He sipped his beer. The club music got louder, the front door probably open around the corner. He could hear one or two men laughing. Car or truck doors slamming, engines starting up. In the kitchen an old man pulled from the machine a dripping and steaming rack of glasses. Another man stepped into view. He was dressed in a fry cook uniform, a bottle of beer in one hand, an apron in the other. He stopped the dishwasher and started pointing here and there, giving some kind of instruction. Then he turned and dropped his apron in a bucket and stepped outside. He rested his beer on the lid of the Dumpster and lit up. He had a wide body and hardly any hair left. Probably AJ’s old man’s age, wherever he was. Whoever he was. Even now, when he’d sit with Mama out on her small concrete patio overlooking the walled lawn of bahia grass and her Virgin Mary statue and the goldfish pond nobody sat around, she still never told him.
“That old question again?” she’d say. “Just a ten-day mistake, honey. I’ve told you that. Eddie raised you. Think of him.”
Eddie. Skinny, drunk, no-’count Eddie.
The cook finished off his beer and tossed the empty into the Dumpster. They stopped serving food at midnight. Wouldn’t be long now.
The first thing that pulled him to Marianne was not her hips and hair, that sweet trusting face, but the music she’d moved to: “I’m Not in Love.” It was big on the oldies radio when he was a kid working for Eddie, and seeing her dance to it made him think of the younger AJ, sad all the time. Hungry for girls who never seemed to see he was there. This half-naked woman smiling at him the whole damn song long. And it was like watching what he’d wished for back then come for him now, and he felt sure he loved her even before she’d finished her act and changed her clothes and made her way to his table.
The fry cook said something through the screen to the old man, then turned and walked into the row of parked cars, climbing into a new Chevy sedan. AJ watched him back up, his headlights sweeping the other cars and AJ’s truck and the mangroves before he disappeared around the corner of the club. Maybe he saw him for a second. Maybe he didn’t. AJ didn’t care; he wanted to be seen. By his old man he’d never met. By Marianne in some honest light. Would she still look at him like he was a good man? Would his daddy? What would he see if he ever saw him anyway?
JEAN’S FOOT PRESSED hard onto the brake pedal, her car jerking to a stop at the entrance to a parking lot full of men. Her headlights shone on them all. Young ones, older ones. Some leaning against the hoods of their cars or trucks, others milling about in twos or threes in the center of the crushed-shell lot, a few turning to squint into the glare of her headlights. Two men on motorcycles rumbled up to her left, one of them—his face a mask of whiskers and drunkenness—peered in at her like she might be an item for sale. A large invisible hand was pushing against her chest and she had to take short breaths. Sweat broke out across her forehead and the back of her neck, the palms of her hands gripping the wheel, and she couldn’t, she just couldn’t.
She put the Caddy in reverse and backed away into the blare of a horn, the swerve of bright lights, angry shouting from a young man in a convertible already speeding south, the motorcycles too. She was gulping air, her eyes burned with tears, and she despised herself for driving away but still she couldn’t breathe. She pressed both window buttons to let in more air but what came rushing in was a warm blast of humidity smelling of engine exhaust and street dirt and it whipped her hair.
She drove faster. She tried breathing through her nose. The windows rolled shut and she didn’t remember making them do that. She turned up the radio but now there was no jazz, just the voice of the disc jockey, low and melodious, and she made herself listen to it, not the words, just their sound—sonorous, rooted in great knowledge and articulation, a voice of reason in an unreasonable world.
The weight against her chest began to lighten and she was able to get a noseful of air all the way down into her lungs. The man’s voice said contralto and Hampton. It said many more things, but it was the sound she heard, not the words. Everything is as it should be, it seemed to say. This is how it was and this is how it will be. You simply need to listen, dear listener. Sit and do nothing.
