“Marion Holly?” he said, a little taken aback. “As in Roy Holly’s girl?”
“That’s the one.”
CHAPTER
17
MARION HOLLY
SOUTHERN ALABAMA
1981
1.
The lights inside the Time-Out Gentlemen’s Club washed its patrons in sickly pale shades of pink and green. Other than the girls onstage, who were painted in thick layers of glitter and pancake makeup, everyone in the place looked like they were made of warped, sweaty plastic—carnival versions of reality. Not that they were anything to look at anyway, even in the daylight. Most of the gentlemen that frequented the Time-Out were long-haul truckers on the tail end of marathon crank binges, or obese married men from a county over with baseball caps pulled down low-profile in hopes of not being recognized—losers and degenerates, the lot of them. The place always smelled like a gas station bathroom someone had tried to clean up with a bucket of cheap Avon perfume, and the unwashed bodies of a dozen greasy men, sitting around tables scratching themselves, pawing stacks of single dollar bills, didn’t exactly help.
Marion set her drink tray down on top of one of the big PA speakers at the back of the stage, near the restrooms, and scanned around the bar for any empty glasses in need of refilling. Louis would be here any minute to make a long and shitty night a little less long and shitty. When it dawned on her that, for once, no one in the place was gawking at her, she slipped a finger under the neon-green string of her thong and pulled the uncomfortable thing out of her crack. She didn’t understand why she had to wear the damn thing. It accomplished nothing. She gave herself a good scratching along the back seam and lit a cigarette. She nearly hot-boxed the entire thing by the time Louis appeared at the bar. The barkeep, Todd, pointed in her direction and Louis made his way over. Marion dropped her smoke on the concrete floor and squashed it out under the toe of the ridiculous six-inch heels they made her wear.
“What’s up, girlie?” Louis was one of the few black guys allowed to roam free in the Time-Out. The owner, a guy named Bill Cutter, wasn’t big on “darkies,” but Louis moved a lot of dope, crank, herb, even heroin, and he always kicked up a piece to Cutter for letting him work the room, so he was given a pass.
“You’re late,” Marion said.
“But I’m here. I saw your kid outside in the car. That shit ain’t cool, girl. He should be at the house or something.”
“Ain’t got no house to be at. Barb and Tim booted us out again. What do you care? It’s none of your business anyway.”
“That may be, but Cutter don’t play that shit. If he finds out . . .”
“He won’t find out if nobody says nothing. The boy’s fine out there. He’s got his comic books and some leftover pizza from happy hour. At least if he’s out there I can go check on him when I can instead of . . .” Marion stopped talking and looked at the slinky man in baggy jeans and a wifebeater leaned up against the wall, and realized she wasn’t having that conversation with this guy. “What are you anyway,” she said, “a social worker? Are you here to judge me or hook me up?”
“That depends. You payin’ or you wantin’ to put it on your already inflated tab?”
“I’ll get it to you by Friday.”
“Always by Friday. Don’t the fellas in this place tip?”
“You know waitresses don’t make it like the girls up there do.” Marion pointed to the sad brunette baring it all from the pole in the middle of the stage, doing her best to block out the obnoxious 38 Special song blaring over the PA and imagine she was somewhere else.
“Well, you know there are a few ways we could work all that out,” Louis said, rubbing a gangly black thumb down the smooth curve of Marion’s hip bone. She swatted it away immediately. “I don’t trick. Not anymore.”
“It don’t have to be like that, girl. I can make it real romantic.”
“Come on, Louis, can you help me out here or not? I need to get back on the floor. Either it’s on or it ain’t. Don’t play games.”
“Damn, Angel, you ain’t gotta be like that.” Louis reached into the pocket of his filthy black jeans and pulled out a small baggie. “Here,” he said, and reached out, took Marion’s hand, and pressed a tan-colored lump down hard in her palm. “Don’t think I’m gonna forget what you owe me, Angel. I got a keen memory, and someday soon you’re gonna have to pay the piper. You get what I’m sayin’?” Louis cupped his crotch to emphasize the play on words, and looked down his flat nose at her. She wasn’t impressed.
