It was downtown, on the East Side where all the bars are and the nightlife, but it was afternoon. He wasn’t in jail. Obviously. It had been a close call until his lawyer urged him to accept court-mandated rehab. But that was for coke, and he was still drinking. Vodka, mostly. Well drinks.
Inside the bar, it might as well have been night. Just the glow from neon beer signs — Schlitz, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Lone Star — and the garish light from an old jukebox that cost four quarters, a Wurlitzer playing “Life During Wartime.” This ain’t no disco. A big, bearded guy nursing a Pearl longneck on the stool next to Frank’s had pumped it full of coins to play the song again and when it was over, again. Been to Vietnam? he asked. No, Frank said, my feet were flat. Are they still, the guy asked?
Traveling south to north on the bar top was a blonde in an off-the-shoulder white eyelet blouse – the kind little girls wear – that was stained with mustard; she wore denim cutoffs and, pulled down over hair that managed to be straw-like and greasy at the same time, a hot-pink cowboy hat. Red roses with turquoise leaves embossed her Lucchese boots, and the legs that rose from them were beginning to look like maps — roadway options from Baha to Sacramento — the low-slung cottage-cheese of her upper thighs, the capital of California where jean threads stopped the eye. When two guys by the gate hinge at the end of the bar each slapped a dollar onto the counter, she jack-knifed her middle to scoop them up.
The woman shuffle-danced over to Frank. This ain’t no party, this ain’t no foolin’ around. Her makeup made dry clay of her face, peeling paint of her eyelashes. If she was weather, Frank said to Pearl Beer Man, she’d be a drought.
Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons, packed up and ready to go said the Talking Heads.
When Frank didn’t put a bill on the bar, the lazy shuffle became a stomp that menaced his drink. He looked up at her. How much would it cost me for you to stop dancing?
Hey, Asshole, that’s just about rude, the bearded dude yelled. He grabbed his beer bottle by its neck and smashed it against the bar like in the movies and would have held its jagged edges to Frank’s throat except that Frank used his barstool to block and ran through the door. The guy followed Frank into the street, still brandishing the broken Pearl, but the big spenders from the end of the bar, who weren’t drunk yet, were right behind and grabbed his arms.
That was the last time that Frank took a drink. He tells it better, but he isn’t here.
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