by Joel Arnold
“Just one more, Ben,” she said five more times until finally he shook his head gently.
“Come back tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow you can have some more.”
The next night was another slow middle of the week night. A couple pool games going on. The house band playing to an empty dance floor. Spaces left up at the bar. Dinah sat in her usual spot.
“Have you seen him?” she asked Ben.
“Who’s that, sweetheart?”
“That biker. Billy. That bad-ass biker.”
Ben shook his head. “Nope. But the Hanson brothers were here earlier. Looked like they’d seen better days.”
“Think they hurt him?”
Ben shrugged. Poured her another drink.
The cigarette smoke, the odor of beer and whiskey hung in a stubborn cloud around her head. Had he taken off already? Was he holed up in a ditch somewhere, bleeding to death? Everyone knew the Hansons never played fair.
Why should I care, she thought. He’s nothing. A phantom.
Something she could never have, save for maybe just a taste, brief as a Sunday matinee.
She looked at her watch. “Shoot,” she said. Almost closing time. She turned to Ben. “One for the road? No ice this time?”
“I don’t know about you, Dinah.” But he poured her half a glass. Knocked on the bar with his thick knuckles. “On the house.”
She closed her eyes and let it slide down her throat all at once. She shivered at the burn that erupted in her gut and flowed to the ends of her limbs. Shook her head. Rose carefully from the stool and gathered her purse, her jacket, her cigarettes.
Ben nodded. “You take it easy.”
Billy waited for her out in the gravel of the parking lot, a silhouette with eyes reflecting the flickering neon of the Slaughterville Roadhouse sign. He stamped his cigarette out on the ground, the sparks not wanting to go out just yet, and with a tilt of his chin, motioned her onto his bike, a big old Harley — every mother’s nightmare and every kid’s dream.
Dinah got on, wrapped her arms around his belly, waiting for her warmth to heat the leather of his jacket. But it stayed cold. She shivered.
“Loneliness is cold,” Billy said, as he kicked the Harley into life. It roared with a fierceness that vibrated through Dinah’s heart, forcing it to pound and pump blood with the same ferocity as gas through the cycle’s chambers. Billy revved the engine and bolted forward.
Shadows flew by. Dinah leaned to the side to catch the wind in her hair and on her face. The wind never tasted so good. And the sound of that bike, the feel — the vibrations tore through her clothes like a hundred pairs of frantic hands.
He slowed to a stop, Dinah’s arms still wrapped tightly around his chest. She recognized this place. The old Starlite. She looked up at the remnants of the movie screen. Bare branches poked through what was left of it, yellowed panels, the edges splintered, the right corner with a nasty burn mark running down it from a lightning strike. Thistle, poison ivy, oak and birch saplings crumbled the lot’s asphalt in its own glacially determined way. Weeds clutched at the cracked and rusting speaker-posts as if keeping them from sinking into the earth.
“Why do the good things always disappear?” Dinah asked.
Billy took his time answering. “It’s best that way,” he finally said. “Then it can never sour. It stays in your memory and gets sweeter as the years go by.”
“Are you gonna disappear on me?”
Billy said nothing, his face still turned toward the screen.
“Take me with you,” Dinah said. “Take me wherever it is you need to go.”
“I don’t think I can.” Already the moonlight was playing tricks on the back of his pale neck, making it appear to fade in and out. Dinah closed her eyes. Felt the leather jacket crumble in her arms. She stood alone. No bike. No Billy.
She looked up at the tattered movie screen. The moon played tricks on that, too, because it looked like he was there, a flickering silhouette expanding and bleeding off the edges into the tree branches, making them shudder with the heat of the Harley’s engine. Riding off into the sky, clouds forming in the wake of exhaust.
Dinah turned away. Shivered in the cold. Looked at the concrete square that once held a concession stand. Bent over and picked up the jagged remnants of a broken beer bottle. She sat down in a heap, threw off her shawl and rolled up a sleeve.
The best things never last. The best things disappear and become an imprint in the memory. But she would try to find him. She would try.
She looked up at the screen. It was a jewel, a diamond with its spectrum of colors sparkling through the cool night air, filling her eyes, filling her with a longing for another life. A life full of color and excitement, full of rebels, bikers, black leather clad Jesuses who just might set her on the back of their bike and take her away.
Take her away.
From this.
From all of this.
She pressed the glass onto her wrist. Closed her eyes. Was this the way to become nothing more than a celluloid dream projected onto the night-time sky?
She gasped. She couldn’t do it.
When she stood, dizziness swept over her. What she wouldn’t give for a good stiff bourbon. No ice. Make it a double.
She looked around the overgrown lot. There was no one there.
No one at all.
She started to walk.
A week later he showed up again. She watched him from her stool. Watched him sway in front of the stage to the rhythm of the house band’s set of 60’s music. Hendrix. The Doors. The Stones. She stood and walked over to him. He was crying. She reached up and wiped a tear away. Put her arms around him. They danced like that. Slowly. Gently. Questions were for later. After the band was finished. After last call was announced. After the bartender rapped his knuckles on the bar.
“Closing time.”
“Why did you leave me there?” Dinah asked Billy.