AJ STOOD PISSING against the trees. He was drunk and tired and when he shook himself off with his good hand he dripped onto his pants and couldn’t get the zipper up. One girl had left already. A short Chinese he never did like. She had stubby legs, flat breasts, and dull eyes. He’d sat behind the wheel and watched her drive away in her Camry. So many new cars. All the lying whores driving nice rides because of sorry sonsabitches like him. Now he stood in the black shadows of the mangroves. He could hear the music coming from inside, some country song, and he knew that girl in the white cowboy hat and boots was up there now. And who was Marianne dancing for?
Inside the Puma’s kitchen the old man was gone, but before he’d left he mopped up, his back narrow and humped-looking. Made AJ think of Mama’s back, how hunched over she’d become and he knew it and it wouldn’t be long till he lost her and then the only family he had, the only blood, as far as he knew, would be Cole.
That’s something Marianne should know. That’s the kind of thing that’d make her sweet eyes well up for him, for sure, though it wasn’t right to think of cashing in on his own loss like that. It felt like bad luck even thinking that way. He and Deena, sitting out back of their house, sometimes holding hands, looking up at the constellations neither of them could name. And those tears she’d cried tonight. Cole’s sleeping face. What was his daddy doing out here waiting for the woman who’d scorned him? Get your ass into your truck and back to Mama’s ’cause you’re gonna have to get into your work clothes before morning, aren’t you? Caporelli going to believe your tale in your club clothes?
He’d have to slice the compressor hose to drop the bucket. Be careful and cut the rubber near the fittings where it was already worn, make it look like a natural rip because Caporelli Sr. was such a cheap sonofabitch, putting all his profit into his golf course house on Longboat Key instead of back into the business, letting his equipment go to shit. But now it occurred to AJ that maybe he was thinking too low. Not just worker’s comp and a few weeks off. Instead he should sue him. Sue him for faulty equipment and unsafe work conditions. Really set himself up. Fifty, a hundred grand, maybe more.
He wanted another beer. He could hear muted hoots and hollers inside, the bass and drums thumping like some old and world-weary heartbeat.
SHE SMELLS SOAP bubbles and old food and she’s standing on a wet floor. It’s warm and a little slippery and she remembers when the sun was still in the sky and she was sleepy on Mama’s shoulder and her neck was sweaty and Mama carried her away from the green door she sees now on the other end of the kitchen. She wants her backpack and her books and flip-flops but she doesn’t want to go where the big man is ’cause Mama can come back and get them later. We’ll get it later. We’ll do that later. Let’s do that later. Mama and Jean always saying that.
She walks over the wet floor, touches her fingers to the big silver machine. It’s smooth and hot and she pulls her fingers back. She sees a light over the door out there, so many bugs flying around it. Like the lights on over their porch when Mama used to wake her up on Jean’s couch and carry her upstairs to their house. The bugs flying. All their wings flapping. Like Stellaluna’s who fell into the dark woods anyway because she was a baby. And she’s okay. Nice birds found her.
She stands at the screen, presses her fingers against the tiny metal holes and pushes the door open. But it smells bad outside and she can hear all the bugs against the light, flying away then against it like they want to get inside but they can’t get inside. She stays in, lets the door fall shut and stays in the kitchen, thinks she’s going to cry again, forgets when she stopped crying. Cars are outside past all the bugs and the bad smell. Their car. With her car seat in it and her two old sippy cups on the floor. A picture of her and Mama hanging from the mirror and she liked when they took that picture. At the store with the dark box they
could sit in and Mama put a dollar bill in the wall. Before Jean’s house when they lived in the motel with the big TV you could see from their bed and Mama’s warm skin next to hers.
COLE WAS CRYING.
AJ could hear him clearly through all the nightnoise: the bass-heavy music thumping through the club walls, cars pulling fast in and out of the lot, the ornery hollering of drunks from inside—through it all came the high wail of his boy. And there, under a lit swarm of mosquitoes and moths and gnats, a crying little girl stood on the other side of the kitchen’s screen to the Puma Club for Whores. It was such the last damn thing he ever expected to see it took him a second or two to believe it. The club music thumped louder, men roaring. Around front a car or truck spun shells back out onto the boulevard, some drunk sonofabitch laughing.
