Through the Grey, page 9
Tucker is pretty sure she's just said something wicked, but he can't parse it. He blames the whiskey. “Let's just start at Tucker and not work at all.”
“I like that suggestion. Work is the curse of the drinking classes, y'know.”
Tucker chuckles. “Oscar Wilde. Good one.”
“Thank you.”
“So… what is it you're cursed with, Jen?”
“Wire coat hangers.”
Tucker blinks at her. “Uh… is that a personal choice?”
“Business. I sell them. You?”
“Single-edged razor blades.”
“They still make those?”
“In all their near-useless glory.”
“If they were useless, no one would buy them.”
“True, but they don't have a lot of breadth.”
“You should try comparing paper-covered hangers to coated wire at a dry cleaner's convention.”
“How does that go?”
Jen sips her whiskey and Tucker is just drunk enough that he isn't distracted by the sight of her lipstick printing on the rim of her glass. No, he is not. “Much better after a few of these,” she says.
The jukebox expresses an opinion about the superiority of whiskey's burn over that of tequila, by way of Toby Keith's “Whiskey Girl.”
Tucker ignores it. “So, you drink on the job?”
“Never. I might be tempted to go all Mommy, Dearest otherwise. You know, that film almost single-handedly ruined the industry?”
“Seriously?” Tucker asks.
“Yes,” Jen says with a nod. “To this day, I can't watch a Faye Dunaway movie. You?”
“Never had that problem. I don't care one way or the other about Faye Dunaway.”
Jen's mouth presses together and she looks at him from the corner of her eye. “Smarty pants.”
“Flatterer. I'll bet you say that to all the guys.”
“Only the ones that are wearing them. So, no ninety-proof give-a-damn for you, either?”
“Au contraire.” Tucker reaches into the pocket of his coat and flashes the small flask riding in it. “They should issue these along with the sample cases and order forms.”
“Is it safe to drink and shave?”
“Wouldn't know. No one actually shaves with single-edged razor blades.”
Jen's eyes widen until she looks like a doe thinking vengeful thoughts about men wearing safety orange camouflage. “No?”
“Not this kind.” Once again, he ticks off on his fingers: “They can scrape off a bumper sticker, chop cocaine, or slit your wrists, but they don't shave for shit. And that is why mine is a dying industry. Ha ha.”
“Bet mine's dying faster.”
“Doubtful. Every dry cleaner in the country uses wire hangers.”
“But they don't buy them. They recycle the old ones. When was the last time you saw a wire coat hanger in the wild?”
Tucker remembers the tangled mess residing in the closet of last night's hotel. “This morning.”
“Cheap hotel, right?”
Tucker nods. “Yeah—the kind that rents by the hour or the month. Don't you wonder about that? I mean, it kind of presupposes there's someone in the world who actually wants to live upstairs from hookers and drug dealers.”
Jen nods and finishes her drink. “Bail bondsmen and skip tracers.”
“You speak from experience?”
“We sell them advertising on the paper wrappers—they're called 'capes.'“
“That sounds like a superhero—The Caped Hanger and his trusty sidekick—”
“Razor Boy.” She narrows her eyes, rolls her R, and makes it sound wicked. Her small white teeth flash behind the ardent red of her lips.
Tucker blows out a breath that feels too warm and turns his gaze back toward the row of liquor bottles behind the bar before he can make an ass of himself. The jukebox plays the chorus of Jimmy Buffett's “We Are the People” while Jen muddles through her handbag for a pack of cigarettes.
The bar seems to be getting darker…and emptier. The bartender passes with a brace of long-necks, glances at the massive, shapeless sack of red leather and says, “There's hooks under the bar to hang that on, so it doesn't get wet.”
Jen quirks an eyebrow. “Oh?” She looks under the bar. “Oh! Well, look at that. It's like a little hardware convention under here!” She hangs the purse under the bar and grins as she brushes Tucker's knee on the way back up. “Oh, the things I can do with a hook and a hanger…”
There's a promise in that statement that widens Tucker's eyes. “Really?”
