Люциус Шепард - The Best of Lucius Shepard

Two men and a woman were hanging by the glass doors, nailing us with a six-eyed stare as clear in its negativity as a No Trespassing sign. The men were young, both a shade under six feet, dressed in slacks and Tshirts. A blond and a baldy. They had the look of fitness sissies, like they might have pumped some iron and run a few laps, but never put the results to any spirited use. The woman wore cut-offs and an oversized denim shirt and carried a bulky tote bag. She was fortyish and big-boned, with wavy dark hair, and her body had a sexy looseness that would still draw its share of eye traffic. Her face was full of bad days and wrong turns, the lines cutting her forehead and dragging down her mouth making it seem older than the rest of her. Way the men tucked themselves in at her shoulders, you could tell she was queen of the hive.

Leeli clutched at my arm, breathing fast. Nobody said nothing. Finally I came out from behind the couch and tossed Leeli her panties. I stepped into my pants and feeling more confident with my junk covered, I said, Have yourself a show, did ya?

—Have yourself a show? the blond man said, mocking me, and the baldy sniggered like a kid who’d seen his first dirty picture.

I pulled on my shirt. Y’know this here’s government property? Y’all be in deep shit, I turn your asses in.

—You saying you the government? The woman’s voice was a contralto drawl made me think of a dollop of honey hanging off the lip of a jar. You the first government man I seen got jailhouse ink on his arms. She turned to Leeli, who was tugging the tank top down over her breasts. How’s about you, sweetcheeks? You in the government, too?

Leeli snatched up her jeans. You got no more right being here than we do!

The woman sniffed explosively, like a cat sneezing, and the bald man said, You can’t get much more government than we are. Government’s like mommy and daddy to us.

Leeli piped up, Well, whyn’t you show us your ID?

The flow of feeling in the room was running high, like everyone was waiting for a direction to fly off in.

—Screw this, said the woman. We was just going for a drink. Y’all wanna come?

I was about to say we’d do our own drinking, but Leeli said, It’s Margarita Night over the Dixieland! and soon everybody was saying stuff like, Looked like you was gonna fall out and God you scared the hell outa me and telling their names and their stories. Though he didn’t seem up to the job, the blond man, Carl, was the woman’s husband. Her name was Ava and she owned a club in Boynton Beach where the bald man, Squire, worked as a bartender. I knew a kid name of Squire back in high school who was accused of having sex with a neighbor’s collie. Much as I would have enjoyed bringing this up, I kept it to myself.

We piled out through the glass doors, both Carl and Squire heading toward the water. Fuck you think you going? I asked.

—Ava got her four-by-four parked down on the beach, Squire said.

I was staring at Ava and Leeli, who were still back at the glass doors. Leeli had her head down and Ava was talking. Something didn’t sit right about the way they were together.

—Government don’t care what goes on at the house no more, Squire said, apparently thinking I was off onto another track. We been partying here for years.

You know that kid’s toy ball you can bounce and instead of coming straight back to your hand, it goes dribbling off along the floor or kicks off to the side? My expectations of the weekend had taken just that sort of wrong-angled bounce. After Leeli and I broke in the leather couch, I assumed we’d be heading over to my place, maybe coming up for air sometime Sunday. A shitkicker bar had for sure not been part of the plan.

The Dixieland was down on A1A, a concrete block eyesore with a neon sign on the roof that spelled the name in red and blue letters, except for the N was missing, which might have accounted for the gay boys who occasionally dropped in and left real quick. All the waitresses were decked out in Rebel caps and there were Confederate flags laminated on the table tops. The Friday night crowd was men in cowboy hats who had never set a horse and women with flakes of mascara clinging to their lashes and skirts so short you could see the tattooed butterflies, roses, hummingbirds and such advertising their little treasures whenever they hopped up onto a barstool. Some country & western goatboy was howling on the jukebox about the world owed him a living, while a few couples dragged around the dance floor, Ava and Leeli among them. Their relationship appeared to be deepening.

Carl fell in love with a digital beer display behind the bar that showed a bikini girl waterskiing. I was coming to understand the boy must have some empty rooms in his attic. He stood gawking at the thing like he was stoned on Jesus love. That left Squire and me alone at a table, sucking on our margaritas. Shaving his head probably hadn’t done for Squire what he hoped. It made his face resemble a cream pie somebody drew a man-in-the moon face on, but he tried to sell the look as being the front door into the world of a badass individual with secrets you would want to know. It was kinda pathetic. He threw a couple of insults my way and when that didn’t get a rise, he went on about how tight he was with Carl and Ava, how they’d been partying for two months solid, saying me and Leeli needed to get on board the party train, they’d sure show us a time.

—Two month vacation must get in the way of your bartending, I said and he said, Huh?, then got flustered and came back with, Oh, yeah… hell, I just work when we’re there, y’know.

The juke box played the Dixie Chicks. Leeli squealed, clapped her hands, and did this slow, snaky hula, dancing like she was on stage at a titty bar and using Ava for the pole.

—We ain’t hardly ever there, though. Squire said this like it was super important for me to understand. He started to spout more worthless bullshit, but I told him to hang onto the thought. I walked over to Ava and tapped her on the shoulder and said, ‘Scuse me, buddy. Believe it’s my turn. She flashed a condescending smile and backed off. Leeli kept her eyes closed like she didn’t care what was going on, she was so lost in the music, but when I put my leg where Ava’s hip had been she said, That was rude!

—Yeah she was, I said.

She punched me in the chest, but didn’t leave off dry-humping my leg. Just ’cause we did the deed, don’t you go waving no papers at me.

—That wasn’t my intention.

She didn’t hear and I said it again louder.

This ticked her off. Just what is your intention? she asked.

—I got a friend in Lauderdale lets me use his beach house. I thought we could drive down next weekend and see how it goes. But hey, you wanna fuck the old skank, do it.

—Well, maybe I will! She looped her arms about my neck and smiled me up. Or maybe I’ll wait ’til after Lauderdale.

I thought the two of us were back on track, but when Ava decided to hit another bar, Leeli said in a cajoling voice, I’m having so much fun! Let’s not go home yet! Wasn’t until we wound up in a Daytona Beach motel on Saturday morning, sleeping in the room next to Ava’s, that I realized somewhere in the middle of all those tequila shots, we’d climbed aboard the party train. I remembered telling everybody about the beach house. From that I guess the idea had developed for Ava to drive me and Leeli to Lauderdale, making frequent stops for refreshment, with Ava paying the freight. They weren’t going to welcome me back at the food mart when I turned up a week late for my shift, but that world was spinning me nowhere and I thought I might take a shot at separating Ava from some of the money she’d been throwing around. I worried about her going after Leeli, though. We’d only had us the one night, but Leeli and I seemed to recognize each other’s zero score in life as only folks do who’re born in a neighborhood where the most you aspire to is a double-wide and sufficient loose change to afford a couple of cases on the weekend. We’d both worn out our craziness to the point where we saw we might have us a nice little run and maybe avoid killing each other at the end. Once she loosened up and that sick-of-it-all waitress hardness drained from her face, I saw a sweet seam in her no one had bothered to mine.