“You don’t have any idea where she could be, do you?” Mister Arthur said.
Now it was down to the nitty-gritty. A big old lie or not. No way to fudge. A direct question concerning her whereabouts.
“I…uh…maybe she’s in a bar somewhere.” You big old liar.
“I’m sure that’s probably true. She’s probably at the Peabody. She goes there quite a bit.” There was a long silence. A really long silence. It seemed filled with sadness even though it was so silent.
“Are you okay?” Eric said.
“I’m just worried,” Mister Arthur said to him over the phone. “I don’t know what she might do. I don’t know when she might come in. We kind of had a fight. She didn’t leave a note or anything and she hasn’t called to let me know where she is. You know there was a murder at the barbershop just across from the coffee shop I go to sometimes.”
“Oh yeah. I saw that in The Commercial,” Eric said.
“You just never know,” Mister Arthur said over the phone. “It’s a big city. Lots of people. Lots of things go on. Probably some things we don’t even want to know about.”
“I know that’s right,” Eric said.
“What are you doing?”
“Me? Aw, nothin’. I’m about ready to close.”
“What time do you close?”
“Ten.”
“What time is it now?”
“It’s about five till.”
“What are you going to do when you get off work?”
“Aw. I don’t know.” Just one damn lie after another.
“Have you got old Jada Pinkett in there with you?”
“Yessir, well, he’s out in the car. They won’t let me bring him in here. He’s asleep last time I looked.”
“Is he doing okay?”
“Jada Pinkett? Aw yeah, he’s fine. He’s old, but he’s all right.”
“Can he still breed?” Arthur asked.
Eric hated to tell him. He remembered it out by the barn. In the shade under the big mimosa tree. Some of his daddy’s buddies standing around drinking beer. Telling dirty jokes. His daddy talking about the whore that had left him and how glad he was she was gone. Eric’s mother.
“Well, nosir, he cain’t get a puppy no more I don’t reckon. He don’t seem to be able to get it up. Last time Deddy had to take his hand and kind of guide it up in there and…I don’t reckon it did no good…she never did have no puppies. Not from him.”
Puppies. There was no telling how many his daddy had drowned. Maybe hundreds. Sometimes the pit-bull boys dug or tore out of their pens and into another and got ahold of the weenie-dog girls, and made a strange, kind of reddish dog, one that was long and low and brindle striped with a big square head and a deep chest that would dig up armadillos from their dens and kill them, but you couldn’t really sell them to anybody unless they specifically wanted armadillo dogs, which, of course, a few folks here and there did. But it took dog food to raise them after six weeks on the teat. And dog food cost money. Eric knew his daddy figured correctly that it was a lot cheaper to put the ones nobody wanted in a tow sack early and throw them in a deep hole in the river. He never had done it himself, and his daddy had always said he was too soft, and sometimes, when he thought about stuff like that, he didn’t want to go back home so much. But it was his daddy. What was he supposed to do?
“Oh. I see,” Mister Arthur said, and then he brightened. “It was really something the way he caught that kitten. I was really impressed by that. Helen was, too, after she got over her scare. Helen’s…Helen’s really a good woman, Eric.”
He had to swallow hard. The shot of the open zipper had burned itself into his brain. But he couldn’t say No she’s not.
“Yessir. She’s been real nice to me.”
“Me, too,” Mister Arthur said. “We’ve been married for almost twenty years. I’m sure you can tell that she’s a good bit younger than me.”
“Well. Yessir. I noticed that. I think she’s around the age of my mama.”
“I know she married me for my money,” Mister Arthur said. “But I like to think that she does care about me.”
“Yessir. I’m sure she does.”
There was some more silence. Eric didn’t have any idea what to say and now all he wanted was to just get off the phone. Then he heard Mister Arthur clear his throat.
“Well. I was just wondering if you wanted to come by here and have a drink. I’ve got plenty of scotch, there’s some food here, too, I’m just sitting here by myself, well, not totally by myself, I mean I’ve got the cat here with me, but of course it’s not much company, being in the cage and everything, but I thought maybe you might want to come by here and have a drink and maybe a sandwich. TBS is showing Red River at eleven. John Wayne? I thought I’d sit up and watch it and see if she comes on in. I thought maybe you might want to come over and watch it with me. You could bring Jada Pinkett and I could feed him something. I’ve got some frozen hamburger I could thaw out. It’s really a good movie. Have you ever seen it?”
Damn, man. How fucking pathetic was it going to get? And how pathetic was he, lying like this to a nice old man who had only befriended him?
“Yessir, I’ve seen it. It’s a good one, sure is. Old Montgomery Clift’s in that one.”
“Yes he is. And there’s probably some other stuff on. The History Channel usually has some good stuff on. Sometimes. Well, they have reruns, but of course some stuff’s fun to watch over and over, like those treasure-hunter guys. You ever watch those guys who go out to Arizona with metal detectors and look for buried treasure? I’d like to do that sometime.”
