The Tar Pit (6 of 9)
By Thomas Frye
- 157 reads
“Anyone know where a girl can have a good time in this town?” Her voice soothed every muscle in my neck and flooded through my shoulders, relaxing my back.
“We’re having a good time right here,” I said.
“Well let me join you then.”
“Yeah, you're lucky, we weren’t having a good time until you came in,” said Johnny.
“Well, don’t I have good timing?” she smiled with a soft nod and a wink.
“Come over and sit down,” said Benzo, waving her on.
She sauntered to the empty stool between Benzo and I and set her bag down on the brass-rail circling the lower portion of the bar that was meant to be used as a foot rest. She gently shook the bag a few times to jostle whatever was inside so it would settle in a way that allowed the bag to remain balanced on the wide brass foot-rail. The bag, with its bright orange warning-strip, didn’t go with her high-slit, black ribbed-skirt. The skirt came to the middle of her calf, but was slit all the way up to the top of her thigh, with gold studs running the length of her leg so she could close the skirt up and be all business if she needed to, then unbutton them all at night so her bare leg could show all the way up to her succulent round hips if she chose. Tonight, she had her skirt unbuttoned clear passed the top of her black thigh-high stockings. Thigh-highs are one of my many weaknesses. She hadn’t laid a finger on me and my whole arm was already twisted behind my back. A red, silk, low-cut top displayed her tanned handful breasts once she took off her black business blazer and laid it over the gym-bag at her feet.
“How ‘bout a round, Johnny?” I waved my finger in a circle to mean the whole place.
“Oh, you’re buying a round? Said Benzo.
“I am.”
“How come you never buy a round when the place is full?” Johnny refilled my bourbon, letting it glub to the top of the glass.
“I’m saving up,” I said.
“For what?” The woman raised one finger without looking at me. “Tequila,” she said to Johnny. “And something good, no Jose.”
“El Zacatecano?”
Johnny looked at me for approval.
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever.”
“Just give me a well-whiskey, rocks,” said Benzo.
“Get whatever you want,” I told him. “I’m up five-hunny in the box.”
“Well-whiskey,” said Benzo. “That five-hunny’s for your escape.”
“Oh, you’re trying to get out of here too? How original,” the woman glanced at me from the corner of her caramel-toned face.
My eyes couldn’t help but to be drawn to the line of cleavage she’d so maliciously let ablaze when she took off her blazer. She was a magnet and I had metal irises that were helplessly attracted to anything she had visible. “Where are you moving?” she asked me.
“Anywhere but here.”
“Here as in where?”
“Here as in Youngstown. Here as in… northeast Ohio, the Midwest… probably head west… somewhere. To the coast, I guess.”
“What are you doing with your car?” Benzo stirred his drink with a swizzle-stick.
“I’m going to drive it. What else would I do with it?”
“You think it’ll make it out of the state?”
“I don’t know if it will, but I will. I might have to ditch it on the side of the road and walk the rest of the way to the West coast, but I’ll make it out there.”
“What’s on the west coast?”
“Different scenery, that’s it. Doesn’t have to be the coast. Just not here… something warm though.”
“As long as you’re not strung out your car will run fine,” Benzo blurted out. “Soon as you start getting high again it’s gonna break down. You know how you are with cars when you get a habit.”
My eyebrows went stern, and I shook my head ‘no’ at Benzo, then nodded my head sideways at the girl,
“Yeah,” said Johnny, handing us the drinks. “That’s gonna be a long walk… you better stay clean this time.”
I looked around and uncomfortably raised my hands, palms up, thumbs out, then dropped them to my side, shaking my head at them both.
“Well what’s the fun in that?” she said, toasting her glass with the rest of us.
“Cheers,” somebody else said.
I drained my rocks glass in one pull.
“You get high?” Benzo asked the woman once she threw back her shot.
She laid her hand on his wide chest and purred, “Shoot, I came in here looking for heroin.”
