Bobby's Diner (12 page)

“Holy, shit!” I rubbed my eyes
with my shoulders, the right one first, then the left.

“Pay attention to what you’re
doing! This isn’t a Barbie Doll.” Panic coursed over me in a hot wave. I looked
at Vanessa with wide-eyes.

“You have mascara all over your
face.” She smiled because I think she could tell I was about ready to cry. “Be
serious and keep focused on the gun, not me.” Her words softened. “Don’t feel
intimidated, I’m trying to teach you—not intimidate you, okay. You’re holding a
weapon, Georgie. Always, but always,
 
keep that in mind. Let me show you.” She took the gun from me, stood
firm, twisted her head to line up with the sight, closed her non-aiming eye,
and squeezed the trigger, BAM! She squeezed again. BAM! “See? Like that. Now you
try.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Quit your sniveling and take
it.” She said it like a drill sergeant and I responded like a private
first-class.

“Okay, now, once again, take your
stance, that’s right. Hold it
 
up.
Higher, Georgie, you’re aiming at the ground. That’s better. Can you see the
sight? Is it lined up with the target? Okay, now slowly and controlled, squeeze
the trigger.” The moment of firing was one of the most frightening yet
exhilarating feelings I’ve ever experienced. I hit the target.

“I did it!”

“Why, yes you did. I’ll be
damned. Okay, you have two more rounds. Empty that fucker.” I took the stance
and
 
aimed a little quicker this time and
pulled the trigger, BAM. And, again, BAM. I looked to see if I’d hit the
target. Only one more hole from me. I missed either the first or second shot. I
wasn’t sure.

“You hit the second one
perfectly.” Vanessa was an old pro at this I could tell.

“That spray feels really weird.”

“The gunpowder? Yeah. You get
used to it though.

Let’s reload and shoot some more,
what d’ ya say?”

“Okay.”

***

The first Guinness went down like
cream. Vanessa’s lesson started off a little shaky but after alternating ten
rounds
 
with her, I’d come to understand
how powerful these things actually were. It reminded me of the quote, “Guns
don’t kill
 
people, people do.” But, I
still had a sneaking suspicion the
 
guns
had something to do with it.

Vanessa had followed me home. I
told her the least I could do for her after two proper southern ladies spent a
day out on the shooting range was to buy her a nice cold beer. She stayed for a
little more than an hour and we had two beers. We talked a little about
business but mostly about the gun, about shooting the
 
gun, and about how invigorated it made us
both feel—the blood pulsing through our veins and all! We sat and talked
drank
 
beer and talked, talked about
nothing in particular. She told me about her brother. He’d moved to Washington
and had a thriving little business close to the base of Mount St. Helens. He
was killed because he refused to leave his home after warnings the once-
dormant volcano was going to blow. He had two acres of wooded land only a mile
from his business. The volcano erupted one mid-May day in 1980 and sprayed
magma over 2,000 feet in the air. When the stuff came back down to Earth, his
home was buried under hot rock and mud from the blast.
 
And, although they couldn’t find a
body—everything buried
 
got baked beyond
recognition—they assumed he perished.

She didn’t add much but I knew
more about Vanessa, more than she revealed. I remembered the letter she’d
written to Bobby was dated shortly after her brother was killed. Even now, when
she talked of him, the memory bubbled to the surface. She got real misty but
acted as though she had gotten a lash or something in her eye. I’d never seen
her get emotional until that day— the day we shot the gun together.

