Kiss of Noir (9 page)

At the shop, it was dark. I parked in front and let myself in to get one of the beers Cleo kept in the fridge when I heard a rustling. A dark form suddenly emerged from the back room and was in silhouette from the lamp behind him. My heart raced until I recognized the fedora.

“Cleo! Goddamn, you scared me!”

“Nora?” Ellis said. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

“Oh, Ellis. That’s you? You looked like Cleo in the dark.”

“Now why would Cleo be here at this hour? Or you?” Ellis flipped on the light.

I breathed, my hand to my chest. “Chill. I’m meeting Payne outside for a night. I came in for refreshment.” I walked to the fridge and helped myself to a couple of bottles. “Want one?”

Ellis shook his head. “I get you.” He made a little dance move. “Going to the clubs?”

I grinned my response and swallowed a third of the beer. “What are you doing here so late? Sayan is waiting for you. And why are you in the dark, man?”

“Oh!” Ellis looked at his watch. “I gotta go. Just checking over accounts. No big. I had just turned everything out when I heard you. She and I have a date tonight.” Our eyes met and we smiled and said “mmm-hmm” in unison.

“She’s a fine woman, bro, you couldn’t’ve done better,” I said.

Ellis’s face went soft. “I know.” He put his hand on my head and shook it. “Lock up and set the alarm.”

“I’ll follow you out. I can wait in the car.” I got another beer and said good night to Ellis, who had parked in back. I watched his taillights speed home to his beautiful, bounteous wife. I got a sharp pain in my chest considering that gentle home life and I cracked open my second beer to wash it away.

I heard Payne’s music before I saw the car. I rolled my eyes and followed.

The bar had no name or sign on it. The building, like Fat Mammy’s, was buried in the wilderness. But rows and rows of parked cars glittering in the one pole-mounted light indicated that no one from anywhere in the state had trouble finding it. I marveled at the power of the gay grapevine. Just build a bar and tell one person. By the time you open, there will be a line waiting to get in.

I parked, got cigarettes, matches, and mints and checked myself and met Payne.

“This is Marcie’s,” said Payne, who was sharp in a loose white button-down shirt and tight jeans and boots.

“Nice,” I said, nodding. “Look, we’re twins.”

Payne looked at me, frowning. “Oh, for God’s sake.” I was surprised at her show of real anger.

“Hey, I was only joking. Let’s go inside.”

“No, forget it. You go in, I’ll meet you in there.”

I spread my arms. “What are you gonna do, go shopping? It doesn’t matter. C’mon, get your sorry ass moving.”

“I said I’ll meet you in there. Get me a light draft beer.” Payne walked off, muttering and pulling the shirt off over her head.

I pulled the door open and was assaulted by smoke and music. It was crowded but as I pushed through, I found a tiny, wobbly table in a dark corner away from the speakers but facing the dance floor.

When the waitress came, I ordered a pitcher of regular draft. Payne wouldn’t know the difference.

The beer arrived with Payne, who was now clad in a black T-shirt.

“Now we’re T-shirt twins,” I said, pouring for her.

“Fuck off.” Payne gulped her drink. “Gimme one of those.” She gestured to the hand-rolled cigarettes.

“You smoke?” I passed her one.

“Only when I drink.” Payne clamped it between her teeth. “Light?”

“Sure.” I flicked my thumbnail across a wooden match head and held it to the fag.

“You gotta show me how you do all that.” Payne squinted at me through the smoke.

“All what?” I was beginning to feel very fine.

“Roll ’em, light ’em, you know.”

“Sorry, butch trade secret.”

Payne laughed. She gestured around the bar. “Well, whaddya think?”

“I have been to a bar before. They’re all the same.” Flashback to a Tulsa Redhead.

“See anything you like?”

“Not yet, you?”

“Sure do. That little filly over there.” Payne pointed to a thin woman with long, dark hair.

“Mmm,” I grunted. “I guess she’s better than a poke in the eye, but way too skinny.”

