Bull Mountain (19 page)

“Hello?”

“Barbara?”

“Holy shit. Marion?”

“Yeah, girl, it’s me.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m home. I’m over by Grand Central. Can you come and get me?”

“Hell, yeah, I can. Just let me get the keys from Tim, and I’ll be right there.”

“Thanks, Barb. And Barb?”

“Yeah, girl?”

“I need some clothes, too.”

“Um, okay. I got you. Anything I need to know, Marion? I mean, Tim is cool and all, but is there anything I need to tell him first?”

She looked down and rubbed her flat belly. “Goddamn, Barb. I just need some clothes and a shower, can you help me or not?”

“Of course I can. I’ll be there in twenty, okay?”

“Okay.”

Click.

4.

Marion caught her reflection in the glass pane of the diner’s door, right above the
HELP WANTED
sign. A week’s worth of healing and Barbara’s magic makeup skills weren’t enough to cover up the ugly done to her in Jacksonville, but it was going to have to do. If Marion didn’t show back up at Barb and Tim’s place today with a job, she wouldn’t have anywhere to go back
to. She wasn’t going back to Roy’s. She’d take her chances on the street before asking that son of a bitch for anything. The baby cooking in her belly was about ten weeks, by her estimation. That was kicking up the timetable, too. If she started to show before she could find work, nobody would hire her. Nobody wanted a scar-faced ex-whore, much less an unwed pregnant one. She straightened out the
sleeves of the borrowed blouse and opened the door. She snatched the red-and-white
HELP WANTED
sign off the inside of the door and took a seat on one of the chrome diner stools at the bar, then took a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. She placed the sign flat in her lap and resisted the urge to light up another smoke.

A nice little Indian fellow named Ishmael Punjab
ran the Grand Central diner. He was always there. Today was no exception. “Good morning,” he said. “Would you like to see a menu?” Without waiting for an answer, he laid a laminated picture menu in front of her and, almost like sleight of hand, produced a set of silverware rolled in a paper napkin from under the counter. Punjab was short and bald, with a few strands of wiry black hair slicked down
to his tan scalp.

“Just coffee,” she said, “and maybe a job.” Marion placed the
HELP WANTED
sign on top of the menu and slid it toward the little Indian man. He looked at it, then at her. He clearly had trouble keeping eye contact without focusing on the damage done to her face, but did his best.

“Do you have any server experience?” he asked, and put the silverware roll back where it came
from.

“I waited tables at the Red Minnow in Gulf Shores every summer during high school and almost two years after. Mrs. Gentry said she’d give me a great recommendation if you want to call.”

“That’s good. That’s good. My place is a little faster-paced than the Red Minnow. Do you know anything about short-order diners?” He took the menu up but didn’t move to get the coffee she’d asked
for.

“No, sir, I don’t. But I’m a fast learner. I work hard and I’m extremely reliable. I can work any hours you need and any days. Even weekends.”

Punjab held a finger to the corner of his mouth and stared at her intensely. “Can I ask you why you didn’t just get your old job back from Mrs. Gentry?”

The truth was she had tried, but the Red Minnow was more upscale, and the Gentrys hired
only pretty girls to parade around out front. Marion wasn’t pretty anymore. She’d never be pretty again. “Their staff is full-up right now, and the truth is, I don’t think I’d be a good fit there anymore.”

Punjab struggled with the next part of the conversation, so Marion picked up the volley. “I know I look rough, but I promise you it will get better. I’ll never be as pretty as I used to
be, but I won’t always be this hideous. The problem is, the bills don’t want to wait for me to get better. They want to be paid right now, and I’m a heartbeat away from being out of options.”

“Young lady,” Punjab said, his face softened, “I don’t find you hideous.” He held her eyes that time. She could have cried right there.

“Thank you, sir. You’re sweet to say that, but I don’t think
most people will share your opinion. I know I’m not a prime candidate for a job here, but if you were to take a chance, I promise you, I’ll do my very best.”

Punjab smiled. It was a genuine and warm smile. He didn’t look away once. From the same space below the counter he’d retrieved the silverware a few minutes ago, he pulled out a pad of generic employment applications, tore off the top
one, and slid it over to Marion. She really could have just started sobbing all over this man’s counter.
A break,
she thought.
Finally a goddamn break.

