The Bones (31 page)

"Mercy, give him a drink," Tino orders, walking toward his office in the back, to Frank's relief. As soon as his eyes adjust
to the light, he notices how attractive Mercy is, and Tino's retreat opens the playing field. Willing his incipient depression
into retreat, he sits at the bar and immediately looks for a wedding band.

On happy inspection, he sees only two silver rings with turquoise stones and says, "Frank Bones."

"I know who you are, Mr. Bad. Tino probably thought you were gonna shoot him."

Frank smiles at this acknowledgment of his status (thank you, cable television). "Jeez, what a reputation. Could I get a beer?"

He has recently decided the culture of recovery is not for him and so developed a drinking strategy that eschews hard liquor
and calls for a two-beer limit. So far it is working.

"I read in the
Star
you were in detox."

"To help me cut down."

"Funny." Not laughing, but it's an effort.

"So, Mercy . . . Are you free later?"

"I don't date comedians. They're as sleazy as rock stars but not as good-lookin'."

Frank is beginning to sense the frisson of repartee for which he is a sucker. As much as he enjoyed Honey's physical gifts,
he was always a little disappointed that she couldn't do the verbal razzmatazz. And now here he is in some Tulsa dive jazzing
with a girl bartender on whom he wants to trace figure eights with his tongue. Things are looking up.

"Thank you," he says, appreciating her attitude. "A guy can't be friendly anymore."

"All the desperadoes try and flirt with the lady bartender."

"But I love you."

"Nothing comes with the drink but the pretzels, babe."

"Did you just call me babe?" This is taking it to a new level. Mercy's subtle yet pervasive aura of sexuality conflating with
the verbal confidence she displays is combining to make Frank temporarily stop hating his life.

"Isn't that what you call everyone? I've seen you on the talk shows. Not recently, but I've seen you."

"So nothing comes with the pretzels?"

"That's right."

"And they say romance is dead." As if hearing her cue, Vida Suarez strides through the front door, her hard features burning
a hole in the shadows. Somewhere in her thirties, but she's trying to turn back the odometer. Vida wears a tight white blouse
buttoned down the front, and a miniskirt reveals cut legs working high-heeled pumps that click off the floor of the bar like
castanets.

"Where's Tino?" she demands.

Mercy tells her, "In back," with no inflection. Vida marches through the bar and toward her husband.

"Who's the Lizard Queen?" Frank wonders.

"Vida, Tino's loving wife. If you're still lookin' for a date, I bet she's gonna be free later." Frank can't keep from laughing
at Mercy's deadpan delivery.

"Let me see that knife," he says.

Mercy smiles at him, her kind of guy. She takes the weapon out of her pocket, flips it open, and lays it on the bar. The steel
blade is seven inches long and the handle is onyx, inlaid with pearl. Frank picks it up and runs his finger along the blade,
nearly drawing blood. He whistles in appreciation.

"Where'd you get this?"

"The Internet. Get anything you want these days."

"Pretty fancy for a deadly weapon."

"I thought I deserved a treat when I turned thirty . . . but I didn't want to wait." Frank takes his knife out and places
it on the bar. Mercy picks it up, looks at it, Frank waiting for her reaction. She flicks it open, feels the blade. "This
thing's junk." He starts to laugh, loose, relaxed. "That's funny?"

"You and me already have more in common than I did with both my ex-wives."

Vida Stice met Tino when she worked for the beer distributorship he bought from. They struck up a phone relationship, and
when he asked her out, she was only too happy to see what the man who owned a popular local nightclub looked like. When they
began dating, Vida was in her early thirties and had recently left her first husband, a cop who beat her, but never around
the face. Tino had a big condo in a nice part of Tulsa and a second home on a lake. He told her he was doing better than he
really was and she bought his line, accepting his marriage proposal after knowing him six months and wanting to quit working
anyway. That he didn't seem violent was an added incentive, given her marital history. They'd been married almost five years
now and Tino's deteriorating financial situation had recently become apparent when he had to trade in her Corvette and lease
her a RAV4.

Outside the bar, Tino and Vida face each other in front of a Dumpster. The muscles in their faces are taut. It's no picture
for the family album. "I can't give you a thousand bucks," he tells her.