The place got quiet. “You won’t find any of that in here,” Johnny barked.
Benzo and I exchanged a look, then I cocked my head with a somewhat confused grin.
“But I’d hate to knock you off your wagon.” She smiled and winked at me.
Johnny relaxed at her joke. He had a strict ‘no-dope policy’ that we adhered to out of respect.
“Oh, don’t feel bad, he’ll fall off on his own sooner or later,” said Benzo, with cheese spreading across his face. “Were you serious?” he asked her after a considerable bit of silence.
“Do I look like I do heroin?” She said, shaking her head ‘no’.
“No, you do not,” said Eric from under a mop of sandy brown hair. He stood up from where he’d been silently sucking a sud-mug at the far end of the bar.
“See, he gets it.” The woman smiled at Eric.
Her teeth were perfect white pearls in her mouth, held back by a plump set of red painted lips. Eric smiled back, then thanked me for the drink as he passed me on his way out the door. We exchanged a few good words as he left. When I turned back around, Benzo and the woman were making out.
I glanced at Johnny and raised my eyebrows. He made a face back and we both smiled. I was about to order another drink when she pulled away from Benzo’s face just long enough to turn to Johnny with three fingers raised and say, “Bartender, round of Tequila please,” and she slid a twenty and a ten across the bar quicker than I could wonder where she pulled it out of.
They continued to maul each other as I twirled a swizzle stick around the lip of my empty glass, then turned my attention to the rerun of Who’s the Boss, silently playing on the television bolted to a wall. My eyes followed Johnny as he lined up three shot glasses and filled each one with a clear white tequila from a bottle marked El Zacatecano.
She kissed Benzo one last time, then stood up and leaned back against the bar, still positioned between the two of us. “To Feeling Good,” she said, and we all drank to that.
“I like your face.” The woman grabbed me by the buttons of my shirt and drew me in closer with a sweet magnetism that enveloped me the way a drug rushes through the blood. Her mouth and mine were polar-opposites. I couldn’t have pulled away if I wanted to. She had a hold on me. Her lips were a soft drop in a feather bed, and all the blood left my head and went straight to my pants. I stood at attention, ready to stab. Her tongue massaged the back of my throat, and I could feel what it was like to be her, as if her energy had penetrated mine and had taken me over. My will was no longer my own. I was not a free agent. She tasted like an old bar rag, bitter and strong, still I knew after that first taste, I was hooked.
“Listen to me,” she drew back from my lips and laid her hand on Benzo’s chest. “I have something I have to be up very early for tomorrow, and I’m on a weird sleep schedule, so there’s no way I can fall asleep right now. I need somebody to keep me up all… night… long. What do you say, boys? You up for the challenge?”
“Yes,” I said, as sure about what I said as I was about anything I’d ever said before.
“Yeah, I’m down. Let’s go, I only live a few blocks away.” Benzo stood up, ready to turn and walk out the door.
“Well hold on now, I’ve got to go powder my nose.” She raised her slender eyebrows at Johnny, and he nodded toward the back of the bar, down a short hallway, where the Ladies’ restroom was located. The woman picked up her gym-bag and slung it over her shoulder. “Don’t let anyone else sit here.” She draped her slim black blazer jacket over the barstool. “You two are mine.” Her feet floated across the barroom floor. She looked at Benzo as she disappeared into the bathroom. “And it’s your turn to buy a round.”
Benzo nodded at Johnny behind the bar, and Johnny picked up the bottle of Basil Hayden.
“Not that top-shelf shit, I’ve got habits to support. Three shots of well-whiskey.” Benzo leaned forward and pointed at the bottles of well-liquor lined up under the bar by the ice.
“Fuck that swill.” I dropped my hand over my glass. “Give me the good stuff, Johnny… and put my shot on my tab. Then lemmie close out.”
“Works for me.” Benzo dropped back onto his barstool. “Lemmie close out too then, Johnny.”