“No, she’s just right. You like the pie wagons, huh?”

I grinned. “I do hate the sticks. There’s no juice. You eat the meat and leave the bones. The bones are for the vultures. It always strikes me as a bit…necrophiliac to like skinny women. I want a woman that I need a grappling hook to climb. Someone who has the fire to go all night, every night. I love the ample pulchritude that makes a woman a woman.”

“Uh-huh.” Payne smoked and drank. “I like tits.”

“You want a skinny woman with tits? You got to be man enough to love the entire package. You got to love the real.”

“I guess I’m just not man enough, then. I like ’em small and tight and athletic—”

“With big tits.”

Payne shrugged. “If they’ve got ’em it’s a plus. But the most important thing is
no fats
.”

“You crackers are all mixed up and crazy like that. You’ve got the entire culture FUBAR. And meanwhile, you’re missing the sweetest, wettest, hottest poon this side of heaven.”

“FUBAR?”

“Fucked up beyond any recognition.”

“Oh, ha, ha. Well, forget it. If it is no sex or sex with chubniks, I’ll pass on all of it forever. That shit is nasty. You don’t know which sweaty fold to fuck.”

“You’ve got more wrong with you than I suspected if you can’t find a hot twat.”

“I find all I need between the legs of women who are in shape.”

“Just because a woman has curves doesn’t mean she’s not fit,” I snapped.

“Listen, I’m not going to argue with you. You like what you like and I like what I like and we won’t change each other. Between us, we can split all the women.”

“So to speak.”

Payne laughed. I watched her try to catch the dark-haired woman’s eye. Payne tossed her hair, stared, made a big show of cigarette posturing. Finally the woman looked around, smiled, and looked away.

“Looks like I’m gonna go dance.”

“Go jump those bones.” I watched Payne sidle to the woman. She bought her a drink and leaned over her, forcing the woman to look up to see Payne’s face. She moved her slim hips slightly toward the woman and smiled her knockout smile as she spoke to her. The woman nodded and stood up. Payne held her close and swayed, rolling her pelvis gently into the woman. Payne looked over the woman’s shoulder and winked at me, and I held up my glass. When the song was finished, Payne spoke to the woman, who shook her head and walked back to her bar stool. Payne shrugged and returned to the table.

“She’s very hot. I’ll take that filly home tonight or I’m not Payne Phillips. See a wide load with your name on her yet?”

“Nope.”

“Oh,” Payne mocked sympathy, “I guess that means you
won’t
be scoring tonight. Share how that makes you feel inside.”

“Bite me, pedophile,” I retorted. I was feeling better and better.

“What did you call me?”

I faced her. I could feel how fine I looked. I could discern my bald head gleaming, my face sitting exactly right on my chiseled bones, my T-shirt clinging in all the bulging muscular places, even my beer at the perfect level. And damn, I knew how to hold a cigarette and a woman. I knew it all showed tonight. It had been a long time since I felt all of it together. So I inhaled deeply off the pure tobacco that Cleo had showed me how to roll into an obedient cylinder and repeated, “Pedophile.”

“What the fuck?” Payne was irritated, but distracted by her beer that she was drinking too fast, her cigarette that she couldn’t keep lit, and the woman who kept staring at us.

“What else do you call someone who wants their sex to come in a tiny, curveless, weightless, odorless, hairless package? An entire industry of pedophiles.”

“Oh, that again.” Payne leaned back and sighed, unconcerned with my taunting. “What can I say? I don’t like hair in my food.”

I sipped my beer. Payne finished hers and refilled both our glasses. She drank half her own right away. “Listen, you think I’m so predictable?” Payne said. “You think I’m nothing but vanilla?” Her eyes sparkled with a secret.

“Go on,” I said.

