Last Call Lounge

by Stuart Spears

“No,” I said. “Mitchell won’t let me close the bar. We haven’t closed a day ever.”

  “I remember when Rita hit,” Allen said, smiling at the memory. “Or didn’t hit, really. Mitchell and your Dad wouldn’t evacuate. Everyone thought they were nuts, because it was just a couple weeks after Katrina.” He tilted his chin up, scratched his neck. “Nothing happens. Nothing. The weather was beautiful, but the whole city was empty. Every time there’s something like that, I drive by here in the patrol car, just to check on things. That time, there’s your Dad and Mitchell, standing in the middle of the street, smoking cigars and drinking big drinks with umbrellas in them.”

  I laughed. “They were Hurricanes. Mitchell ran a special.” I had evacuated with Sarah. She was six months pregnant. We’d spent fourteen hours in the truck, stuck on the highway to Austin. When we got back, Dad and Mitch were all smiles, showing pictures of the empty streets and blue skies and I’d had to choke back my jealousy.

  Allen nodded and looked around the room. Then his eyes fell back on me.

  “You okay?” he asked. “You don’t look so great.”

  “I haven’t been sleeping very well,” I said.

  Allen spun slowly in his chair, propped one foot on top of the non-alcoholic beer case.

  “You haven’t been sleeping well?” he asked. I stared at his boot, sipped from my cup. “Business been all right?”

  “Same as always,” I said. He watched me. I lit a cigarette. He nodded at it.

  “You worried about the smoking ban?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said with a shrug. “But there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  He watched me lean over and tap the cigarette on the ashtray on the Dad’s desk.

  “No problems?” He rocked his boot a little, the chair squeaked.

  “Nothing we can’t get through,” I said.

  Allen put his cup on the file cabinet, rolled his gray head around on his neck.

  “Anything else been stolen, anything like that?”

  “They steal anything that’s not nailed down,” I said. “Just part of the business.”

  He grunted a little noise of agreement, picked up his coffee mug, then remembered it was empty and set it back down. I could hear the clock tick on the wall, hear the muffled sounds of the ballgame from the TV in the bar. Allen scratched his chest, arched his back, and let his eyes wander around the office.

  “All right, lets go take a look,” he said, picking up his metal clipboard from the desk. I led Allen out of the office. Mitchell was sitting at the bar, looking through his notes. The Hispanic guy in the button-down was coming out of the bathroom. When he saw Allen in his uniform, he put his head down and walked out the front door. Allen tilted his chin after him.

  “Happens all the time,” he said. “Mexican guy sees the uniform, he heads for the nearest exit.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I had half a mind to run when I saw you.”

  I called Mitchell over and the three of us stood in front of the spot where Pancho had hung. The nail was still there. The paint was lighter where the mask had been. Allen asked us some general questions – what it looked like, what it was worth. Mitchell produced copies he had made for Allen of some of his documents and photographs. He pointed out some of the more important things to Allen – the indentation of the bullet hole in the forehead above the left eye, the crease in the bronze along the bottom. Allen dutifully wrote everything down, slid the copies Mitchell handed him under the report sheet.

  “Any idea who took it?” Allen asked.

  “I have an idea,” Mitchell said.

  “Oh yeah?” Allen asked. Mitchell turned to me.

  “What about the kid you kicked out?” Mitch butted in from under his hat.

  My neck itched and my shirt felt tight.

  “The kid you kicked out?” Allen asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, rubbing my neck. “He was just a kid fucking around.” I could feel sweat on my stomach.

  “John kicked him out for dealing coke in the bathroom,” Mitchell said. He was proud of himself for thinking of a suspect, of me for kicking out the drug dealer.

  “Oh, yeah?” Allen started writing

  “Yeah,” I said. “You know, we don’t let that shit happen here.”

  “He might have taken it,” Mitchell said.

  “We were watching him the whole time, Mitchell,” I said, trying to sound cool and rational. “We would have seen him take the mask off the wall.”

  But Mitchell wasn’t listening to me.