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“But you did hurt me. You hurt me by leaving.”
“It would’ve been worse if I stayed.”
Once again, they stood in the lot of the old drive-in. The air was humid and mosquitoes and gnats swarmed in the cone of Billy’s headlight.
“I’m too old for you, aren’t I?”
Billy shook his head and grinned. “Naw, I like older women.”
“You don’t think I’m ugly?”
“You make me shiver inside when I look at you. You make me want to take you in my arms and never let go.”
“Then do it. Take me. Take me wherever it is you have to go.”
“I wish I could.”
“You can.”
“You don’t understand.”
“All I need to understand is that you make me feel special and young and appreciated and wanted. All I need to understand is that you’re what I used to dream about when I was a teenager. You were my dream, a biker just like in those movies. I wanted to ride off across the country. Never worry about this life again.”
Billy looked up at the broken down drive-in movie screen. Dinah looked, too. There was movement on it, tricks of the moon tossing shadows across it.
Billy said, “Out here color fades when night comes. But up there on the screen, color stays sharp and clear.” He motioned for Dinah.
She gave Billy her hand. Let him lead her to the cement footing where the concession stand once stood, the smell of popcorn and hotdogs and teenage lust lingering in her memory. Billy stood with her in front of the blackened fire ring. He took a cigarette from beneath his black leather jacket. Lit it and tossed the match in among the ashes. He took a deep drag. Held it in and brought his lips to hers. Exhaled into her mouth. She sucked it in hungrily, filling her lungs with it, letting it sit there as long as she could before it seeped out through her nostrils.
Billy tossed the burning cigarette into the ashes. Stepped into the fire ring. The ashes swirled around him. They traveled up his body in a small tornado.
&nb
sp; Then he was gone.
Dinah peered into the fire ring. Could see nothing but the still burning cigarette. She heard the motorcycle rev from far away — a growl of lust and need.
Ironic, she thought, that the thing she had been longing for, the love she thought she could never have, was centered within a crude circle of ash and blackened beer cans, cigarette butts and fire charred wood.
She stepped inside. A sharp pain shot through her leg. She shut her eyes.
Ash swirled around her, traveling up her hips, her breasts, her head. It shot up her nose, filled her mouth and ears. She felt herself sinking. The cement base had turned into something wet and pulpy. She gagged, trying to spit out the ash. A multitude of hands grabbed at her from below. The ash filled her, the spent cigarettes of a thousand outcasts, loners, the neglected and abused. Her whole body stung and she felt herself melt into unconsciousness.
But all the while, there was that part of her that remained filled with hope and longing. The memory-feel of Billy’s kiss remained on her lips, the smell of him trapped in her clogged nostrils.
When she came to, she found herself looking out over the overgrown lot of the drive-in. No.
Wait.
That wasn’t right.
Something was different. There were different trees. Sycamores instead of pine and birch. And beyond, she recognized the tufts of cotton plants instead of withered stalks of corn.
She heard the roar of a motorcycle. Her heart filled with joy when she saw him. Riding circles down below. Looking up at her and smiling.
But there was another sound. She thought it was a generator at first. A low hum barely heard over the motorcycle’s engine. It was coming from each side of her, from above and below. She tried to turn her head, but it felt as if it was encased in quicksand. She forced it to turn. Slowly. Painfully. And when she saw them, all the joy leapt from her heart as if forced out by the blast of a shotgun. There were hundreds of them. All of them women. All moaning. All mourning. A collective hum of loss, their faces painted in agony pressed against the remnants of a tattered movie screen, looking out.
Billy revved his engine. Stood up, straddling his bike. Another smile. Another wink and wave.
The groans grew louder.
Billy turned. Rode away into the night, his taillight disappearing.
It was at least an hour before the three teenagers came. She felt all the trapped faces watching apprehensively. The teenagers sat around a fire. Dropped broken up palettes onto it. Smoked cigarettes. Drank beer. Again, Dinah slowly, painfully turned to look at the others. One by one, their mouths opened in screams.
Even before opening her own mouth, Dinah knew that the teenagers below would not hear her.
Soft Notes From a Hard Guitar
John Baxter was a skinny man with hunched shoulders and a large protruding Adam’s apple. A dark purple birthmark stretched across his throat from the tip of his chin to the top of his chest. Random patches of black hair bristled from his forearms like weeds.
But goddamn could he play the guitar.
Up there on the small stage with a row of red lights making his sweat look like blood, he was a temporary god that made people stare at their beer and contemplate their fucked-up lives.
As he neared the end of a love song, the chords creeping like poisonous snakes into the hearts of the bar’s patrons, he looked up and saw her sitting on the edge of the stage. Three hundred fifty odd pounds squeezed into black leather pants and jacket, her hair dyed just as black, staring up at him. She was hard to miss. Her chin quivered with the music.
John caressed the twelve strings of his Gibson hungrily. The woman swooned. John thought she was going to flop over in a faint, but just as her body teetered forward, she forced herself back. Forward and back. Forward and back. Like a life buoy bobbing in the ocean.
