“I don’t think I’ve ever been to a drive-in alone,” Don said. “Not that I remember, anyway.”
“Well, I have,” Hank said, “just like Larry. Some movies only play drive-ins, and if you don’t catch them there you’ll miss them altogether.”
“I’ve been a few times, I guess,” Eddie said, “and you’ll always see a few guys sitting alone in their cars. But I’ve never seen a woman alone in a car at a drive-in, unless her boyfriend was getting something at the snack bar.”
“Let me tick it off,” Hank said. “First, if a woman’s there, she’s either with her parents, her husband, or her boyfriend. Second, no woman ever goes to a drive-in alone. They’re afraid to, for some reason, even though a drive-in movie’s safer than any place I know for a woman alone. Because, third, a man would be stupid to look for a broad at a drive-in when there’re a thousand better places to pick one up.”
“That’s the toughest place, all right,” I said. “It’s impossible to pick up a woman at a drive-in.”
Hank laughed. “No, it isn’t impossible, Larry. It’s hard, but it’s not impossible.”
“I say it’s impossible,” I repeated.
“Better than that,” Eddie said, “I’m willing to bet ten bucks it’s impossible.”
Hank, shaking his head, laughed. “Ten isn’t enough.”
“Add another ten from me,” I said.
“I’ll make it thirty,” Don said.
“You guys aren’t serious,” Hank said.
“If you don’t think thirty bucks is serious enough,” Eddie said, “I’ll raise my ten to twenty.”
“Add another ten,” I said.
“And mine,” Don said.
“Sixty dollars is fairly serious money,” Hank said. “That’s twice as much dough as I’d win from you guys shooting pool at the White Shark.”
“Bullshit,” Eddie said. “We’ve offered to bet you sixty hard ones that you can’t pick up a broad at the drive-in. And we pick the drive-in.”
“You guys really love me, don’t you?” Hank said, getting to his feet and rotating his meaty shoulders.
“Sure we love you, Hank,” I said. “We’re trying to add to your income. But you don’t have to take the bet. All you have to do is agree with us that it’s impossible, that’s all.”
“What’s my time limit, Eddie?” Hank said.
“An hour, let’s say,” Eddie said.
“An hour? Movies last at least an hour-and-a-half,” Hank said. “And I’ll need some intermission time as well to talk to women at the snack bar. How about making it three hours?”
“How about two?” I said.
“Two hours is plenty,” Don said. “You wouldn’t hang around any other place in Miami for more’n two hours if you couldn’t pick up a broad.”
“Let’s compromise,” Hank said. “An hour-and-a-half, so long as I get at least ten minutes intermission time. If the movie happens to run long, then I get more time to take advantage of the intermission, but two hours’ll be the outside limit. Okay?”
“It’s okay with me,” I said.
“Then let’s make the bet a little more interesting,” Hank said. “For every five minutes under an hour, you add five bucks to the bet, and I’ll match it.”
Hank’s self-confidence was irritating, but I considered it as unwarranted overconfidence. We took him up on his addition to the bet, and we agreed to meet in Hank’s apartment in a half-hour.
We all had identical one-bedroom apartments, but we furnished them so differently none of them looked the same. I don’t have much furniture, but the stuff I’ve got is unique. On Saturday nights I often get the early Sunday edition of the Miami Herald and look for furniture bargains in the Personals. That’s how I got my harpsichord. It was worth at least $850, but I paid only $150 for it. I can pluck out “Birmingham Jail,” but I plan to take lessons if a harpsichord teacher ever moves to Miami. I’m not in any hurry to complete the furnishings; I’m willing to wait until I get the things I want to keep.
Eddie has a crummy place, a real mess, but his mother drives down from Ft. Lauderdale every month to spend a couple of days with him, and that’s the only time it’s clean.
When Don left his wife, he took all of his den furniture, and his living room is furnished as a den. He’s got two large comfortable leather chairs, tall, old-fashioned, glass-doored bookcases, and a half-dozen framed prints of “The Rake’s Progress” on the walls. When we’re watching football and drinking beer in Don’s place, it’s like being in some exclusive men’s club.