  “He was probably 23 or 24, had a really chunky haircut,” Mitchell said. “He’s friends with that asshole Worm.”

  “Frank couldn’t have taken the mask, Mitchell,” I said. “We were staring at him the whole time he was here.”

  Mitchell looked at me blankly, then turned to Allen.

  “His name is Frank,” Mitchell said. “And we weren’t watching him the whole time. And he had a backpack.”

  Allen made a few more notes on his report, then tapped his pen on the side of the clipboard.

  “You get a lot of drug dealing going on?” he asked.

  “Nah,” I said, scratching my nose. “We’re pretty careful.”

  “Good,” he said. “You heard what happened over at the Galaxy Club.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “We’re cracking down around here,” Allen said. He was using his big, jovial voice, the booming, outdoorsy voice cops use when they’re telling you something serious, but they don’t want to sound official.

  “I know,” I said. “Good.”

  Allen made a few more notes, declined Mitchell’s offer of more photocopies. A dispatch call cackled over his hip radio and he turned it down while he finished writing up the report. On a sheet from a thick pad, Allen wrote out our case number and a few phone numbers and handed it to me. I handed it to Mitchell and he immediately found a pocket for it in the front of his new spiral notebook.

  “Okay,” Allen said. “If you think of anything else, or anything else comes up, give me a call.” He walked to the front door, nodded to Boyd, then turned back to me.

  “Stay out of trouble, Little John. I promised your dad I’d kick your ass if you got out of line.”

  I laughed and waved like an idiot. When he was out the door, I turned to Mitchell.

  “Damn, Mitch,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “You talked more in the last twenty minutes than you talked in the last ten years.”

  “This is important,” he said.

  “It’s just a fucking mask,” My shoulders were tight and I could feel the blood in the skin of my arms. “You didn’t get so worked up when they stole the Lone Star sign off the back wall.”

  “The mask is valuable.”

  “What the hell do you care?” I asked. “It’s not yours. You didn’t lose any money on this.”

  Mitchell didn’t look at me. He gathered up his papers, finished his coffee. He tucked the spiral notebook back in its place next to the register, washed his coffee cup and left. I went behind the bar, poured another shot of Beam in my cup. When I looked up, Boyd was watching me. I tried to laugh.

  “A little more breakfast,” I said, but Boyd looked away. Even Redmond avoided my eye.

  I grabbed some paperwork out of the office, tax forms and things, and sat at the bar with a calculator and a pen. I liked to do paperwork out in the bar, rather than in the office, so the bartenders would see me. If I didn’t, they tended to believe I didn’t do anything.

  Boyd watched his game, Redmond smiled at himself in the mirror. The sounds of the game on TV filled only half the room. The rest was filled with the sounds of the building, of cars passing by. The hum of the coolers and the clunk of the air conditioner coming to life.

  I paid the last bill and stepped out the front door to stretch. The sidewalk was cracked, the buildings in either direction were flat and low. Over the top of the convenience store across the street peaked the tips of the skyscrapers downtown. Cars buzzed past. A quick wind k
icked up the heat off the pavement. I bent over a cigarette to light it.

  A woman approached, stopped in front of me on the sidewalk. At first she was just a woman in a dark, knee-length dress, a woman with straight black hair cut like a dagger over deep green eyes. Then she smiled and she was Ruby.

  “Hi, John,” Ruby said. It was the same voice, her voice, but with more whiskey-haze in it. She had a tattoo on her shoulder, a twisting rose, that hadn’t been there before. A pound or two more, in the right places, new curves that fit her perfectly. The legs that came out of the dress were brown and smooth, like something perfectly baked. She smiled a half a smile at me, wrinkled her nose while I stared.

  “Aren’t you gonna invite me in?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded and gestured with my cigarette. “Come on in.”

  Boyd looked up when he heard the door open.

  “Well, well, well,” he said with a laugh. “Look what the cat took seven years to drag in.” He unfolded himself from the stool and gave Ruby a hug.

