Installment #9
Chapter 13
13
More country music for Walt. Only now electrified, more jangly. Buck Owens blaring from the jukebox at the far end of the lounge of the El Ranchero.
Walt sitting alone at the bar. The place was small and dark and almost dead except for two couples drinking in a booth near the jukebox. Walt had woken up groggy, if not a little hungover, from his long nap. Rolling over in bed to find it dark in his room. Looked out his window to find it dark outside.
In the daylight, he had missed the lounge completely. But looking out his window, he’d found it easily in the night, the neon glow of the El Ranchero’s sign brilliant against the starlit prairie sky.
Shot by shot, Walt’s grogginess had given way to the whiskey.
“She loved me.”
Walt threw back the whiskey. The shot glass left a watery ring on the bar. Walt breathed through the fire of the liquor trickling behind his sternum. The ring on the bar glistened. Walt focused on the way it touched the watery ring left behind by the previous whiskey shot and how that one touched the one before that and that touched the one before that and so on. His circle of interlocked rings was nearly complete.
Walt waved to the bartender. She was a lean Mexican woman wearing thick eyeglasses and she darted around behind the bar like a bantamweight fighter. Walt thought she looked like she could rabbit punch you three times before you realized your teeth were gone.
She brought him another shot. Rather than placing it on the bar, she handed it to Walt as he had requested. Walt was particular about his work with wet rings.
Walt rotated the shot of whiskey on the bar, then slowly lifted the shot to his lips. The shot left another ring on the end of the chain. Walt saw that he required one more link to close his circle.
“She loved me not.”
Walt threw back the shot. His cowboy hat tumbled off the back of his head. Walt bent to pick it up, one hand clutching the bar for balance. Hat retrieved, he placed it back on his head. It tilted to one side but felt all right to Walt. He turned again to stare at his chain of rings. Connect the circle, ring by ring. Divine the truth.
So damn typical, thought Walt. Only I would show up to find the person I want to strangle is already dead.
Walt snickered into his empty shot glass, waved for another. It was just like Geri to beat him to it. Cheat him out of any satisfaction.
“You got the last word again, you….”
It seemed wrong to cuss the dead, even if he had been planning to make her dead. Walt considered if he really would have or even could have done it. No doubt the desire to kill her was strong, as strong as any desire he’d ever had for anything. As strong as his desire for her. Both emotions came out of similar places, Walt figured.
But the way he felt now?
Hell, how bad would he have felt if he had killed her?
The bartender brought his shot of whiskey. Walt placed the shot glass in the small opening between the two links at the open ends of the circle. His shimmering circle was now complete. He studied before tossing down the shot.
“She loved me,” he said.
He covered a burp with the back of his hand as the whiskey backed up into his throat. His head was beginning to split inside now but in a good way. He could almost hear the pressure hiss and release from within. Again, Walt waved to the bartender.
“I make an Olympic sign myself.”
Walt looked to see where the voice came from and if it was speaking to him but his vision was fuzzy. All he saw were two hands down the bar from him. One hand held a pocket knife and was digging the blade under the nails of the other hand. There was no one else at the bar.
Walt ignored the hands and the man they were attached to.
The hand with the knife gestured toward the rings in front of Walt. The owner of the hands and the knife spoke again.
“The Olympic sign,” the man said. “Five rings of unity. That’s how I know when I’ve had enough.”
Walt blinked, trying to focus on the man speaking. There were two of them at first, but they blended into one man. Thinning but well-groomed hair on an enormous head floating above a white polo shirt, wrinkle-free.
“My diet is not so strict,” Walt said.
The man leaned toward Walt, offering a hand to shake. Walt looked at the soft, clean hand as if he’d never seen one before. Walt glanced farther down the bar at the bartender.
When he looked back, Walt saw the man’s hand still hanging out there over the empty stool between them. Finally Walt shook it, a little too firmly. As the bartender brought another shot, the man moved onto the stool next to Walt.
“When you’ve made the circle, do you stop drinking?” the man said.
With the palm of his hand, Walt wiped the entire chain of wet rings from the bar. Then he put the shot glass on the bar. When he picked it up again it left behind a lone ring.
“When it’s done,” Walt said, “the only thing left is to start over.”
The man went back to cleaning his nails with the knife.
“Whatever’s inside you must be either drunk or drowned by now,” he said.
“You can never be too sure,” Walt said. “Let’s just leave it at that, all right?”
“Not a problem. A man needs to be alone. Time to grieve is important. Especially when he finds out the woman he’s come all this way for is dead.”
Walt watched himself in the mirror behind the bar, peeking out through tiers of liquor bottles.
“Goddamned small town gossipers,” Walt said.
“It helps pass the time. You’re Walt, right?”
“And what’s my social security number, you know damn so much? Which ass cheek of mine has the birthmark in the shape of Mexico?”
The man smiled.
“Name is Vern. I was a friend of Joni’s.”
“Vern Mason? Well, I’ve already heard of you. How do you like Mr. Small Town know-everything-there-is-to-know? Her name was Geri. Didn’t know that did you, Mr. Know It All?”
“I did, in fact. But I met her as Joni. So to me, you know, she’s Joni.”
“You didn’t know her.”
“Seems you didn’t neither.”
Walt thought about knocking Vern on his ass but didn’t. Too drunk to strike quick enough. Besides, who knew? Maybe Vern was a black belt or mixed martial arts nut or something like that. Instead, Walt took some satisfaction in knowing his judgment wasn’t cloudy, merely overcast. Walt signaled for the bartender.
“She love me?” Walt said.
“Lorena?”
“Who?”
“The bartender.”
“No, Geri.”
“Oh, I doubt it,” Vern said.
“What about the bartender? Could she love me?”
“Could anybody?”
The bartender handed Walt another shot, looking him up and down. He could tell she was considering whether to cut him off.
“Lorena, what’s he owe you?”
“Twenty-seven, Vern,” Lorena said.
Vern peeled off the money plus a tip and laid it on the bar. Walt watched the bartender walk away. He just knew there was no way Lorena could ever love him either. Obviously, she wasn’t going to take the time to get to know him. Who could blame her? Probably hates her customers. Just like strippers.
“I don’t need your pity,” Walt said.
“Just a friend of a friend buying drinks, Walt. You’re probably heading out in the morning, huh?
“Might stick around. The sheriff seemed awful anxious to have me gone too. But I might take in the sights of Eden, whatever they may be.”
“You know small towns,” Vern said. “Not much to see, nothing going on. If something is going on, you don’t want to know about it. Or nobody wants you to know about it.”
“And yet everybody winds up knowing about it. Hate to think I was missing out on something.”
“True. Free country, I guess. Free and boring, around here anyway. But if you’re sticking around, you might want to stop by my place.”
Walt, eyes heavy with drink but intense, tried to look inside Vern’s enormous head. Walt wondered: Whose fingernails are you digging under now, fat boy??
“My salvage yard, up north of town,” Vern said, putting away his pocket knife. “I have Joni’s car there. What’s left of it. If you want to take a look. Consider it a little Eden hospitality.”
Walt blinked and sighed and tried to focus.
“Is there any place in this town where a drunk man can get a bite to eat this time of night?” Walt said.