Lee Johnson - Nitro Mountain

—

After the gig, I sat at one of the tables out on what people were calling the veranda, these pieces of plywood nailed onto pallets in the parking lot with red Christmas lights strung from garden posts Quikreted into the cracked asphalt. Rachel was hovering around me, talking to a few straggling regulars, and I was listening for one of them to say her name, to see how well she knew them. That’s how I planned on trusting her.

The band had left with the tip bucket, and for pay I was stuck drinking pints of Natty Light, which really wasn’t so bad. She’d already offered to drive me home but I still didn’t want to go. One more beer? Why not. Bob had tried to rub away the eyeliner and by now he just looked dirty. He stood at my table, arms behind his back like he was trying to undo his own bra, asking if I wanted a new beverage.

“Another one of these,” I said.

“Another those,” he said, and sidestepped over to Rachel, who was now talking to a group of guys about how hard it was to be a woman. “It’s like,” she said. “It’s like,” she said. “It’s like.”

They nodded along with her, following her point: It is like.

“Order now or forever hold your peas,” Bob said, cupping his crotch.

One guy smacked his hand away and asked for a round of whiskeys.

“How round?” Bob said, reaching for Rachel’s breasts.

“Do it,” she said, “and I’ll bite your nose off.”

“It’s all right, Rachel,” another guy said. “He don’t mean nothing by it.”

When I went back in to pack my gear, I did something on purpose.

After I’d slid my bass into its bag, I left my power cord and guitar cable on the corner of the stage. Daffy Duck was mopping up behind the bar, sweating and cursing at himself. I expected him to look over as I walked by, but he didn’t. With the gig bag over my right shoulder, the amp in that hand and my broken arm thumping hot pain through my neck, I kicked open the door and dumped it out on the edge of the veranda. The shots the group ordered had come out, and Rachel left the circle to hand me mine. “Here’s to you,” she said. “For trying.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant. Trying to play bass? Trying to get with her? Trying to be a big boy and carry my own shit? But I tapped my shot glass against hers, splashing a burning drizzle of whiskey over the hangnail on my thumb.

Daffy led Bob, who was crying again, in by the shirt collar, and without looking at me Rachel said she wanted to go.

“I’m riding with you,” I said.

“I’ll load your stuff,” she said. “It looks heavy. Don’t lift a thing. You looked all night like you were hurting.”

She had a green Subaru Outback with one blue door. “A train hit me one time,” she said. “It was going five miles an hour.”

“Story of my life,” I said.

She fit my stuff in the back among jugs of antifreeze, oil, transmission fluid. The heat in her car was a miracle; it even came up out of the leather seats. I told her to drive slow so we could enjoy it.

She lived in a condo on top of a treeless yard. A basketball goal lay on its side across part of the driveway with sand pouring out of its base. “The family that lived in the other half of the house left it like that,” she said. “A Mexican bunch that was always fixing my car for free. They moved out last week. We can stretch our limbs tonight. Make all the noise we want.”

We were walking up the stairs to her front door when the blinds in the picture window broke open, then snapped shut. I stopped at the top step and asked who was in there.

“Why so nervous?”

I wanted to tell her that I was fine with coming inside tonight, especially since I needed a place to stay. I would do it as long as I didn’t have to get to know her. It was about Jennifer. “Is somebody else here?” I said.

“It’s just my dog. He crashes the blinds when he gets excited. Nobody ever comes over. Until they do.”

—

I slept soundly for the first time since Jennifer had ditched me. Rachel’s boxer was there on the bed where she’d been, twisting on its back, all muscle and muzzle, snorting and sneezing. The smell of bacon came into the room in the dog’s coat and made me think of my folks’ place. I should’ve told them I wasn’t coming home. But I was old enough. I didn’t have to call anybody.

Rachel bounded onto the bed with the dog and they both covered me in kisses and paws and fingers, like we were actually lovers.

“Food’s almost done,” she said. “Come on.” She kissed my cheek and stood up over me, her nylon nightgown opening, and on the lower cheek of her ass I saw a tattoo of lips, three little words printed under it.

“That,” I said, and touched it.

“Kiss my ass.”

“Let me.”

She stepped off the bed and said, “I gotta,” holding herself. The thought of her going in there to do that sent a rush through my groin, but I slid into my jeans and walked down the hallway to the kitchen, slowing past the bathroom to hear her pissing.

Over eggs and bacon I told her, “They’re up to some bullshit at Misty’s.”

“I didn’t know you were a detective.”

“No. I mean, really.” The black coffee steamed in her bright kitchen. By the time we’d finished talking about Misty’s, what I’d seen, it was cold and untouched. “Drive me over there and I’ll prove it,” I said.

“Don’t you think it’s best to sometimes let things be?”

“Sometimes, yeah. I just got to pick up a couple cords.”

“If you’ll leave it at that. I don’t want to get involved in this nonsense.”

“You might already be.”

“They’re not even open yet,” she said. “Not for another few hours.”

“Hey,” I said, getting an idea. I threw the coffee back, took her to the bedroom and kicked the dog out.

—

The day was the kind of clean and clear that almost made the weather seem warm. The top branches of a twisting white oak caught the light as we turned onto the road to town. The bare mountainside was the color of a deer. She clicked the radio to some station playing opera. I never liked that music, didn’t understand it, but this time a man’s voice wailed out an endless lonesome cry, and I knew exactly what he was saying. He was just some lost dude, down on his luck and looking for love. All he had to his name was a busted heart. And that’s all he needed. I turned the volume up, closed my eyes and listened.

She parked in front of the veranda, the front tires butting against a pallet.

“Careful,” I said.

“ You be careful.”

The pub door sucked shut behind me. Pine walls slick and blackened, a low dropped ceiling with fluorescent lights. “Anybody here?” I called toward the kitchen. “Just getting my shit.”

Next to the cash register Bob’s front half lay stretched across the bar. His head rested on a folded arm while the other reached out in front of him, as if ready to take payment. The greased hairdo flopped over dead. His dentures had slid halfway out of his mouth. I walked past him and gathered my cords. Didn’t take but a second, and then I slid back to the pinball machines, past buzzers and flashing lights and into the ladies’ room and the sharp stink of urine and bleach.

A little black thing like a clip-on microphone was stuck outside the toilet up around the back of the bowl with a kind of lens that looked like a water droplet. A thin black cable snuck down to the floor and into the wall. In case somebody was watching, I grabbed some toilet paper so I’d have an excuse and took it to the men’s room. I stood around for an ass-wiping minute and then stepped out like nothing was wrong, just a bass player come to get his usual forgottens.

Bob was where I’d left him, but now he was on his other side, the mirror image of a minute ago. The heater hanging from the ceiling coughed a blast of dry air into my hair and poured out rolling fumes of oil heat.