  “Hey, Boyd,” she said. Ruby and Boyd had hated each other back when she and I were going out, although they always faked a little cordiality. Boyd hated Ruby because she did all the things the girlfriend of the son of the owner wasn’t supposed to do – she went behind the bar while we were open, poured her own drinks, called the bartenders by name to get their attention. Ruby hated Boyd because he’s an asshole. They broke off the hug and Boyd sat back in his stool, his eyes went back to the game.

  “What are you doing here, Ruby?” I finally asked. My heart was pounding in my ears. She sat down on the edge of a stool, brushed at her bangs above her eyes. Her smooth skin was everywhere I looked. I stared at my hands.

  “Well,” she said. “I was in town visiting so I thought I’d stop in and see Big John. I have something I want to ask him.” I wasn’t mentioned in that sentence and it hit me hard.

  “He’s dead,” I said. “Anything else I can help you with?”

  She blinked like she had been swatted on the nose. Her eyes dropped to the floor. I had forgotten that she and my father had been close.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It was about a year ago,” I said, waving my hand a little.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked. “Obviously the bartender isn’t gonna get off his ass and do his job.”

  Boyd didn’t turn from the TV. “I figured she’d want to get it herself,” he drawled. “For old time’s sake.”

  Ruby took in a long breath and stood up.

  “I should just go,” she said, unfolding her long, baked legs.

  “No, wait,” I said. I went behind the bar and poured two shots of Jagermeister. It had been our ritual to start our nights together with a shot of Jager. I set one glass in front of her, held the other. She looked at it with pursed lips.

  “No, I should really just go.”

  I held my shot up to toast.

  “For old time’s sake,” I said. And it was like old times. I felt the old mix of feelings, the desires to grab and hold her and, at the same time, the desire to run. I needed her but I didn’t want her to need me.

  She picked up the shot, downed it without toasting me. When she set the shot glass back down, she held on to it for a long second.

  “I’d better go,” she said.

  “What was it?” I asked. “What was it you wanted to ask my Dad?”

  She pursed her lips and shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it, at least not with me.

  “It was nothing,” she said. “Just a stupid idea I got into my head.”

  She picked up her purse. The news about Dad, along with the way Boyd was ignoring her, was pushing Ruby back out the door. I started talking.

  “How long are you in town?” I asked. She didn’t answer. “Come back tonight,” I said. “I’m working the door. We can catch up. Mitchell’s working.” Ruby loved Mitchell. She was one of the few people who could make him laugh. She shook her head, looked up at the ceiling. “Think about it. Maybe I can help. With whatever it was you wanted to ask Dad,” I said.

  “Maybe,” she said. “If I can.” She turned to the door.

  “Bye, Ruby,” Boyd called from the bar. She stopped, cocked her head to one side, then continued out the door and onto the street. I looked at the closed door, then went behind the bar to wash the shot glasses. Boyd stared at the TV like nothing had happened.

  I lit a cigarette, looked at the closed door again. I sat like that for a long time – smoking and staring at the closed door and thinking about Ruby and about the fact that it only took two minutes to scare her off after she’d been gone for so long.

  A few minutes later, a bit of movement in the front window caught my eye, just a flicker of something outside, above the maroon curtain. I trudged out from behind the bar and back out the front door. Outside, on the sidewalk, in the same work pants and cracking shoes, was Frank. He had a crumpled newspaper in one hand and a spray bottle in the other. It took me a minute to realize he was washing the window.

  “Oh,” he said when he saw me. “Hi, John.”

  Then everything just sort of fell out of me. I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t upset. Everything was just gone. I took a drag off my cigarette, flicked it into the street, and went back inside the bar. Frank followed me in.

  The bar was dark and sullen after the bright afternoon of the sidewalk. I sat at the bar, rubbed my eyes with my forefingers. Frank walked up beside me, but kept a safe distance. He held the spray bottle at his side.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

  He shifted his weight on his feet, shrugged his shoulders like a school kid getting ready to give a report.

