Patrick deWitt - Ablutions

The pretty bartender is not waiting at the entrance of the rodeo and is not in the stands at the rodeo and is not at the concession booths and is not leaning against a fence with her arms crossed smiling at the exit of the rodeo. The rodeo is dull and hot and you cannot concentrate on its happenings, as busy as you are looking around and with the smell of the animals strong in your nostrils, gripping the pit of your stomach. Sitting behind you is a cowboy tapping repeatedly on your spine with the toe of his boot and apologizing; children are led away by their mothers to be put down in their beds and the eyes of drunken men that remain fall critically on you. The bartender has no plan of coming here. When the sun goes down the overhead lights snap on with a creaking, buzzing click and your hands look like an angel's hands floating before you in the glowing fluorescent whiteness.

Back at the bar you catch sight of Lois and Corey before they do you, and you push through the crowd to sit beside them. The room is at capacity now and there is a country-western band playing on a stage so high that as you pass by, the fiddler's boots are a foot above your head. Corey's little eyes meet yours and he points out your return to Lois, who swings around, waving entreatingly. Her head looks as though it has been taken off and put back on improperly — even without your money it is clear they have continued drinking in your absence. Lois works her elbow like a pump handle while summoning phlegm with a series of deep inhalations and you watch as she spits four times in her palm, and when you reach her she is beaming, holding the puddle of mucus out between you.

"All right," Corey says, "now you in yours."

You do not want to touch Lois's hand but can see no way out and so you spit once in your palm and hold it similarly outward. But this is not sufficient for a spit shake, neither the amount nor the ingredients, and you are informed to "get some glue in there," and you make a hacking sound with your throat and cough up a large ball of phlegm into your palm and clasp hands with Lois, whose spit runs over your knuckles and causes you to wretch so that you fear you will vomit, but you do not vomit and it is all over soon enough and Corey passes you both bar napkins and declares Lois and yourself Official and True Friends for Life.

"For Life," Lois says.

Drinks and more drinks, bought always with your money, and you find Lois's hand is resting on your thigh. Her thumb draws back and forth and Corey can see this and does not seem bothered but you are uncomfortable and try to involve him in the conversation. Lois drags her long, painted nails across your lap.

"Leave him alone," she says to you. "He's trying to make it with girls."

This is true. Corey's pickup method is to stare, with his little pig eyes, at the heads of unaccompanied women until they are made so uncomfortable that they ask him to stop; when he does not stop they collect their effects and move to another part of the bar, outside his field of vision. He does this again and again until there are only accompanied women within sight, and he drinks more tequila and begins looking at them, and they lean in to tell their cowboys and the room now turns to ugliness and the night begins its unraveling.

You are separated from your mind. Lois's hand is worming down the front of your pants and Corey is laughing and licking his mustache and you drink whiskey after whiskey and are taking pills now as well and Lois sees this and says, you don't know nothing about pills, and she hands you a baby-blue circular pill that you eat and which Lois begins immediately rooting around for, forgetting she has given it to you, and she empties her bag on the bar (you spy a roll of condoms) and says, that pill was just deadly, that pill was deadly and I lost it, and you give her two of your white pills and she orders two more tequilas, one for Corey and one for herself, and she gives her son a pill and he takes this without looking at it and chews it up, followed by the tequila, and you hear a cowboy tell him to stop looking at his wife, and Corey, having given up any hopes of finding love on this night, crosses over to fight the man, who stands and grips the neck of his beer bottle in his hand.

Lois does not stay to watch her son in battle but steals you away to the back of the bar and leads you to the darkened dead end of a service hallway. She is on you now, her gaping mouth breathing hot and foul-smelling air on you, and she places your hands on her body and yanks at your belt and zipper, and finding your body unmoved, begins whining and clawing your chest and humping your leg and she tries putting your hands up her skirt and inside of her but you drop them to your sides and your head lolls back and you are laughing, knocking your skull into the damp and sticky wall. She is in a frenzy and drops to her knees and you watch her head moving frantically back and forth and at the other end of the hallway you see the silhouettes of cowboys and you hear their shouts and wonder if they are watching your romance or the fight with Corey, and then you see Corey walking down the hall toward you and you smile at him and say, "Happy Fourth of July, Corey," and he has blood smeared on his cheek and he draws back and hits you in the eye and you drop to the floor and through your covered face see him drag his mother away by the arm like a rag doll.