Boy, he just kind of rambled sometimes, didn’t he? Just jumped around from one thing to another. Maybe Miss Helen thought he was loony. Maybe he was loony. Naw, hell, he was probably just lonesome and old. Like his granddaddy after his grandmother died and left him sitting alone in his rocking chair with only the hounds that slept on the porch of the big weathered house to keep him company in his last days.
“Nosir. Well. I’ll probably just get on home. I mean, unless I stop for a drink somewhere.” Shit! What the fuck’d you say that for?
“Well, I just thought I’d see,” Mister Arthur said over the phone.
“I just thought you might want to.” He paused. “But you’re a young man. You’ve got your own things you want to do. I’m sure you’ve got your own friends your own age you like to do things with.”
No. Hell no. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t like that at all. Eric wanted to tell him that he didn’t have any friends up here, that it was hard to meet people, he thought because of his hick accent, and that he’d actually stolen Jada Pinkett from his daddy and run away from Mississippi because his daddy had been going to shoot Jada Pinkett for refusing to fight anymore, and because he couldn’t fuck anymore, and that he was lonely except for the old dog, and homeless, and scared sometimes, and that he really wanted to come over and have a drink with him, and a sandwich maybe, too, and tell him some more stories about home, maybe even tell him about how they’d built the rabbit factory, he and his daddy and Mister Nub, putting up the steel posts and six feet of chicken wire around seven acres of grass and brush over two summers, and running boards all along the bottom and tacking the wire to the boards to keep the rabbits in so that they could take the beagles over and run them for practice in the summer, and sit on the benches they’d built, and sip cold beer, and listen to the races. But then, if he did that, he wouldn’t be able to go have a drink with Miss Helen, and find out what was going to happen with her, so he just stayed quiet, knowing what he was doing, but not being able to really help himself because he was so badly wanting her, wanting her even worse than he wanted the complete boxed set of The Civil War by Shelby Foote, and he wanted it pretty bad.
“Well,” Mister Arthur said. “I just thought I’d call and see if you’d seen her. I didn’t know but what she came by there to get some catnip for the cat maybe. But you might not even sell catnip. I didn’t notice any when
I was in there. Of course I wasn’t really looking for any. It was a long shot, I guess. I guess she’ll eventually come in sometime tonight. I just hope she’s not drinking and driving.”
“You gonna be okay?” Eric said. He guessed this meant if he went over to the bar and had a drink or two with her at the Peabody and then got her in his car and drove her somewhere he probably wouldn’t get to see Mister Arthur anymore. That’d be a shame. Shit. It would be worse than a shame.
“Oh, sure,” Mister Arthur said over the phone. “I’ll just sit here and watch some TV until she gets in. I’ve got the cat. I can feed it maybe. I think I may have another can of anchovies in the cabinet somewhere. Maybe I can make friends with it.”
“Maybe you can,” Eric said.
There was another long pause. It went on for a pretty good while but Eric just waited. He tried, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Well. Come by and see me sometime, Eric.”
“Okay. I will.” No you won’t. Not if you do that shit.
“And bring Jada Pinkett, too. Maybe he can play around with the cat some. Maybe it’ll be tamed down by then.”
“I’ll bet he can,” Eric said.
“I’ll bet he can, too. Well. Take it easy, Eric.”
“You too, Mister Arthur.”
He hung the phone up, and for a while he just stood there, looking down at the floor. He was thinking about Miss Helen and what she’d said. And how she’d looked. He thought about Mister Arthur at home alone. Then he felt something. He didn’t know what it was at first. Then he looked at the animals in the cages around him. They were all watching him, almost like they could tell what he was thinking.
66
Anjalee took the bus downtown and walked the streets for a while. She was kind of putting off going back to her apartment just yet, afraid the cops had been in there and ransacked everything. The snow seemed to be gone, but a lot of people seemed to be keeping themselves inside. The sidewalks were not nearly as congested as they usually were.
She waited at the corners when DON’T WALK was lit on the pole and waited with other people who did not look at her, all except the men. She walked by furniture shops and delicatessens and shoe shops and electronics shops and bars and windows full of lamps and scarves and things carved from wood and ivory in countries far north of there. She didn’t see anything she wanted. When she got tired of walking, she flagged a cab the few blocks back to the Peabody. She’d have to go back and see Moe and get her clothes and her coat sometime.
She went to the women’s room and made herself up and decided she was okay to be seen. It wasn’t very crowded in the lobby since the ducks had already done their thing. At the elegant bar, she took a tall padded chair and waited for a slightly sullen and plainly disinterested woman in pants and white shirt and a bow tie and a short black jacket to come over and take her order for a shot of Herradura and a Bud draft. There was a folded menu and she picked it up and read it. Good thing she was on the pill. But who knew if he had genital herpes? Cops could catch things, too. She’d been tested for HIV four times. She thought she’d have some chicken wings. She looked up at the lady in the black jacket who was pouring the shot.
