Empty Pockets (17 page)

“What kind of guys?”

“German ones. Ones that had given up.”

The waitress was looking at Michael, watching to see how he was taking it.

“You tell him about your singing, Bub?” the waitress said, holding the coffee pot out. “Maybe something a little more positive?”

“My singing,” his grandfather said. “Sit down, Bess,” he said to her. She put the glass pot on the table and sat down next to Michael.

His grandfather's name was Bill, but everyone who knew him called him Bub. “When you're with your granddad,” Michael's dad had told him, “remember one thing, he's a big talker, so just let him talk. He's got some good stories.”

“My singing,” his grandfather went on, and it was all about Fridays in Paris, the late spring and summer of 1945 Paris, with all the old architecture, the wonderfully kept parks, the magnificent subway system (wonderfully kept, magnificent,—those were his grandfather's words), and how on leave on those Fridays he would go to this old dance hall with the yellow plaster walls and long, narrow windows up high near the ceiling, the windows always open, to work on his music, and since this would be early afternoon, with the hall not opening until after dark, it was always empty and quiet inside with only the afternoon light coming in, and giving the old woman a five, or sometimes the five and nylon stockings, or a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes after they talked, and she'd left, giving him the key, he would take the bottle and sit down at the piano, placing the bottle on top.

“Sometimes it was Scotch,” he said, “sometimes a nice wine I'd get in this little hole-in-the-wall right up the alley.”

And maybe he would sing first, or maybe, after loosening up his hands, he'd play, working on some chords, taking a drink, then start a song, having a drink, singing another song, taking
another drink, then a third song, “Laura,” “Stars Fell on Alabama,” “My Buddy.” “Nights are long since you went away, I dream about you all through the day, my buddy, my buddy, your buddy misses you . . .” usually a drink a song, he said, “My Funny Valentine,” “Angels with Dirty Faces,” “Stardust,” going through the lyrics, checking out how they were, how he was, checking the feeling the words and sounds gave him, seeing if the phrasing was working, lighting another Lucky, drifting the phrasing out slowly across the chords, the light inside the hall gradually changing, taking another drink, the light warmer, softer, the pure tingling feeling that came in electric prickles across his forehead and scalp when everything was smoothly working, the alcohol helping, to where he finally would forget where he was and where he'd been, it was only the music, he was not even there, the music was playing him, and he would be sweating and drinking and rocking and smoking and singing and gradually the afternoon would be done, the bottle nearly gone, the cigarettes finished, his voice hoarse, playing just a little longer until time to go, closing the cover over the keys, taking down the bottle, and walking out toward the doors, the light coming through the windows now high on the wall, the long, worn floor nearly dark, going outside, always pleasantly drunk then, locking the doors, putting the key under the stone next to the trash, tossing the bottle into one of the bins, and going on down the alley to Le Cog Vol, The Flying Cock, “That was its real name, Michael,” his grandfather said, with inside, the first thing you saw, covering the entire back wall, a ten-foot-high, photographically accurate, wonderful painting of a forty-foot-long, silver-winged erection, the thick swollen pink shaft being straddled by a gorgeous nude, long-legged, full-breasted, with long, flowing chestnut-red hair blowing back off her face in the wind, guiding the cock by means of a black leather bridle strapped just behind the enormous head, her milk-white legs angling back, heels spurring into the pair of gigantic balls, and the little woman who ran this place, hair the brilliant, brittle-looking metallic-red common to most of the women of this quarter, who would say,
“C'etait moi, moi! I was that one. Ah, ah, you should have been here then!”

“And,” his grandfather said, “she had a point, kiddo, 'cause you should have seen me back then, at Fort Bliss, back in Texas, when every goddamned guy in the crowd, some six thousand guys, stood and clapped and cheered when I finished singing, McKenzie at the mike calling me back out on the stage, the whistling and cheering still going on, me near to tears, unable to stop shaking. I mean, that was some feeling! Boy, if it wasn't! Of course it was wartime, anyone could've taken that audience, but, hell, at least six thousand guys! And I was slim as an arrow, too!”

“You're still slim, Bub,” Bess said.

“Well, that's nice of you to say, Bess,” his grandfather said, pushing his mug toward her. “Can't sing like that anymore, though.”

“Who was McKenzie, Grandpa?”

“He was the pianist for Sammy Kaye. ‘Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye.' That was one of the biggest orchestras in the country then. Mac heard me singing in the shower during basic training and asked me to sing with them during their
USO
tour. And so I did.”

Bess winked at Michael and got up, topped the cup, then, taking the glass pot, walked off toward another booth to refresh someone else's coffee. Michael waited until she was out of earshot and asked about his grandmother.

His grandfather said, “No, I assumed she'd had other guys. Four years is a long time to be gone. For sure it is when you're young. I never held that against her. I wasn't so perfect myself. Once or twice some strange guy would call on the telephone until they realized I was back. Your dad was just six years old then when I got back, and just as cute as anything could be. I was really glad to see him. And her.

“No, I don't know what happened to Zip. I'm sure he paid for it.

“No different then. No different now.

“All that music is long gone. All Las Vegas lounge act music now, all gone to polyester. Music for lounge lizards.”

“I like that music, Bub,” Bess said, coming back by again. “It'll always be good music.”

She was looking directly at Michael now and he saw that she had soft brown eyes and deep worry lines across her forehead and narrow ones up and down above her upper lip where her skin looked old.

She smiled at him. There was lipstick on the tips of her teeth.

