Nick's Trip

by George Pelecanos

“Grand-Dad, if you’ve got it.”

  Flynn pointed to the unlit call rack. “Jack and Beam is what it is.”

  “The Jim Beam will do it,” I said.

  Billy put money on the bar and walked back toward the dart room, where I saw him move toward a woman in a half-length black leather coat. Her hair was as black as the coat, and she wore blue jeans and a loose purple sweater that didn’t work at hiding her lush shape, if that was what she was after. She smiled at something Billy said, and he leaned into her slightly and returned one of his patented pretty-boy grins. I looked around the bar.

  I knew one guy standing up, an alcoholic named Denneman who was memorable for having thrown up whiskey one morning in junior high first period industrial arts, thrown it up with stunning ferocity on the varnished oak of the center drafting table. His young porcine features had mutated into an obese mask of pink splotches and scars. Someone bumped my back—on purpose, I supposed—and I didn’t bother to find out why. Instead I searched for a friendly face.

  There was one—a guy I knew who had worked for years at the local Shell, sitting at a deuce away from the crowd with his girl, a plump young woman in a waitress uniform of white oxford shirt and black skirt. I grabbed my beer and whiskey off the bar and moved across the room to join them.

  Thankfully, the guy’s name was stitched across his shirt. “Hey, John,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “Nick, right?” He smiled crookedly but with warmth as I nodded. “Have a seat, man. This is my girlfriend, Toni.”

  Toni looked a little looped but still conscious and I shook her clammy hand as I sat. I was relieved to find that John was as genuinely nice as I remembered him, and the conversation stayed dead set on what type of Chrysler product I was driving now. But John had to go and screw things up by excusing himself to play a game of darts, leaving me to sit with Toni, who was becoming alarmingly more drunk with each rum and pineapple she was firing down.

  Toni excused herself and stepped up to the bar. I waved my arm to get Billy’s attention, but he was deep in conversation with the woman in black leather. And John, a lit cigarette drooping out the corner of his mouth, was playing his darts.

  Toni returned with a bar tray, on which were set two rum drinks and another round for me. She served the drinks, left the tray on the sticky wood table, and slid the bourbon and beer in front of my forearms.

  “Drink up,” she said. “I can tell you like it.”

  I shrugged and had a pull off the fresh beer. The Jailbaiter Boyz were playing a Guns N’ Roses cover amid some competing activity in the main room, most likely a spiritless fight.

  “So, Toni. Where do you work?”

  Toni made me pay for that innocent question by launching into a tirade against the management of the Brave Bull, a steak house around the corner on the mistakenly named Grandview Avenue. Then she got right up in my face (hers was now ghoulishly contorted) with graphically venomous descriptions of her unfortunate coworkers, and it became apparent that she hated all of them, save the Greek chef she called Uncle Baba, who was the “undisputed master” at carving “fuckin’ sides o’ beef” and “fuckin’ cuts o’ veal,” a point that she argued with the vehemence of a litigator at the Nuremberg Trials.

  “If you hate the place so much,” I said tiredly behind a slug of Beam, “why don’t you leave?”

  “’Cause I can’t get a good job,” she said indignantly, looking around carefully (as if there would be an African-American face within miles of Captain Wright’s), “’cause the colored women get all the good jobs.”

  “Where’d you get that idea?” I said, realizing as I did that I had made a huge mistake.

  “Where? Where? I’ll tell you where. I know it’s true ’cause my ex–old man used to work for Montgomery County Social Services. That’s how I fuckin’ know.”

  For some reason I said, “Your ex–old man? Bullshit.” And then I watched her fat little face turn red.

  Seeing the hopelessness of the hole I had admittedly dug and then leaped into, I began to look around the bar for help. Toni wouldn’t let it die, though, and she reached her flabby right arm across the table (her tricep was shimmying flatulently like one of Uncle Baba’s cuts o’ meat) and began to sock me on the shoulder with progressively harder punches, yelling, between each slug, “Huh? Huh?”

