Jack Wakes Up (3 page)

He leads the group to an alternate door and tells Jack, “V.I.P. section, Mr. Palms. I hope you guys have a good night.” He claps Jack on the back as he shows them inside. “And I loved your movie, man.”

Jack follows the Czechs straight to the bar, thinking that this is not bad, like he might be scoring himself some karmic points by staying away from the blow.

Here in the V.I.P. section, a large room, with as many dancers as men, Jack sits at the bar and watches a beautiful young blonde stand on a stage above Al and David, swaying in front of them, wearing only a small yellow thong.

Vlade sits down next to Jack, waves to a bartender with long brown hair and a pair of fake breasts that won’t quit. She works without a shirt on, her falsies standing at attention as she works the bar, moves toward Jack and Vlade to make their drinks.

“Hi,” Jack says.

She laughs. “That’s a new line. What can I get you?”

“Seltzer. With lime.”

She laughs again—“I got that.”—and turns to face Vlade. Curly hair, long legs, big, delicate eyes. She can’t hide her surprise at Al’s green suit and gold shirt and she lets out another laugh, more of a short howl, then covers her mouth with her hand. Jack likes her already. She wears a tight black band around her neck. She looks back at Jack, looking maybe for an explanation about Al, one he doesn’t have. Her lips have a glimmer, her eyes squeezed into smiles at their corners.

Vlade orders a scotch and two more for Al and David.

“And I’m buying.” A short guy pulls back the stool next to Jack’s, holds out his hand. “Tony Vitelli,” he says, like his last name comes in two parts, the first rhyming with bite, the second with jelly. “It’s not often I have a local celebrity in my establishment.”

He speaks softly, with a slight lisp—Jack thinks of Joe Pesci—and wears a deep blue suit, a shirt with a high French collar underneath. His hair is slicked back and held behind his head in a tight ponytail. The guy’s got a diamond on his finger as big as a dime.

“I like your place,” Jack says. He shoots the bartender a look to let her know she’s included, but she’s busy squeezing a lime into Jack’s drink.

Tony Vitelli waves his hand at the idea, says, “Shake this baby down, motherfucker!”

Jack nods, acknowledging the line from his movie.

“I’ve seen that shit like six times. It’s no Scarface, but after Pulp Fiction, True Romance and a few others, it’s on my shelf.”

Jack wonders where that puts it, decides to try the waters, just to talk to this guy. He hasn’t made conversation with someone in a bar or club for a long time. “So it’s top ten?”

“Of mine?” Tony Vitelli slips up onto the chair. “I’m not sure I’d go that far. Top twenty maybe.” He hits Jack on the back. “I’ll give you that, how about?”

The bartender comes close again, sets Jack’s drink down on a white beverage napkin. The more he looks at her, the more he likes what he sees. And this isn’t only because it’s the first pair of breasts he’s been this close to in a long time.

Or it could also be that.

She smiles an extra-wide one at Jack as she puts a glass of ice on the bar in front of Vlade, starts pouring Oban over it slowly.

She bites her lip, steals another look at Al and brings her eyes right back to Jack’s.

Vlade thanks her. As she moves down the bar to tend to the Czechs and Ralph—David is leaning over the bar with a hundred-dollar bill extended from his hand—she gives Jack a look, all eyes and big red lips, that would stop a train.

“Yeah,” Tony says, “Top twenty.” He takes Jack’s hand again to shake it, already getting up off his chair. “We like your friends here, their kind of business,” he says, looking around Jack and sizing up the cut of David’s suit, the bill in his hand. Then he sees Al and he laughs, shakes his head. “That’s nice,” he says. “I got to get me one of those.”

“The suit?” Jack asks.

“No.” Tony smiles. “The monkey wearing that thing, he’s a fucking holler.”

Vlade holds up his drink in a toast.

Then Tony Vitelli leans in close to Jack, pats him on the shoulder and says, “For tonight we won’t say anything about Mr. Anderino, your boy. But take it into consideration—” He holds up one finger on his left hand, the first finger, and Jack can see the diamond sitting at the other end of his fist. “Let it be known that he has been unwelcome here in the past.”

Jack looks at Ralph. He just got his drink, what looks like a gin and tonic in an extra-large tumbler, something more like a bowl than a glass. He stirs it with his finger, licks it off and takes a long pull. He’s got different sunglasses on top of his head, aviators today instead of the Ray Charles specials, but most of his curly hair has come loose around his face.

