At the front doors, there’s no one on duty who goes by the name of Clyde, and no one who’ll tell him if Clyde is anywhere on the premises. Inside, the club is as warm as a midday barbe cue, even with air-conditioning going and ceiling fans whirling overhead. The dance floor, seemingly half a mile of parquet wood flooring, is a sea of cowboy hats, ducking and swaying. Jay can hear the thump and shuffle of boots across the wood floor. He counts three bars under the pitched roof, each with a line of cow boys gathered, dollar bills folded lengthwise in their hands, wav ing at the girl bartenders for 75-cent longnecks of Lone Star.
Jay stands in the entryway, wishing he’d at least put on some jeans or a pair of boots and pretended to be some long-lost descendant of Charley Pride.
People are starting to stare.
He decides to start with the bar on his left, working his way to the front of the line. The gal behind the bar gives him a can of Gilley’s beer even though he ordered a Michelob. He imag ines she didn’t hear him over the music, that or she’s fucking with him, or maybe Mickey makes all the girls push his brew. She pops the top for him, twirling the cap on her pinky finger, motioning to the next man in line. Jay sips at the beer; it’s thin and not to his taste. He pulls out a $5 bill and orders a Michelob, louder this time. He tells her to keep the change. She looks at Jay anew, raising an eyebrow. From the cooler behind the bar, she pulls out two sweating bottles of Michelob. She opens one and slides it to Jay, pops the cap on the other and takes a sip herself. She leans across the bar. “I don’t drink the shit either.” She winks at him, pocketing the rest of his change.
He watches her work for a while, thinking he’s got an in.
She moves with grace, able to fill one order while she’s tak ing the next, making sure the women in line get served first. Her hair is stick straight and dirty blond, and she wears it straight down her back like Crystal Gayle. She’s older than the other barmaids at her station. There’s a weariness in her hips; too many years on her feet, he gathers. This is career work for her. He bets she’s in here at least five nights a week. The next time she’s down at his end of the bar, he asks her about Clyde. “He’s off tonight,” she hollers above the music, moving back and forth between the bar top and the cooler of beer. Jay orders another Michelob. “You got a phone number for him or something?”
“Depends on why you’re asking? You’re not a cop, are you?”
From his back pocket, Jay pulls out a Polaroid picture of his client, one he took the first day she came into his office. He lays the picture of Dana Moreland on the bar top, along with another $5 bill. “You seen her in here before?”
“She a friend of yours?”
“Something like that,” Jay says.
The bartender nods at Jay’s wedding ring. “Your wife know you’re friends with a girl like that?”
“So you know her then.”
“I know what she and Clyde are up to, if that’s what you mean.”
The line behind Jay is getting rowdy, pushing up against him.
The bartender finishes the rest of her Michelob in two clean swallows. She goes back to taking one-dollar bills, pulling beers, popping tops. Jay tries to talk to her over the noise. “You seen her in here with him?” he asks, pulling out a smudged newspaper photo of Mr. Cummings, a shot of him with the other port com missioners standing on one of the public wharves. The bartender snatches the picture from Jay on her way to the cash register.
“Maybe,” she says.
“He wasn’t one of Clyde’s customers, if that rings any bells.”
“I said ‘maybe.’ ” She pulls the tab off two cans of Gilley’s beer, slides them down the bar to a couple wearing matching black-and-silver cowboy shirts. She crosses back to the cash reg ister, studying the smudged newspaper photo, holding it next to the Polaroid of Dana Moreland. “Yeah, all right,” she says.
“Are you sure?” Jay asks.
“This one looks real familiar,” she says, pointing at Cum mings’s picture. “I remember him not wanting to leave so early, getting huffy with Clyde.”
“On the night of June twenty-ninth?”
“That sounds about right.”
“You saw these two people together?”
“I guess so,” she says, not sounding as sure as she did a moment ago.
“And what about Clyde? You got a number for him or some thing?”
“Why? What’s this all about?” She leans over the bar top, smiling, her breasts mashed together under a pink-and-red Gilley’s T-shirt. “What’d she do?”
Jay puts another $5 bill on the countertop. He hopes she won’t ask any more questions. She pockets the extra money and reaches for a matchbook on the bar top. From somewhere in her water fall of hair, she pulls a stub of a pencil and jots something on the inside flap of the matchbook. “Clyde’s number,” she says. Then, smiling, she adds, “And mine.” Jay actually feels himself blush.
It’s after midnight by the time he picks up Bernie at Evelyn’s house. He’s whistling, in a good mood, and Bernie catches his spirit. She’s on the baby now, day and night. Since the last doc tor’s appointment, she’s started packing her suitcase and scrib bling baby names on the back of any piece of paper she can get her hands on— takeout menus and circulars from the paper, even paper napkins.
“What about Donna?”
He shakes his head, making a face.
“Gayle?”
“No.”
“A ngela?”