  I realized then that she actually wanted to fight, and for a brief moment I indeed considered what a kick it would be to see her rubbery face cave in as I smacked her across the barroom, but John was a truly good guy, and then there was the tiny obstacle of the six-and-a-half-foot bouncer of indeterminate lineage in the black Harley T-shirt who was now eyeing me out the corner of his narrowed eyes. I finished my shot, then my beer, and set the bottle on the table.

  “Have a nice night,” I said, and went to recover Billy.

  I pulled him away from his friend and gave him a nudge for the front door. Somebody at one of the tables near the dance floor yelled something at Billy, but when we glanced in that direction no one was looking our way. The Jailbaiter Boyz were destroying Free’s “Fire and Water” as we headed out the door and into the cool, fresh air.

  Billy was laughing as we climbed into the Maxima. Maybelle’s tail thumped the backseat. “You saved me, man.”

  “I saved myself,” I said. “Who was the lady?”

  “No lady.” Billy shook his head as he started the engine and pushed a button for the heat. “I met her in here one night, about a year before I met April. Took her over to my car in front of Wheaton Guns, that night, and fucked her right in the parking lot. She made me pull out before I came—she didn’t want to get pregnant ‘again,’ she said. Man, I shot off all over her leather jacket, the same motherfucker she was wearing tonight. She got some hankies out of the glove box, real calm, and wiped all that jism off, like it was nothing. And we just walked back into Cap’n Fights and had a couple more beers.”

  “You’re a hopeless romantic, you know it?”

  Billy chuckled. “She called me a couple of times after that. Described on the phone how she wanted to do all this funky shit to me—leather and shit—shit I’m just not into, man. So I didn’t hook up. I never saw her again, until tonight. But I gotta love that jacket.”

  “A sensitive guy, Billy. To the end.”

  “That’s me, Greek.” He smiled. “How about another beer?”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re on a roll tonight, aren’t we?” Billy handed me a beer and opened one for himself.

  “Yeah, Billy. I believe we are.”

  I found WMUC on Billy’s radio. They were just crashing into the intro to the Replacements’ “Seen Your Video.” I clockwised the volume as we pulled out of the lot and headed south on University, toward the entry ramp to 495.

  TWELVE

  THE MAXIMA CUT a swift southeast arc on the inner loop of the Beltway. We followed and then passed taillights of various geometric mutations, using the leftmost lane for the pass and then returning to the center. Billy seemed to be holding his booze fairly well, though the fact that he was driving did not seem to influence his rate of drinking. He was on a tear, and I was right there with him.

  We exited at Route 5 and headed south, stopping at the first bar we saw, a strip joint named the Fourway at a traffic crossroads in Clinton, to cop a six of long-necks. I waited in the car and kept an eye on the movement behind the fogged car windows in the lot. Billy emerged from the bar, the thump of bass briefly chasing him until the door behind him swung closed, and hustled to the car. We popped the caps on two of the beers, swung back out onto the highway, and once again drove south.

  The road went to four lanes with a wide, bare median, the terrain hilly at first and then flattened out. In the southeastern sky the bright yellow moon was full and large. We passed pickup cap depots and parts yards and outdoor ornamental pottery shops, broken by the odd stretches of undeveloped land. Ten miles of that, and the low lights of Waldorf appeared ahead.

  Charles County’s Waldorf stood w
here Route 5 met 301. It had once been a gambling mecca for Washingtonians who had a taste for the slots, but that had ended by law sometime early in the sixties. Scattered remnants of Little Vegas remained—the Wigwam “casino” had been converted for a while into a bakery, and now the peaked structure was nothing but an empty glass tepee—but Waldorf had been reborn initially as a five-mile stretch of car dealerships, Taco Bells, and strip shopping centers whose tenants consisted primarily of liquor stores, electronics franchises, low-end clothiers, knockoff booteries, and convenience markets. Now the area had entered another phase, as its predestined growth pushed it into the league of Washington Suburb. A mall at the south end of town, anchored by two mildly upscale retailers, had opened to much fanfare, bringing with it the legitimization of a ten-plex cinema and a new Holiday Inn.