“Too bad you still don’t live next door.” Johnny tipped the bottle of the good stuff and splashed me a solid double. “You guys could go right upstairs, be home in twenty seconds.”
“Yeah, I miss that place. Good times up there… and in here,” I motioned to the inside of the bar. “Then back up there for afterhours.” I pointed next door.
“Yeah, you guys ran up a hell of a tab… well…” Johnny corrected himself, pulling two clean shot glasses from a stack behind the bar. “You never did. You refused to even start one, if I remember right.”
“‘Cause I knew I’d never pay it,” I said. “Like Shoestring Johnny.”
“Shit… Shoestring Johnny,” the bartender laughed, shaking his large head of tar-black hair. “It’s Johnny’s like that giving all Johnny’s a bad name.”
He walked to the end of the bar, reached underneath and pulled out the beat up, speckled black notebook he used to keep track of his running tabs for that year. The pages were worn and wrinkled and filled with names in blue and black ink. He ran a puffy cracked finger down one page and stopped on a name, then ran it across to the amount it was associated with. “Put it this way, Shoestring Johnny owes me just about what you guys were paying for rent next door.”
“You used to live next door to here?” Benzo asked. “Next door to the bar? Or next door as in the first house down the side street?” He pointed toward the back of the bar.
“Take a left out the door,” I pointed at the exit that fronted on South Avenue. “Walk twenty steps that way, down the sidewalk.”
Benzo’s head cocked. “Above the old arcade?”
“Yeah, but it was shut down by the time we moved in there. They’d already pulled all the pinball machines out. Me and Shoestring Johnny lived up there for a couple of years, way back, before shit got all crazy with drugs. Never got a D.U.I. walking across the parking lot.”
The Bartender’s tone went nostalgic, “How’s Johnny doing? Is he clean?”
“Far as I know.” I nodded. “He drove out to Seattle and never came back. He’s living out there now. Livin’ it up, from what I hear… managing a restaurant.”
“Damn. Lucky Fuck. He got out.” Benzo shook his head with a solemn look. “Good for him… fucker.”
Then a jolt of excitement hit Benzo, and he slapped my arm and pointed to the bathroom down the hallway. “We gonna go run the train,” he exclaimed.
When Benzo’s locker-room side came out, he’d jokingly point to somebody out of earshot and say, “What do you think? You think she’d let us go back and run the train on her?” Old women, waitresses, librarians, whoever. He just thought it was a funny thing to say to his boys when the girls couldn’t hear him, but now, in the very near future, it looked like this might be a definite possibility.
“I think she’s going to run the train on you two,” said Johnny. “That woman is hungry. You guys better be careful fucking around with some shit like that.”
“Hey, I’m down if you’re down,” I said.
“Oh, I’m down,” said Benzo. “But we’ve got to go back to my place and do this now. I got to go cop before Nico shuts down for the night. I’d stop on the way to my house…” Benzo nodded to the bathroom. “But she’s not going to be cool with that.”
“You guys need to quit that shit,” Johnny shook his head and leaned back with both open palms flat on the closed lid of an ice bin behind the bar.
“Hey, I’m clean. I got five-hunny in the box.”
“You ain’t gonna stay clean for long going home with girls like that,” Johnny nodded his headful of dark hair toward the bathrooms. “What do you think she’s in there powdering her nose with?”
“She doesn’t fuck with that shit. Look at her,” Said Benzo, standing up. “She’s all woman.”
“So was Eve,” Johnny laughed and looked at me like he’d made a good point.
“You mean she’s going to tempt me? Is that what you’re saying? First of all, the temptation of Adam is a patriarchal fallacy. Everyone chooses to eat their own apple, simple as that. But I can’t just ignore the fact that apples are an important part of a balanced diet.”
“Hey, they keep the doctor away.” Benzo pulled his full shot of whiskey toward him.
“You need a steady supply of ‘em, but yeah… and where would we be without the knowledge of good and evil?”
