Now Is the Hour (46 page)

The door to the Blind Lemon was open, and the music was loud, and the place was packed, everybody drunk and yelling. Communists, the lot of them. Smoke pouring out of the open door out into the night.

Something about the light inside the bar was something I'd never seen before. Everything was glowing with a purple glow.

When it was my turn, I stepped up to the podium. I handed the bouncer my fake ID. Usually, I would've been scared shitless, trying to find my breath, but the grass had kicked in. When you're stoned, you don't have to wait until it's all over for things to make sense. As they happen, things make sense. Ordinary things, like looking, make so much sense.

The sleeve of my chambray shirt turned into some kind of day-glo purple brightness. It made so much sense, this brightness.

The bouncer saw me staring at my shirtsleeve.

It's a black light, the bouncer said. We just put them in, he said. Makes everything look weird.

The bouncer hardly looked at me, handed me my ID back. When I opened my wallet up to put my ID back in, the black light coming out of the Blind Lemon made the dollar bills, my hands, look like we were on another planet.

Planet Blind Lemon.

So much sense.

Then it was Billie's turn. Billie wasn't a lot taller than the podium. Her little hand, her tiny Midnight in Helsinki fingernails. She handed her ID to the bouncer. With her other hand, Billie grabbed my hand and squeezed. Billie's hippie earrings, the Indian beaded birds, flying, flying.

The bouncer looked hard at Billie's ID. He checked the corners. He turned Billie's ID over, looked on the back side. Pulled his glasses down his nose.

I couldn't figure out why he was spending so much time on Billie's ID. I was the one who looked like he was seventeen years old. Billie could pass for twenty-one any day. And Billie's ID was the same as mine.

Then it hit me. Another, even deeper sense of meaning. A true marijuana moment.

The bouncer looked differnt with Billie. A way he didn't look with me. He was making himself look tough, like he was a real hard-ass.

When I looked over at Billie, I could see. Billie wasn't worried a bit.

The guy was flirting with her.

It blew my mind, it made so much sense.

Then something else. Billie's boobs.

The bouncer was really looking at Billie's boobs. Billie said she was used to it, and I was used to it too, in a way, the way people, I mean, men, looked at her breasts. But that night with the bouncer, that moment, just before Billie stepped into the black light, he was
really
looking at her boobs. I mean, he was gawking.

It made so much sense.

Billie's boobs under her loose-knit pink sweater, in the black light, that bra of hers was going to pop out like the Star-Spangled Banner.

The bouncer gave Billie's ID back to her, and Billie was putting her ID back into her pink satin purse. Just before Billie took the step, out of darkness and into the light, so to speak, I put my hand on Billie's arm.

You know, Billie, I said.

Right at that moment, Billie's head was still outside, but her boobs were inside. Inside, that is, in the black light. The bouncer's eyes bugged right out his head. I thought he was going to have a conniption fit.

Billie looked down. There they were. Each one as big as my head. The two enormous day-glo white D cups that were her breasts.

Billie squeezed my hand so hard it damn near broke the bones.

Oh shit, Billie said.

What happened next went smooth and made sense.

I pulled my shirttails out, unbuttoned my shirt, took my shirt off, and handed my shirt to Billie.

If ever I was sure there was a time that Billie really loved me, it was right then.

In her blue eyes. So much sense.

Billie took my chambray shirt and pressed her face into my shirt.

Billie's big smile, like I was the only boy in the world.

My God, you smell good, Billie said.

Inside in the crowded smoky loud Blind Lemon, my T-shirt glowed.
Billie's teeth glowed. We kept pointing and laughing at each other because of our teeth. All over on the both of us, tiny little specks of things that glowed. My chambray shirt on Billie was glowing. Billie's hippie earrings, those birds were glowing too. Glowing and flying.

All around us, people with glowing teeth, everything that was white, glowing purple-white. Everything dark, especially dark. Everything dark covered in glowing specks. A weird purple light in people's eyes.
Come on, baby, light my fire.

Couldn't hear yourself think.

Everybody yelling and laughing.

Planet Blind Lemon.