Hank, because he doesn’t have an office, has almost a third of his living room taken up with cardboard boxes full of drugs and samples of the other medical products his company manufactures. Hank serves as our “doctor.” We get our pain killers, cold remedies, medicated soap, and even free toothbrushes from Hank. Before the strict accountability on drugs started, he could sometimes spare sleeping pills and a few uppers. But not any longer. His company counts them out to him now, in small quantities, and he has to account for the amphetamines he passes out free to the doctors he calls on.
Hank’s apartment is overcrowded with possessions, too, in addition to the medical supplies. Once he has something, he can’t bear to part with it, so his apartment is cluttered. On top of everything else, Hank has a mounted eight-foot sailfish over the couch. He caught it in Acapulco last year, had it mounted for $450 and shipped to Miami. Across the belly, in yellow chalk, he’s written, “Hank’s Folly.” He still can’t understand how the boat captain talked him into having the sailfish mounted, except that he was so excited, at the time, about catching it. He’s so genuinely unhappy now, about his stupidity in mounting a sailfish, we no longer kid him about it.
When I got to my apartment, I was feeling the effects of the two martinis, so before I took my shower, I put on some coffee to perc. After I showered, I put on a T-shirt, khaki shorts, and a pair of tennis shoes. I fixed a very weak Scotch and water in a plastic glass, and carried it with me down to Hank’s apartment.
The other guys were already there. Don, wearing yellow linen slacks and a green knit shirt, was checking the movie pages in the Herald. Eddie wore his denim jacket and jeans with his black flight boots, and winked at me when I came in. He jerked his head toward the short hallway to the bedroom. Hank, of course, was still dressing, and a nose-tingling mixture of talcum powder, Right Guard, and Brut drifted in from the bedroom.
Eddie grinned, and jerked his head toward the bedroom. “An actor prepares,” he said. “Stanislavski.”
“Jesus,” Don said, rattling the paper. “At the Tropical Drive-In they’re showing five John Wayne movies! Who in hell could sit through five John Waynes for Christ sake?”
“I could,” I said.
“Me, too,” Eddie said, “but only one at a time.”
“If you go to the first one at seven-thirty,” Don said, “you don’t get out ’til three a.m.!”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Eddie said, “if we all went and took along a couple of cases of beer. It’s better than watching TV from seven-thirty till three, and I’ve done that often enough.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but you can watch TV in airconditioned comfort. You aren’t fighting mosquitoes all night.”
“They fog those places for mosquitoes,” Eddie said.
“Sure they do,” Don said, “and it makes them so mad they bite the shit out of you. Here’s one. Listen to this. At the Southside Dixie. Bucket of Blood, The Blood-Letters, The Bloody Vampires, and Barracuda! There’s a theater manager with a sense of humor. He put the barracuda last so they could get all that blood!”
We laughed.
Eddie got up and crossed to the kitchenette table, where Hank kept his liquor and a bucketful of ice. “What’re you drinking, Fuzz-O?”
“I’m nursing this one,” I said.
“Pour me a glass of wine, Eddie,” Don said.
“Blood-red, or urine-yellow?”
“I don’t care,” Don said, “just so
you put a couple of ice cubes in it.”
Eddie fixed a scotch over ice for himself, and brought Don a glass of Chianti, with ice cubes.
“The Southside’s probably our best bet,” I said. “There’ll be fewer women at the horror program than at the John Wayne festival. And besides, there’s a Burger Queen across the highway there on Dixie. We can eat something and watch for Hank when he comes out of the theater.”
“Shouldn’t one of us go with him?” Eddie said.
“It wouldn’t be fair,” Don said. “I don’t think he’ll be able to pick up any women there anyway, but it would be twice as hard to talk some woman into getting into a car with two guys. So we let him go in alone. As Larry says, we can watch the exit from across the Dixie Highway.”
Hank came into the living room, looking and smelling like a jai-alai player on his night off. He wore white shoes with leather tassels, and a magenta slack suit with a silk blue-and-red paisley scarf tucked in around the collar. Hank had three other tailored suits like the magenta—wheat, blue and chocolate—but I hadn’t seen the magenta before. The high-waisted pants, with an uncuffed flare, were double-knits, and so tight in front his equipment looked like a money bag. The short-sleeved jacket was a beltless, modified version of a bush jacket, with huge bellows side pockets.
