Lee Johnson - Nitro Mountain

“You want another drink,” Bob said. He had the eyes of a boy, and orange cracker crumbs at the sides of his mouth. His hair was caught up in a bad Elvis situation. Paper clips held some of it together.

The man stood up and started clapping. “Thank God! Hallelujah! Fuck it. You know a lot more than we give you credit for. Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced to the empty room, “please give Bob the bartender a hand. He knows every fucking thing.”

Bob took a bow. Some of his comb-over fell forward as he went down, and when he came up a length remained standing.

The man quit clapping and ordered himself another one of what I was drinking. “Hell yes, heaven time,” he said, and drained the shot. He moved the other drink to and from his mouth with both hands, like he was operating some big machine, and then looked straight between Bob and me and asked, “You know why a girl’s got two holes?”

I didn’t, and neither did Bob.

“So you can carry her around like a six-pack.”

Bob started fixing his hair.

The man looked intent, like he’d just imparted some essential information. “Get it?” he said. “Do you get it?” Past the plane, a clock was nailed into the wall. It wasn’t even nine yet. Or maybe it was.

I don’t know how I made it back to the diner, don’t even remember driving, but that’s where I landed when I stepped out of the cab just in time to see the building’s lights going out. Chairs were upside down on tables and I could see all their legs in the air, a hundred little whores taking it. Drinks had worked and I was drunk. I leaned against the hood and the heat of the engine warmed my jacket sleeve. The stars were so bright the sky looked like the diner’s speckled countertop.

A door shut in the back of the building. I tripped, steadied myself. Walking could not be beyond me.

The front of the diner was a retro singlewide. The kitchen and the dish room were in a cinderblock addition stuck behind it. I found Jennifer and Greg standing back there together near the dumpster. He had a full trash bag on the ground beside him, and when he saw me he said, “Who the hell’s that?”

“That’s him,” Jennifer whispered.

“What’d you just call me?” I said.

“ ‘Him’?” she said.

“I ain’t going anywhere without you.”

“Oh, boy. This kind of thing?” Greg lifted the trash bag and carried it to the bin. A broken bottle cut through the black plastic and caught the light of the security lamp. When he turned around I was on him, asking how he liked me now, and I swung on him. Things went spinning and I fell against the dumpster and slid down into a sitting position.

“That’s embarrassing,” he said, and kicked me in the side. Air left my lungs like a puncture. I couldn’t stand up, couldn’t say anything, couldn’t think. I should’ve asked if that was all he had, but I just kept looking at Jennifer.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, tugging at him. “C’mon. Before he gets himself up.”

“We can’t just leave him here.”

“Teach him a lesson,” she said.

While they were walking back to his car, she turned around to look at me. There wasn’t pity in her face anymore. I saw approval. I was exactly what she wanted — someone to leave again. Maybe for good this time.

We weren’t living together or anything like that, and honestly, if you’d asked her whether we were a couple, she would’ve said no. I was crazy for her because she wasn’t crazy for me. I could see that now. The first time we met was so wonderful it made me believe she’d said things she never said. It was during a gig. I was onstage and she was the only one dancing. She kept her eyes on me. After, we made out against somebody’s car. She said we’d never part. She said she wanted to be with me the rest of her life. Without even moving her mouth. We didn’t spend the night together, just fell down right there on the concrete. The months following, I drove her around places, helped her get little things done, took her to various jobs. Never asked for gas money. The skin under her shirt was untouched, almost translucent, and I could not, no matter how hard I tried, let that go.

Tires shot gravel and she and Greg sped south down 231. I made it back to my truck and picked my keys up off the floorboard.

—

I should’ve seen it coming back when I was the one driving her around. I’d roll over to her apartment, this single-room efficiency thing with a raw mattress lying crooked in the middle of the floor, and just walk in without knocking. Once I found her curled up on the mattress beneath a mess of sheets and shirts and jeans. Everything smelled of her body and I knelt beside her and breathed it all in. “You,” I said. “You’re gonna be late.”

“I quit.”

“Since when?”

“Since just now.” She’d been working for some photographer, doing what she said he called “tasteful erotic web work.” He was paying her to be what she was — gorgeous — and though I’d been hoping she’d quit, I didn’t get why she’d chosen this morning to do it.

“Is it ’cause I told you to?”

She snarled, clawed the air and kicked off the clothing and sheets. “Them motherfuckers don’t own me.” She sat up. “And neither do you. Let’s go take me for a ride.”

I leaned in for her lips, but she pressed two fingers against my forehead and pushed me back to where I’d been sitting.

“You’re like, panting?” she said.

“I can’t help it.”

She pulled her hair back, slid a rubber band off her wrist. “So unique!” she said. “A guy that can’t help it. Who’d’ve guessed?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Can I just say something?”

“I’m sure you can.”

She tied her hair up and pushed it back. The way her breasts hung there with her elbows raised like that — I had to look away, else I’d have lost control.

“Go start your truck,” she said. “I’ll be right out.”

“I left it running.”

“Well,” she said. “Get out there, turn it off and then start it up again.”

We took 231, the same stretch down which I was now chasing her and Greg, but things were different back then; new leaves were out on the trees, bright as katydids. We popped open the vent-windows and the warm air came blowing onto our laps and flowing through the cab. We shared every cigarette we smoked and we must’ve gone through half a pack before she said, “So. You asked me what I meant. A man that can’t help himself. You ready for this?”

I said yes but knew I wasn’t.

She talked for a while, building it up big, said when she was twelve she used to smoke weed in her friend’s basement. She’d light up under the stairs hoping maybe God wouldn’t notice, but she finally decided God probably had the ability — who knows how or why He even gives a crap — to see her most secret things, and even though she hated Him for this she came to terms with her sins. The only time in her life she believed God really cared about her was the day she went down there to smoke and found a present wrapped up under the stairs with her name on it. That filled her with a joy she couldn’t describe. She opened it and there, folded inside, lay a pair of blue socks. The note on top of them said From Good Steve .

“You don’t know who that is,” she said. “Good Steve was my friend’s dad and it was his house. He’d never given me nothing before except kisses when I slept over.”

“Kisses?” I said.

“Just little pop-kiss things. That and the time he taught me how to give him a blow job.”

“The fuck?” I hated hearing that there’d been anybody other than me.

“It happened in his daughter’s room, my friend, who I’m not going to say her name. It was in her bedroom and I was on the trundle bed. She was off taking a bath or something.”