"You better if you want any more customized amateur home video," she says, referring to the previous evening's escapade when
she'd finally consented to his repeated requests to videotape the two of them having sex.

"Go home."

"Let me see your wallet."

"I said go home, if you didn't hear me."

"Let me see your damn wallet."

"Would you get out of here, please?" he says, rediscovering his good manners.

"Afraid to show me what's in there? What is it, a condom so you can pump your little bartender?" The contempt with which she
regards him is mirrored in his own face. Physical violence would be the next step but she just did her makeup in the car and
he's wearing a new shirt, so the situation resolves when Vida walks away, leaving Tino with murderous thoughts.

A young blonde with country-singer big hair stands at the door of Club Louie with a rubber stamp of a duck, inking patrons'
hands as they go in, saying, "Quack, quack," as she does it. This is Bobbie Jo Horton, and her tight stonewashed jeans, belly
shirt, and navel ring all say she wants to have fun. Right now. The bar area is filling up behind her with guys drinking longnecks
and girls sipping cosmopolitans, thinking they're still trendy. It's a Friday night and Club Louie is buzzing with the anticipatory
energy people who work regular jobs bring when they're ready to get their groove on at the end of the week.

Frank sits in a small dressing room just off the stage checking himself out in the mirror. A wall-mounted speaker in the tiny
space receives a feed from the house PA. On the counter in front of him is a table with several tapes next to it, one of which
he is going to use to record his act tonight. Rising from his chair, he feints and jabs at his reflection, two lefts, a right,
then shakes his shoulders loose. Mercy appears at the door with a beer on a tray.

"Tino thought you might want this." Placing the beer down on the counter. "Such a thoughtful guy." She turns to leave, choosing
not to see Frank's smile.

"Wait a minute."

Mercy stops in her tracks and without turning says, "You think I was too rough on you before?"

"When someone looks beneath my suave veneer and sees I'm horny and desperate . . . well, I don't have to tell you . . . my
heart goes pitty-pat. I just want to share the warmth."

"Save the love for a sucker, dollface." She leaves, and Frank wants her even more than he did before.

Half an hour later, Tino stands on the small stage of Club Louie squinting into the lights of the three-quarters-full house
and trying to hide his disappointment at Frank not selling out. "How's everybody doing tonight?" he asks, feigning enthusiasm.
He gets the kind of tepid response that indicates the audience could be at a ball game, a bowling alley, or a racetrack, any
place that serves alcohol. Tino forges ahead, "We got a great show for you. Before I bring up our headliner I want to remind
you we're doing dwarf tossing on Tuesday nights now, so be sure to come around for that." Tino waits a moment for this intelligence
to sink in, then proceeds. "Alright. This is a big thrill for us tonight."

In the dressing room, Frank hits the RECORD button on his tape player, checking his hair as Tino's voice pours out of the
wall-mounted speaker. "You've seen him on TV. You've read about him in the papers. Give it up for the bad boy of comedy, Mr.
Frank Bones!"

Frank bounds out to the stage, passing Tino on the way, shaking his hand without looking at him. Tino continues backstage,
where he sees a man wearing gold-tipped cowboy boots standing in the hallway. Tino tells him, "Let's talk in here," indicating
the dressing room.

In the background Frank's saying, "Hello, Tulsa."

In Frank's dressing room there's tension between Tino and the man with the gold-tipped boots. Tino says, "I need to see the
money before you get the tape."

The guy reassures him in a flinty tone, "You'll get it later tonight."

While Frank is trying to amuse the Tulsans who have come to be entertained, and Tino and the man with the gold-tipped boots
engage in their nefarious two-step, a Harley-Davidson 1250 comes roaring up to the front of the club. The rider is Creed Baru,
a muscular man in his thirties wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. He's good-looking but his features have a fierce
quality. Creed sees the ferret-faced kid who has taken Bobbie Jo's place at the door. The kid says, "Twenty dollars, please."

"Just here to see my wife," Creed says, breezing past him. Mercy looks up from the bar where she is mixing four Southern Comfort
and Sprites for a table of sorority sisters. She does not appear happy to see him.

Taking no notice of this, Creed sits at the bar and stares at her for a full minute before she says, "What are you doing here,
Creed?"