“Fill this out, and I’ll take a look. Okay?”

“Thank you, Mr. Punjab.”

“I’m not making any promises, dear. I will check your references and decide if you are the best qualified for the position.”

“Of course, sir.”

“But maybe
I’ll just keep this in my office until I have a chance to look over your application.” Punjab picked up the
HELP WANTED
sign, folded it in half, and tucked it in his apron.

“Thank you,” Marion said again.

“You are welcome. Do you need a pen?”

Marion pulled a pen from the pocket of the slightly-too-small skirt she’d borrowed from Barbara. “No, sir. I got it.”

“Very well, then.”

She hadn’t finished writing her full name down on the application before Punjab returned with a mug and a small stainless-steel carafe of steaming chicory root coffee, a Mobile trademark. He filled the mug and left the carafe on the counter. The coffee was thick and hot and smelled like heaven.

“If you need anything else, feel free to ask. I will be just through that door.” He pointed at
the double swinging doors leading to the kitchen. He looked at his watch. “Sarah, my head waitress, will be here any minute, which works out perfectly. She’s really the one that needs the help.”

“Sounds good, sir.”

Punjab tapped the counter with both hands and disappeared through the swinging doors.

Marion was on her third cup of coffee and the back page of her application when she
heard Sarah Watson come through the front door.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Sarah said, and her voice soured the air in the room. Marion felt that the day and her luck had just taken a turn. The short, squat redhead flipped up the hinged counter, tucked her purse below the bar, and strolled up to Marion’s stool. Marion knew this girl from high school, from another life. She was a
big girl then and an even bigger girl now, with a face covered in freckles, but not the good, sun-peppered kind. Sarah’s freckles made her look like the victim of a big truck speeding through a nasty mud puddle.

“Hello, Sarah, you look well,” Marion lied.

“A mile better than you. That’s for sure. How long’s it been? Three years? I suppose the rock star thing didn’t work out too good.”
Sarah stared at Marion’s face as if she were watching a car wreck. “Jesus,” she said, her own pudgy face all twisted up. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I’d rather not talk about it, if that’s okay. I’m just here for a job.”

“Is that a fact?” Sarah picked up the carafe and poured the remaining coffee down the sink without asking if Marion was finished with it. “Isn’t it funny?” she said.

“What, Sarah? What’s funny?”

“How life is, you know? How all through high school you and all your perfect little friends never even saw me in the halls, never even gave me a second thought, and now here you are, needing something from me. I just think that’s funny, is all.”

“Yeah, it’s hilarious.”

Sarah snatched up the application from the counter. After a minute of cycling through
a gamut of disgusted expressions, she tossed it back on the bar. “You’re kidding, right? I mean, you know there’s no way Punjab is going to hire you with your history.”

“What history?” Marion said softly, involuntarily scanning the empty diner.

Sarah mocked her and looked around the diner as well, then leaned in with her own low tone. “Everybody knows about you, Marion. The whole Gulf
Coast knows what happened with you and your father.”

“He’s not my father.”

“Whatever you say, honey,” Sarah said. She crossed her arms and peered straight down her mud-splattered piggy nose.

“It’s not just what I say. It’s the truth. Nothing happened.” Anger was seeping in around the edges of Marion’s voice.

“Not the way I heard it.”

“I don’t care what you heard.”

“Not
the way everyone else heard it, either. Your old man do that to your face? You guys have a lover’s spat?”

“Fuck you,” Marion blurted out on instinct. Her words dropped on the counter like a cinder block. Sarah’s sneer twisted into a smile—a freckled pig smile.

“Listen, Marion, I’m going to do you a favor here, since clearly you are lost and in need of some direction. You know the Time-Out
over off I-65?”

Marion could taste acid building in her mouth. She fought the urge to spit it in Sarah’s face.

“I can see that you do. That’s good. I hear they’re always looking for girls like you. I bet they even got a late-night slot where that mangled-up face won’t be such a big issue. I mean, let’s be honest. Nobody goes there to look in a girl’s eyes, right? So why don’t you take
your scary face, your family business, and your burned-up twat down to where you belong and do what it is you do. This here is a diner. We serve food. We ain’t hiring whores.”