Billie and I in the middle of it all. Billie in my shirt, and for some reason I was holding her pink satin purse. Smoking the same cigarette. My arm was around Billie's shoulder. Billie so close. Like we were one being, attached at the hip.

After a pitcher of beer and about an hour in the Blind Lemon, Billie and I felt like we were tripping on acid. There was this one woman who had put Murine in her eyes, and the Murine in the black light made it look like her eyes were leaking green shit.

We moved on to the next bar. It had regular lighting and a good jukebox, called Juck's. Then after Juck's, there was the Emerald Club, then the Office, then a basement bar close to the railroad tracks called Satan's Cellar. Each bar, each time, the bouncer checked our IDs, looked us over, let us in as slick as snot.

Satan's Cellar had a cover charge because there was dancing. One dollar a person. After all the beer we drank — I should say
I
drank — there were still five one-dollar bills in my wallet.

Mostly hippies in Satan's Cellar. I didn't know Pocatello had so many hippies. The dance floor was no bigger than ten feet square, so it was real crowded.

“Monday Monday,” “To Love Somebody,” “Baby I Need Your Lovin'.”

The top of Billie's head right under my chin. Her breath through my T-shirt onto my chest. Her French smell. Both my arms around her. Billie had her hands in the back pockets of my Levi's. Warm and close and slow, Billie and I were smooth dancing.

If you're going to San Francisco. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

Right there that night on the Satan's Cellar dance floor. The first time I heard that song.

You might say that song changed my life.

Back out on East Center Street, we were feeling no pain.

Billie and I stood ourselves on the sidewalk under a lamppost. Just Billie and I in a bright spot on the sidewalk. We had our hands on each other's shoulders. We were looking at each other in the eyes. We were laughing and talking and laughing. I can't tell you what all we were talking about or what made us laugh so hard, but whatever it was, it was making so much sense, and the way it was making sense made Billie and I laugh our asses off.

Eleven-forty-five by Billie's watch. The night sky was a mess of stars. A big gust of warm wind blew our hair back. Even Billie's hair with all her hairspray. Her earring birds flying, flying.

Billie and I started walking, just walking along, her shoulders under my arm. Billie was trying to take steps as big as my steps.

Another big gust of warm wind. Out in the dark night, the wind blew through the leaves of a tree, the high sigh on top, and Billie and I turned to look. In the branches, a large bird. A crow maybe, or a raven. All we could see was the bright in its eyes.

The tree was a scrub elm growing by the side of the underpass where the cement sloped down.

That part of town my dad called Niggertown.

Billie's eyes lit up as if the high sigh of the wind and the bright eyes of the bird had made her remember something.

I've got a great idea! Billie said. Let's go to the
WORKING MAN'S CLUB
!

Something big and sharp in my heart then. Breath. There was no breath. My hand on my throat, then my hand on my chest, I laid my palm flat.

Billie's elbow, locked in my elbow, pulled me forward.

Come on! she said. Let's do something
really
different!

Walking was a dream of walking.

So long ago that Sunday after nine o'clock Mass, the first time I heard the word
nigger,
and the word
nigger
landed on the dark side of my heart. How old was I then, five or six? One of the very few times my family did anything differnt. A detour on the way home from
church, my father behind the wheel. He had turned his face and smiled his black eyes across the front seat of the '48 Buick Special into Mom's almond-shaped hazel eyes, the net of her Sunday hat a shadow onto her forehead and her glasses.

Slumming, Dad had said. Just thought we'd see how the other half lives.

The other half, the dark half, that part of Pocatello, especially the two bars Dad pointed out that Sunday to us, his loving Catholic family locked safe inside their big green Buick, Sis squeezing my hand so hard. The two “dives,” as Dad called them, the Working Man's Club and Porters and Waiters, the bars' long, sad windows with the paint peeling off, the rusted, broken-down cast-iron fence, the garbage overflowing in the two garbage cans, a skinny yellow dog peeing on a dead bush, the two sets of front stairs up to the first floors, a woman with dark skin in a yellow dress and red high heels sitting on the front steps, the little neon blue moon in the cracked window,
WORKING MAN'S CLUB
. Next door above the door, the painted red sign with fancy gold letters, a sign like you see in the train station,
PORTERS AND WAITERS
. The slow, sinful saxophone jazz playing out from somewhere inside in there, enormous and dark.

