The Familiar Dark(14)

I pushed out through the heavy double doors, letting them swing shut on Cal’s hurried good-byes. I gulped in the fresh air, early evening painting the sky with pink. This had always been Junie’s favorite time of day, when the light turned hazy and the clouds sparkled.

When Cal dropped me off at home, it took ten minutes of convincing to get him to let me go in alone. “You have to be getting sick of my couch,” I pointed out. “It’s lumpy as hell.” He didn’t disagree, but started to open his door anyway.

“Seriously, Cal,” I told him. “I’ll be fine. I just need some time alone.”

He turned and looked at me, and I held his gaze. “Nothing stupid, right?” he said.

I nodded. I knew he meant a bottle of pills or a razor. My head in the oven. What I was planning might have been even dumber. But I wasn’t like Cal; I lied all the time. Had it down to a science. “Nothing stupid,” I agreed.





SIX


The titty bar my mama had mentioned, the one where Jimmy Ray had been hanging out recently, was about ten miles down the road, situated a few feet off the highway and topped with a giant sign announcing ADUL EN ER AINMEN. I didn’t know if some thief had a hankering for Ts or if there had never been any to begin with, but the sign had looked the same for as long as I could remember. And if anyone was confused by the missing letters, the silhouettes of naked women painted on the boarded-up windows were a dead giveaway as to what went on inside.

I didn’t doubt that this was Jimmy Ray’s new watering hole. My mama’s information was always good. But I didn’t think Jimmy Ray was spending his time here looking at boobs. He had that crazy charisma particular to very bad men. He didn’t need to stuff dollar bills in the G-string of some washed-up meth addict to get his rocks off. He had women lining up to do that for free. Which meant whatever he was doing here was business related. Money laundering or signing up mules, if I had to guess. And business always made Jimmy Ray more careful than usual. Meaner, too.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous, maybe even scared. I knew what Jimmy Ray was capable of when he felt cornered. My wrist still ached on rainy days, and every time I thought of him fear pulsed at the base of my spine, my legs wanting to run even when he was nowhere in sight. But scared wasn’t going to stop me. Not now. What’s the worst he could do? Kill me? The thought didn’t even bother me all that much.

I’d only been inside the strip bar once before, back when Junie was an infant and I’d been desperate for some extra money. I’d gotten about five minutes into the interview—had been told that while blow jobs and hand jobs were fine, actual fucking had to be off premises, but hadn’t yet been asked to peel off my top so the owner could ogle my milk-heavy breasts—when Cal had barreled through the front door and dragged me back outside. I’d screamed at him for interfering, for treating me like a baby, but inside I’d pulsed with relief. Standing on that beer-sticky stage night after night, letting glassy-eyed men flick my nipples when I leaned over to take their money, would’ve kept Junie fed in the short run but killed something inside me in the long term, something I needed in order to be a different kind of mother than my own.

I jerked down the rearview mirror and looked at myself in the dim light of the parking lot. I pulled out my ponytail holder and ran my fingers through my hair, pinched some color into my cheeks, slicked some sheer gloss onto my lips. Jimmy Ray, for all his bravado and bullshit, was a fairly simple guy. He liked his women pliable and pretty. I couldn’t give him the first one, but I could bluff my way through the second.

The smell was the first thing that hit me when I pushed through the heavy door. Sweat and spilled beer. Something dank and musky that made you immediately think of sex. And not the good kind. The dirty, hopeless, borderline-mean kind. I paused inside the doorway, let my eyes adjust to the darkness. Cheap strobe lights blinked on the edges of the long narrow stage that extended out into the middle of the bar, studded at intervals with stripper poles where a couple of topless women slid along their lengths, gazes somewhere far away. Music pounded into my skull, way too loud for the relatively small space and even smaller crowd. A few men hunched on bar stools pulled up to the stage, slack gazes pinned on the women above them. A table of guys in the corner, one of whom was getting an unenthusiastic blow job from a middle-aged stripper wearing only high heels and a silver G-string. His friends watched, too bored to do more than stare, too turned on to look away.

On the other side of the room, a bartender lounged behind the bar talking to a couple of men nursing beers. No one seemed to have noticed my arrival, which meant Jimmy Ray probably wasn’t here. Everyone lived on high alert when he was around. I was the only woman in the place other than the ones working, but I wasn’t worried. I was used to places like this, even though they hadn’t been part of my life in years. If nothing else, my childhood had taught me how to navigate the world’s seedy underbelly.

“Hey, Sam,” I said, sliding into the empty bar stool next to the man on the end. He turned and looked at me, his face breaking into a slow smile. I’d always liked Sam. Of all Jimmy Ray’s hangers-on, he was the most human, with his scruffy beard and tiny paunch of belly. He’d always had the decency to look sorry, at least, after Jimmy Ray had a go at me. Which is more than I could ever say for the rest of them, Jimmy Ray included.

“Well, look who the cat dragged in. Jesus, Eve. How you been?” At the last second, it hit him and his whole face shifted. “Oh God, sorry,” he said. “I just . . . I forgot for a second. About your daughter. I didn’t hear until yesterday.”