“Ralph?” Jack says.

“So you’ve heard me?”

“What?”

“Nice meeting you, Mr. Palms.” He cocks his head, grabs Jack’s hand again, squinting his eyes just slightly, maybe trying to tell Jack something. Before he moves away, he stops for a look at the bartender, tightens his ponytail and smiles at her. “Sweet thing,” he says, to Jack.

“Thanks,” Jack says, stupidly: he wanted to mean it about the drink, but it comes out like he’s talking about the bartender. Tony laughs, an awkward sound, almost a bark, then turns and waves 28

to one of his guys, points toward Jack’s party, and he’s gone. As he moves away, Jack looks up onto the stage behind the bar, where a tall blonde in knee-high white leather boots and a skin-tight leather leotard has just come out from a wing to Janet Jackson’s “Nasty.”

Later in the night, between the bartender—Maxine—slipping Jack her phone number and the Czechs working their way through a series of lap-dances, Jack starts to really enjoy himself, actually have a good time without coke or booze. He’s thinking he should get out more often, when Ralph stumbles over and puts his arm around his shoulders. “We’re doing well so far, brother,” Ralph mumbles. Even leaning away, Jack can smell Ralph’s breath. He can imagine how this must have been for the young stripper whose breasts Ralph’s just been kissing—but that’s if she’s sober, which she probably isn’t.

“Real well, pal,” Ralph continues. “These boys having fun and that’s the point. We just keep them happy, get a few girls to go and see what happens.”

Jack moves away from Ralph’s arm, ducks to go for his drink, and Ralph has to use both hands to steady himself against the bar, shuffle his feet to keep balanced.

“Sounds good.” Jack tucks the bartender’s number inside his jacket. “We keep them happy here. Then we introduce your Colombian friend and get this thing done.”

Ralph turns to Jack and winks at him, opening his mouth to do it. “Good for you, right?”

He looks at where Jack’s just put Maxine’s number. “You just make sure you keep these boys entertained.”

Down the bar, Jack sees David and Al standing at the stage, holding bills up to a brunette putting one of her high heels on Al’s green shoulder. As she bends forward to take Al’s bill between her breasts, David is already laying a twenty across the bridge of his nose.

Jack laughs. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

The next morning Jack wakes up later than his schedule—he didn’t get in until after four—

and when he gets into the kitchen, there are already three messages waiting on his machine. He hits the button and starts taking out a bowl and the cereal—fuck today’s run.

First there’s a beep and then, “Hi, Jack. This is Maxine from The Coast. From last night.

Hope you liked your seltzers with lime. So sorry you and your friends had to leave before we got off. I’ll call you again later.”

Nice one, Jack thinks. The girl’s aggressive. Not afraid to find his number or to call first. He considers calling her back, but she probably got in later than he did and is still sleeping it off.

Jack thinks back to her breasts, the little silver cups over her nipples, the tight choker around her neck. He hears the second beep. “Yo Jackie, this’s Ralph. Nice show last night. I’m icing my head to wake up this morning and I just got a call from the Colombian. He wants to meet this afternoon and get acquainted. Know what that means? Anyways, come pick me up when you’re moving and I’ll tell you what’s next. ”

Jack guesses the Colombian will have some questions about this Czech money and if it’s as green as he likes. That or he doesn’t know Ralph as well as Ralph wants everyone to think.

Probably the Colombian wants to feel Ralph out before he gets into any deals with his friends.

Maybe it’s the cards he’s been dealt, more payback for all the drugs he did with Victoria, all he took out of life after Shake ’Em Down, that makes Jack a hired hand in all this, the guy who has to go pick up Ralph at his house, but he can take it. He has to admit he had fun last night; even acting like a bodyguard-concierge, it felt good to get out again, better than anything he’s done in a while.

He knows the longer he goes with Ralph, the harder it’ll be to get out. But maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he’s ready for something—even something like this.

The answering machine beeps again. “Jack Palms, this is Sergeant Hopkins from the S.F.P.D.

I’m sure you remember me from when we made that little visit to your house three years ago. The one your wife requested?”

“Fuck,” Jack says out loud to the morning. He remembers them taking him away in handcuffs as the papers snapped pictures of him like he’d just robbed the White House. How could he forget? Or forget Sgt. Mills Hopkins, the cop who brought him in?

