Ben took the photo and thanked her.
“The hearing is tomorrow morning at ten,” he reminded her, “Even though she probably won’t be called into the courtroom, you need to bring Emily.”
Bertha nodded.
Ben crouched down and smiled at Emily. “Would you like me to turn the record over?”
Emily nodded eagerly. Ben flipped the record on the stereo.
The music swelled. Emily’s eyes closed and once more she was a part of the symphony. Ben’s last sight, as he and Christina walked out the front door, was of Emily, the girl with no past, no future, barely a present, sitting in the middle of the living room, joining the music in a reverential symbiosis.
They walked silently down the sidewalk to Ben’s Honda.
“You’re not saying very much,” Ben said to Christina as he started the car.
“No.”
Ben placed his hand on her shoulder. “She’s quite a girl, isn’t she?”
Christina nodded. “How old is she?”
“Eight, we think.”
Christina stared at the road straight ahead. “Is that right?” She released a soft laugh. “That’s how old my little girl would be.”
“You never told me you had a baby.”
“I didn’t,” she replied. She pressed her fingers against her left temple and stared out the passenger-side window for the remainder of the drive.
23
THE RED PARROT WAS not quite a cowboy bar, but Tulsa was not quite a cowboy town. Tulsa did have equivalents—transient oil rig hands, truckers, bikers, construction workers, miscellaneous unemployed, your basic criminal element—and all of them apparently frequented the Red Parrot.
Ben and Christina stepped into the smoke-filled bar. Ben kept telling himself to be bold, but he knew he wasn’t convincing anybody, including himself.
They had both dressed down for the occasion, in blue jeans, cotton western shirts, and boots. Ben even had a western belt with BEN branded on the back. Something his grandmother had given him that he’d never worn until now. Ben thought Christina looked outrageous in her pink suede cowgirl jacket, but then, he reflected, no more so than she did in her daily work clothes.
Ben observed that the Red Parrot was roughly divided into four quadrants. Quadrant one: the bar, where dirty men and dirtier women stood shoulder to shoulder quaffing longnecks and complaining about the day’s events. Quadrant two: the tables and booths, the intermediate step between picking a woman up at the bar and taking her home for a quick but purposeful encounter. Quadrant three: the two pool tables, each with a trail of quarters on the side and men lined up waiting to play. Finally, quadrant four: the games area, where menacing-looking men tossed menacing-looking steel darts in the general direction of an oversized dart board. In the center of the bar was a multicolored Wurlitzer jukebox wailing some Hank Williamsesque tune about sixteen-wheelers and cowboys and the day “my mama got out of prison.”
“This joint ain’t big enough for the two of us, pilgrim,” Christina said.
Ben looked at her blankly.
“Get it? Pilgrim? Sleazy western saloon, thugs, bad side of town. It just seemed to follow—”
“I understood, Christina.”
“Oh. Pardonnez moi.” She looked hurt.
His lips turned up slightly. “Smile when ya say that, pardner.”
She did.
Ben scoped out the clientele. The crowd looked seriously tough. Lots of muscle, tattoos, and stubble. Several men were wearing jeans jackets with matching emblems on the back. They were all members of something and Ben suspected it wasn’t the Moose Lodge. At the table closest to the bar, two men were taking turns stacking upended shot glasses. The tower already rose above the level of their shoulders.
Meanwhile, over in the darts area, the game had taken a nasty turn—the dart board was replaced by human beings. It was a local variant on mumblety-peg; players alternated between standing against the wall and throwing the darts. Apparently, the object was to throw the dart as close as possible to the sucker on the wall without touching him. Two throws, then the players switch places. Closest throw wins. Thrower’s option as to what part of the body to aim toward. Flinching was an automatic forfeit, although striking the target body with the dart merely resulted in a reduction in points.
“Well, I’m thirsty,” Ben said. He and Christina wedged themselves into a small opening at the bar. “I believe I’ll have an amaretto sour.”
“Get a beer,” Christina said curtly.
“What?”
“You heard me. Beer.”
Ben looked confused. The bartender, a burly mustachioed fellow in a red-checkered shirt, walked up to them.
“What kind have you got?” Ben asked him.
“Just say beer,” Christina whispered.
“Beer,” Ben obeyed. “Two.”
The bartender nodded and moved toward the taps.
“An amaretto sour,” Christina muttered. “These guys would use you for a dust mop.”
The bartender brought two mugs of beer and set them in front of Ben and Christina. Ben tossed a five onto the bar.
A thin, wiry man with a red steel wool beard and a cap saw the five go down. “Were you in the service?” he asked. His voice was like gravel.
“I beg your pardon?”
The man’s teeth were tightly clenched, even as he spoke. “Don’t beg my pardon, man. Don’t ever beg my pardon. I hate beggars, man. Fuckin’ hate ’em.”
He pounded his fist against the bar so hard that Ben’s beer wobbled and bounced. “I asked if you were in the goddamn service!” He was shouting. The smell of beer and booze and tooth rot was thick on his breath.
“Uhhh, no,” Ben said quietly, not looking him in the eye. “Were you?”
“Damn right I was. Damn right.” He pounded the bar again. “I don’t suppose you fought in the war?”
“N-no—”
“Hell, no. Too goddamn good to be in the war!”
Ben had the distinct feeling he wasn’t handling this very well. “I spent a year in the Peace Corps,” he said softly.
“You think that’s an excuse?” The man spat as he yelled. He emphasized the last word by knocking over his beer with his fist.
“Let’s go,” Christina whispered in Ben’s ear. She tugged at his sleeve. “Pronto.”
Ben took a step back from the bar.
“You know what I ought to do with you? Do you?” The man followed Ben. They were practically nose to nose. Ben took another step back. The wiry man followed.
A few others at the bar turned around to watch the fun. The man who had been standing to the right of Redbeard jabbed a friend and pointed.
“Leave him alone,” the bartender said as he popped the lid off another longneck. “He’s too young. He doesn’t know. Here, have a beer on me.”
God bless the bartender, Ben thought. But the bartender’s offer didn’t seem to make any difference. The man kept coming. Ben kept backing up.
There was a sudden, loud smashing sound. Ben whirled. He had backed into the nearest table and knocked over the tower of upended shotglasses. The supreme effort of the combined lifetimes of the two bikers lay dashed and broken into a million pieces on the floor.
“Sonovabitch!” the larger of the two men exclaimed. He was wearing a jeans jacket with a skull-and-crossbones appliqué on the back and had silver chains looped around his waist. He threw his chair back and stood up, pounding one fist against his hand. A dark-haired woman from the back of the room came forward and laid her hands on his shoulder. Ben couldn’t see either of them clearly in the dark haze of the bar.