  But all the swirling logos and white-handled shopping bags could not mask the fact that Waldorf was still Waldorf—the memory of the abandoned 301 Drive-In still loomed like a decaying gray ghost over the highway, and it still took fifteen minutes to get an ice-cream cone from the geriatric hair-netted help at Bob-Lu’s Diner. Then there was Reb’s Fireplace (the sign had two silhouetted swingers dancing the night away over the tag line LET’S PARTY TONIGHT!), aptly named since it had become a raging inferno one night three years earlier and had remained undemolished, a charred shell and unforgivable eyesore to the occupants of the Volvos who cruised by nightly on their commute home to the planned “city” of Saint Charles.

  Billy pulled the car into the next lot down from Reb’s, where a nightclub called the Blue Diamond stood windowless and alone. The lot was filled with Ford and Chevy pickups, late-model American sedans, and Mustangs and Firebirds. We parked next to a black El Camino that had a blue tarp in the bed covering varying lengths of PVC pipe.

  “What’s going on?”

  “One of April’s haunts,” Billy said. “She used to stop here on the trip home, and usually on the way back. Maybe someone’s seen her.”

  I patted the dog, who had instinctively lain down when Billy cut the engine. We locked up and walked across the lot. A couple of young men exited the club as we approached. They didn’t look at us, and they didn’t hold the door. The Top 40 rock coming from inside faded and then blared out as I pulled the door open once again.

  The Blue Diamond had two circular bars on either side of the room and a large dance floor in the middle, with a live band playing on a barely elevated stage in front of it. The band was finishing up their set with “Glory Days,” the vocals buried somewhere in the heavily synthesized mix. A sea of acid-washed jeans, high-tops, and ruffled shirts moved on the dance floor. A glitzy banner behind the band announced that they were FRIDAY’S CHILD.

  Two mustachioed bouncers, both twig-legged but heavy in the chest, checked our IDs. We moved to the bar and ordered a couple of domestics. I paid the tab and added a healthy tip, and the neckless bartender took both without a nod. Billy and I turned and leaned our backs against the bar.

  No one spoke to us while we drank or even gave us a hard stare. Finally I turned to Billy. “Come here often?”

  “I like it like cancer.”

  “We’re way too old for this shit. Nobody even wants to kick our asses.”

  “I know,” he said. “Let me ask around, then we’ll split.”

  “That’s my job.”

  “And you can do it. But I’ll do it here. I know some of these guys.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I grabbed my beer off the bar and walked into the men’s room. After I drained I washed up in a dirty sink and ran a wet paper towel across my face. When I walked out Billy was on the other side of the room talking to the barkeep. He was putting something back into his wallet while he talked. He nodded and headed back in my direction. I finished my beer and placed it on the Formica-topped bar as he arrived.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Any luck?”

  Billy shook his head quickly. “These brain-deads don’t know a fuckin’ thing.”

  We moved across the empty dance floor to the entranceway. I noticed the blue vein of determination on Billy’s temple, and I knew he was going to crack on the doorman, knew it like I knew the sun was going to rise, knew it from all the teenage years we had spent together in bars more dangerous than this. When we reached the door, Billy turned to the larger of the two bouncers and smiled.

  “Thanks,” he said. “We had a great time. And oh yeah”—Billy whacked his own forehead thoughtfully—“I meant to tell you when we walked in. I really like those jeans you’re wearing tonight.”

  “Yeah?” the doorman said with hesitance.

  “Yeah,” Billy said, the smile turning down on his face. “My sister’s got a pair just like ’em.”

  The doorman sighed and said, “You guys have a nice evening,” holding the door open for us as we walked out. I zipped up my jacket as we moved across the lot.

  “What the hell you do that for?” I said.

  “It’s his job to take shit.”

  “You always had to do that, Billy. You always were a mean drunk.”

  “Drunk?” Billy said, showing me his young-boy grin. “Man, I’m not even halfway there.”

  We climbed into the car, and Billy started it up while I fixed him a beer. Maybelle’s nose touched the back of my neck. Billy caught rubber and tilted back his bottle as he pulled back out onto 301.