CHAPTER 19

Early evening was hanging with
white flies clustered like clouds in the warm air. When they landed they’d do
so on innocent hibiscus and lantana. At the cabana bar, Tweeter took a long
drink from his Long Island Ice Tea. He liked to meet clients at Houston’s. The
place was
 
classy
 
and
 
stood
 
in
 
stark
 
contrast
 
to
 
his unsophisticated manner. People gave
Tweeter
 
room when he’d walk in and when
he’d sit at the bar which was fine with him. Having space meant having fewer
eavesdroppers. Pinzer walked in and spotted him right away on this
business-side of the bar near the waitress pickup station by the straws,
olives, lemon peels, and lime wedges. Tweeter tipped his head up in recognition
of Pinzer. Tweeter couldn’t help but feel envious
 
of Pinzer’s appearance—clean-cut carrying an
attaché— the appearance Tweeter thought exemplified money.

As Pinzer approached, he
consciously had to fix his facial expression not to intimate to him how
Tweeter’s appearance nauseated him.

“Hey, man. How’s it goin’?”
Pinzer sounded cool about the meeting which immediately set Tweeter at ease,
and put his hand out to shake.

“Good. Can I buy you a drink?”

Pinzer nodded. “Sure.”

“What’ll it be?”

“You having the usual?”

“Uh-huh. Long Island Ice Tea.”

“I think I’ll just have a
Heineken.”

“A Heineken for my friend and
I’ll have another.”

Tweeter yelled off to the
bartender.

“So, how’d it go?” Pinzer wanted
to get done with this meeting as quickly as possible.

“Easy. Went off without a glitch.
Did you hear anything?” The bartender delivered both the men’s drinks.

“Pyle said the police think it’s
some teenage vandals. They haven’t got a clue. Both women are shaken-up by it.
It’s time to go back and make a second offer.” Pinzer grabbed his beer like an
Oscar, held it up in a toast and took a long healthy drink.

“You have the money?” Tweeter
looked at Pinzer and his bright, scarred face distorted in that way it did.
Pinzer looked away quickly.

“Yeah, yeah. Here.” He reached
into his briefcase and pulled out an envelope. “Don’t count it here. It’s all
there, ten thousand, like we agreed.” Tweeter stood and pulled from his
 
pocket a wad of cash, counted out twenty
dollars in fives and threw it onto the bar. “Perfect.” Tweeter sucked down his
drink while he stood. “Call if you need anything else.”

As Tweeter began to walk away
Pinzer shook his head that
 
he would and
picked up his beer to take another swallow. “Will do.”

He turned to see Tweeter leave
and felt a shiver run down his spine, like a rattler had just crawled out of
his pants.

CHAPTER 20

As he packed, the mayor’s head
sweated profusely from his rapid and exaggerated pace and he wiped it off with
the sleeves of his upper arms. He balled two dress shirts one after the other
and stuffed them into his Pullman. Helen leaned against the bedroom door biting
her thumb nail. He went to another drawer and pulled out his dollar-sign boxer
shorts and
 
another striped pair, grabbed
two pair of black knee socks, and two undershirts. He piled them next to his
piece of luggage before stuffing them in along and down the inner sides of
the
 
two-day hodgepodge of things to
wear. He grumbled and shook his head angrily while he packed.

Then, finally he stopped and
looked again at Helen and protested further.

“What were you thinking, if
anything, by going out on ‘a night with the girls’, as you put it?”

Helen’s hand lowered from her
mouth as if she wanted to defend herself but no words were readily available.
She shrugged her shoulders and hemmed and hawed, but only for want of an excuse
the mayor would approve of. Helen knew this didn’t exist and she looked out
through the
 
door where she stood. She
slowly brought her thumbnail back in between her teeth and chewed on it more.

“Are you stupid or something?”

Helen turned quickly toward him
from the cruelty and squinted disapproval.

“Well, really Helen, did you
think it was a good idea to go out drinking with them?

“Why not, Harold?”

“Why not! I’ll tell you why not,
you’re supposed to be the wife of an esteemed politician.” She turned her head
away and rolled her eyes so he couldn’t see. “And, here you are, carrying on
like common folk, that’s why not!”

He was again stepping up onto the
soapbox which happened more often than not during their life together since his
career move into the political arena, a move she’d long regretted.