You correct yourself and stand and return to the bar. Lois and Corey have moved to another table and neither will look at you and you are no longer friends. You try to buy the man next to you a drink but he politely declines, handing you a napkin for your bloody eye. "But you're sure you don't want something?" you say. "I'm sure of it," he says, then orders a drink and pays with his own money. The lights come up and the country-western band says goodnight and the bartender will no longer serve you and he points to the door and you file out with the others, speaking to those on your left and right and people smile and slap your back patronizingly but will not respond properly to any of the things you say.

All of the bars on Whiskey Row have closed and the street is overrun with drunks. Discuss the cowboy that is lifted up and carried the length of the street on the crowd's shoulders — here is the winner of the rodeo. He is just a boy, not yet twenty years old by the looks of him, and his smile is the truest and most handsome smile you have ever seen, and he looks sober and embarrassed at the fuss, but beneath this is an unqualified joy and pride and it is a living dream for him as he raises his hat and tosses it to the crowd, and you see the dagger hands of lizard-women reaching up to take pieces of him as he passes by.

The sight of the rodeo champion makes you sad in your heart and you decide you will visit your old horse and maybe steal him and ride him into the desert, but to do this you have to backtrack against the flow of the crowd and you are shoved and kicked at and offensive to those who touch you, and women gasp as you pass and recoil as you draw near, because your drunken blood is dripping freely from your eyebrow and your eyes are wet with tears, and some of the men you push past want to knock you down but are so repelled by the sight of you they move on or their women pull them along. But now you trip or else someone hits you from behind and you fall to your knees and a pair of hands are on you and they drag you to the side of the road and drop you there, and you are lying down in the dirt watching the boots file past, hundreds of pairs of cowboy boots, no two alike, walking along together in a pack.

The crowd thins out and you sit up against a hitching post and across the way you see the Mexican barback and call out to him and he walks over. He has a date on his arm and he asks if you are all right and you do not speak but give him the okay sign. His date asks him a question in Spanish and he answers in English, "This is the guy I told you about, the one that almost got it from Penny's boyfriend," and she nods. Now Penny the pretty bartender and her boyfriend come over to say hello to the barback and they see you on the ground and Penny gasps, and the barback asks her boyfriend if he is the one who did this to you, and he promises it wasn't and he reaches down and picks you up to stand and it is unusual to have his strong hands on you because he only wants to help you now, and he asks where you are staying and you point towards the horse and they as a group walk you in this direction. Penny cleans your face with a tissue and asks you what happened, and who did this to you, but you cannot remember just then and you say you don't know. Her boyfriend and the barback are holding you up and the barback's date says something in Spanish that causes him to laugh and Penny asks him to translate, and he does: "She says he walks like a cigarette thrown out of a car on the highway. You know, the way the cherry dances?" and they suppress their laughter at the girl's joke. You break away and they do not follow after but call to you, apologizing, and you hear Penny's boyfriend saying, "Let him go, let him go if he wants to go," and you stagger closer to the old horse, thinking of him standing in the alley by himself with nothing in his mind but gray sound and all of a sudden you are so sorry for hitting him like that, and you cannot understand why you would do such a thing and it seems to be the worst thing you have ever done in your life, and you choke and cry at this and have never felt so intense a hatred for someone as for yourself at this moment, and you will not ride the horse but stroke his face and make friends with him and you will give him more pills, all the pills you have to help him with his life's pain, and he will not know why but he will feel a supreme happiness and a change in the sound of his mind to a kind of heavenly and eternal music, and when at last you reach the alley there is goodness and repentance in your ringing spine and ringing heart but this vanishes when you find that the alley is dark and the tired old horse is gone.