Fiction by Robert Denby: "OK", Part One
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| Photo by Beyzaa Yurtkuran |
Hi-ho, LL here. Our own Robert Denby has graciously submitted this novella for our delectation. It's in eight parts, so you'll get a new part every week. Enjoy!
***
For Debbie
One
He crumples to a heap on the parking lot and starts to snort out blood. I could of sworn I didn't hit him that hard, but I guess I broke his nose. I squat down next to him, grab a handful of his hair, and pull his head up. Not hard, but just enough so I can stare him in the eye.
"Look, kid, don't get the wrong idea. I don't get off on dragging guys like you out here, but there are rules. You don't touch the dancers, I sit in the corner and leave you alone. You do what you were doing and, well, here we are, aren't we?"
I reach over and pull up his left hand.
"This is a wedding ring, I assume. You're a good-looking guy. You could probably get all kinds of good-looking women. You look like you work at some sort of office. No women there for you to cheat on your wife with?"
I let go of his hand. It falls limp to the asphalt. The blood is running down his chin and onto his shirt.
"It's OK, it's OK. You just got your nose broke. It's not the end of the world. Just have your friend inside there drive you to a hospital."
I reach under his arms and pull him up into a sitting position. He swallows hard and starts to wipe his nose with the cuff of his jacket. I grab his hand.
"No, no, no, don't mess up your clothes any worse. Here." I pull my little plastic-wrapped packet of Kleenex out of my coat pocket. "I get all sorts of allergies this time of year. Take it."
He pulls out a clump of tissue and begins to dab at the bloody snot flowing down his chin.
"You want me to get you some ice or something?" I ask.
He finally speaks. "No," he murmurs. "I think I just want to go."
"Just one more thing."
He stares at me.
"Give me your wallet for a second."
He swallows.
"I'm not going to take anything you'll miss. Just do it."
He waits for another couple of seconds, then reaches into his coat and hands it to me. I flip it open and immediately see the photo flap right next to his drivers' license and credit cards.
Right on top there's a portrait photo of a woman; early twenties, I'd guess. She has long red hair. I stare at her for a moment; it feels like I'm petting a cat and listening to it purr. Then I reach into the flap and pull out the photo.
"This picture. You mind if I keep it?"
He looks confused.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to stalk you or anything. I didn't even look at your license. I just figure that with all the trouble you caused, it's the least you can do. "
He nods. "Yeah, sure, OK."
I stand back. "This your wife?"
He nods again.
"She's pretty. You're a lucky man. Now get out of here."
He staggers back up to his feet; I pull the cash out of his wallet, hand it back to him, and start walking back towards the club. I fold the picture into the bills, tuck them into my pants pocket, and walk back towards the club. The guy's friend is standing behind us, right by the front door. He's dressed in khakis and a dress shirt, no tie. He walks up to me with his hands in his pockets.
"Sorry. We're both sorry," he says, staring at the ground.
"Yeah," I sigh. It's just then that I stare at my fist. There are little flecks of blood on it.
"Well," I say. "He'll be OK. Just get him to the emergency room. And I don't want to see him here again."
I continue past him and through the front door. Talia is swinging on the pole while that "Save Me" song from the show Smallville blasts out from the speakers. Dennis waves me over to him from behind the bar.
"Everything OK?" he hollers.
"Yeah," I yell back. "Just some computer tech trying to be badass."
"How do you know that?"
"I saw the company ID in his wallet."
"You want a Pepsi or something?"
"Yeah." I answer. "Just let me go and wash my hands. I'll be right back." I walk across the room and into the Men's room at the back. I'm alone as I turn on the water and squirt out some soap. I hear the door push open behind me. I look up at the mirror and see Anna standing behind me. She's been dancing as Violetta for about a month. Ray, the manager, swears up and down that she's eighteen, but she looks like she just started high school. According to the other girls, she really cleans up tipwise.
I reach over for some paper towels. "What's up, Anna?"
She's wearing jeans and a too-tight t-shirt with the Playboy logo. "Are you OK?"
This happens whenever I have to take care of someone; everyone starts treating me like I pulled some kid out of a well.
"Yeah, just some horny kid who had one too many. Pretty typical."
She pulls her hair up over her left ear and stares at the floor. "Yeah, I know. He was bugging me, actually."
"Really? I didn't see. I was outside taking a smoke break when Dennis came out to get me. He just pointed him out and I grabbed him."
"Yeah, I saw." She tilts her head up. "I just came in here to say thank you."
"No problem. This is a crappy enough place to work without having to put up with stuff like that."
"Yeah, he was a dick, but it was still kind of scary."
"I'm sure."
We just stand there for a moment. She pulls her hair up over her ear again.
"So," she asks. "Do you want to do something sometime? We could get some coffee after work."
I rub my head. Not this again.
"Or you could come over to my place. My roommate and me will make you dinner, if you'd like."
I exhale gently, just blowing air out of my lips. "Look, that's nice of you to offer, but I probably shouldn't. Ray gets kind of pissed off when we fraternize with the girls here." That's not true (he'd probably be cheering me on right now, actually), but I have to tell her something.
"OK," she says. She walks across the bathroom and stops in front of me. "Can I do something else for you?"
"What?"
She reaches over and begins to undo my belt.
"Anna, wait..."
"Sssh, Ray won't find out, don't worry."
"Anna..." I'm just about to twist myself away when she reaches down my pants and grabs me. I shouldn't stay in here; I've gotten myself out of these situations before, but thistime I know it's too late. Her hand feels good.
"See, I knew you'd like that." She laughs a little. "And this isn't just for tonight. I thought you were really cute the first time I saw you."
She gets down on her knees. "Just relax."