Marion saw what might happen next in her mind’s eye. She grabs two big handfuls of Sarah’s tight red ringlets, pulls down and bashes her smug grin into the bar. Her nose busts like a ripe tomato, but Marion doesn’t stop.
She keeps bashing Sarah’s head down over and over into the black-and-white-tiled counter. Screaming at her, wailing like a banshee about how she was molested and almost raped by her piece-of-shit stepfather, about how
she
was the fucking victim. She keeps bashing and bashing until the fat girl’s face is nothing but pulp and her lifeless body goes limp. Marion lets it slide to the floor.

But
that’s not what happened.

She just stood up, wiped the corners of her eyes on a napkin, and left the diner.

Punjab heard the bell on the door chime as Marion walked out, and came out of the kitchen.

“Where did she go?” he asked.

“You weren’t thinking of hiring her, were you?”

“Yes. I was thinking about it. She seemed nice. A little sad, but nice.”

“Well, then, Mr. Punjab,
I think I deserve a raise, because I just did you a huge favor.” Sarah handed the application to her boss and crossed her arms. “Read it,” she insisted. Punjab put on his glasses and read the form.

“Marion Holly?” he said, a little taken aback. “As in Roy Holly’s girl?”

“That’s the one.”

CHAPTER

M
ARION
H
OLLY

S
OUTHERN
A
LABAMA

1981

1.

The lights inside the Time-Out Gentlemen’s Club washed its patrons in sickly pale shades of pink and green. Other than the girls onstage, who were painted in
thick layers of glitter and pancake makeup, everyone in the place looked like they were made of warped, sweaty plastic—carnival versions of reality. Not that they were anything to look at anyway, even in the daylight. Most of the
gentlemen
that frequented the Time-Out were long-haul truckers on the tail end of marathon crank binges, or obese married men from a county over with baseball caps pulled
down low-profile in hopes of not being recognized—losers and degenerates, the lot of them. The place always smelled like a gas station bathroom someone had tried to clean up with a bucket of cheap Avon perfume, and the unwashed bodies of a dozen greasy men, sitting around tables scratching themselves, pawing stacks of single dollar bills, didn’t exactly help.

Marion set her drink tray down
on top of one of the big PA speakers at the back of the stage, near the restrooms, and scanned around the bar for any empty glasses in need of refilling. Louis would be here any minute to make a long and shitty night a little less long and shitty. When it dawned on her that, for once, no one in the place was gawking at her, she slipped a finger under the neon-green string of her thong and pulled
the uncomfortable thing out of her crack. She didn’t understand why she had to wear the damn thing. It accomplished nothing. She gave herself a good scratching along the back seam and lit a cigarette. She nearly hot-boxed the entire thing by the time Louis appeared at the bar. The barkeep, Todd, pointed in her direction and Louis made his way over. Marion dropped her smoke on the concrete floor and
squashed it out under the toe of the ridiculous six-inch heels they made her wear.

“What’s up, girlie?” Louis was one of the few black guys allowed to roam free in the Time-Out. The owner, a guy named Bill Cutter, wasn’t big on “darkies,” but Louis moved a lot of dope, crank, herb, even heroin, and he always kicked up a piece to Cutter for letting him work the room, so he was given a pass.

“You’re late,” Marion said.

“But I’m here. I saw your kid outside in the car. That shit ain’t cool, girl. He should be at the house or something.”

“Ain’t got no house to be at. Barb and Tim booted us out again. What do you care? It’s none of your business anyway.”

“That may be, but Cutter don’t play that shit. If he finds out . . .”

“He won’t find out if nobody says nothing.
The boy’s fine out there. He’s got his comic books and some leftover pizza from happy hour. At least if he’s out there I can go check on him when I can instead of . . .” Marion stopped talking and looked at the slinky man in baggy jeans and a wifebeater leaned up against the wall, and realized she wasn’t having
that
conversation with
this
guy. “What are you anyway,” she said, “a social worker?
Are you here to judge me or hook me up?”

“That depends. You payin’ or you wantin’ to put it on your already inflated tab?”

“I’ll get it to you by Friday.”

“Always by Friday. Don’t the fellas in this place tip?”