He’d never seen her before. The Slaughterville Roadhouse was a place of regulars, the same farmers, bikers, mechanics, and antique-shop owners night after night. It was rare to see a fresh face. Rarer yet to see a woman watching him without staring at his birthmark. Without that look in her eyes of pity or disgust.
He dove straight into a fast, lively instrumental before the last one sunk in too far to ever get out. There was clapping and whistling. Beer bottles and shot glasses clanked on chipped pine tables in rhythm. The large woman on the edge of the stage swayed back and forth. Forward and back. Hypnotic. Her own special rhythm pulling at John, and he caught himself staring at her. Caught himself altering his tempo slightly to match hers. The large woman’s eyes slowly opened and a smile journeyed across her face.
John finished his set a few songs early. Took a sip of tequila from the bottle kept behind his amp to calm his nerves, then moved his equipment aside to make room for the next band.
The bartender handed John a twenty dollar bill, payment for the gig. “Everything okay?”
“Sure. Just got a headache is all.” John felt the woman’s eyes on his back.
The bartender nodded toward her. “You watch out for her. She looks like trouble to me.” He winked.
John grinned. Rapped his knuckles on the bar. “See you tomorrow.”
He followed her out the door, carrying his guitar with one hand, an old leather hat in the other. In the gravel parking lot, she stopped. Turned. John swallowed. Nodded toward his pick-up. She squeezed in without a word.
The life of a musician, John thought.
He’d had groupies before. Lost, wayward women who became a bright shining light for a few brief moments. But they were few and far between. And he learned long ago to grab hold of that brightness when he could.
The truck bounced on the washboard surface of the dirt road, leaving a flurry of dust and dead autumn leaves in its wake.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Chryse,” she said.
John’s eyes darted briefly to her reflection in the rearview mirror. The dashboard lights spun a green aura around her.
“You’re an angel,” John said.
Chryse smiled. “I’m no angel. I like musicians.” She put her hand on his thigh. He flinched. “And I know how to take the pain away.”
John slowed down. Heard a branch scrape across the shell of his truck. He wanted to ask her what pain, but knew it would come out sounding like a kid trying to lie.
Instead, he cleared his throat. Said, “My place is a mess.”
“I don’t mind. Life’s a mess.”
“You like beer?” He pulled to a stop in front of his trailer home.
“I just want to feel you.” She pulled his hand to her mouth and kissed his rough, callused fingers. “I want to know you.” She poked out her tongue and slid it slowly over his strumming thumb. “I want to take the pain away.”
In the darkness of the trailer they undressed. Her hands slid over his chest and she pushed him back onto his bed. She crawled on top of him, her weight pressing him into the mattress. Then he was inside of her, and the bed creaked violently with each sliding, bouncing movement. John felt a warm fire igniting his groin. He watched her flesh turn dark, watched the ceiling spin, heard a loud hum in his ears that sounded like a chorus of cellos all playing a single sustained note. He couldn’t breath.
“Get off me,” he gasped.
Her face turned to the ceiling, her chin wiggling, her stomach like a sea of oil undulating in shadow. John thought for a moment he could see the top of his trailer open up, the light of a thousand stars stabbing his eyes.
* * *
“Ugly fucker! You stupid ugly fucker.”
Tom Pike. It’s always Tom Pike who starts it. Whenever Ms. Darrow steps out for a cigarette. The eyes of the entire class turn on Johnny.
“What kind of monkey did your mother have to fuck to give birth to you?”
He feels himself shrinking behind his desk, wishes he could disappear in a cloud of smoke.
“Ever heard of a shower? Why don’t you wash that ugly stain off?”
And the giggles start.
First, the two girls tittering in the front row, then a couple more start in behind them. The sound quickly ripples across the room, turning into a giant wave of pointing and laughter.
Johnny shuts his eyes, trying to retreat into himself, his skin feeling like it wants to turn inside out, his birthmark throbbing and hot.
“Stupid ugly fucker!”
He can’t take it. Jumps from his chair. Slaps the top of his desk so hard his hand feels like it’s full of angry bees.
“Shut up!” he yells. “Shut up you stupid cocksucker!”
And the teacher walks in. Ms. Darrow dressed so nicely in a blouse and black skirt, Johnny’s words hitting her, stopping her cold as if he had just thrown shit across her face.
“Johnny Baxter! Get to the office right NOW!” Her face is bright red. She seethes as Johnny passes her, the class still chuckling as he passes from the room with his head hung low.
He thinks about running away. Why did his mother have to move here?
He thinks about killing him. Killing Tom Pike.
Life would be so much easier without a bastard like him around.
“Stop!” He slapped at her buttocks, gasping for air. With a jerk, he rolled onto his side, forcing her off.
His world came back into focus. She sat on the floor in the corner, her hands covering her face. He heard her crying softly, saw her belly jiggle with each sob. He sat up.
“What the hell was that? What were you trying to do to me?”
She looked up at him through her tears. “I can take the pain away,” she whispered.
John ran his hand through his sweat-slicked hair. “I think you should get out.”
He stood in the corner while she dressed. “I know who you are,” she said gently. “I know what you did.”
“Get out.” John had trouble finding his breath. “Get out now, damn it.”