“You’ll get paid.”
“I always do.”
Marion pushed open the door to the women’s room but turned back to look at him. “And don’t call me Angel.”
2.
Marion shut the door and locked it. She looked at the baggie in her hand and worked the knot carefully so as not to rip the plastic. It was lighter than she’d hoped for, but it would get her through the next eight hours of fondling and groping. And maybe if she was lucky, she’d find someone desperate enough to want a lap dance from her so she could get out of the hole, maybe rent a squat for a few days for her and the kid. She spread open the bag in her palm and dug out a bump with a long press-on pinkie nail. She held it to her nose and sniffed. It burned like a blowtorch every time, but she liked it. Crystal that didn’t burn was stepped on too many times and never did its job. Louis’s shit was always on time. Her eyes watered immediately, and her damaged left tear duct gushed even more than it did normally. She yanked a paper towel from the dispenser next to the sink and dabbed at it. She always wore her dark chocolate hair down in her face, not to mention a ton of foundation, to hide the damage and scars, but under the bathroom’s unforgiving fluorescent light it was all she could see. She dug out another bump of crank and hit it again. More tears. More dabbing. She gave herself a once-over in the mirror. She still had her body, even after childbirth. If anything, having a baby added only more definition to her already killer curves. No stretch marks. No oversized nipples. Just Marion—but better. It didn’t matter, though. Once someone got a look at her face, it was all they would ever see. She carefully tied the knot back in the baggie and slid it underneath the skimpy fabric of the barely-there neon bikini top. Then she took a deep breath, tilted her head back, and let the crank drain down the back of her throat. That was her favorite part. She faked a quick smile at herself in the mirror and unlocked the bathroom door.
After locating the server tray she’d set down on the speaker, she scanned the room for the best opportunity to make a few dollars. She began to walk toward a table full of what appeared to be college students, bushy-haired twentysomethings with hats on backward and football teams on their T-shirts. The crank was kicking in hard, and she was feeling the confidence it gave. The dope made it easy to forget that this was her life.
3.
By the time the Thursday-night crowd whittled down to just a handful of regulars, Marion found herself at the server well, chewing on the empty baggie of crank she’d depleted in record time, talking to the barkeep, Todd. Todd was a good kid, handsome and clean-cut. She liked looking at him. Other than the few jailhouse tattoos that peeked out from under his shirtsleeves, he didn’t even look like the type that belonged in a place like this. He was fit and cut in all the right places and his teeth were so white they glowed.
“You need a shot?” Todd asked, lining up two shot glasses on the bar between them.
“Always,” Marion said, looking up from the thin stack of bills she’d been counting. By the look of what was in her hands, and what was still folded and feathering out from under her thong, she’d be lucky to crack sixty bucks. So much for the steak dinner.
“Jäger, right?”
“You know me too well, Todd.”
Todd poured the thick German green death-flavored liquor into the glasses and they hammered them down in unison, slamming the empties down on the bar. It wa
sn’t the kind of burn she liked best, but it was free, and free was good. Todd cleared the glasses and turned to an open foam clamshell of chicken wings sitting on the ice cooler. He dipped one in some kind of white sauce and shredded every bit of meat from the bone with one bite. Marion looked at the box of food and pouted a very intentional and practiced pout.
“You hungry?” Todd said, using one hand to cover his mouthful of food. “I got a ton of them. No way I can eat them all.”
The meth in Marion’s system stripped her of any kind of appetite—in fact, the smell made her a little nauseated—but she wasn’t thinking about herself.
“Oh, no, no,” Marion said. “I’m good. I was just thinking that my kid might be getting a little hungry, and I didn’t exactly break the bank tonight.”
Todd wiped his mouth with a bar napkin and tossed it in the trash. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll hook you up. Just remind me before you go.”
“You’re the best, Todd.”