"I'm movin' back in."

"I'll tell you right now, I won't be cohabitating with a man who shovels bullshit for a living."

Just then the kid from the door arrives, having gathered enough courage to do his job. "I said twenty dollars, please."

Creed just laughs in the kid's face in a way that says,
I'm gonna blink now and if you're here when my eyes open, I will kill you.
Mercy tells the kid, "I'll take care of it," letting the eager beaver save face and walk away, flexing his skinny shoulders
as he does, ready to kick some ass.

"Bourbon," Creed says to his wife. Mercy pours the drink. As Creed looks toward the main room, she spits in his glass. Frank's
voice is hard to hear above the babble of the bar area, but Mercy manages to make out something Frank's saying about why don't
all black people hate Elvis since he's a fat cracker who stole rock 'n' roil from the brothers.

She wishes she could hear the rest as she places the drink in front of her future ex-husband. Turning his attention back to
the bar, Creed sips the bourbon while Mercy does her best to ignore him. "The deal came through," he tells her, as if he had
just swung a leveraged buyout on Wall Street.

"What deal?" Puncturing his little balloon.

"The one with that old boy in Okmulgee? For the Ford truck? The one I bought for five hundred bucks less than I'm about to
sell it for?" He waits for her reaction, and when there is none, he continues, "And I don't appreciate the lack of encouragement
I'm hearin' in your tone of voice. I'm workin' the angles, girl. I'm talkin' to people, lookin' to expand my horizons." Mercy
regards him skeptically, Creed's speech a rerun. "Meantime, I got you a gold necklace." He pulls a thin gold chain out of
his pocket and lays it on the bar with a flourish befitting a far more impressive piece of jewelry.

"You're makin deals like I'm layin' eggs. Where'd you steal it from?"

While Creed ponders how to answer this affront to his abilities as a provider, Bobbie Jo approaches the bar with an empty
tray saying, "Two tequila shots, a banana daiquiri, a creme de menthe, and four longnecks."

"I'm out of crème de menthe," Mercy tells her. "Let me check the back."

When Mercy leaves, Creed gets off his barstool and sidles up to the waitress. He says, "Hey, Bobbie Jo. How you doin'?" She
answers by rubbing her slender leg against his thigh.

"How come I ain't seen you lately, Creed?"

"I'm a busy man."

While Creed and Bobbie Jo are engaged in the early stages of their adulterous assignation, Mercy finds herself in the back
of the main room, listening to Frank, who is saying:

I
love being back on the road because it's a great opportunity to meet new women. Comedians do great with women. We're as sleazy
as rock stars but not as good-looking, which means we get an even lower level of groupie.

Mercy is surprised and a little flattered to hear her words repeated by a professional performer and doesn't mind the implied
knock, knowing he's embellishing for comic effect.

And there is nothing more attractive than a horny road comic. I had a romantic interlude with a lady bartender today. And
when I told her I wanted to be her Yoko Ono, she said, "Nothing comes with the drinks but the pretzels." Then we exchanged
bodily fluids.

Mercy's outraged for a split second but then laughs with the rest of the crowd when Frank informs them:

She spat in my beer.

A few hours later, just short of midnight, and the place is mostly emptied out. What passes for country music now but is really
just mediocre rock with a cowboy hat plays on the stereo behind the bar. Vida, who saw the second half of Frank's show, sits
at the end of the bar sipping a drink while Mercy talks to Frank, seated at the opposite end nursing a beer.

"You gotta pay me if you're gonna use my material," she tells him.

"You can have my child."

"How about a house?"

"I've got a house but it's in Mexico."

Creed has been talking to Bobbie Jo in the back of the room but now he's walking toward Frank and Mercy. He's heard the tall
end of their conversation. "You know the problem with Mexico?" Creed asks, preparing to weigh in with his anthropological
observations. "Too many Mexicans."

Frank does not respond. Turning away from Creed, he smiles at Mercy. "Can I get a beer?"

Creed places his hand on Frank's shoulder a little too heavily. "Frank, lemme ask you somethin'. I'm thinkin' 'bout headin'
out to Hollywood, maybe try to catch on as a stuntman. You got any contacts in the movie business?"