“You know waitresses don’t make it like the girls up there do.” Marion pointed to the sad brunette baring it all from the pole in the middle of the stage, doing her best
to block out the obnoxious 38 Special song blaring over the PA and imagine she was somewhere else.

“Well, you know there are a few ways we could work all that out,” Louis said, rubbing a gangly black thumb down the smooth curve of Marion’s hip bone. She swatted it away immediately. “I don’t trick. Not anymore.”

“It don’t have to be like that, girl. I can make it real romantic.”

“Come
on, Louis, can you help me out here or not? I need to get back on the floor. Either it’s on or it ain’t. Don’t play games.”

“Damn, Angel, you ain’t gotta be like that.” Louis reached into the pocket of his filthy black jeans and pulled out a small baggie. “Here,” he said, and reached out, took Marion’s hand, and pressed a tan-colored lump down hard in her palm. “Don’t think I’m gonna forget
what you owe me, Angel. I got a keen memory, and someday soon you’re gonna have to pay the piper. You get what I’m sayin’?” Louis cupped his crotch to emphasize the play on words, and looked down his flat nose at her. She wasn’t impressed.

“You’ll get paid.”

“I always do.”

Marion pushed open the door to the women’s room but turned back to look at him. “And don’t call me Angel.”

2.

Marion shut the door and locked it. She looked at the baggie in her hand and worked the knot carefully so as not to rip the plastic. It was lighter than she’d hoped for, but it would get her through the next eight hours of fondling and groping. And maybe if she was lucky, she’d find someone desperate enough to want a lap dance from her so she could get out of the hole, maybe rent a squat
for a few days for her and the kid. She spread open the bag in her palm and dug out a bump with a long press-on pinkie nail. She held it to her nose and sniffed. It burned like a blowtorch every time, but she liked it. Crystal that didn’t burn was stepped on too many times and never did its job. Louis’s shit was always on time. Her eyes watered immediately, and her damaged left tear duct gushed even
more than it did normally. She yanked a paper towel from the dispenser next to the sink and dabbed at it. She always wore her dark chocolate hair down in her face, not to mention a ton of foundation, to hide the damage and scars, but under the bathroom’s unforgiving fluorescent light it was all she could see. She dug out another bump of crank and hit it again. More tears. More dabbing. She gave
herself a once-over in the mirror. She still had her body, even after childbirth. If anything, having a baby added only more definition to her already killer curves. No stretch marks. No oversized nipples. Just Marion—but better. It didn’t matter, though. Once someone got a look at her face, it was all they would ever see. She carefully tied the knot back in the baggie and slid it underneath the
skimpy fabric of the barely-there neon bikini top. Then she took a deep breath, tilted her head back, and let the crank drain down the back of her throat. That was her favorite part. She faked a quick smile at herself in the mirror and unlocked the bathroom door.

After locating the server tray she’d set down on the speaker, she scanned the room for the best opportunity to make a few dollars.
She began to walk toward a table full of what appeared to be college students, bushy-haired twentysomethings with hats on backward and football teams on their T-shirts. The crank was kicking in hard, and she was feeling the confidence it gave. The dope made it easy to forget that this was her life.

3.

By the time the Thursday-night crowd whittled down to just a handful of regulars, Marion
found herself at the server well, chewing on the empty baggie of crank she’d depleted in record time, talking to the barkeep, Todd. Todd was a good kid, handsome and clean-cut. She liked looking at him. Other than the few jailhouse tattoos that peeked out from under his shirtsleeves, he didn’t even look like the type that belonged in a place like this. He was fit and cut in all the right places
and his teeth were so white they glowed.

“You need a shot?” Todd asked, lining up two shot glasses on the bar between them.

“Always,” Marion said, looking up from the thin stack of bills she’d been counting. By the look of what was in her hands, and what was still folded and feathering out from under her thong, she’d be lucky to crack sixty bucks. So much for the steak dinner.

“Jäger,
right?”

“You know me too well, Todd.”