“That’s what all the ladies say,” Todd said, shining his smile at her like a spotlight.
Marion rolled her eyes, but she was pretty sure that all the ladies did say that. Todd had turned back to the wings when the phone hanging next to the rows of liquor bottles behind him lit up. It wasn’t the regular bar phone but the direct line to Cutter, holed up in the back. The boss rarely ever came out on the floor. Todd snatched up the phone and held it in place with his shoulder while he listened and tried to divide the chicken wings into two piles. Marion was still lingering in hopes of getting another free shot before returning to the wild, and she watched Todd until he stopped what he was doing, looked at her, and said something into the phone she couldn’t hear. Marion raised her hands in a silent “What’s up?” motion, and finally Todd hung up.
“Cutter wants to see you in his office.”
“For what?”
“Dunno. He didn’t say, but he said now.”
Marion swirled the soggy plastic baggie in her mouth and slid off the bar stool as if her bones had suddenly turned to jelly. She folded her money in half and tucked it into her bikini top and made her way toward the back of the club, to Cutter’s office.
4.
The back office was nothing more than a converted storage closet. No windows or places to sit other than the folding chair behind Cutter’s desk. Besides a stack of filing cabinets against the far wall, a few signed photos of various “Featured Attraction” strippers stuck to the wall with Scotch tape, and an ashtray that should have been dumped five years ago, there was nothing else in the room except the man himself. Cutter looked no different from the bums he catered to out front. His clothes might have been more expensive, but his skin was just as cracked and Marlboro-dried, and his tightly curled black hair looked like it had been freshened up in a truck stop sink. He thought the blue-tinted glasses he always wore made him look European. Marion thought they made him look like the cheap pimp he was.
“You wanted to see me, Cutter?”
He didn’t even look up from the newspaper he’d been reading. “Get your shit, Marion, and get out.”
“What? Why?” She acted surprised but knew why before he even said it.
Now he looked at her. “What did I tell you about bringing kids here?”
Marion’s defensive posture deflated. “C’mon, Cutter . . .”
“Don’t ‘C’mon, Cutter’ me. I told you last time not to be bringing that little shit around here. I got enough problems with the cops and the holy-roller commissioners wanting to shut me down as it is. I don’t need them finding out I’m running a preschool in the parking lot.”
“I got nowhere else to take him.”
“Not my problem, honey.”
“Give me a break, here, Cutter . . .” Marion leaned down hard on the desk, hoping this would be a cleavage fix. It wasn’t.
Cutter stood up. “Give you a break? Are you kidding me? I gave you a break when I hired you. I figured that rocking little body of yours might be worth investing in, but it ain’t. You act like nobody has the right to even look at it. News flash—this is a strip club. I gave you another break last time I caught that little rug rat of yours in the men’s room. I’m out of breaks. You’ve been here for almost a year, and what do you have to show for it? Nothing. No regulars. No money. Hell, I’m losing money keeping you here. All you do is consort with the darkies and cram as much of that shit as you can up your nose. Don’t think it ain’t common knowledge that you’re gaked out of your head ninety percent of the time, gritting your teeth and scratching like a damn junkie. The other ten percent is spent at my bar begging for my liquor. Liquor I have to pay for. I’m sick of it. I ain’t carrying your ass no more and I want you gone. Now get your shit and get the fuck out before I get Moose in here to throw your ass out.”
Marion had nothing. The gig was up. She knew it. Cutter sat back down and picked up his paper as if his problem child, Marion, ceased to exist. A few minutes later, wrapped in a black sarong and matching flip-flops, Marion was at the back door. She pushed the silver metal bar across it that said FIRE EXIT ONLY in faded red letters. The alarm hadn’t worked in years, and the metal door swung open with ease. She stood in the gravel parking lot out behind the club and lit a cigarette. Only four left in the pack. At least she was in a comfortable pair of shoes. That thought made her smile. She knew it was the remaining drizzle of speed in her brain making her look at the bright side, but it wasn’t going to last. Nothing good lasted.