I know this is a mistake, I know I should just pull her up and tell her to get the hell out of here before she's dried up and wasted, but what am I supposed to say? "Go flip burgers?" "Go work at a call center?" "Marry some abusive asshole who reminds you of your father?"
When all is said and done, the money here is good. She'd have a pretty impossible time making this much anywhere else.
I stare at the ceiling as she gets down to business.
***
I pull out of the parking lot a little after 5:00 A.M., but the sky's already full of light. About a block away from the club, I pass three scraggly old palm trees poking out from behind a McDonalds. The rising sun gives them a glow they really don't deserve anymore. I suppose there was once a time when palm trees made Southern California look like some sort of
beckoning oasis to all of those poor Midwesterners, but now they look like leftovers. I don't know why some mini-mall developers don't just get together, follow their bliss, and just pull them all up by the roots. Put in drive-through expresso stands. It wouldn't hurt me any.
About a mile down the road, I pass by the 24-Hour Fitness that I usually work out at. I should probably head in for a bit right now; I haven't been in since last week. Fortunately, I've never been one of those lift-or-die guys who end up on the covers of muscle magazines with all of those freaky veins sticking out. I've been able to bench press 300 ever since high school and I've always been able to handle a forklift or hammer together a roof or beat up on drunk computer nerds or do anything else I've had to do for a living.
I used to never miss a day at the gym, but I've been feeling lethargic about the whole thing. I never liked 24-Hour Fitness, and I'm starting to hate it now; it's like lifting weights at Target. Perhaps I'd feel better about the whole thing if I could go to one of those cool gyms like they have in those old boxing movies; places filled with guys hoping for a shot at a title while the grizzled, cantankerous owner teaches some young palooka with a heart of gold everything he knows. I know those places don't exist anymore and probably never did, but it's still fun to think about. I watch too many movies, always have. Hell, I got digital cable just so I could get Turner Movie Classics. I have trouble fantasizing about anything that I didn't see in some movie anywhere, but I guess it's harmless enough. As long as I see it for what it is.
It's nice that the traffic's still thin this early. I turn off the main stretch, head up through the neighborhood of houses with peeling paint and chain-link fences, and pull into the parking lot of my apartment complex. There's another complex across the street that's getting its' roof redone, and there are already five or six guys at work. I wave in their direction as I cross the lot, and one of them waves back. I know it sounds like a cheesy thing to say, but it's true: I've never
met a roofer that wasn't a nice guy. It's good work, and it's work that actually gets something important done. It even pays alright, but it wears you down. Being up on a roof when it's 101 outside, permanently bent over hammering in nails and breathing in tar fumes, that’s bad enough.
Being part of a crew, that's what really gets to me. Like I said, they're nice guys, but they're always there: talking, wanting you to talk to them, asking you questions, wanting you to go out for beers afterwards. It's exhausting after eight or ten hours. I suppose that's one of the nice things about working at the club: as long as you're there when something needs to be dealt with, the chit-chat tends to stay to a minimum. Being strong and silent works better as part of the schtick, anyway.
I pull out my keyring as I climb the stairs, unbolt my door, and then bolt it shut behind me. I drop my coat on the couch and head into the bathroom to piss (it looks like some more of that damn mildew is growing on the wall behind the toilet.) I head over to the bathroom sink to wash my hands, and I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I haven't shaved my head in a couple of days, and it's starting to show; I've been pretty much bald since my late twenties, and if I don't shave what's left up there, I start to look like Rush Limbaugh. You wouldn't think it'd be true, but not having hair is almost as time-consuming as having hair. My last disposable razor is getting dull, too; I'll have to grab something next time I go down to Safeway for milk. I go into the bedroom just long enough to kick off my shoes and pull off my shirt and pants before walking back out into the living room. I plop down on the couch and reach over to my coat for my Malboros. I was thinking that I'd turn on the TV, but suddenly sitting up to grab the remote seems like too much effort. Besides, the quiet feels nice right now; apparently they've been having trouble with somebody dealing drugs out of the house down the street, but if you're sitting in here with the door shut and the shades drawn, you'd never know it. I light up a cigarette and slouch there with my eyes closed; I suppose I should just go in and go to bed, but I don't feel like surrendering just yet.
That's when I reach back over to my coat and pull out the picture I snagged earlier. She's beautiful, and not in the nice-tits-nice-ass sort of way. She's just lovely; the hair, the cute little upturned nose, and the calm smile that suggests that she knows something wonderful that she just can't wait to tell you. She looks married, and she looks like being married has been good to her. I know that you think that this is more of my sentimental movie crap, and you might be right. I snagged this off of her drunken husband after busting his nose, for God's sake.
You probably think that I'm overromanticizing what it'd be like to be with her, but I'm not, and I'm making a point not to. Just being alive and getting through the day gives you an idea of what it's like: the bills, the dishes, piles of laundry in the living room, buying overpriced ear medication when the baby needs it. Everything is hard, and that's a different kind of hard, but goddammit, why's it such a mystery? Maybe if I stopped shaving my head, stopped lifting weights, stopped eating, let myself whittle down to something skinny and normal. Maybe I look too much like a bouncer, or a roofer, or whatever. It sounds dumb, buy why not? Sometimes dumb things happen. Sometimes dumb is the answer. Maybe I'm just some dickhead who wastes his time stealing pictures. It makes me feel like the monster from Frankenstein. "It was beauty that killed the beast." No, wait, that's King Kong.
Oh, Jesus, see what happens when I get going? It's time for bed; time to drop this picture into the shoebox, crawl under the covers, and forget about trying to solve this right now. Forget about solving things, period. I'll be alright; I've always been to get by and keep my head on straight.
I'll be OK.