Who would bring their child into a night like this?
He walked quickly, stepping over crushed shells, lowering his hurt hand so he wouldn’t scare her.
“Hey there, little one. Hey.”
She stepped back.
“It’s okay, honey. Where’s your mama? Where’s your mama at?” He squatted on the concrete stoop, the air rank with the smells from the Dumpster—rotted meat and greased fish. He could see just under the door’s center rail that she was tiny—three years old tops, standing there barefoot on the mop-streaked floor, steam still seeping from the industrial dishwasher next to her.
“Where’s your mama, honey?”
She nodded and began to cry again, softer this time. He stood, his wrist and lower arm feeling shredded. He squeezed the handle and pulled the door open just enough to lean in. “Where’s your mama, hon?”
“Mama?” Her eyes all round now, rimmed with tears, looking up at him like he knew her mama and could take her to her. What if he was some sick sonofabitch about kids? What in hell was she doing a wall away from a nest of lying whores and a gang of drunks shouting out for pussy in the dark?
“Mama?” The young thing was pointing through the screen at the night behind him. Was she out here? One of the waitresses who’d already gone?
No. He slipped all the way inside. She stayed where she was, looking straight up at him, her cheeks wet and streaked. Her hair was the color of Cole’s. She had on pink pajamas and her lower lip started quivering.
His arm ached. He squatted and rested it across his knee. The music was loud even back here, electric guitar chords slicing through his head.
She was saying something to him, her eyes scared but trusting him a little bit. He couldn’t hear her, cupped his good hand behind his ear. “What, sweetie?”
She pointed. “Our car. Our red car.”
“Is your mama in the car?”
She nodded again, her lips parted, her hair brushing her pink-covered shoulder.
“You want to show me?” He had to say it louder than the music. His mouth was dry and a headache was coming on. He should get his ass out of here back to Bradenton, get ready for tomorrow’s ditch on Lido Key, but how in hell could he leave this one here alone? How could anyone?
And to see her step toward him and hold out her hand was terror itself. Was Cole this dumb about strangers, too? Her hand was warm and disappeared completely inside his. Something caught between his chest and throat, something thick and shot through with grief, the flesh-memory of Cole’s little fingers. How long since he’d held them? He should stop and explain to her she shouldn’t be talking to him at all, she should turn and run away. But to where? The fucking club? Jesus.
He pushed open the screen door with his boot toe, thought of her bare feet, how he was going to have to carry her.
“Bugs.” She was pointing up at them all, flapping and buzzing and dodging at the light. She pulled back on his hand, looked scared again.
“Want me to carry you?”
She nodded slow, like she wasn’t sure she did or not. He squatted and scooped her up, her small bottom resting on his forearm, her arm around his neck, though she was leaning away from him like he smelled bad.
“Just show me where she’s at, okay?”
“Huh-huh.”
Her mother wasn’t in any car, he knew that. But he might be able to find out who she was.
“There. There it is!”
The little one’s hair was partly in his face. It itched but he didn’t want her to move. It smelled like watermelon and he followed her outstretched and pointing arm, could hear the relief and excitement in her voice, and he hadn’t felt this needed in a long time. Even since before Deena kicked him out. Even before then.
“That’s mama’s car. My car.”
“What’s your name, sweetie?”
“Franny.”
“We’ll take a look, Franny.”
It was a maroon Sable. In the kitchen’s light he could see there was no one in the front or back, though.
“Your mama’s not there, hon.”
“Mama still inside?”
Her voice broke a bit and he didn’t know if she meant the car or the Puma. He rested her on the hood. His arm was pounding again. In the shadowed light the little girl’s eyes filled and if her mama was here right now it’d be hard not to slap her across her slutty face. “What’s your mama’s name, Franny?”
“I’m Franny.”
“That’s right. What’s your mama’s name?”
“Um, do you know where Mama is?”
AJ cupped his hands over the glass of the driver’s window. An empty Styrofoam coffee cup lay in the passenger seat. Hanging from the rearview mirror was a picture in a seashell frame. “Stay right there, hon. I don’t want you falling off.”
