Overton Square was everything the Highland Strip might have been, if the druggies hadn’t moved in. It was counterculture at its most benign, a Southern-fried Greenwich Village, home to maybe a dozen restaurants and twice as many trendy shops.
Saturday night, Overton would be hopping.
“Should I check out their stakeout,” I said, “and make sure they’re who we think they are?”
“They’re who we think they are,” Boyd said. “Heading into the can, I brushed up against the one who just showed up, and he was packing. And don’t say, ‘Maybe he was just happy to see you.’ ”
“Could be an undercover cop.”
“No. This is them, Quarry. But, uh, I... never mind.”
“What?”
“Tell you when you get here.” He gave me the address and hung up.
Wonder what that’s about, I thought.
The evening cool enough to keep me in the windbreaker, I left the Mustang in a public parking lot a block or so from Lafayette’s Music Room, a two-story joint twice as wide as the TGI Friday’s next door. Two marquee pillars bookended four double-door entrances with four large arched windows above, all with Bourbon Street trimmings. The act playing was BIG STAR, with “REUNION!” below. So apparently a band I’d never heard of was getting back together, for one night anyway.
My excitement contained, I paid the two-buck cover, moving past posters of previous attractions (Billy Joel, Barry Manilow, Phoebe Snow, Pure Prairie League, Linda Ronstadt) and found myself in a big packed smoky room with college kids and other under-thirties at little tables with not much room for dancing, balconies on either side similarly full. The audience had a date-night look, lots of guys in paisley or striped shirts and girls in mini-dresses or new bell jeans. Up on the stage, the band was similarly attired, maybe a little sloppier. They were playing some song I’d never heard before, but generally seemed like just another garage band. The crowd loved them, though.
That crowd was frustrating me, because as I edged through the standing room at back, I had trouble spotting Boyd. But he spotted me and waved and that finally did the trick. He was upstairs, at a little table for two, looking a tad old for this crowd but fitting in well enough, in a light blue leisure suit with pink-and-white-and-blue paisley shirt.
I made my way up a tight winding stairway and squeezed through young bodies to his table, where he sat before a mostly empty beer pilsner.
“They still here I hope?” I asked.
“They’re here,” Boyd said, and gave a slight nod directly across from him, on the opposite balcony.
It was a little like looking in a mirror. One guy was five or ten years older than the other one, who was about my age, average-looking, the black sheep of the Brady Bunch. The older one had Boyd’s head of curly brown hair, but no mustache and more angles in his face, like a cigar store Indian with a white man’s Afro. My counterpart was in a polo and jeans, though his shirt was red (I would never call attention to myself that way) and Boyd’s near-doppelganger was in a denim leisure suit with a black shirt exploding with pink flowers — orchids, I’d guess, but from here I wasn’t sure.
“Why would they pick a place like this,” Boyd asked, noticeably tense, “for their first meet? How do you go over stakeout intel in a crowded noisy hole like this?”
The Lafayette was certainly no hole, or if so was a very big and deep one, but the remark only demonstrated that Boyd was on edge. Something really was eating at him.
“It’s not how we do it,” I said, “but on the other hand, you can get lost in a crowd. And who’s listening to their conversation but themselves, when the band is on?”
Big Star were doing a song about a slut right now. Or anyway the word “slut” was in it a lot.
“No,” Boyd said, “they aren’t here on business.”
We had long ago learned to speak in noisy places without yelling at each other. We both had the lip-reading skills that helped that effort.
“What do you mean?”
He said, “Don’t you see? Don’t you get it?”
“See what? Get what?”
“They’re a couple!”
I almost said “couple of what?” Then the older guy put a hand on the other’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. It did look like kind of intimate.
“So what if they’re a couple,” I said, shrugging. “You got something against two men having a loving relationship?”
He scowled at me in a way he never had in all our years. “It just bothers me. Do I have to explain it? It doesn’t feel right.”
“They’re not gay.”
“You’re the expert?”
“Okay,” I said, shrugging, getting why he was bothered. “It makes you queasy, maybe I can handle it alone.”
“Don’t patronize me, Quarry!”
“I’m not. I wasn’t.”
“We’ll do this together.”
“Fine.”
“I’m just... weirded out, that’s all.”
I shrugged, doled out half a smirk. “Well, just cool it. This place is too packed for us to do anything about them, anyway.”
“I think they’re just out enjoying themselves.”
I still didn’t think those two were necessarily gay, not that I gave a shit either way.
But I said, “Sure. We’ll find a better time and place. Still, we’ll stick with them tonight, okay?”
Boyd nodded. He was frowning. Way off his feed. “Okay.”
The band did several more songs. One called “When My Baby’s Beside Me” won me over. They took a break and a number of people left their tables, including the intimate pair across from us.
We did, too.
They pushed through the crowd toward an exit. Lots of the kids were going out for some fresh air and to pollute that air with cigarette smoke, not that they weren’t leaving plenty behind. Few wandered off, however — these were just audience members stretching their legs, waiting for the next set by a local-favorite band. But our doppelgangers broke from the herd and ambled down the street.
The walk along Madison to the nondescript-looking little bar called George’s took only a couple of minutes. The two men up ahead of us walked side by side, but not terribly close. They certainly didn’t hold hands or in any other way express anything like affection. Just two guys out looking for a little action. Female action.
“Not gay,” I whispered to Boyd, as the pair entered the bar. “Not that it matters. But they’re not. So just lighten up, buddy.”
“Okay, Quarry. Okay.”
I opened the door for Boyd and noticed the logo on the glass: GEORGE’S TRUCK STOP AND DRAG BAR.
It wasn’t only men in the place — there were women, too. But the men were with men, and the women with women, and this was a showbar full of glitter and sequins, with disco lights and a mirrored revolving ball over a raised dance floor with flashing yellow, red and green lighted-under square tiles on which same sex couples danced, some in attire no different than any disco, others in full-on drag. Right now “Boogie Down” was playing, very loud.
Yep, I thought to myself. Memphis — home of the blues and rock ’n’ roll.
The place was hopping, but not swarming like the nearby Lafayette’s. We had no trouble getting a table for two along the dance floor. Our counterparts were just two tables away from us, near the elevated DJ booth. In some ways the place reminded me of the Climax Bar. But I doubted the likes of Brandi Wyne would be stripping here, nor would any miner’s helmets be rented out.
I ordered a Coke and Boyd got a daiquiri. I was keeping as close an eye on my partner as we both were on our targets. I was determined that daiquiri would be his final drink of the night — he’d already had at least one beer at Lafayette’s.