“Well it’s just come onto my desk that there may be a few new reasons for us to have a talk sometime soon. Do you think you could call me back at 559-6477 and save me the trip out to your place?” Jack can practically hear something like joy in the officer’s voice. “That’d be the greatest. Thanks.”

Jack can hear the sarcasm dripping from his final statement. Hopkins, the fucking Sausalito cop who took Jack away that time Victoria called, tipped off the papers about the wife-beater story and had a fun time doing it. Jack remembers the guy laughing in his squad car, his big thick neck-rolls contracting and expanding as his head moved up and down laughing, nodding at all he’d done and the reporters snapping pictures of Jack in the back seat as the squad car pulled away from his house.

Now that motherfucker’s going to call? That makes sense, Jack considers, thinking it would be too much to ask for the good to start coming again that easy.

Jack pours the milk, looks out over the Bay to see this morning’s sun coming out in force near Treasure Island. As usual, a stream of fog covers the Golden Gate and West San Francisco.

Downtown, where the money is made and spent, is still in the sun.

He spoons the first mouthful of cornflakes into his mouth.

An hour later, showered and cleaned up but wearing an Adidas warm-up suit—because it’s clean and why the fuck not?—Jack cruises across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge toward El Cerrito to find Ralph where he lives. Jack likes the feel of being out of the house, doing something without going to the gym first, and the chill breeze coming in his window. No way he’ll catch any visits from Sgt. Hopkins today.

The fact that Ralph’s already been up and calling Jack doesn’t surprise him. The old Ralph partied till morning four or five nights a week and still made all his meetings, talked the movie dicks blue until his clients got whatever roles they wanted. Now he’ll probably do the same to the Colombian, which is why Jack’s going along to make sure he doesn’t fuck things up.

In front of Ralph’s house, a tan one-family in the middle of a street of tan one-families, Jack sees a white pickup and a green Chevy sedan. Either way, Jack knows why they’re using his car. On the lawn Ralph’s planted a big “Beware of Dog” sign, but as Jack gets out of the car and walks up to the door, he doesn’t hear any barking. Ralph, himself, is probably the dog to beware of.

Jack tries the bell and doesn’t hear anything happening for a while, so he knocks twice, waits, then knocks twice again before trying the door.

It opens before he can turn the knob. At a normal person’s house this could be weird, but at Ralph’s, it’s not that out of the ordinary. The last time Jack came over, he found the front door 32

unlocked and Ralph tripping his head off on mushrooms in an upstairs bathroom, eating pizza in a bubble bath and listening to Led Zeppelin as loud as his stereo would play it. That was enough to keep Jack away for a while.

Inside, only thin strips of sunlight shine onto the living room furniture through the closed blinds. Jack smells a musty warmth as he steps into the foyer, where he is surprised to see a good-looking mountain bike, something he can’t imagine Ralph ever using. “Ralph!” he calls into the house, hears nothing in return.

Stepping up onto the living room rug, Jack hopes he doesn’t have to see Ralph naked in his tub again. A big couch dominates the dark living room: a wrap-around sectional, situated in front of an extra-large TV console, with a dark wood coffee table in the middle. TV guides and magazines cover the top of the table, along with some half-finished drinks in various non-matching mugs and cups from various food chains. Jack notices a few magazines on the couch, Stuff and Maxim, a Penthouse. He crosses the living room and enters the kitchen: a small room with a brown linoleum floor and a counter space cut into the wall, a pass-through connects it to the living room. There’s a pizza box open on the kitchen table, a single pepperoni slice left in it.

“Ralph, I found your breakfast,” Jack yells. “It’s ready!”

He steps back into the living room and listens: no sound. He waits, hoping to hear some movement upstairs, Ralph flushing the toilet or walking across the floor. Nothing. No Zeppelin, no bath water, no singing.

Next to the phone in the kitchen, Jack sees a small pad of notepaper with a few names on it: the top one is Tony Vitelli, scratched out; the next is Joe Buddha, an old friend of Jack and Ralph’s from the movie days back in Hollywood and the producer on Shake ’Em Down. He’d been one of Jack’s chief backers from the start, the guy who took him from bartending on the party scene to movie scripts and let him star in Shake ’Em Down. When it came down to the sequel, Shake It Up, Joe Buddha had never backed off; it was the other producers who feared 33