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The Circle
She wore red leather pants that were skin tight on her thighs and behind
with a thick black belt covered with pointed silver studs. She had natural
light blond hair and she wore it bobbed off with bangs. Perched on the end
of her nose were a pair of rose-colored granny glasses. She was quite tall
and had slender, prominently long fingers with which she often gestured.
She was in her late thirties and had probably smoked for twenty years. She
had a husky voice. She claimed to be able to sing any Stevie Nicks song,
although her voice when she sang was badly pitched. In her manner she was
animated and attracted a lot of attention. Her hair seemed to glow in the
dark bar. And her red pants gleamed. She moved around a lot and threw her
arms around people, spouting effusive greetings or affections. The more she
drank the more she exhibited a girlish enthusiasm for her friends and for
the songs on the jukebox.
She had a friend who had a pretty, sensuous face and long, nut-brown hair.
By contrast the friend was very placid and pacific. She hardly ever moved
from her stool, never seeming to have to piss, hardly ever turning from one
side to another. She wore a comfortable-looking sweatshirt beneath which
she had a generous pair of lopping breasts that seemed to rest on the bar.
Her eyes were half-closed and sleepy giving the impression that she
secretly had a pair of Ben Wa balls between her legs and was in a state of
near constant sexual rapture. She wore very large, heavy and ornate rings
on her fingers and thumbs and she smoked cigars.
Both of them hung around with significantly older men. No one really knew
why. The guys in their group were a changing cast of balding, pot-bellied
men in their fifties who didn't look like they'd be much fun for these hip,
tart-like women. There was talk that these guys were all married and that
they bought the girls drinks, drugs and presents in exchange for adulterous
sex. This guy Bill told me once that the blond had been abused as a child.
To give them credit, were it not for their presence The Circle Inn would
have been a rather mournful place. It was a gutbucket, hole in the wall in
Forest Park, IL. And on this particular night it was Valentine's Day, a
sloppy, sub-freezing and forbidding mess of a day. I was out because I had
nothing better to do. I had no sweetheart. Which prompted Bill to ask me if
I was gay. Bill's face that night was covered with scabs and bruises. I
asked him what had happened to him but he said he didn't want to go there.
The chesty girl and her man were watching Field of Dreams on the
television. The bartender said that she loved this movie. So I had to
suffer this inane display until the end. Who in their right mind liked a
Kevin Costner movie? Finally when it was over the blond ask the bartender
to turn the set down and then she walked over to the jukebox and played a
Fleetwood Mac song. She sat back down and began to bellow in drunken glee
and gesticulate with her elegant, tapered fingers.
I got up after her and put on some songs of my own. There were a few I
always liked to hear. As it turned out the blond had only put in a quarter
for a single play because my songs came on right after hers. "Good song!"
she yelled, when my first selection came on. The bartender started to
wiggle and sing along.
"Did you play this?" the older guy on my left asked the blond.
She looked around his shoulder in my direction and said quietly, "No. I
think he did," and she pointed at me.
The guy turned and stared at the side of my head until I thought he was
going to burn a hole in it but I didn't acknowledge either one of them.
Basically I thought the girl was crazy and I'd had my fill of crazy girls.
Bill and I shot the shit about writers as we often did. Bill enjoyed
Steinbeck and Faulkner. I favored Flannery O'Connor and William Saroyan. At
one point the blond interrupted us and leaned in close to our heads. She
asked Bill what had happened to his face and he just waved her off. I got a
whiff of her glowing hair. It was nice and I went half large in my pants.
The girl had allure. She galloped away with her long legs toward the
ladies' room and disappeared.
I had had trouble sleeping all week and felt poorly grounded in reality. I
hadn't dreamt properly or had sufficient REM sleep for five days and it was
turning my reality into a brittle stage set. I kept my eyes in the area of
the ladies' room so I could see the blond when she came back out. I got a
good glimpse of her face accented by her glasses. She had a kind of long
face that was not model pretty but was still very feminine.
Bill said to me abruptly, "I got thrown into a fence."
I said, "Oh yeah? Were you robbed?"
He shook his head. "Naw," he said. "What really hurt were the kidney punches."
"Damn," I said. "What did you get involved in?" But he waved me off again.
That was all he was going to say.
The guy to my left got up and walked to take a piss. The last of my songs
played and then there was the sound of naked conversation. The blond turned
to me and grabbed my arm. "Why don't you play some more songs?" she asked.
"Oh here. Here," she said bouncing on her stool. She handed me a dollar.
"You play good songs," she said, smiling at me.
