J
ack was always glad to see celebrities in the place.
They kept Cecil occupied, and Cecil kept Grape and Cat busy playing hoods.
Singers and movie people liked to hang around guys who'd whacked somebody, or knew someone who did.
Grape was the loudmouth skinny guy on Sopranos, and Cat was the dope.
There was no one on the show like Cecil R. Dupree. There was no one like Cecil anywhere.
Jack took an order of Ahmed's recycled eggrolls to a table of college boys.
They'd been there half the night, and were drunk enough to eat lint.
Minnie Mouth was dancing naked, rubbing up one guy then the next. Jack was sure she was asleep.
The college guys had stuffed so many bills in her shoes, she could hardly raise her knees.
When Gloria came on again, he stood in the dark where he could see real good, and no one like Cecil or Grape could see him.
Every time he watched her it was always the same, a
flutter in his belly, and a moment when he couldn't catch his breath.
Sometimes he'd imagine her dressed in fine clothes like they had in ladies' magazines.
You weren't supposed to open magazines in a store, but a lot of times he did.
Once, when he borrowed Ortega's car, he found a Victoria's Secret catalog buried under the otter and whale magazines.
The pictures knocked him for a loop.
He wanted to order Gloria a hot little number but he didn't know her size, and knew better than to ask.
And that was the thing, he thought, he had good ideas, stuff he'd like to do, but when it came time, nothing seemed to work right. He'd fucked up good with that Mescan talk, she didn't like that.
There wasn't going to be any pie
if he didn't figure how to do it right.
H
e was thinking on that, running some ideas by, when it struck him there wasn't any music going on, there wasn't any girls.
What there was, was Cecil R. Dupree over at the DJs, standing in the dark.
Now what is this shit? Jack wondered, backing away a little farther from the bar.
He didn't like it, whatever the hell it might be.
Stuff you don't know about, that's the stuff you don't like to see.
"We got a special surprise for y'all at Piggs tonight," Cecil said, holding the mike so close it squealed in everyone's ears.
"What we got is post time, ladies an' gents, if there's any ladies here," and everybody whoops at that, everybody knows there's not.
"What I'm saying is you don't have to go to Kentucky or nothing, we got your race right here."
The guys cheered, whistled and stomped.
They didn't know what was coming, didn't have any idea.
Didn't care, as long as the girls got naked and Piggs didn't run out of beer.
"We got your horsies, we got 'em right here.
Ugliest horsies I ever seen, but take a look at them jockeys, fellas, that's what you come here to see!"
Bradford Marsalis blew out the chords of "Dewey Baby," which didn't sound Derby at all. Nobody heard, they were all on their feet, cheering as the red and purple lasers raked across the floor, catching the horsies as they bolted out of the gate on all fours.
Jack stared at the sight, wondering who'd come up with this, wondered exactly why.
It wasn't like Cecil to give away anything free.
Everything cost something at Piggs.
The only thing you could do without paying was pee, to make room for more beer.
Jack recognized some of the horsies.
A lawyer who came in every night, the dude who sold cars.
A trucker he hadn't seen before, a big dude Maggie said was a defrocked Steeler guard.
They all had numbers pinned on their butts, and the naked jockeys–in little jockey hats–whipped their mounts freely as they scrambled across the floor.
Minnie Mouth and Laura Licks.
Maggie Thatch and Alabama Straight.
All the girls except Gloria Mundi.
Gloria wasn't there.
Jack squinted through the dark, through the dizzy laser lights, looked until he found her, caught her in the crowd.
Wished, in that moment, he was anywhere else.
Kansas, Oklahoma, even Arkansas.
Anywhere but Piggs in Mexican Wells, watching the woman he loved hanging on the greaser, hanging on Ricky Chavez.
Okay, not hanging on, but close enough to make Jack's stomach knot up, get the antifreeze leaking again.
One hand on his shoulder, saying something to him, looking up at him, not even watching the race going on.
Ricky looking down, looking in her robe, taking everything in, her not trying to close it up at all.
What was she saying, come on up, climb up to my place, you can do anything you like–
Aw, man, she wasn't saying that, not to this taco with his banks and his fucking candy on sale from the Walgreen's store.
Not Jack's Gloria, not the woman he'd be with forever, soon as he could straighten everything out...
A shout went up from the crowd, a din, a near explosion you could hear as far as Fort Worth.
The trucker had gone down hard, spilling Maggie Thatch, sending her sprawling, ass over end, an aerial view of her private inner parts.
Everyone had seen most of Maggie a dozen times before, but this was a special event, this didn't cost you anything at all.
Halfway to the finish line, the lawyer drew ahead, the used car dude and the Steeler dropped behind.
Jack decided, at exactly that moment, that he had to kill Ricky Chavez.
It came to him just like that.
He felt a lot better with that off his mind.
The only thing was where, he'd have to think about that.
Not right at Piggs, that wouldn't be a smart thing to do. Somewhere else, somewhere far off.
Which meant he'd have to borrow Ortega's car.
Would that be the right thing to do? Jack wondered. Was there a conflict here, if the owner of the car was of the greaser persuasion too?
It was something to consider, and Jack would have given it some thought, if someone hadn't wrapped a big hand across his mouth, yanked him off his feet and dragged him out the side door.
Jack knew at once who had him, and the knowledge struck terror in his heart.