Jen gives him the full femme fatale—eyes, cleavage… the works. “Uh-huh… Wanna find out?”
Green Day’s “Last of the American Girls” is playing.
Tucker fears this may be true. “Would this include a Faye Dunaway impression?”
She gives him a sly look. “Only if you like that sort of thing.”
Tucker does not take up that challenge. “Surely a coat hanger is good for something aside from shilling bond services and cinematic child abuse.”
“Do-it-yourself-birth control?”
Tucker blinks at her. “You actually went there.”
Jen shrugs in a way that makes her breasts peer over her neckline. “Like it's not the first thing most people think of. Tell me you didn't.”
“I really didn't. Guess I'm losing my edge…”
Jen giggles. “Maybe you need whetting…”
Is the jukebox a little louder? The crowd a little thinner? Tucker's not sure, but he holds up his glass. “Working on it.”
“Different wet.”
“Lady, I sell razors. I know the difference between a whet H and a wet… wet thing.” Tucker thinks he may have actually blushed. Blushed! At his age! And he's getting drunk…
“I'll just bet you do.”
Jen takes a cigarette from her pack and puts it to her lips. Tucker almost wishes he smoked but it's cut short by the arrival of the bartender, who offers Jen a book of matches decorated with the same plucky pig as the napkins on the bar and the sign outside. Tucker has begun to think of it in terms of a coat of arms: a porcine, pink, rampant on a field of drunkards…
Jen does not take the matches, but leans toward the bartender with the cigarette in her hand and her hand to her mouth. The bartender grins at her, strikes a match, and holds it out, saying, “How're you making out?”
“If we were making out, you'd know it,” she replies.
“I'll get my camera,” the bartender says with a wink.
“Screw the camera,” Tucker says. “Bring the bear.”
The bartender looks mildly affronted. “She's a very private person.” He refills their glasses and walks off into the gathering gloom at the end of the bar. The matchbook remains.
The jukebox puts up “Take It or Leave It” by The Strokes.
Jen puts her fingers down on the matchbook, the cigarette held between them, and moves it around in little circles. The smoke trails behind, leaving hieroglyphs to rise slowly in the air picking up the spastic flashing of the neon so they look like Portents of Doom in a cheesy fantasy flick.
“He seemed kind of familiar… You come here often?” Tucker asks and immediately wants to kick himself.
“Not here…” Jen says.
“But a million places just like here,” Tucker finishes, remembering his own million.
“Yeah. Except for the bear.”
“Do you think he really…?”
“Hey, there are times a bear would have been better company than some of the guys I've been with, though I'm not so crazy about the hairy thing. Me, I prefer 'em dark and desperate.” She winks at him.
Is he desperate? Tucker wonders. He looks up and into the mirror at the back of the bar, past the gleam of the pig's flickering neon and the smoke signal seduction. Yep. That is the face of desperation. “How did we come to this?”
“'Scuse me?” Jen asks and Tucker thinks that she might be a little more than tipsy…
He turns and this time he notices the shabby lining of her faux fur, the slightly thin patches near the seams of her dress, and a run in her stocking that's been stopped with a dab of clear nail polish that just peeps from under the hem of her skirt… It's no worse than his too-often spot-cleaned suit, his ties carefully knotted so the indelible stains won't show, or the gray marks around the insides of his collars that never quite wash off anymore…
“I mean…” he starts, “we're good people, aren't we? Pay our taxes—mostly—don't roll the homeless for shits and giggles, or trip old ladies in crosswalks to steal their retirement checks. We're kind to kids and animals… for values of kind that don't include actually doing anything inconvenient. So… we put in fifteen years of ass-breaking work on the road, and this is what it all boils down to? Whiskey and innuendo in Nowheresville bars?”
Jen licks her lower lip and has an intimate moment with her smoke before she replies, “Maybe for you. But I'm all about the cigarettes and meaningless sex.”
“Oh, come on. No one really likes this job—not unless they're a serial killer. There has to be something else that keeps you going… Aren't there any other people in your life?”