Todd poured the thick German green death-flavored liquor into the glasses and they hammered them down in unison, slamming the empties down on the bar. It wasn’t the kind of burn she liked best, but it was free, and free was good. Todd cleared the glasses and turned to an open foam clamshell of chicken wings sitting on the ice cooler. He dipped one
in some kind of white sauce and shredded every bit of meat from the bone with one bite. Marion looked at the box of food and pouted a very intentional and practiced pout.

“You hungry?” Todd said, using one hand to cover his mouthful of food. “I got a ton of them. No way I can eat them all.”

The meth in Marion’s system stripped her of any kind of appetite—in fact, the smell made her a little
nauseated—but she wasn’t thinking about herself.

“Oh, no, no,” Marion said. “I’m good. I was just thinking that my kid might be getting a little hungry, and I didn’t exactly break the bank tonight.”

Todd wiped his mouth with a bar napkin and tossed it in the trash. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll hook you up. Just remind me before you go.”

“You’re the best, Todd.”

“That’s what all
the ladies say,” Todd said, shining his smile at her like a spotlight.

Marion rolled her eyes, but she was pretty sure that all the ladies did say that. Todd had turned back to the wings when the phone hanging next to the rows of liquor bottles behind him lit up. It wasn’t the regular bar phone but the direct line to Cutter, holed up in the back. The boss rarely ever came out on the floor.
Todd snatched up the phone and held it in place with his shoulder while he listened and tried to divide the chicken wings into two piles. Marion was still lingering in hopes of getting another free shot before returning to the wild, and she watched Todd until he stopped what he was doing, looked at her, and said something into the phone she couldn’t hear. Marion raised her hands in a silent “What’s
up?” motion, and finally Todd hung up.

“Cutter wants to see you in his office.”

“For what?”

“Dunno. He didn’t say, but he said now.”

Marion swirled the soggy plastic baggie in her mouth and slid off the bar stool as if her bones had suddenly turned to jelly. She folded her money in half and tucked it into her bikini top and made her way toward the back of the club, to Cutter’s
office.

4.

The back office was nothing more than a converted storage closet. No windows or places to sit other than the folding chair behind Cutter’s desk. Besides a stack of filing cabinets against the far wall, a few signed photos of various “Featured Attraction” strippers stuck to the wall with Scotch tape, and an ashtray that should have been dumped five years ago, there was nothing
else in the room except the man himself. Cutter looked no different from the bums he catered to out front. His clothes might have been more expensive, but his skin was just as cracked and Marlboro-dried, and his tightly curled black hair looked like it had been freshened up in a truck stop sink. He thought the blue-tinted glasses he always wore made him look European. Marion thought they made him
look like the cheap pimp he was.

“You wanted to see me, Cutter?”

He didn’t even look up from the newspaper he’d been reading. “Get your shit, Marion, and get out.”

“What? Why?” She acted surprised but knew why before he even said it.

Now he looked at her. “What did I tell you about bringing kids here?”

Marion’s defensive posture deflated. “C’mon, Cutter . . .”

“Don’t ‘C’mon,
Cutter’ me. I told you last time not to be bringing that little shit around here. I got enough problems with the cops and the holy-roller commissioners wanting to shut me down as it is. I don’t need them finding out I’m running a preschool in the parking lot.”

“I got nowhere else to take him.”

“Not my problem, honey.”

“Give me a break, here, Cutter . . .” Marion leaned down hard on
the desk, hoping this would be a cleavage fix. It wasn’t.

Cutter stood up. “Give you a break? Are you kidding me? I gave you a
break
when I hired you. I figured that rocking little body of yours might be worth investing in, but it ain’t. You act like nobody has the right to even look at it. News flash—this is a
strip club.
I gave you another
break
last time I caught that little rug rat of
yours in the men’s room. I’m out of
breaks.
You’ve been here for almost a year, and what do you have to show for it? Nothing. No regulars. No money. Hell, I’m losing money keeping you here. All you do is consort with the darkies and cram as much of that shit as you can up your nose. Don’t think it ain’t common knowledge that you’re gaked out of your head ninety percent of the time, gritting your
teeth and scratching like a damn junkie. The other ten percent is spent at
my
bar begging for
my
liquor. Liquor
I
have to pay for. I’m sick of it. I ain’t carrying your ass no more and I want you gone. Now get your shit and get the fuck out before I get Moose in here to
throw
your ass out.”