Don was the only one of us with long hair, that is, long enough, the way we all wanted to wear it. Because of our jobs, we couldn’t get away with hair as long as Don’s. Hank had fluffed his hair with an air-comb, and it looked much fuller than it did when he slicked it down with spray to call on doctors.
“Isn’t that a new outfit?” Eddie said.
“I’ve had it awhile,” Hank said, going to the table to build a drink. “It’s the first time I’ve worn it, is all. I ordered the suit from a small swatch of material. Then when it was made into a suit, I saw that it was a little too much.” He shrugged. “But it’ll do for a drive-in, I think.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that color, Hank,” Don said. “I like it.”
Hank added two more ice cubes to his Scotch and soda. “It makes my face look red, is all.”
“Your face is red,” I said.
“But not as red as this magenta makes it look.”
“When you pay us off tonight,” Eddie said, “it’ll match perfectly.” Hank looked at his wristwatch. “Suppose we synchronize our watches. It is now, precisely…seven-twenty-one. We’ll see who ends up with the reddest faces.”
We checked our watches. For the first time, I wondered if I had made a bad bet. If Hank lost, I consoled myself at least his over-confidence would preclude my giving him any sympathy.
We decided then to meet Hank at the Burger Queen across from the Southside Drive-In. He would take his Galaxie, and the rest of us would ride down in Don’s Mark IV.
Because we stopped at the 7/Eleven to buy two six packs of beer, Hank beat us to the Burger Queen by about five minutes. Don gave Hank a can of beer, which he hid under the front seat, and then Hank drove across the highway. It was exactly seven-forty-one.
3
We ordered Double Queens apiece, with fries, and then grabbed a tile table on the side patio to the left of the building. The Burger Queen didn’t serve beer, and the manager couldn’t see us fish our beers out of the paper sack around to the side. We could look directly across the highway and see the drive-in exit.
Unless you’re going out to dinner somewhere, eating at eight p.m. in Miami is on the late side. We were all used to eating around six, and so we were ravenous as we wolfed down the double burgers. We didn’t talk until we finished, and then I gathered up the trash and dumped it into the nearest garbage can. Don ripped the tops off three more beers.
Below Kendall, at this point on the Dixie Highway, there were six lanes, and the traffic was swift and noisy both ways. Eddie began to laugh and shake his head.
“What’s so funny?” I said.
“The whole thing—what else? I know there isn’t a hellova lot to do on a Thursday night, but if I ever told anyone I sat around at the Burger Queen for two hours waiting for my buddy to pick up a woman at a drive-in movie—”
“You’d better hope it’s at least an hour-and-a-half,” Don said.
“I know, I know,” Eddie said, “but you’ve got to admit the whole business is pretty stupid.”
“Yes, and no, Eddie,” I said. “It isn’t really money, either. You and Don both know that we’d all like to take Hank down a notch.”
Don smiled. “I think you may be right, Larry.”
“I’m not jealous of Hank,” Eddie said.
“Neither am I,” I said. “All I’m saying is that for once I’d like to see old Hank lose one. I like Hank, for Christ’s sake, but I hate to see any man so damned over-confident all the time, that’s all.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “I know what you mean.”
Don snorted, and looked at his watch. “You’ll have to wait until another time, I think. It’s now eight-twelve, and here comes our wandering over-confident boy.”
Don had spotted Hank’s Galaxie as it cleared the drive-in exit, and Hank, waiting to make a left turn, was hovering at the edge of the highway when I turned to look. He had to wait for some time, and we couldn’t see whether there was a woman in the car with him or not. He finally made it across and parked in the Burger Queen lot. We met him about half-way as he came towards us—by himself.
“How about a beer?” Hank said.
“We drank it,” Eddie said.
“Thanks for saving me one. Come on. I’ll introduce you to Hildy.”
We followed Hank to the Galaxie. When he opened the passenger door and the overhead light went on, we saw the girl clearly. She was about thirteen or fourteen, barefooted, wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt, and tight raggedy-cuffed blue jeans with a dozen or more different patches sewn onto them. On her crotch, right over the pudenda, there was a patch with a comic rooster flexing muscled wings. The embroidered letters, in white, below the chicken read: I’M A MEAN FIGHTING COCK. Her brownish hair fell down her back, well past her shoulders, straight but slightly tangled, and her pale face was smudged with dirt. She gave us a tentative smile, and tried to take us all in at once, but she had trouble focusing her eyes. She closed her eyes, and her head bobbled on her skinny neck.