A car seat was strapped in the back. A flattened cardboard Slush Puppie cup lay next to it but there wasn’t anything on the floors or seat, and Deena’s Corolla was a shithouse compared to this, Cole’s books and broken McDonald’s toys and old Popsicle sticks everywhere. This one, a neat whore.
From here he could just barely see who was in the picture up front, two people. One big, one small. He glanced over at the tiny girl sitting on the hood. She rubbed one eye and yawned. Now with each heartbeat his lower arm and hand pulsed out an ache that rippled up to his head. He wanted more whiskey, a handful of pain pills, a few hours’ sleep before putting it to Caporelli. For a second he saw himself carrying the child back to the kitchen and leaving her there before he drove off to do what he had to. But he couldn’t. The one and only thing that had kept him sleeping away from Cole all these months wasn’t his wife’s paper from the court but knowing his boy was in a concrete house way out where nobody went, that he was safe for a little while even without him.
“Do you know my mama?”
“Don’t think so.” He pressed his wrist to his shoulder and with his good hand tried the driver’s door. It opened.
Shit.
Behind him, back through two skimpy walls, the crowd was louder than it would get all night, the final parade of bodies up onstage selling T-shirts. He leaned in, caught that smell that somebody else’s car has, the one that’s not yours, this one smelling like suntan lotion and vinyl. He plucked the picture off its string, straightened back up, studied it.
“That’s mine.”
“I know it, hon. I’ll put it back.” He held it over the roof of the Sable till the bug-drawing light behind him shone on it. It was one of those photo booth pictures and at first he didn’t quite recognize her sitting there in a sleeveless sundress, her daughter on her lap, smiling openly into the camera. Then he did: Spring. One of the coldest bitches at the Puma. She had a fine body she knew how to make you hungry for, showing you just enough in her stage act you’d pay to get her alone in the VIP, which he’d done early on. She’d sat him down and danced and stripped for him, hardly ever looking away from his eyes, though it’d been like staring at somebody on the TV and getting nothing back. She’d show you her tits and her bush and her ass, but that’s it. Nothing like Marianne, who hadn’t learned how to do that yet, close some kind of steel shutters behind her eyelids that kept you from seeing
her. But this Spring, she was a pro. Moving between the tables with her chin up like he and all the rest were beneath her. When he’d given her the money she took it and smiled like she meant it, but he’d felt like a fool.
“That’s me and my mama.”
“Yep.” He dropped the photo on the driver’s seat and shut the door. He looked over at this Franny, a strand of her curly hair hanging over one eye, her narrow shoulders slumped, staring back at him the way dogs sometimes do, like they think you’ve got a plan and whatever it is they’ll follow you. But she looked scared too, her shadowed face all still, waiting.
He rested his arm on the roof. He felt woozy, needed something for it quick. “Your mama’s in there. You better go on back inside.”
She kept her eyes on him and shook her head. First slow, then fast, her hair swinging, her lower lip protruding.
“Don’t you want to see her? I know your mama. I know she’s in there.”
Behind him, around the corner of the club, came men’s voices, some drunk and loud, others quieter, more controlled, off to go do something. A few engines started up. A radio blared a metal tune he’d always hated and somebody was talking about shaved cunt, how he was sick to death of shaved cunt. The little girl was crying. AJ could only shake his head and with his good arm lift her up once more. She squeezed his neck tight and wasn’t letting go. He could feel her small heart jumping in her rib cage. What was he going to do? Go back in there and say he found her when he wasn’t even s’posed to be anywhere near here?
Then again it was late and it wouldn’t be too long before her piece-of-shit mother came back out. He could put the girl in her car and wait with her. And what? Be sitting with a child in a car that wasn’t even his when the hired beef finally came out to drive home? Do all this for a bitch queen who didn’t even goddamn deserve his help in this way? Meantime his arm needed some serious painkilling right now, painkilling that wouldn’t hurt his chances for getting up early.