  “I was hoping maybe I could help out around here,” he said. “I quit that other thing I was doing and I thought if I helped out around here, maybe I could learn to be a bartender.”

  “I’m not hiring,” I said.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t have to pay me or anything,” he said. “I just want to learn how to do it, so I could go to a bar and get a job.”

  I bit my bottom lip, looked up at him. His blue work pants were brown at the knees.

  “I don’t know if you remember, but I kicked you out of here last night for selling cocaine.”

  He nodded, a quick little nod.

  “I know,” he said. “But I quit that. Last night. I called Worm and told him I didn’t want to do it anymore. It felt like maybe it was time to grow up.” He licked his lips a little, shrugged his shoulders again. “So I thought maybe I could help out here and learn how to be a bartender so I could go get a job somewhere.”

  I looked at the front window. The half Frank hadn’t gotten to yet was rain-spotted and gray, the other half clear. Frank stood staring at his cracked shoes and tugging at his stained t-shirt. I don’t know why I did it. I really don’t. Something told me to. I bit my bottom lip again, nodded slightly.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Frank smiled, a lopsided smile under his lopsided nose, then turned and headed back to the window. He went outside and I saw the spray bottle come up, then the hand with the crumpled newspaper. I gathered up the checkbook and the bills and put them back in the office. Boyd was behind the bar when I came back out, waiting on a couple. I gave him a cursory wave that he didn’t return.

  Out the front door, I stopped next to Frank. He kept scrubbing at the window.

  “When you’re finished with that,” I said, “you can sweep the parking lot. There’s a broom and a dustpan in the closet in the men’s room. You already know where the men’s room is. If Boyd gives you any trouble, tell him to call me and I’ll explain it all.” I knew Boyd wouldn’t give him any trouble – it wasn’t in Boyd to stop someone else from sweeping if they wanted to.

  “Okay,” Frank said. He chuckled, ducked his head a little. “Thanks.”

  I turned toward my truck, then turned back.

  “Come back at nine,” I said. “You can bar back. I’m not
promising anything. We’ll have to see how it works out.”

  “Sure,” he said, grinning widely. “Thanks, John.”

  “And you might as well call me Little John,” I said, walking away. “Everyone else does.”

  He bustled inside to get the broom. I leaned back against the front wall, squinted into the falling sun. Mitchell pulled into the parking lot, squeezed his tall frame out of his tiny Ford Festiva, and loped his gangly lope up to me. He had an Astros hat pushed back on his head. Even though I’d given him shit about it dozens of times, he wore black socks and white tennis shoes and cargo shorts. He held a plastic grocery bag, bulging with lemons and limes. He was about to say something when Frank burst out the door, broom in hand, and went running to the parking lot.

  “Hi,” Frank said to Mitchell as he passed. Mitchell cocked his head to one side.

  “Okay,” Mitchell said. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “He told me he was impressed with our fair prices and friendly customer service,” I said.

  Mitchell stared me down, waiting for an answer. Mitchell would have made a good cop. “He came by today, said he’d quit drug dealing and wanted to learn how to tend bar,” I said.

  “And you believed him?” Mitchell asked.

  “Look.” I tried to think of the right way to word it, but nothing came to mind. Instead, I said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About the mask.”

  Mitchell frowned at me.

  “He might have taken it,” I said. “And at least if he’s around and we get the chance to learn some things about him, we might be able to find it.”

  Mitchell’s frown relaxed a little bit.

  “I told him he could bar back tonight. We’ve been talking about getting you a bar back on Fridays,” I said. Mitchell worked with another bartender on Fridays, sometimes Tracy, sometimes a guy named Kenny, and usually it was just busy enough to be too much work for the two of them. I’d end up jumping up to get them ice or shag glasses. “I told him we’d give it a try. It seemed like the best chance of finding out what happened to Pancho,” I said, playing the Pancho card.

  Mitchell put his thumb between his teeth, nodding. Mitchell was a boy scout when it came to evil-doers, and the idea of knowingly letting a drug dealer behind the bar was a tough one for him. But his desire to get the mask back, I figured, would win out.