Our Napoleon in Rags. Kirby Gann
jacket, his benjamin overcoat thrown lightly over the bar and his Stacies propped on the stool next to him, all animated gesture and argument to Beau, who stands in rolled shirtsleeves pretending to listen. A clement smile graces Beau’s lips, he clutches a wash rag in one hand, and he directs his eyes to the baseball game on TV. Glenda murmurs the melody while she folds cloth napkins in contented lassitude, her floral smock reeking dusted with spices and sauce, her bobbed hair caught on one side in the arm of her eyeglasses; Chesley Sutherland sidles down the steps, rubbing the ginger stubble on his head and resituating the holster over his hip as he cranes around a post to catch the score. A few couples splay scattered and intent over their tables. Upstairs in the Theatre Room, the night’s band begins to check their levels, the drummer giving a shy punch to his kick.
Haycraft watches them. His lips part slightly, eyes saucer huge behind thick lenses, two fingers the size and texture of sausages holding his place in a fat book. He stares at the room and then the window, falling deep into the light outside as it grows fine as sand, whirling with red and blue, singing with descending sirens; soon that light filters to black, and the reflection of the bar in the glass stretches narrowly into the leaf-dusted, bottle-strewn boulevard. The illusion of the bar extending into the streets is definitive to Haycraft: All his efforts were focused on bringing the strangely patient camaraderie from inside the building out to spread over the neighborhood, and to bring the people from outside, in.
Capture this picture in a long slow dissolve, these few souls held static in their particular share of solitude. They offer singular visions of companionship to whomever happens along. A picture hesitant through the following hours, expectant, waiting for midnight to arrive like some longed-for music, waiting for each night to be stirred alive.
As the moon reaches its full height, the typical weirdness sets in:
No one could guess why a retired ballerina decided to discard her top and shimmy onto the half-wall that cleaved the bar from the rest of the room. Two AM and her shift finished at the Primrose Girls on the Go-Go, the Don Q parlor nearly crowded with sweating bikers and slumming bankers and career students ravished by their need to break from all things MOM – they shouted again and again for the bourbon and the beer that polished each leering face to a hazy shine.
Beau scurries to serve in Hawaiian shirt and black leather apron. He shouts to Romeo Díaz, No, no, tell her not here, this is a good place! and allows himself a good take on her bare torso before casting a glance for any glimpse of wife Glenda nearby; at no sign of her, he hacks a grateful guffaw.
Romeo turns to the young woman to pass on Beau’s orders, but stops speechless at the marvel of her bare breasts, sculpted scoops of pale flesh peaked by a maraschino cherry rose. She drifts through a drunken routine of pliés and jètés, culminating with a turned ankle, a surprised exclamation, her bruised bottom scattering dirty glasses from a nearby tray.
She sits in silent rumination, gazes at the floor with a confounded smile. As if alone in her bedroom she reaches to her left breast and scratches the underside softly.
—Buy her whatever she’s drinking, a shirtless man in leather jacket, HELLZAPOPPIN emblazoned across the shoulders, waves to Beau. He mocks applause for the performance, shouts his thanks.
—Well what the fuck is that? asks his companion, twentythree clutching at forty with handbag-leather cheeks and blue smudges beneath her eyes. Smoke frets from her mouth and over his face though she appears to be griping to an invisible associate beside her, loud enough for HELLZAPOPPIN to hear. He fiddles with one of the tiny rubber bands spindling the braids in his beard.
—Let it hang, woman, he answers her.
She sucks harder on her cigarette and hot-boxes it, the yellow of her eyes rimmed with venom. He looks at her, looks away, smacks his lips at something distasteful, looks at her again:
—Don’t break my balls over it, jesus, I’ll slap you here to Nashville, he adds, and this breaks her gaze.
Díaz approaches the dancer, fresh gin rickey on HELLZAPOPPIN’s tab in hand for her. He drapes his jacket over her small, bare shoulders; her top seems to have disappeared. Beau checks Chesley Sutherland, who scowls and shakes his head, setting Beau to wonder if he should expect a crackdown soon – he worries that Chesley, under investigation with another cop for his second excessive-force complaint, might decide tipping off a fruitful bust could help his case with the department. Then again, Chesley still wears his gun, which can’t be legal in his situation. On such unadmitted bargaining chips Chesley and Beau have built a solid working relationship.
A pack of redneck southenders stride down the six steps from the Theatre Room, exulting in the nostalgia of classic-rock covers going on in there. Swine-eyed with liquor and scavenging for more, a brush-cut boy in Hilfiger attire continues to a buddy:
—I says fuck you officer, pulling me over on expired tags, I mean I was only two days late dawg. . . .
Sutherland shadows them near the bar, hoping for a messy altercation. He turns away to suck on his inhaler and misses an underage patron maundering the tables for unclaimed tips.
The clock pops to three, Saturday night’s heaviest hour. Romeo is launching into grins now as he makes clear headway with the ballet dancer.
—It was $225 a week with the company, I only got corps work, she says, one slender hand modestly pinching together the lapels of his jacket. I make that a night now. Exotic dancers have longer careers, too.
—You are absolutely right, Romeo agrees.
She opens the jacket and lifts a breast to show him a pink scar from where she had paid to have a size reduction to meet the demand of an art she later abandoned. Now she was saving to have them enlarged.
—More money in a bigger size, she says, and again, Romeo, fascinated, replies:
—You are absolutely right.
The dancer appears now to fully observe Romeo for the first time, to actually consider him as a real person and not a vague figure from a daydream, and the first hint of a smile tightens the soft corners of her mouth. She offers him her hand and says:
—Anantha. Anantha Bliss.
—What kind of name is that? Anantha Bliss?
—Not my real one.
Romeo’s grin moves beyond his usual leer, and he takes her hand between both palms and raises all three hands together, a gentler version of his gentlemen’s handshake. He has no idea what sort of transformation has just been introduced into his life, and as yet feels overwhelmingly confident.
Son of a bitch !
Those circled nearby turn and look; the corn-yellow teeth of HELLZAPOPPIN’s companion are bared in response to an unanticipated slap. He was feeling his whisky. Magically a compact mirror appears in hand and she adjusts herself accordingly, inspects her face for visible damage. Finding nothing permanent, she sneers at those who stare: What’re you looking at?
On a run to the bathroom Romeo stops long enough to scoff at Sutherland’s dutiful public stance (arms crossed over massive chest, feet shoulder-width apart, an air of smug alertness though his eyes appear aimed above the crowd at the far wall). He expresses sympathy for Sutherland’s frustrations at being allowed only to watch.
—Big healthy boy like you and nothing to do but spectate? And we got crimes going down right now all over the neighborhood, some damsel in distress you can’t do anything about!
Sutherland shoots a sullen stare. Since his suspension he has muttered this outrage often – that while he wastes time among the drunks at the Don Quixote there are real crimes being committed throughout the district. Like today’s bus accident. What if a cop had been out there on a beat? The injustice just baffles him. But he doesn’t mind a little play here and there with Díaz, and he refuses to take the bait the man has tossed him. He suggests Romeo had better be careful not to take too much time with the young boys in the