No way. I’m gettin’ hauled up before a judge for “contributing to delinquency.” A judge might be one of the ones They are watching. They catch wind of me, and pfff! There goes both Chuckie and me.
“Hey, Chuck!”
“Yeah, what! What you want?” I bellow. Full Chuck bellow from the edge of the bar.
They stand in the doorway ten feet away, three underage lodgepoles in denim—scraggly moustaches and zits. They want to pull something I’d catch them at easy. So they’re about to appeal to Chuck’s sense of camaraderie. I gotta smile.
“Hey, Chuck, can we bring in some beers? You’re cool, man. We’ll keep it under the table…”
Turn grin to grimace.
“Hell, no. You guys get that stuff out of here! Drink it at home and then come back. Or better yet, don’t come back!”
They cuss me, laughing. I cuss back to maintain image, but my heart really isn’t in it tonight.
Five minutes later they’re back. Must have chugged the whole six-pack from the way they slosh and giggle as they come in, giving me a wink. Jesus! Can you remember chugging just to get a stomach full of beer? Doing it because a boy’s got to have some sort of rite of passage when the girls just won’t put out and we don’t send young men after eagle feathers anymore?
That’s bouncer lesson number three. Like your clientele. Establish empathy. But never identify too closely. It’ll drive you nuts.
The surface of the bar is smooth, like ivory keys, like the smooth-rubbed stick in a trusty airplane… With my eyes closed the pounding of the drums blends with the crowd noises and seems to become the growling of engines. A red haze under my eyelids turns into a fire… fire on a mountainside.
My fingers press into the bar, the tendons humming momentarily as if to something from Stravinsky …
And Parmin did have purple eyes.
Agh! Ignore it. Ignore it!
The Blue Ridge Mountain Boys are picking up a fast number beneath the spots, in a swirling haze of tobacco smoke. I imagine the smoke contains other things, as well, but it’s hard to tell as my sense of smell isn’t what it was. In fact, for reasons I’d rather not go into, it’s pretty well nonexistent. I do a quick scan around the room to make sure no one’s passing around a J too obviously. I’m no party pooper. Like I said, I have this thing about being busted.
I’ll give the Boys credit. They sure do give that hillbilly music a shitkicking beat. The dancers on the floor are capering and screaming “Eeee-Haw!”… that city-boy version of the mountain yell.
Chuck likes this band. He’s gotten drunk with them a few times and he fixes their bikes for less than he usually charges.
Once, though, when he’d had a bit too much brew, Chuck let them persuade him to join them with a borrowed harmonica. He’d intended just to clown around, but got carried away. He bent over that mouth organ and played.
By the time I came to my senses the crowd was whooping it up, the Boys thumping me on the back, and I was blinking in the spotlight, wondering what I had let happen.
I almost left town then and there, but that’s when Elise had just broken her arm dirt-biking with Chuck for the first time. I guess he felt guilty, so I stayed.
Strange purple eyes, hooded and cat-slitted… a smile as subtle as any man’s… A look of ages. You don’t hide from eyes like those.
“You are a Protector,” he said. “A certain fraction of your species cannot help themselves in this respect. Without something or someone to protect, they wither and die.”
“Parmin, you are full of it.”
Again that smile. A voice like a reed organ.
“Do you think I don’t know what you are, Brad? Why were you, after all, among the first I chose for my Cabal…?”
There’s dancing out on the sawdust now. Single girls prance around the edges as if it’s some tribal custom to let the couples take the center. I always found that an interesting phenomenon.
The kids don’t know anything about bluegrass, though some of the boys affect harmonicas. If it’s country it must be salubrious, so they hop around with thumbs in suspenders and fingers splayed to give their dance a superficial country air.
I can’t believe it. Did I just subvocalize the word “salubrious”? Sweet heavens, I must have gone mad!
What have I been doing, letting myself think like that? How long did I lapse? I look at my watch. No watch. I don’t wear one anymore. What’s wrong with me!
Calm down. You’ve only been intellectualizing since the beginning of the set. Too little time to do any real harm.
Besides, it’s not proven They can put a tracer on subvocalized thought. That was just a theory.
Still, maybe they can. So cut the two-dollar words, hmmm? When did philosophy ever do anybody any good anyway?
Joey asks me to help him move a keg. Sure. Anything’s better than standing here thinking. The crowd is too well behaved to serve as a distraction.
Down at the other end of the bar we heave the monster onto the platform. Straightening up, I rub the grease off my hands and look around the room. That’s when I see her.
She stands by the door; the coldness comes over me like an Amarillo norther. I cringe a little, momentarily thinking to make myself invisible as she peers around, blinking in the sharp light of the stage spots.
But there’s no dignified way to make six and a half feet of hair and muscle transparent. She sees Chuck and smiles and starts to walk over. And while she’s between there and here the magic thing happens again. The coldness leaves me.
She is very pretty, and she moves well.
I try to look busy for a second, checking the place as she comes up beside me. Joey says hello. She answers him in a low alto voice—friendly, but with a hesitant sort of nervousness to it.
I didn’t put the nervousness there. She had it when I met her, so don’t blame me.
I’m not bothered by sky-eyes or fiery mountains now. The Boys are picking out one of my favorite silly tunes, “Old Joe Clark.”
She looks up at me.
“Hi.”
I look back down at her. “Hi, yourself. How’s the nursery?”
“Pretty good today, but we had a late afternoon rush. I hurried home and changed, but this saleslady came by and I couldn’t resist letting her show me some things. I bought some nice scents so… so… that’s why I’m late.”
She suddenly looks a little scared, as if she’s said something she shouldn’t have. Oh, yes. Chuck hasn’t got a sense of smell and hates to be reminded of it. It’s true I haven’t been able to pick up anything weaker than a six-day-dead steer in almost two years, but has Chuck really been so irritable that Elise should be frightened by a passing remark?
I shrug. “Have you eaten yet?”
“I had a snack earlier.” She looks relieved. “I can fry us up a couple of steaks when we get home, if you want me to.”
She wears her light brown hair in a permanent—swept around the ears like Doris Day. I always hated that style so Chuck tells her he likes it. She’s too damn pretty anyway. A flaw helps.
“Come on.” I grab her elbow and nod at Joey to take over watching the door. He’s flirting with a teenybopper but I take the hand stamp with me. No one gets brew here unless he’s been stamped. By me.