Dark Dreams, Pale Horses Page 5

  “Well ain’t this just as sweet as candy?” It was the bass player. He had zigzagged across the floor and was standing next to Terri, staring at her with an exaggerated expression of meanness (like one of the WWE wrestlers Daddy watched on TV). He was big, sweating through the black vest—the wife beater—he was wearing: muscles and tattoos, just like Daddy. He grabbed Terri’s upper arm and pulled her close. “What the fuck?”

  “We were only talking.” Terri reverted to the defensive, as she so often did, bound by the need to explain her actions. She lowered her head, and the way she felt at that moment put her in mind of those motion capture images of fruit spoiling. She receded from the stranger and felt herself melting into the uncomfortable heat of the bass player. It was like going home.

  “Leave her alone.” Billy blew another stream of smoke from the side of his mouth, regarding the bass player with a cool expression. Terri caught his eye, appealing for him not to get involved. She didn’t want him to get hurt. And he would get hurt, because guys like Billy were only tough in the movies. They didn’t do the hurting. In real life, it was guys like Daddy and the bass player that did the hurting.

  “And just who the fuck are you?” The bass player was sneering. In the black and white clasp of The Slum—before she had noticed the stranger—he had seemed as uninspiring as everyone else: just another corn-fed philistine from Nowhere, USA. Now, swollen and perspiring and standing in the shadows cast by the brilliance of Technicolor, his platitude was glaring. It was like looking at a thunderhead in the sun.

  Billy smiled. “I’m the man who can send you home in tears. Leave the girl alone.”

  The bass player yanked Terri’s arm, pulling her closer. “That’s big talk, but the girl is with me.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Think you can take her off me?”

  Another cool stream of cigarette smoke. “I won’t need to. She’ll just come.”

  The bass player shook his head and Terri could see his rage building—nuances she recognized from when Daddy’s control was slip-sliding away. Billy smiled again. His eyes danced in the lights and she was once again struck by the beauty—the Hollywood—of him. Still, her heart yearned for him to walk away before the hurt rained down. Her eyes were huge and tear-filled. She looked at him and shook her head.

  “What do you want?” he asked her.

  I want you, she thought, but said, “I don’t want you to get hurt. Maybe you should leave.” Because watching him get hurt would be like watching her dreams get shattered. It would be the end of ambition, and the beginning of the rest of her life in this soulless, static town.

  “I won’t get hurt,” he said, and reached out his hand. “Come with me.”

  She looked at his hand, wanting to take it and be lifted away on a heated current of air, and to touch down in a place that was endless with summer—just the two of them. His simple hand made the promise, but she held back, feeling the pressure of the town wrap around her thin body like a straitjacket.

  As if to tighten the straps, the bass player whispered in her ear, “Take his hand and I’ll break your fucking arm.”

  They had attracted attention: a collage of gray faces painted along their perimeter, expressions like gravestones. Terri looked at them and could almost hear every beat of their submissive hearts. It was like hearing a pump buzzing in a cloudy aquarium. Her eyes were drawn back to the stranger’s hand.

  “Trust me,” he said.

  The bass player moved between them, bulky and awkward. His teeth were the color of old piano keys. “You’ve just checked into the Last Chance Motel, pretty boy.”

  Billy never flinched. He took another drag of his cigarette, his bright eyes dancing from Terri to the bass player.

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” he said. “You think that guitar makes you the star of this show—that when the credits roll it’ll be your name at the top of the screen. But you’ve got it all wrong.”

  A smile cracked the firm set of the bass player’s jaw. “Are you for real?” He regarded the bleak collage. “Is this fucking joker for real?”

  “Do you want to know something else?” Billy grinned. He seemed to be enjoying this, relishing the attention. “There is a star…and you’re looking at him.”

  “I can show you the stars,” the bass player said, and now the anger was surfacing. “I’ll put you on a cloud with Sinatra.”