"Oh, thanks," I said. I spun off my stool and walked to the juke box. I had
really shot my load on the first four. Now I had to follow up. I played the
Fleetwood Mac song Dreams, mostly so she could sing along. Then I went with
two Creedence and a Petty. When the first song started she yelled out, "Oh,
I love this!" and she twisted around on her stool and patted me on the
shoulder as I walked back to the bar. She started to moan the lyrics, "Wait
a minute, baby. Stay with me a while.."
I told Bill he should read Bukowski and he said that I always said that to
him. I apologized. "I'm always drunk when I see you," I said, "and I don't
remember what I say. Still, you should check him out."
"I want you to come with us," he said. "We're going to stir things up. You
ready?"
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"To play golf," he said. "Starting in April."
"Golf?!" I asked. "Who the hell knows how to play golf?"
"We all suck," he said. "But so what? Why should all the rich people have
the fun? We're going to stir things up."
"You're going after work?" I asked.
"Naw, man," he said. "In the morning. Five o'clock."
"Oh my God," I said. "Now I know you're bullshitting me. You and a bunch of
people are going to be on a golf course at five in the morning? No fucking
way."
"Yes way, man," he said. "We're going to stir it up."
"Well that will definitely stir it up," I said. "But I cannot do that. No
way, no how."
"C'mon, man," he said. "Give me your phone number."
I took out a business card and wrote my number on the back. I also wrote
several Bukowski titles. "Here," I said, and I tossed the card onto the
pile of cash in front of him.
Overhead the speakers played Run Through the Jungle and the blond got up
and started dancing. I looked at her. She nodded at me enthusiastically and
her hair bobbed up and down. Then she danced over my way. She swung her
leather-clad hips at me and struck me in the side then she put her hands in
front of her mouth and laughed. I grinned at her and turned back to my
beer. At this point I wondered what was up. The guy to my left was back
from the pisser and again he stared at the side of my head. Again I chose
not to engage him.
"Turns out she was married," Bill said to me.
"What's that?" I asked.
He had this diffident look on his face. It was a familiar look. I had a
master's degree and Bill had only completed high school This bothered him
when we talked and he often gave me this diffident look.
"How was I supposed to know?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders.
"You hooked up with some married chick?" I asked. "But aren't you married?"
He guffawed and threw his arms toward me.
"Turns out she was Phil Stamen's wife. This guy from Stamen's
Construction," he said.
"Oh, is that right?" I asked. "So Phil let you have it."
He tapped a hand against my upper arm. "Naw," he said, "that's just it. He
had a couple of his boys do it. They threw me into a fence. I just went
into work the next day."
"You went to work the next day?" I laughed.
"She lured me," he said, tapping the bar. "I had no way of knowing. Next
thing I know I'm getting my face slammed. That's what I get for drinking
Bushmill's."
"Oh, so it was liquor that did it," I said. "I've only seen you drink beer."
"It was Bushmill's," he said. "The rest I don't remember."
I swung around and walked to the pisser. In the john there was a urinal set
at close quarters with a toilet. I had often wondered what the etiquette
was. If you opened the door and there was a guy at the urinal could you
just walk in and start pissing in the toilet right next to him? Or would
that be considered out of line? I had never had the situation come up.
When I walked back to my place I found the blond in my seat talking to
Bill. She looked at me coquettishly through her red half-lenses. "I'm in
your seat," she said, jutting her chin out at me. "You can have my seat,"
she said, gesturing with a long thin arm and hand. "You can sit next to
Dana. Isn't that right Dana?" she called out loudly in her husky voice. I
looked over to the empty stool and Dana patted it with her ringed hand,
cigar between index and middle.
"Is that right?" I asked. She just smiled at me.
I walked over and sat down. First I gave props to Dana's man by looking him
in the eye and nodding my head. He didn't react. The guy looked like a real
middle-class, suburban drag who hated his own kids. I sat down.
"Melanie?" I asked the bartender. "Can you hand me my beer down here
please?" and I pointed.
"Oh, sure," she said. Melanie was a pleasant, freckle-faced woman in her
twenties who always sounded like she had a chest cold. I often thought she
would look better if she cut her hair shorter. She brought the glass down
to me.
I sat awkwardly next to Dana and sipped at my beer.
"She likes your songs," she said to me.
I looked into her eyes and was smitten by their green, smoldering sexiness.
"Oh, that's good," I said. "I play a little myself, but I play the old
blues stuff."
"Oh, is that right?" she asked, tipping her cigar ash. "Blues is cool," and
she nodded her head. I knew that this woman's life revolved around what was
and was not cool.
"So you were actually watching that movie?" I asked. Then I got a sinking
feeling. Field of Dreams was like an all-American fantasy. I didn't want to
say something that might peg me as anti-American.
