Finally, in one concerted sweep, the woman filled her arms with products and swaggered over to dump them on the counter: tampons, foot powder, wart remover, orange sticks, baby oil, a toy airplane, and three of the magazines that Holstein, left to himself, would never have stocked in the first place.
“You ever check out these pussy books you got? They make the girls too pretty if you ask me. It’s better with all the hair, dirt under the nails and maybe a pimple here and there.”
“So maybe they should leave the faces blank altogether.” Tildy was ringing up her items very slowly, peeling the price tags off.
“But it’s got to be real, see?”
“Yeah, I used to be a stripper about a hundred years ago. Worked three straight nights at this place with a terrible case of hives. They loved me. On the fourth night they wanted to paint them on.”
“No shit, you really did that? How was it?”
“Lousy. But I liked the hours.”
The woman dug into her greasy jeans, spilled a hash of bills and coins on the counter. “Hope I got enough.”
Tildy took a crumpled five. “Tell you what. Pay me for what’s already on the machine and we’ll call it even.”
Shown in a wide smile, the woman’s teeth were small and gray. “I can have the rest for nothing? You sure?”
“Doesn’t matter to me. I’m not working for commissions.”
“Well, muchas gracias. You’re damn good down-with-it people, you know that … uh, Tildy,” reading the plastic name tag, then hooking a thumb at herself. “DaVita. Big D, small a, big V. My mom wanted something unusual, the old cow, and I guess she got it. Yeah, down with it. So what time you get off here, Tildy? I’d like to buy you a drink.”
“Around six. But I …”
“Cool, cool. Can you meet me then at the Paddle Wheel? It’s down Route 17, just past Sears. I’ll wait for you in the parking lot and we can go in together.”
“Why not.”
But when Tildy found her perched on the hood of someone’s jeep around by the rear entrance, DaVita had already been inside. There was a table waiting for them.
“I know the bartender,” DaVita said.
She seemed to know everyone at the Paddle Wheel. As they were sitting down, an older woman in an orange caftan rushed over and threw a drunken sloppy kiss on DaVita’s chin.
“This little girl is just so full of life,” she yipped at Tildy. “I just love her right to death. So full of life. Wisht I could be your age again.”
“Really needs a man, that one,” DaVita reported as the woman shouldered her way back to the bar. “Hasn’t been off work more than forty-five minutes and already she’s sloshed out of her old head. So what do you do for fun, Tildy?”
“Could I get a glass of rum with no ice?”
“Sure. Let me catch my breath a minute. Whoo, but this shit can become a way of life, like Donnie says I should just go on and move in here, all the time I spend. Him and the two kids there in a house-trailer, so if I don’t get out regularly — you know — I got to flip out from all that time boxed up. You married?”
“Seven days a week.”
“Mmm-hmmm. It can get that way. Men seem to move a whole lot slower, that’s what I’ve noticed. They’re like lizards or something around the house. Where’s the fun? Like, Donnie just came off the work farm. Some bank guy came to take the car back and Donnie punched him around. So he pulls three months on the farm and what does he want to do his first day out? Drink beer and fuck me while he watches television. That’s the most fun he can think up in three whole months. Moves too slow for me, that’s all.”
Tildy nodded; she knew about the slowness. “He doesn’t try and keep you home?”
“No point in that. Besides, Donnie weighs close to three hundred pounds. How many times is a guy like that going to get lucky? Once, and I’m it…. But what about you? What do you get into on the weekends?”
“Not a lot. Drive to Tampa and eat out.”
“I know you’re bluffing, a fox like you. Think about it some more and I’ll be back with drinks.”
Not much to think about — that was the problem. Tildy was embarrassed at her own dullness. Playing catch with Karl on a typical off-work day, hitting a few fungos just to watch the ball sail; sometimes going off on a treasure expedition, but unable to share Karl’s rudimentary excitement at digging up a high school ring near a roadside picnic table or a few black Mercury dimes at a demolition site. If she weren’t so perverted, could make the quick, animating choice instead of turning from it, she’d still be in New York and shacked up with Looie. No one to blame, sweets, but yourself.
DaVita showed up with two drinks, two men, and an unsettling gleam in her eye. They all four shoved in around a table for two and it was instant kneesies.
“Tildy, I’d like for you to meet Leroy and Bob. Leroy runs the security for Sears and Bob manages … What is it, Bob, sporting goods?”
“Affirmative. That’s my area, rods and balls.” Beefy Bob chortled through his mustache and his elbow pressed into Tildy’s left breast.
Leroy, squinting over the rim of his Bloody Mary said, “How about it for sports? Do you do tennis? Horseback riding?” Leroy was tall and pop-eyed, his hair cut in early Beatles fashion, sort of a Merseybeat Ichabod Crane. His arm went around DaVita and squeezed. “Now DaVita, she loves to go four or five miles on a stallion, right?”
“Don’t let these boys startle you,” DaVita cautioned. “That’s just what they’re after.”
“Not at all, not at all.” Bob sadly puffed his lips at the extent to which they’d been misconstrued. “I mean would we be making the money we make and looking how we do if we weren’t a couple of straight arrows?”
“I’d like another,” Tildy said.
DaVita emptied her glass. “Me too,” she said with her mouth full of ice cubes.
“Okay, this is my round,” Leroy volunteered. “Let’s get the party going.”
While he was off seeing to refills Bob stuttered his chair to a strategic angle and dropped his hand in Tildy’s lap. She tossed it back. With the sudden downshift of a telethon emcee going from toilet joke to fund appeal, Bob came on all chumpy and sincere.
“Hey, I’m really sorry. Don’t get ticked off, okay? I’m not always this crude but sometimes I get so nervous, you know, nervous around women that I act like a dumb high school kid.”
“No whispering, Bobby.” DaVita waggled a finger at him. “This is a party. You gotta be loud.”
Tildy smiled at her, but it was hard to tell if she and DaVita were allies or not.
Then Leroy was back and it was time for a toast to Mother’s beaten biscuits, dancing by moonlight, and, for all present, the peace and contentment of a sow on her belly in a bog. They all touched glasses and drank. Leroy, who seemed deeply moved by his own words, had to be cajoled into sitting back down. DaVita tickled under his chin and told him he had poetry in his soul.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bob said. “He got that off a record jacket.”
“Bullshit.” Leroy sent a fine spray of tomato juice across the table.
“Lighten up now, both of you. This is a party.” DaVita made them all touch glasses again.
Trying to ignore everything but what was in her glass, Tildy was struck by the sudden inspiration that separately or together DaVita had already fucked these clowns about a dozen times. This better not be a setup, she thought.