No one had more lethal body odor, no one had hands the size of Cat's.
Jack kicked, flailed at empty air, tried frantically to shake himself free.
Nothing helped, nothing did any good at all.
From the corner of his eye, he could see the dumpster back of Wan's, the twenty-watt bulb above the door.
Maybe Ahmed or Rhino would walk out and see him.
Maybe Cat wouldn't kill him in front of the help–
Cat held him high, held him out straight.
Someone took off his shoes, peeled off his socks.
Jack got a look, saw it was Grape, saw his bad teeth, saw his nasty smile.
Looked right at him as Grape ripped his T-shirt off his chest.
Jack felt his jeans slide down his legs, felt his shorts go next.
Oh God, they're going to do it, they're going to cut it off, don't let 'em do that!
It was over, over and done.
A minute, a minute and a half, and Jack had never been so frightened in his life. He was scared, he was naked, and somehow he wasn't outside anymore, he was back inside Piggs.
Down on the floor, down on his knees.
Down on his knees and something heavy, lumpy on his back.
Looked to the left, looked to the right, saw a pair of hand-tooled boots, six hundred retail in South Fort Worth, a grand in New York.
A fringe hung down and tickled his nose.
Jack smelled girl sweat, leather, cigarettes and beer.
Grape leaned down real close, whispered in his ear:
"Cecil said he wasn't gonna let Cat kill you, Cecil does what he says he's gonna do.
This here's what you gotta do.
Move, you little fuck."
Jack gasped as Grape kicked him soundly in the rear.
Jack scrambled off as fast as he could across the floor.
He could hear Cat laughing, a deep, terrible, totally mindless sound, a haw-haw-haw without pleasure, anger, anything at all.
The lasers seared his eyes, the mean little boots dug in his sides.
His hands got dirty, his knees went numb.
Butts, egg rolls, peanuts, and mud passed beneath his eyes.
Once he saw a twenty dollar bill.
"Hold it, folks," shouted Cecil R. Dupree, chewing on the mike, "we got a late entry here, it ain't done yet!"
Clap, shout, stomp on the floor.
We want more-more-more.
"Here she is, ladies an' gents, y'all know her, our real special guest an' she's just fourteen, the prettiest songbird in Nashville, Tennessee...little miss Kandy Klee!"
Jack wished he was dead, a wish he'd had once or twice before.
God wouldn't listen to him then, wouldn't listen now.
"Thirteen, motherfucker," said little Kandy Klee, but only Jack could hear...
O
ne of the things Ricky thought about airplanes was he didn't care for them at all.
Didn't like getting in one, didn't like it when they got up off the ground.
It didn't help any that Gloria's plane was wedged in forever in a live oak tree, and hadn't taken off since l943.
True, it was stationary now, but it was the nature of things that went up to come down.
Even the birds, which the Creator had intended to fly, sometimes dropped for no reason at all.
Nevertheless, if the gringo devil himself could climb up here, so could Ricardo Garcia Chavez, for he was assuredly twice the man the Godless gangster Cecil would ever be.
And, besides, he would hang by his
cojones
from a fucking balloon if he could win the heart of Gloria Mundi, and call her his own.
"One cannot but admire the genius of the German people," Ricky said.
"Yes, it is true they have often turned their talent to the art of the wars, but they can craft the most incredible machines.
"This thing of the air is a marvel to see, Miss Mundi.
I, Ricky Chavez, have never been in such a device before, and I am grateful you have allow me to experience the Junkers JU 52, which I recall has a maximum speed of 350 kilometers an hour, and the ceiling of 18,045 feet, yes?"
"That's true," Gloria said, "though that's goin' to depend on your load, an' what kind of weather you might be up against in the European skies.
You got your performance numbers, see, and you got your ever'day variable type conditions, which isn't going to always be the same."
"That is much like life itself, is it not, Miss Mundi?"
Ricky sighed as he peered into the night through the open portside door, standing well back in case his stomach rebelled, which was likely at such a distance to the ground.
"What we expect of the goals to which we strive is not always that which the person he achieves.
Sometime, we are falling short of this."
"I guess," Gloria said. "I hadn't given it a whole lot of thought."
She had, as a fact, but wasn't about to get into something deep as that.
Deep, with a guy, led to the very same that shallow did, but it took them more time to get where they were going, which was right in your crotch, where Ricky Chavez was gazing now.
Chavez was all right, but he thought he was slick as Johnson's Wax.
A man just couldn't be easy with a woman, he couldn't stop thinking what he was doing there.
Every time a man opened his mouth, he told you a little more he didn't want you to know.
Lord, he'd gone and looked up that speed and ceiling stuff on the net or in a book, and thought she couldn't figure that out.
He didn't know shit about German aircraft, anyone could see that.
And, she reminded herself, she hadn't "allowed" him to experience being there, hadn't asked him up at all.
Any more than she'd asked up Cecil R. Dupree.
At least Ricky had a little class and wouldn't jump her on the spot.
He'd ask a couple times, bring some more candy and see if she'd spread out for that.
"It was my great pleasure that I have travel, had the
vacaciones
, in the lovely German town and countryside in the summer ago," Ricky said, looking about for a place to set his coffee where Gloria wouldn't see.
It was, truly, the worst he'd ever tasted anywhere, even in San Angelo.