Those two dives and the basement door in the alley behind the two dives and what I was still yet to find behind that basement door.

Even back then, five years old, to me the world on the other side of my rolled-up window, beyond the stuffy locked-up Buick, was Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past, something shocking, differnt, a pain down low in my pants I wanted more of.

The part of Pocatello that exists only in a Judy Garland song.

Niggertown.

Looked like the Princess Theater to me.

Or
The Wizard of Oz
when it goes from black and white to color.

Magic.

Billie's hand was around my arm, and she was shaking my arm. We'd walked two blocks down East First Street and were standing on the sidewalk across the street from two old buildings. We were in the dark, next to a big, square, metal dumpster painted dark blue. Behind us, weeds growing up, the cyclone fence, pieces of garbage and tumbleweeds stuck in the fence. Beyond the fence, the wide, empty, dark
expanse of shiny railroad tracks that went through the middle of town.

Rig, Billie said. You are so stoned. Are you all right?

There was something like San Francisco about the old buildings. The long, sad windows with the paint peeling off. The rusted, broken-down cast-iron fence. The garbage overflowing in the two garbage cans. The two sets of cast-iron stairs up to the first floors.

Slumming, I said. Just thought we'd see how the other half lives.

Rig? Billie said.

The neon blue moon in the cracked window.
WORKING MAN'S CLUB
. Right next to the
WORKING MAN'S CLUB
, another set of stairs that led up to a door. Above the door, the painted red sign with fancy gold letters, a sign like you'd see in the train station,
PORTERS AND WAITERS
.

Slow, sinful saxophone jazz playing out from somewhere inside in there.

Then and now. Enormous and deep. In my body, a gust of Idaho wind got inside and was blowing me around.

None of this made sense. Everything made sense.

I put my hand on the dumpster, leaned my body against it. The dumpster smelled of new paint. When I spoke, my voice sounded like a faraway train.

What's that thing that happens to you, I said, when you feel like something's already happened to you?

Billie was right there on my arm, ready to hold me up.

Déjà vu?
Billie said. Is that happening to you? I love it when that happens.

A skinny yellow dog ran along the street. Right in front of Billie and me, he stopped, raised his leg. Peed on a dead bush.

Billie nudged in close to me against the dumpster. She wanted to
déjà vu
too.

I put my fingers to my lips.

Sshh!

I stuck my head around the dumpster, and so did Billie. The lamppost was a spotlight down onto the stairs and the sidewalk. My eyes went right to the top of the stairs, at the dark door of the Working Man's Club. I knew what was coming next.

The Princess Theater.

The slow turn of the handle, the low screech of the door. Black and
white turned to color. Out of the door stepped a pair of strapped red high heels and a long yellow dress. The woman was dark-skinned, tall. A strapless, yellow, shiny dress, the slit in her yellow dress all the way up to her thigh. Long, straight black hair to her shoulders. Red, red lips. She was holding a purse like Billie's, a red satin purse. She walked sideways down the steps, placing each high red heel exactly on the step. Slow and red and yellow in the neon light of the blue neon moon, the woman stepped down, each step careful, each step the sound of the red high heel against the cast-iron step. At the second-to-the-bottom step, in the middle of the lamppost spotlight, the woman in the yellow dress reached down, pulled her dress up a bit with her fingers, bent her knees, and sat down. The wind, a big gust, blew her hair. From out of her purse, she pulled a green bottle. She unscrewed the cap of the green bottle, tipped the bottle up, and swallowed. The strong muscles of her neck. The woman set the bottle on the step next to her. It was a bottle of Thunderbird. She screwed the lid back on. Out of her red satin purse, her large hands with dark fingernails pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She lit the cigarette, inhaled. The best French inhale you ever saw.

Billie whispered: Smoking is praying.