“Are these wings hot?” she said.
The bartender got a cold glass mug and gave her a shrug and pulled the handle on the tap.
“So-so,” she said. “I’ve got Tabasco.”
“Good. Let me have some wings, please,” Anjalee said.
The bartender brought the shot and the beer and set them down on some coasters and pushed them in front of Anjalee. She picked up a phone and said the order into it and hung it back up. She went over to the cash register and turned to look back and said: “You want to start a tab?”
“You can just put it on my room.”
“What’s your room number?”
Anjalee looked at her dumbly and shook her head.
“Why hell, lady, I done forgot. Let me see.”
Shit. The key card was in her purse somewhere, in a little paper thing. And the cops had gone through everything in there but had put it all back in. All the money was in there. Good thing she didn’t have any grass on her, they’d have busted her ass for that. She pawed through it, pushing aside lipsticks, quarters and pennies, pieces of Juicy Fruit and Big Red.
“It’s in here somewhere,” she said without raising her head. She wondered if Lenny had ever come in. She could use a house phone and call up to the room after a while. Then she found the key card and pulled it out.
“Four oh seven,” she read aloud, and put it back in her purse.
The bartender did something at the register and it spit out a curling white piece of paper that she tore off and brought over with a pen for Anjalee to sign. Anjalee added a good tip and signed it and gave the pen and the paper back to her and picked up the beer and drank some of it. She was almost out of cigarettes, but she’d seen a machine in the entrance to the lobby.
“Can I get a piece of lemon, please?” she said. “And a salt shaker?”
The bartender didn’t say anything, just brought them over. Anjalee picked up the shot glass and sipped from it, then put some salt on the lemon wedge and sucked on it. She turned a little on her stool and looked at the fountain. She knew it was almost dark. She’d eat something and have a few drinks and see what happened. She’d get some cigarettes and call up to the room. She wondered again what in the hell had happened to Frankie. What did he mean going out of town and not letting her know? It was starting to look like she might never hear from him again. And would that be a bad thing if it happened? Probably not. As long as she could hang with Lenny until she could get back on her feet. Go back to her apartment. Try to get back to her drawing. Maybe write her mother a letter and try to send her some money. God knows she probably needed it, all those drunks hanging around.
She found her cigarettes and lit one and thought about Ronnie on top of her. Worthless little son of a bitch. It seemed like she was meeting a lot of them. And you could find plenty of them in Mississippi, you didn’t need to come all the way to Memphis to find some more. More than anything she was giddy with relief to be away from the police without getting locked up. She didn’t want to think about what it would be like if she were doing that now, sitting in a concrete cell with a stainless-steel toilet and some bars on the door, wearing a jumpsuit, instead of being in here, in this nice place, having a leisurely smoke and a cold beer and a shot, waiting for some wings that might need just a little Tabasco.
Two older guys in suits came in and sat four or five stools down from her. Their suits looked expensive and their black shoes were shiny and they had heads of graceful silvering hair. Rings on their fingers and they were tanned. The bartender immediately smiled at them and went over and one of them said something she laughed at. She seemed to have a great personality almost instantly now, kind of a Dr. Jekyll thing. Then he said something to the other guy and they all three laughed. They had to be regular customers, but Anjalee could tell that they also had money. And that caused people to be nice to you. She’d seen plenty of that and not just here.
She turned her face away from them and looked at the mirror behind the bar. She was trying to tell if she looked like she’d just gotten fucked, but she couldn’t tell. What were you supposed to look like after you’d just gotten fucked? She guessed if it had been good you would look contented, but she didn’t look contented, not even to herself.
That fucking Frankie. She looked around to see if there was a house phone in the bar but she didn’t see one. She could ask the waitress. Bartender. Whatever she was. If she ever got through flirting with the two old rich guys.
Anjalee watched her. She was making their drinks now. The two men were talking in low voices, maybe business, she figured. Anjalee looked to see what they were getting just because she liked to know what was going on around her. The bartender filled two crystal glasses with large ice cubes from a scoop and picked up a bottle of Beefeater and made a gin and tonic a
nd added a twist of lime. She poured two shots of Johnny Walker into the other glass and put the drinks on napkins and served them. Then she leaned her arms on the back of the bar and pushed some of the hair away from her face and kept talking to the two old guys.
Anjalee looked around. She sipped at her beer and sipped at the Herradura. She didn’t like sitting by herself right now. It would be nice if Lenny would walk in. She could give him a kiss in front of these people and let them see that she had somebody. But would it do to tell him the cops had picked her up? She hadn’t been able to have any deep conversation with him just yet, just some really satisfying, energetic sex. No telling where he was now. Resting maybe.