  Waldorf ended abruptly, and then the highway was the same as it had been before—flat road and forest with the occasional strip shops, failed antique stores, and billboards. Billy kept the needle at seventy, and ten minutes later we hit La Plata, much like Waldorf only less. Past La Plata were last-chance liquor stores and low-rise motels with Plymouth Dusters and Dodge Chargers and Chevy half-tons parked in their gravel lots. Billy aimed the Maxima for a red-and-blue neon sign touting on/off sale as we both drained the last of our beers.

  “You go in,” Billy said, cutting the engine. “I’ll pitch the empties in that can.” He nodded to a rusted oil barrel open on one end that stood near the bar entrance.

  We were parked in front of a wide, noncurtained plate-glass window. The bar—it had no name—was cinder block painted white. Through the window I could see a small group of men in their thirties and forties shooting pool. “I’ll be right back.”

  I left the car, walked to a glass door, pulled it open, and entered. It was only ten o’ clock, but the place was lit up like last call. I guessed they didn’t go much for atmosphere—a look around the place confirmed it. There were three scarred pool tables standing on the industrial-tiled floor, with some metal folding chairs scattered around the tables. A jukebox was against the left wall, though it wasn’t lit and there was no music playing. A narrow wooden bar stood against the back wall, also unlit, with a small selection of low-call liquor racked behind it.

  There were two games being shot, and the entire patronage of the bar was grouped around the games. The men wore designer jeans circa 1978 and sweatshirts with the sleeves pushed back to reveal uniformly pale and hairy forearms. The few women in the joint, teased hair and also in jeans, sat in the folding chairs drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, the ashes of which they flicked to the floor. The men’s cigarettes were balanced on the edges of the pool tables, lit end out.

  I moved to the bar and on the way got a chin nod from one of the players, a nod that I returned. The woman behind the bar was blond and maybe fifty, with a raspberry birthmark on her right cheek.

  “What can I get you?” she said in a businesslike but upbeat way.

  “Two sixes of Bud bottles to go,” I said, “and a pint of Old Grand-Dad. Thanks.”

  “Don’t have the Grand-Dad. Something else?”

  “A pint of Beam, then.”

  “The Black or White?”

  “Make it the White.”

  She wrapped the bourbon and handed me the bag. “Let me go in the back and get you the beer.” She winked. “Rather not pull it from here, have to restock the cooler later.”r />
  She left the bar and entered a walk-in to the left of it. I turned, rested my back on the bar, and looked out the plate-glass window onto 301. Billy was standing in the gravel next to the Maxima, looking down at the rush of his own steaming urine as he peed toward the window. His hair was unmoussed now, full and ruffled as I remembered it from his youth, and his mouth was slightly open, with that dumb look of stoned concentration he had perpetually worn as a teenager. I felt a sudden sting of guilt and looked away. I drew a cigarette from my jacket and lit it, keeping the hot smoke in and giving it a long exhale. Someone tapped my shoulder.

  One of the pool players stood next to me. He had long black hair thinning on the top, and he was skinny and nearing forty. His small potbelly barely hung over the waistband of his Sergio Valente jeans.

  “That your friend out there?” he said in a direct but not unfriendly way, pointing out the front window.

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “I’d appreciate it,” he said, giving a quick nod to a woman in one of the folding chairs, “if next time he wouldn’t be so quick to show off in front of my wife.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I said.

  He nodded and smiled. “You take care, buddy.”

  “You too.”

  I paid and thanked the woman behind the bar, put the bourbon in the larger sack, and moved toward the door. On the way out I smiled apologetically at the man’s wife and got a smile back. Out in the lot I took a last drag, tossed the butt, put the beers in the backseat, transferred the pint to my jacket pocket, and patted the dog on the head. Two of the beers came out of the bag before I settled in.

  Billy grabbed one, popped it, and tapped my bottle with his. He drank deeply and turned the bottle to admire the label. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

  “You ready? Or you going to do a beer commercial.”

  “No, I’m ready. But I really had to let one fly.”

  “I noticed. So did all those folks inside.”

  “You talkin’ about those rednecks?” Billy said, pointing in the window. “Fuck them.”