  “You’ll lose. The girl’s coming with me.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He moved quickly for a big guy, but Billy had played (rehearsed) this scene in his head a thousand times and he knew what to do. The bass player lunged for him, trying to grab his throat. Billy sidestepped and threw a fist into his meaty ribcage. There was too much flab to break a rib, but the punch winded the bass player and his legs buckled. Billy pressed his advantage by kicking the backs of his knees, sending him sprawling across the bar. Glasses were thrown every which way, shattering into beautiful shards. Some of the chess pieces were stirred into motion. One of them even screamed. Billy lunged again (leather-clad and dripping color, his cigarette perched between his lips), grabbing the bass player’s arm and yanking it hard behind his back.

  “Need a broken arm to go with your broken pride?”

  “Fuck you, man!” The bass player’s mouth was bleeding. Small tears oozed from the corners of his eyes. “Fucking prick! Somebody get this prick off me.”

  Billy regarded the collage of gray-faced extras. “Anybody want to step forward and help this sack of shit?”

  Held in check, nobody moved; they knew better than to try and upstage the leading man. Even his fellow band members were keeping their distance.

  “I thought as much.” Billy grinned again and leaned close to the bass player. He whispered in his ear, but Terri heard what he said and a part of her heart bled for the man that was so like Daddy—maybe the part of her heart that was used to bleeding. “Nobody cares about you. You’re not the star. You’re a supporting role, and nobody gives a fuck about you.”

  Tears were rolling down the bass player’s face. He stuttered and snivelled. “Son of a bitch. Son of a whore.”

  The Slum revolved: plastic music and cardboard cut-outs, and the only color was the EXIT signs above the doorways. The crowd was layered, appearing both near and far, like the illusion of an Escher painting. The bottles of liquor behind the bar reflected the same point of light. There were no aesthetics in The Slum. Everything here was deprived of imagination…everything except for Billy.

  He pushed the bass player and sent him sliding across the bar and to the floor. In the next second he was holding out his hand again and this time Terri took it, without hesitation. Her heart galloped at the wildness, the exhilaration. Billy pulled her toward him and kissed her on the mouth. She felt her body unfold like a fist that has been clenched for too long, and everything inside her ached. It was wonderful and terrifying. Her lips fell away from his and she stood at his side, one hand on his shoulder, looking into his eyes from behind the veil of dark hair that had fallen across her face.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Billy said, but before they left he looked at the bass player again—who was sobbing in a puddle of spilled beer and broken glass—and spoke Jimmy Dean’s line from Rebel:

  “You can wake up now, the universe has ended.”

  The Slum shimmered with expressionless, black and white ghosts. The EXIT sign flickered as the door slammed behind them.

  Billy and Terri stepped into the night. They were hand in hand, and ready for forever.

  LAST

  Home is five rooms held together by tattered boards and siding. The structure leans to the east and has bowed on that side. It has swollen, like an infected limb. The windows are smeared with neglect. They let little light in, and no darkness out. They hide the loss of hope, the creaking floorboards, and the shadows that crowd the seam of light under the doors. The neglect has spread to the inside of the house: dirty floors and walls, a stained sofa where Daddy watche
s TV and drinks beer and jerks off to the titty movies that come on after midnight. The old Frigidaire rumbles as if it’s running on diesel. The electricity generates a constant buzz, and the fluorescents have an insipid quality; even the lights seem dirty, somehow. Home is where the heart grows weary, and dreams drift away on icebergs of reality. It is where the walls sag, as if they are tired of the hate. It is where Terri was raised—in lemon sheets of kisses until Momma died, and in pain ever since.

  Home is where she doesn’t want to be.

  “I can’t go in, Billy,” she says. “Please take me away from here.”

  They idle at the curb in Billy’s ‘86 Camaro. It’s not a movie star’s car. If it was they would be halfway to the sun by now, with rock and roll music on the radio. Instead they are parked outside Terri’s dirty home, with her tears sparkling in the dashboard light.

  “Soon,” Billy whispers, but he has to look away. His hands tremble on the wheel.

