood looking around for a moment. Then she smiled and began speaking, as if someone had approached her.
Bob shifted the van into park. Leaving the engine to idle, he got out and peered hesitantly through the window at his wife.
Inside the Zodiac, Clarisse Clayborn talked and gestured around the newly refurbished Zodiac as she made her way to a table and plopped down in a chair. She picked up a menu and studied the back of it for a moment, then looked up sideways at thin air, her lips moving with words Bob had heard a thousand unchanging times.
“I believe I’ll have a Margarita. Could you bring a pitcher?”
She smiled brightly at an apparent response and folded her pudgy hands on the table, her head bobbing in time with the music from the jukebox.
Suddenly Clarisse looked up, a surprised expression on her face. Beaming with pleasure, she held her hand up as if taking hold of something, and pulled herself out of her chair. Tittering like a schoolgirl, she made her way out onto the dance floor.
Bob stared through the window at his wife and giggled nervously.
“Is she going to dance?”
It appeared that Clarisse was indeed going to dance. With a broad grin on her face, she reached out as if clasping hands with a partner and started to jitterbug. She threw her head back, laughing, twisting far and near, back and forth, twirling around her invisible partner like a carefree young girl on her first date.
Suddenly the smile faded from her face. Clarice jerked her hands back, wiping her palms on her dress as if ridding them of something filthy. Her eyes grew wide and she stiffened, trembling all over. The trembling worsened, emanating from every muscle. It grew more and more violent, until she was fairly vibrating, her jowls jiggling and her eyes so huge that Bob could see the whites around them.
Horrified, Clarisse glanced down at the dance floor. Her mouth stretched into a silent scream. Bob glanced down at the floor, too, and could see traceries of bluish-white lightning flickering just beneath the gleaming wax finish. like blood veins under the surface of skin.
By now Clarisse was jiggling so terribly she could scarcely keep her balance. Stiff-legged, her arms flailing wildly, she skittered across the checkerboard surface of the dance floor like a drop of cold water hitting the surface of a hot frying pan while the strange blue lightning veins pulsed and throbbed in time to the music. Her eyes bulged from their sockets and they were jiggling too, close to exploding from her head.
Bob emitted a strangled gasp as Clarisse lost all control and fell to the floor, her body jerking and twisting spastically, her tongue protruding from a mouth stretched so wide that every time she whipped her head in Bob’s direction, he could see her tonsils. Finally the song on the jukebox faded. Clarisse’s body grew still. Her eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling. Bob flicked a dry tongue over his lips, recalling a line from an old movie:
All hail Dorothy, the wicked witch is dead.
Good old Clarisse had wandered out onto the dance floor of death, and had had a major coronary.
Or something.
The lightning in the floor calmed, and the teased knot of hair on top of Clarisse’s head scrunched as if in the grip of an invisible
vise. Slowly her body began to move, as if something was tugging it. Bob watched in astonished silence as his late wife’s body slid across the dance floor and disappeared through the swinging double doors into the kitchen. A few minutes later the scent of sizzling barbecue wafted to him on the breeze, and the jukebox burst into a new song.