Then, Helen began meagerly. “I’ll
tell you one thing, Harold, going out with them, as you put it, was one of the
most fun times I’ve had in… I can’t remember. I don’t know when it was last
that I laughed so hard. We had fun, Harold. Fun, plain and simple.” Helen got a
touch bolder. “I’m sorry if this upsets you, but I’m not sorry I did it.”

“You certainly have changed from
the woman I married. I remember when you wanted nothing more than to please me,
be my wife, support my efforts, efforts I make
 
for
 
us. But, I see these women
are more important to you than I am.”

“Oh, Harold. For crying out loud.
Why don’t you get a little more theatrical.” She spoke out daringly.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Pyle!”

“Quit yelling at me, Harold. It’s
demeaning.”

“I’m demeaning you? You demeaned
me when you went out on your drinking binge!”

“Harold, please, it wasn’t a
binge. We had a couple of glasses of wine at their restaurant. No one was
around except the three of us. We made dinner there together and had a good
time just being women.”

“Just women, Helen. Well, let me
remind you that you, my dear, are not just any woman you, Helen, are the wife
of the mayor in this here town and you’d better start behaving like it again.”

Threatening was always a last
resort with Harold in any confrontational scenario, but mostly with Helen and
she hated it. She walked out when he finished.

As she sat at the kitchen table
her tea wafted up in steamy spikes and smelled of bergamot. Her journal’s pages
were rice-paper thin from rigorous writing.

May
3rd: Harold reminds me of a tyrannosaurus rex: he’s a virulent meat-eater and
vicious when he wants. He has beady small eyes and a big open mouth always
spouting, roaring, growling ideas of a perfect future—his perfect future. I
don’t know him anymore. He’s become an oddity to me more interesting than
interested. You’re my only source of comfort, your skin touches my hands and I
touch your skin, soft dry delicate page who knows me completely. Flannery would
never have put up with someone so weak, she would shun a weaker person for a
strong writer. Weakness breeds parasites. Parasites eat the body from the
inside out, eat the soul. Your skin translucent watermarked linen crisp my hand
caresses you tenderly, tenderly with my sad words.

Forgive
me Flannery. I’m not worthy.

Helen sipped her black and
creamed tea and let its fragrance soothe her soul. She closed her eyes before
setting the bone-china cup back on its saucer. When she reopened her watery eyes
she gazed at her own front yard through the
 
boxwood-lined walkway, the solar lights, the Saltillo stepping stones.
She gazed past the asphalt’s pulsing heat of the
 
blackened, pebbly pavement, to the
neighbor’s
 
triple-tiered
 
wax leaf topiary. Her eye landed and then
skipped off the leaded cut glass windows trellised, over their
 
seldom-fired chimney, into the tips of tall
oak and birch beyond that lined a parched river bed and out toward the distant
sun breaking through the leaves in the trees and splitting off into a crystal
blue firmament away, away, away. The distant land welcomed her, called to her,
she could hear the ocean’s breeze, waves cresting,
 
ebbing, arcing, flowing, salt air, fish-laden
yet clean, mournful gulls crying, boats lolling along, massaged in-between
green waves slipping out to sea—away, away, away.

She closed her eyes again and
held her face in her hands. Why did it seem so utterly impossible?

***

Pyle was in the bathroom
collecting the toiletries he’d need for the next couple of days. Before he
opened the medicine cabinet he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. The
mayor. He was upset with Helen but not as much as with the other women—“the
Carlisle wives.” He chuckled to himself when he
 
thought it. Those bitches had better sell. They don’t know what they’re asking
for if they don’t. Women! They should be seen and not heard. They have their
place. The only reason they had the diner at all, was because of the hard work
Bobby put into it. But, they benefit. It’s not right, not right. He was
throwing miniatures of aftershave and shampoo, toothpaste, shaving cream,
and
 
deodorant into his leather satchel,
his razor and his comb. That should do it.