  “You promised me, baby,” she says.

  “I know.” He looks into the rear view mirror, where the city lights flicker: strip joints and all-night bars, cabarets of endless, dreamless souls. A police cruiser peels down the drag, red and blue, making the night birds scatter.

  “You promised to make it right.” Mascara runs down her cheeks and her lipstick is smeared. The color is running from her face like her dreams are running from the world: once so pretty, now washed away by tears.

  “Soon,” Billy says again.

  She shakes her head and looks at the house she shares with her father. A shudder moves through her. She imagines him in there, sitting, half-drunk, in a darkened room—nonsensical TV images flickering in his glazed eyes. Don’t go in there, her instinct instructs, but she fumbles for the catch and pops open the car door. The dome light flicks on and her stained expression is painted, red and black on a white canvas. She is tragic and beautiful, like a storm.

  “This is home,” she says, and the words put a feeling, like ammonia, in her soul.

  “Don’t say that, baby. I told you—”

  “Do you see how one side of the house is all askew? The east side?”

  Billy says nothing. She can tell from the way he is breathing that his heart is beating hard.

  “Daddy says that’s because of the weather,” she continues. “He says that the wind and rain always beat on that side, and that the boards are warped and weakened. One good storm, he says, and we’re apt to lose that end of the house. But I don’t think that’s right. You see, Billy, that’s where I pray—at the east side of the house, sometimes in my bedroom, sometimes at the kitchen table. And I think the house is buckled on that side because that’s where my prayers are gathered. They’re piled high, pushed against the wall. All those dreams and wishes…so many that the house is crumbling under their weight.”

  The Camaro’s engine ticks and rumbles. Billy still won’t look at her, and she thinks—after all the dreams she has placed in him, and all the promises he has made—that he is really no different, after all. He is just like Daddy, only prettier, and he hurts her in a different way. He is just like this endless town.

  “You know what I think, baby?” she says, pushing the door a little wider and placing one heel on the curb. “I think that side of the house will collapse one day, and when it does all my prayers will escape. They’ll be carried on the wind, into God’s hands, and I’ll finally get what I’ve been waiting for.”

  She gets out of the car and closes the door. Billy watches her – his torn, star-washed girl — as she walks slowly up the pathway to her front door. Her head is low. She doesn’t look back. Billy throws the car into gear and guns away from the curb. A single tear cascades down his face. He looks into the rear view mirror and sees Terri standing at the front door, so broken and pretty. He has time to wonder if she’ll stay there all night, and then all the lights go out.

  LIGHT

  Days of dancing, nights of heat. Terri fell into Billy’s embrace with reckless ease. It seemed she was always breathless.

  Her fingertips whispered over the stubble on his jaw. “I have fallen in love with you, Billy.”

  They had skimmed along the shore in the setting sun, waves crashing, pink as flamingos. They had tangoed on rooftops and sambaed under the boardwalk. The summer of breathlessness…they had turned the hood of Billy’s Camaro into paradise.

  Wherever they kissed, the world was brighter.

  “I always want to feel your heartbeat.”

  “Never leave my side, and you always will.”

  Days of dreaming, nights of fire. Terri finally touched the hope that she had been dreaming of. She sensed the structure of her house weakening under the weight of her prayers.

  City lights reflected off the windshield of Billy’s car. “You’ll take me away from here, won’t you, Billy?”

  “Yeah…we’ll fly away, and we’ll live forever.”

  “Promise me.”

  His Panavision smile. “I promise you, baby.”

  She remembered The Moko Lounge on the other side of town. The well-to-do side. Across them tracks, as Daddy would say. Terri rarely ventured across them tracks because she felt so out of place in her faded clothes and cheap shoes. Billy had taken her. She had been nervous at first (The Moko Lounge was where the highfalutin folk went to drink cocktails and listen to the kind of music that can only be played on a piano), but Billy had held her hand and swept her inside…to a table where candlelight flickered and the shadows moved in time with the music.