“There are,” Jen says, giving Tucker a significant look.
The clanging of a bell breaks the air for a moment. “Last call, brothers and sisters!” the bartender yells.
As the remaining patrons shuffle and mutter, Tucker leans closer to Jen and says, “I meant for more than one night and sayonara in the morning.”
“Do you sayonara in the morning? I usually do that the night before. Like meditating,” she adds, holding up her drink and then sipping it while her cigarette continues sending love songs to the pig's shuddering reflection in the barback mirror.
Toby Keith again—this time it's “Stays in Mexico” as the jukebox cautions Tucker against trying to chew too big a bite. Or maybe something else, but who knows?
“Uh… I don't actually do that at all. Married.” Tucker looks down at his left hand at the same time Jen does, and spots the wide, pale band of wedding-ring compression that's slowly plumping back to its unburdened state as the alcohol in his system makes his hands puffy.
“I guess that rules out the sayonara,” Jen sighs, “since you're clearly already in full-bore contemplation.”
“Yeah. Well… She left me.” He looks at his watch. “About three hours ago. I'd show you the text message but I broke the phone.”
“Serves the little bastard right. Bearers of bad news and all that.”
“If only it were always that easy—find the bearer of bad news and shhkkkk! Cut its throat,” he says, dragging his thumbnail across his neck. “We could just kill them all. Beat 'em with coat hangers and hang 'em up in the closets of cheap hotels—can you kill a man with a coat hanger…?”
“Sure.”
Tucker gives her a serious look. “Now we're getting awfully close to that serial killer territory. I was speaking rhetorically—I didn't mean you, specifically.”
“I didn't mean me, specifically, either. I mean, do I look like a serial killer? Serial thriller maybe…” She winks. “But, y'know… why not? You could stick the coat hanger in an electric socket, I guess…”
“That… that won't do.” Definitely drunk, Tucker thinks, but, what the hell…?
“Why not? It's wire.”
“I'm more thinking of the position. Electric sockets are never located somewhere comfortable and convenient. You'd have to crouch on the floor to get at it…or next to the bed. You know those crazy beds they have in truckstop motels with the box spring screwed to the floor…”
“Oh, yeah,” Jen says nodding like a bobble-head dog in the back of a lowrider. “My sister's chihuahua went behind one once. We had to push him out with a broom.”
“Was the dog still alive?”
“Certainly—it wasn't a wire-hair.”
“But you see what I mean about that—the coat hanger in the electric socket. If you can't reach it, that's pretty disappointing and you're crawling around on that sticky, fucking carpet with a coat hanger like car thief trying to unlock a mouse hole. But what if it works…? Then they're going to find you on that floor, hugging the nailed-down box spring, with one hand shoved behind it like you're trying to reach a lost sock. It's tawdry. It's undignified. No, no. If you're going to whack yourself, plainly a razor is the superior choice. And while a single-edged utility blade doesn't have the… dare I say élan of the classic straight razor, it's got the advantage of a convenient size and shape.” He can feel the “roll” coming on, the irresistible persuasion that can sell switchblades to pacifists. This is why he does the job—this high—this is his gift, this monumental swell of words that woos the listener into Tucker's spell and locks the sale like a bank vault with teeth. It hasn't felt this good in a long time.
Jen puts her elbows on the bar and her chin in her hands and gazes at Tucker like a little girl seeing her first movie. Her whole face glows as if reflecting the flickering silver light of a black-and-white film shown in the sort of long-gone theater that has ushers dressed in pillbox hats and red uniforms. She scribbles her signature mechanically as the bartender slides her credit slip in front of her.
Tucker has risen to his feet, holding his glass in one hand and the pen with which he signs the credit card's death warrant in the other. “It's the perfect intersection of grace and practicality,” he declares. “The blade so fine and sharp it can cut light without damaging a single photon, but with a simple grip surface, smooth and gently rolled to protect your hand from harm. Your fingerprints will still be perfectly intact with no slipping, no untidy cutting of the palm, or loss of fine motor control.”