Michael and his grandfather were standing now. His grandfather went over with her to pay the bill. Bess said something that Michael couldn't hear. He saw his grandfather squeeze her hand.

Going outside into the humidity his grandfather said, “Nice little gal, Michael. She's got a good heart.”

“She seems to like you, Grandpa. What did she say to you?”

His grandfather laughed.

“Said you were a good-looking boy.” He laughed again. “Told her it runs in the family.”

Walking up the street to the pickup his grandfather said, “She works hard for her money. She has nice hands. You notice her hands?”

“No,” Michael said.

“Very feminine, very fine-boned and gentle, even though she's a working gal.”

Michael thought gentle was a strange word to use.

“How do you know her?”

“It's a small town, Michael.”

“Do you like her, Grandpa?”

“I certainly do.” His grandfather laughed, looking at the boy now. “But not in the way you think.”

He put his arm around Michael's shoulders and squeezed them together.

“I'm the one that's gone to polyester,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

They were at the pickup now and his grandfather unlocked the doors. Michael could see the fishing rods in their cases were still lying in the bed next to the outboard. He had been worried the whole time that someone was going to take them.

“Well,” his grandfather said, “someday I'll explain it to you, but not today. Today's a day for going down to the Keys, and seeing if we can get some of those bull-headed tarps to bite, okay?

“That's the thing about getting out on the water,” his grandfather said, getting in, putting the key in the ignition. “Once you get out there all your female troubles just disappear.”

He fired up the engine.

“How long will it take us to get there?” Michael asked.

“Just about the time you've digested that breakfast,” his grandfather said, turning the wheel, starting them out onto the road.

“What's a bull-headed tarp?”

“Silver tarpon,” his grandfather said. “And they're about as nasty as a good-hearted woman when she thinks she's been wronged.”

“Sounds like a country-western song,” Michael said.

His grandfather laughed.

“That's how they get written,” he said.

They rode in silence for a time, going along the coast with the morning clouds still thick and heavy out over the water. Then his grandfather said, “How's your mom?”

“She's good,” Michael said.

“She moved back in?”

“She did.”

“Good,” his grandfather said. “That's good. That's what I wanted to hear. Turn on the radio there, will you? See if you can find some music you like.”

Michael smiled at his grandfather. He liked him a lot. Coming down here to go fishing with him had been a good idea.

Mary Anne

“H
e said there were lots of people I could feel that way with, and I said, ‘What good is that? They aren't you.' Which disgusted me, it was such a weak thing to say. I knew I should have slept with someone before I called him, had that security in my head, you know, but I didn't. I called, and ironically, he thought I
had
slept with someone, and so was interested, thinking, I guess, she's not that insecure, and then, after giving in and asking him if he has, and though he doesn't want to tell me, ‘God,' he says, ‘I have,' then I have to go and tell him I haven't, and my feelings just got out of control, and he just wanted to hang up because it's just too serious and heavy and doesn't feel right at all. So I have no position of interest with him at all, and the only feelings I could move his feelings with were guilt and pity, and I was so close to slipping into them that I started crying right there because I'm so mad at myself, and he says, ‘Don't cry,' and I say, ‘I'm not crying,' the tears just flooding out of my eyes, ‘I'm just upset with myself, is all,' and he says, ‘Well, I've got to go,' and I know he does, and he did.”

Empty Pockets

T
he three rides before Jack Cutler bought the bicycle had all been different, but each one came down to the same thing. Each of the drivers wanted sex. The first approach was with photographs.

“I've got some pictures in the glove box you might like,” this man said. “Take them out and tell me what you think.”

The pictures were in a thick stack in the glove box. Lifting them out, Jack began looking.

First, different naked women standing facing the camera. Then, naked women bending over, their asses to the camera, their legs spread. Next, naked women kissing half-dressed men. Then, naked women and naked men screwing. Then women with women. Then different naked men with erections facing the camera. Then men with men.

Jack Cutler slid them all back together.

The man, a sallow-faced, thirty-five-year-old in a brown suit and a bolo string tie said, “I know it's evil, but I can't help myself. You can't help me, can you? Tell me how I can stop,” yet excited looking as he spoke.

Jack put them back in the glove box.

The next man had an old Cadillac without air-conditioning and a real sheriff's badge, which kept him from getting speeding tickets, he said, and a plea, after Jack said, “It's not for me,” that he shouldn't think he usually wanted to do this, this was a special circumstance that he knew he would pay for later, that just to have these thoughts was a sin.

The feeling off this man was slightly different than off the previous man. This man was genuinely upset. It was as hot inside the car as it was outside, and Jack thought, How can people stand this heat? His
T
-shirt was soaked in sweat.

The third ride was into Pensacola, this driver saying his
mother was dying of cancer and he was only driving up and down the highway as he didn't know what else to do. She was hospitalized right now, and he would drive Jack as far as Mobile, he had nothing better to do, if Jack would. Then he got mad and said, “I could kill you. I could strangle you in your own spit, you know that?” They were already into the industrial section on the outskirts of Pensacola.

Jack looked at the gray stubble under the dyed-black mustache, the broken vein in the man's right eye. The man's hair was coal black and shiny like it had been painted. Jack didn't know what to say, so he said, “You think your mother would like that?”

“You're getting your scrawny ass out here,” the man said, then softened his voice and warned Jack to watch out for the niggers, that he was likely to get his head broke if he tried sleeping off the road and wasn't careful, that every year some unknown white boy was found dead along these roads, usually a northern white boy, dead with a fractured skull, that this country had no place for people who didn't belong here. “You hear what I'm sayin' to you?”