  “I never sat at a table with a candle on it before,” she had said, and had felt like crying. “What are you doing to me, Billy? What are you doing to my heart?”

  There was no disdain, as she had feared there would be; their drinks were served with refreshing propriety and the highfalutin folk were gracious, showing nothing but smiles. The most memorable part of the evening had been when Billy stepped away from their table and walked over to the piano player. Terri watched as Billy whispered in his ear. The piano player nodded and smiled and rippled off a romantic flutter of high notes. Billy grabbed the microphone, pointed at Terri from his place in the spotlight, and said:

  “This is for my girl.”

  Every pair of eyes in The Moko Lounge turned to her. She pouted, steamy in the candlelight. I’m his girl, she thought, and everybody in here knows it.

  When he sang the temperature seemed to climb ten degrees; some of the ladies closer to the stage were forced to unsnap the buttons of their blouses, while others (those in the company of disapproving men, it would seem) settled for fanning themselves with their cocktail menus.

  His voice was soft and seductive, complimenting every precious note played on the piano. He was held in the spotlight like an icon.

  I walk in light when you’re beside me,

  I’ve found what I’ve been dreaming of,

  Your kiss can stop the rain from falling,

  That’s the power of your love.

  Days of spirit, nights of jazz. The world appeared to be spinning faster—a sun-kissed blur that caused Terri’s heart to slam. She held Billy’s hand through each revolution, afraid to let go. His body promised everything.

  She remembered the fourth of July, and how the night was turned to rainbows. Every explosion of color was like an expression of her heart. They had watched the fireworks rain down on the city from the hood of Billy’s car. When it was over, Billy kissed her and said:

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going, baby?”

  “Whispering Creek.” He slid off the hood and got behind the wheel.

  Whispering Creek, where you could tune the radio to six-twenty and hear the movies playing at Lou’s Drive-In. It was paradise with a soundtrack.

  Terri jumped in on the passenger side.

  “The Philadelphia Story,” he said, before she could ask.

  “Oh, Billy, that’s my favorite.”

  “I know, baby. I know.”

  They parked where only starlight could find
them, Billy taking the Camaro off-road, negotiating a narrow route between the trees, until they came to a clearing that secluded them from the world. He flipped the frequency from WZPP—his favorite oldies station—to six-twenty AM. They climbed onto the hood and waited for the picture to begin.

  “Just see it in your mind,” Billy said. “Katharine Hepburn is not in this picture. It’s you, baby. You’re Tracy Lord.”

  Terri smiled, looking up at the stars. “Are you gonna be Dexter or Mike?”

  Billy winked at her and did his Jimmy Stewart impersonation. “Why, I’m going to be Mike, of course. Professor Macaulay Connor, if you don’t mind.”

  Terri giggled. “But who’s going to play Cary Grant’s part?”

  Billy frowned. “Cary Grant,” he said. “Who else?”

  Later that night, lying in bed with the picture still flickering in her mind (and the world’s most ridiculous grin on her face), Terri would decide that she had never been happier, not even when Momma was alive. The fourth of July with Billy had been the sweetest day of her life.

  “The summer of my heartbeat,” she had whispered into her pillows.

  He had taken her hand as they lay beneath the stars, listening to the dialogue crackling through the Camaro’s speakers. She closed her eyes and saw herself—with exaggerated romance—through every scene in the movie. She was Tracy Lord, powerful and forlorn and tempting. They imagined in silence for the most part, but every now and then Billy would deliver his lines out loud, as if to emphasize their meaning.

  “There’s a magnificence in you, Tracy.”

  Her heart moved with incredible energy. She ached to kiss him, to draw him into her as they cascaded on the hood beneath the stars, but she knew the time was not right; they hadn’t reached that point in the picture.

  Somewhere—on some perfect world where glitter fell like rain and the lighting always made your skin look good—Terri Stanic a.k.a. Tracy Lord said, “Now I’m getting self-conscious, it’s funny, I …”