“She’s only a kid,” Eddie said, glaring at Hank.
Hank shrugged. “I know. She looked older over in the drive-in, without any lights, but you guys didn’t set any age limit. A girl’s a girl, and I had enough trouble snagging this one.”
“It’s a cop-out, Hank,” I said, “and you know it.”
“Suit yourself, Fuzz-O,” Hank said. “If you guys don’t want to pay off, I’ll cancel the debt.”
“Nobody said he wouldn’t pay,” Don said. “But the idea was to pick up somebody old enough to screw. You wouldn’t fuck a fourteen-year-old girl—”
“That wasn’t one of the conditions,” Hank said, “but if that’s what you guys want, I’ll take Hildy home, give her a shower, and slip it to her. I sure as hell wouldn’t be getting any cherry—”
The girl—Hildy—whimpered like a puppy, coughed, choked slightly, and fell over sideways in the seat.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you kid,” Don said.
“She’s stoned on something, Hank,” I said. “You’d better get her out of there before she heaves all over the upholstery.”
Hank bent down, leaned inside the car, and pushed up the girl’s eyelids. He put a forefinger into her throat and then grabbed her thin right wrist to check her pulse. He slammed the passenger door, and leaned against it. His red, sunburned face was watermelon pink—about as pale as Hank was capable of getting.
“She’s dead,” Hank said. He took out his cigarettes, put one in his mouth, but couldn’t get his lighter to work. I lighted a cigarette myself, and then held the match for Hank. His fingers trembled.
“Don’t play around, Hank,” Don said. “Shit like that isn’t funny.”
“Sh
e’s dead, Don,” Hank said. “Are you sure?” Eddie said.
“Look, man—” Hank ran his fingers through his fluffy hair, and then took a long drag on his cigarette. “Dead is dead, man! I’ve seen too many…too fucking many—”
“Take it easy, Hank,” I said.
“What do we do now, Larry?” Don said. Hank and Eddie looked at me, too, waiting. At 28, I was the youngest of the four. Hank was 31, and Don and Eddie were both 30, but because of my police background they were dumping the problem in my lap.
“We’ll take her to Hank’s apartment,” I said. “I’ll drive Hank’s car, and Hank’ll go with me. You guys go on ahead in the Continental and unlock the fire door to the north-west stairway. Meet us at the door, because it’s closest to Hank’s apartment. Then, while you three take her upstairs to the apartment, I’ll park Hank’s car.”
“Okay,” Don said. “Let’s go, Eddie.”
“Don’t run, for Christ’s sake,” I said.
They slowed to a walk. Hank gave me his car keys, and I circled the car and got in behind the wheel.
On the way back to Dade Towers I drove cautiously. Hank sat in the passenger bucket seat beside me, and held the girl’s shoulders. He had folded her legs, and she was in a kneeling position on the floor with her face level with the dash glove compartment. He held her steady, with both hands gripping her shoulders.
“How’d you happen to pick her up, Hank?” I said.
“Thursday’s a slow night, apparently,” Hank said. “There’re only about twenty-five cars in there. No one, hardly, was at the snack bar. I got a paper cup from the counter, and went outside to pour my beer into it. Sometimes, you know, there’s a cop around, and you’re not supposed to drink beer at the drive-in, you know.”
“I know.”
The girl had voided, and the smell of ammonia and feces was strong. Moving her about hadn’t helped any either. I pushed the button to lower the windows, and turned off the airconditioning.
“That was a good idea,” Hank said. “Anyway, I got rid of the beer can in a trash basket, and circled around the snack bar to the women’s can. I thought some women might come out, and I could start talking to one, but none did. Then I walked on around the back of the building to the other side. Hildy, here, was standing out in the open, not too far from the men’s room. She was standing there, that’s all, looking at the screen. The nearest car was about fifty feet away—I told you there were only about twenty-five cars, didn’t I?”
The Shark-Infested Custard Page 2