From the corner of one eye he sees the last of the patrons making for the doors. He is alone in the spotlight of the bar's reflected beer signs and the flashing pink nimbus of the prancing pig.
“And the best thing—the best thing—is that you can do this in the comfort and privacy of your bath! No mess, no muss, no fuss, no pain. Cradled in the warm embrace of water like a return to Mother Sea and as easy as pulling on your shirt. Score a simple line from forearm to wrist and you're free!”
He flings his hands into the air and the last, forgotten drops of whiskey in his glass patter down like summer rain.
Jen claps her hands in delight and beams at him “Oh, Bravo! Bravo! You could sell swampland to Satan, Josh Tucker. You're my hero!”
Tucker puts his empty glass on the bar and bows to Jen, the jukebox, and the bartender. “Thank you, thank you, and thank you. It's been a great run and you're a wonderful audience. Be sure to tip your waitress.”
“Waitstaff went home an hour ago,” says the bartender, “and we're closed.”
Tucker shakes back his hair which has fallen into his face and stands tall, making a grand gesture toward the door. “Well, then. Shall we?”
Jen stands up and Tucker helps her into her coat and shrugs into his own before offering his elbow. She giggles and tucks her arm through his. “Last of the Great American Salesmen.”
As they stagger toward the door, the jukebox stutters the chorus of Boingo’s “Goodbye, goodbye.”
Outside, the temperature has dropped, the highway is silent, and the parking lot is nearly empty except for two cars, a tow truck, and a pickup without a single undented panel on its whole body. Tucker's rental car stands alone, distant from the bar. As they trudge toward it, the lights of the bar go out, casting them into starless gloom as snow-stuffed clouds sink against the hissing sulfur light of the last remaining street lamps.
“So, are we off to end it all?” Jen asks as they stop beside the sedan parked askew to everything.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Tucker replies with absolutely no irony. “I have the appropriate instruments in my car—about six dozen of 'em.” He turns to give Jen a smile and then stares over her shoulder.
He would swear that he saw a bear wearing a pink bow around its neck follow the bartender to the pickup and jump into the back. As the pickup starts up and rolls away, he's no longer sure—the shape in the bed could just be a shadow—and he can't hear anything above the tubercular coughing of the engine.
“What?” Jen asks, craning her neck to look over her own shoulder.
Tucker shakes himself. “Nothing.” He reaches into his pocket for his car keys.
They aren't there.
He tries each of his pockets in turn and then again, patting, pawing, digging… but no keys.
Staring through the driver's side window he sees them gleaming right where he left them: dangling in the ignition switch. “Fuck!”
Jen peers into the car and begins laughing. “Oh… my… God… You locked your keys in the car!”
Tucker heaves an exasperated sigh. “Yes. I did.” Cutting his wrists might not be such a bad idea after all…
Jen waves her hands in the air as if she can wipe out the error. “No problem! I have a wire hanger…” She turns and Tucker turns with her.
Across the lot, the tow truck rolls away from a fire hydrant with a basic-bland sedan in train behind.
“… in my car,” Jen finishes, blinking at the retreating lights of the truck and her rental car.
Then “Phone!” she cries and freezes, clutching her arms and looking around. She is naked of that most-essential of female accessories: “My purse…”
Tucker can see it in his mind's eye, still hanging like a side of desiccated beef on the hook under the bar.
Jen looks to him and he points at the locked rental car. “Broken.”
They stare at each other and then toward the bar.
Dan's Double Barrel is dark, even the pig is no longer leaping and the beer signs have ceased to glow.
They walk back to the building and all the way around in hope, but it's locked tight—steel grilles and security doors pulled shut. The pay phone on the outside is missing its handset and phone book, but it has acquired deep gouges and the heady reek of urine in their place.
They return to Tucker's car and peer through the windows one more time—just in case the keys have magically escaped from Buick Hell.
No luck.
Tucker shrugs, picks Jen up around the waist, and sets her on the car's front hood. Then he hikes himself up and sits beside her. They stare at the empty highway and huddle against the cold.