“Paradise,” said the bartender, closing out our tabs.
“The ‘paradise’ you’re talking about is a state of ‘not knowing’. I don’t see how a state of knowing isn’t better than that.”
“Well there is such a thing as blissful ignorance, I mean…” Benzo craned his neck to look down the hallway for the woman whose name we didn’t know. “I guess that’s what the paradise you’re talking about is. Like animals, they just act, without knowing themselves as individuals, without knowing how to… use a can opener… they just act.”
“So, what…. Knowledge is evil? Is that what I’m to believe?”
“Knowledge is knowledge…” Johnny said, sliding my change toward me. “What you do with it might be evil, but knowledge itself isn’t bad.”
“Then why make a big deal about eating a goddamned apple? Just eat it and shut up.” I motioned to the pile of bills and coins on the bar. “Keep it. Thanks, Johnny.”
Benzo nodded at the money Johnny set on the bar in front of him. “That’s yours,” he said.
We sat in silence with our shots in front of us, waiting for her to emerge from the bathroom. When she did, the clacks of her heals, snapping down the hallway, had both our heads turned toward her by the time she appeared in the barroom. The slit of her black skirt exposed her toned, caramel thigh through her dark, sexy nylon as the leg went all the way up. Her milky muffins made themselves known behind her thin red silk, spaghetti-strapped shirt, when her nipples outlined themselves under the smooth fabric. She picked her black blazer up off the stool and put it on.
“You boys ready? What is this?” Her nod went to three shots lined up on the bar. She picked up her bag by the strap and laid it over one of her shoulders.
“Whiskey,” said Benzo.
“Whiskey Dick? Oh, no, no, no.” She picked up my shot and drank it. “I need you hard.” She pointed at me, shaking her head.
Her attention turned to Benzo. “And you’ve got to drive… I need you to get me there alive.” She grabbed his glass with her slender fingers and drained it with one tilt of her neck … and this…” She picked up her glass and smiled at both of us. “This one’s mine,” she said, before it went up-side-down on the wood surface of the bar. “And that’s yours, Thanks, Johnny. You’ve been a doll.” She buttoned her jacket closed, and turned from the bar, leaving a good amount of change from the round she’d bought earlier.
Covering up her bare shoulders and magnetic cleavage with her slim black blazer, transformed her into someone I’d expect to see handing out orders at the head of a conference table in a Midtown Manhattan boardroom. We followed her out the door with invisible chains on transparent collars that choked us into giving into whatever she required of us.
I sat in the back of Benzo’s style-less economy car, extending her the chivalrous shotgun. She closed the passenger-side door and said, “So, are we going to get high or what?”
“Does the pope shit in Rome?” Benzo spoke without pause, starting the car.
“Vatican City, I believe,” she said, and looked at me.
“What kind of high?”
It didn’t matter. I was ready to relinquish anything I needed to shed to get me into her as quickly as possible. The woman unzipped the corner of her bag and reached her hand inside. She pulled out several small wax-paper baggies and held them under the dome-light’s glow. “These came from a friend. It’s supposed to be the best China he’s found in years, and he travels all over the world.”
She cleared her throat and gathered our attention through eye-contact. “I’ll make you both a deal. You keep me awake for a few hours, make me feel good...” She fanned out the dull white, waxed-baggies between her fingers and her thumb. “And I’ll make you feel good.”
The dome-light shut off when she said it.
I think my whole world shut off. It’s been blackness ever since… the same blackness I’ll sit in every morning on that park bench across the street from the defective payphone. It was the same black vacancy that will, by the end of August, have me pacing the room in the dopesick throes of the hottest summer on record, waiting for someone to show up in my driveway looking for a favor. The tar pit is black inside. The hands disappear in front of the face and navigation is impossible. The life rope disappears when the light at the top of the pit is lost. There’s no guarantee any of us will make it out of the tar pit.
(Continues...)
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