“Sometimes.” Payne looked around the bar then leaned in close. “Sometimes I get all femmed up in drag. You know, makeup, hair, dress, shoes, purse, jewelry, the whole nine, and I go out. I find some really hot butch and I let her take me home. Then, the next night I come out as my regular self, you know, like this and I find that butch and I watch the shock spread all over her face. Then I say to her, ‘yep, last night you fucked a faggot.’” Payne laughed and laughed.

I swallowed some beer and topped off both glasses. I motioned to the waitress, who nodded. “Looks like your filly is ready for another dry hump,” I said to distract Payne from needing any response from that revelation. Payne dropped her cold cigarette and stood, walking with purpose to the woman.

They danced and I lost them in the crowd. I watched the people, idly wondering what their stories were. What was each of them on the misery scale? I spotted a sulky blonde at the bar reading a book. Oh, this I had to see. I drained my glass and the dancing crowd parted as I walked.

I reached the woman. Someone was on the stool next to her so I stared down the offender, jerked my thumb, and said, “Out. Mine.” The offender grabbed her glass and scurried away with a frightened look. I sat on the empty bar stool. “How you doin’?” I asked my prey, tapping a cigarette on the bar.

The blonde appraised me with a scowl and returned to her book.

“What are you reading?”

The blonde sighed and showed the cover, her eyes closed in impatience.

“Stephen Hawking, are you kidding me?” I snorted.

“Why?” The blonde was beautiful. Her hair was long and curly, her face was daintily sculpted and her lips were plump, wet, and shiny with potential. She had big brown eyes, her body was nothing but curvy handrails, and all of it was hostile.

“Well, c’mon, this isn’t a college class, it’s a
bar
.”

“I’m well aware of where I am. Anything else?” The blonde’s flawless eyebrows were raised with withering politeness.

“You want a drink?”

The blonde’s small hand instantly covered the top of her glass of wine. “No, thank you.”

“Then how about a dance?”

“No. But again, thank you.”

“Aw, come on.” I placed my hand on the blonde’s back where it sizzled. She jerked up straight and stared at me until I removed my hand. I motioned to the bartender. “Tank and tonic.”

The blonde had resumed reading, her cheeks burning.

“Isn’t ignoring me a lot of work?” I persisted.

The blonde rolled her eyes and slammed down her book. But her mouth twitched. “Yes, but it’s worth it.”

“Why do you come here if you don’t want company?”

“That’s my business.” Her words were crisp and starchy.

I decided that my harmless goof approach was working best on this one. It had such honest non-threatening appeal. Then, when the blonde was relaxed, I would come out in force like a striking rattlesnake.

“You know.” I paid for my drink and motioned for another glass of wine over her indignant protests. “I read a lot too.”

“Is that right?” The blonde, full of sarcasm and contempt, held her eyes open only a slit to regard me.

“Yep, I’ve read all of Stephen King’s books.”

“Oh, my.” Her eyes opened wide. “We’re just alike!”

“Let’s see…I also like dining out, sunsets, bubble baths and long walks on the beach.” I surprised myself by laughing at my own joke.

“Do you also like being rejected?” She smiled for the first time.

“Love it.”

“Good, then stay right here.” She finished her drink and sipped from the glass I bought her. I was encouraged. I glanced out of the corner of my eye and saw Payne staring at me from the dance floor. When our eyes met, Payne turned the filly in a half-circle and buried her face in the woman’s hair. I watched long enough to notice that Payne’s filly was now staring at me. I turned back to the blonde.

“I’m Nora, what’s your name?”

“Gwendolyn.”

“It is not, what is it?”

“Penelope.”

“C’mon, just tell me your name, please?”

The blonde, holding her wineglass to her lips and facing the bar, had a tiny smile on her mouth. “Jill.”

“All right, forget it. I’ll call you Hellion, how about that?”

The blonde turned and bored into my eyes. “That will do perfectly.”

“Feel like a dance yet?”

“Not at all. Feel like giving up and leaving me alone?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then we’re at an impasse.” Hellion picked up her book and resumed reading.

“You know, Hell, no one’s going to break into you like an armed robber. You have to invite us in.”