"What?" she asked. "Field of Dreams? Yeah, it's okay," she said in a
noncommittal voice. "Fuck else is there to do?" and she shrugged her
shoulders and laughed. Her man stood still beside her.
I felt a touch on my shoulder and turned. It was the blond. She spun me
around and then sat determinedly in my lap. She was smiling from ear to
ear. "Don't you like Dana?" she asked. She rubbed Dana's shoulder and upper
arm. "Isn't she special? I mean just look at her." Her face beamed.
"Yeah," I said. "I'd say you're both pretty special."
She kicked her legs out and squeezed me, "You think we're special?" she
asked. "Hey Douglas," she said to the guy next to me. "This guy thinks
we're special." She wiggled on my crotch and all the blood left my head.
Douglas said something but I didn't catch it. I needed to get a look at
this guy so I stole a glance in the mirror. I felt a wave of relief. He
looked like an accountant with a guilty conscience. Not a major threat.
"Well, why don't I let you have your seat back?" I said to the blond.
"You want to leave me?" she asked. I could see her teeth really well. She
had never had braces and there were minor flaws in the arrangement and
angles of her teeth.
"I think Douglas probably wants me back in my chair," I said.
"Oh poo," she said, and waved her hand dismissively. "I love your hair,"
she said, and she rubbed the back of my burr head. "Feel this," she said to
Dana. Dana just sat there. As I said, she rarely moved. "You have to play
some more songs," she said. "And then we can dance."
"Oh, I don't dance," I said. "And I think I've used up all the good songs."
"Oh no you haven't," she said. She reached to the bar and picked up a
dollar. "Here," she said.
She hopped off my lap and I walked to the jukebox. I flipped the
selections over and over again taking a long time to decide. I found some
older songs and went with them. Then I walked back to my stool and sat next
to Bill. He bumped his shoulder into me and cocked his head toward the
blond. "She's into you, man," he said. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt
up over his head. "She can't stand my ugliness," he said, and then he
laughed and his shrouded head shook.
"I'm not sure what she's into," I said quietly, not wanting Douglas to hear.
Magic Carpet Ride came over the speakers and the blond got up from her
chair and came over to me. "I'm Lyndsie by the way," she said. "I don't
even know your name. Isn't that funny?"
I spun around to face her. "Hi Lindsey," I said. "I'm Fred."
"Greg?" she asked. I spelled it for her.
"Oh, Fred!" she yelled. She extended one of her longs hands as though to
shake. I took it and she jerked me up from the barstool. She started
dancing in front of me. "C'mon," she said, and she slapped me on the shoulder.
I laughed. "Honestly, I can't dance. You have fun dancing. I'll even watch
if you want."
"You want to watch me dance?" she asked. I sat back down on my stool and
she came close to me shaking her hips and shuffling her feet. "You like to
watch me?" she asked. She was smiling and very drunk.
All at once Douglas pounded a hand on the bar and stood up. He methodically
took his change and cigarettes off the bar and put them in his pockets.
Without looking at anyone or saying anything he walked out.
Lindsey looked at me and stopped dancing. She raised both hands to her
mouth as though she knew she'd been a naughty girl. Dana shrugged her
shoulders and laughed. "You better go get him," she said.
Lindsey ran in a girly, knock-kneed manner to the front door and
disappeared outside.
"She always does this," Dana said to me. Again I got a look at her eyes.
Twenty minutes passed and no one said anything. Finally Lindsey came back
in the door. She was in a huff and exhibited obvious signs of a recent
shouting match. Her cheeks were flushed. Her once smiling mouth was turned
down in a pout. "Meredith," she called loudly, "thank you!" she said, and
she handed across a ten. She put her cigarettes in her purse then put her
coat over her arm.
"I have to go," she said, pouting. "It was nice meeting you, Greg," she
called to me.
"Nice meeting you," I said, and I waved to her.
She walked out.
I turned to Bill. "Do you know these people?" I asked quietly. "Can you
tell me what the fuck that was about?"
"She's fucked up," he said, again adopting the diffident look. "She was
abused as a child," he repeated to me.
"Is that what's going on?" I asked. I raised my empty to Meredith and she
took it for a re-fill.
Dana called down to me, "She's just crazy," she said dismissively, then she
put her cigar in her mouth. Dana's man just stood there staring off at the
opposite wall. It occurred to me that he had been standing the whole night
and had not exchanged a word with anyone.
"Happy Valentine's Day," Bill said to me, and then he slapped my shoulder
and collapsed into laughter.
"Yeah, fuck," I said. "Happy Valentine's Day." The last of my songs played
and I sipped at my beer.
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