She tossed the butt onto the gravel, crossed the lot, and looked into the back window of the beat-to-shit Bonneville that Barb and Tim had given her, to see her seven-year-old son curled up and sleeping under a pile of her clothes. He’d ripped open the trash bags of stuff in the backseat to make himself a comfortable place to sleep. Marion thought he looked like an angel—a homeless angel. What was that she’d thought about nothing good lasting? Simon was good. He would last. She watched him like that for a moment more, when a second pair of eyes appeared next to her in the window’s reflection.
“Where you going, girlie?” Louis grabbed her shoulder and spun her around hard enough for the bones in her neck to crack, then shoved her up against the back quarter panel of the car.
“Goddamn, Louis. Take it easy.”
“I take it however I can get it,” he said, and squeezed her shoulder harder. “I know you ain’t looking to roll out early without saying good-bye.”
“It ain’t like that.”
“Well, then, tell me what’s it like? Because I can tell you what it looks like to me. It looks like you’re trying to skate on the two bills you owe me, and I told you I always get paid.”
“And I told you I’d pay you on Friday.”
“Oh, yeah? How you gonna pay me with no job?”
“That’s my business, now get your fucking hands off me.”
“Bitch, who you think you’re talking to?” Louis delivered a haymaker to Marion’s soft belly that folded her in half. Louis stepped aside and she immediately fell to the gravel. While she gasped for air on her knees, he snatched her purse off her shoulder and dumped it out on the ground beside her. He shuffled through the makeup, bits of paper, car keys, and loose change, and found the folded wad of bills wrapped in a pink hair tie. All ones and fives.
“This ain’t gonna cut it,” he said. He stuffed the money into his pocket and lifted Marion to her feet. She tried to speak but could only cough and wheeze for air. “I guess we gonna have to come to some other kind of arrangement.” He spun Marion around backward and shoved her up against the hood of a Dodge pickup. She tried to fight him while still trying to breathe, but Louis twisted her arm back and behind her, pressing her face down on the truck while he went to work on the sarong. Behind them, at the back door of the club, Todd laid the bag of chicken wings he’d promised Marion on the ground and quietly slipped back inside.
“I told you I could make this all
romantic-like,” Louis said, after he tossed the sarong and the ripped thong to the ground, “but I think this is the way you wanted it, ain’t it, girl? You like this rough shit, don’t you?”
Marion was only able to grunt out three words in a croaked whisper. “Don’t . . . do . . . this . . .” She tried to slide out of his grip, but he pulled up on her arm to the point she thought it might snap.
“Yeah, girl, swing it for me,” Louis said, unzipping his fly.
Marion didn’t see the beer bottle hit Louis in the back of the head, but she heard the hollow thud of impact and watched it bounce to the ground beside her. “Owwww. Shit!” Louis let go of her arm, and she slid to the ground, landing hard in the gravel.
The boy stood about ten feet away with another empty bottle in his hand. Louis was still seeing stars when the kid slung the second bottle like a Major League pitcher. His aim was a little wide and he missed the man standing over his mama, but he hit the side of the truck, and the bottle shattered like a bomb. Shards of busted brown glass went flying and both Louis and Marion covered their faces. “Get away from my mama,” the boy yelled, and balled his tiny fists up and raised them like a boxer.
“Well, look at this little fucker,” Louis said, rubbing the growing welt on his shaved head. “Shorty here want to play like a man. Come here, shorty. You can watch what a real man does to a whore that don’t pay what she owe.” The kid was only sixty pounds if that, and tiny even for a seven-year-old, but he stood his ground and dug in, even when Louis produced a knife that caught every bit of the light from the streetlamp. Marion started to stand and rush him but was barely on her knees when the back door of the club busted open and Big Moose, the club’s bouncer, a three-hundred-pound bruiser with jowls like a bullmastiff’s, walked out into the lot. Todd followed behind him, and last, Cutter himself, toting a pump-action shotgun.
Bull Mountain Page 18
