“I’ll drive.” Deftly, I grabbed the keys from her. It was a sign of trouble that I did it so easily, like David Carradine in Kung Fu, snatching pebbles from the Master’s hand.
“Don’t trust me, huh?” she said.
“I trust you. I’ll drive anyway.”
“Coward.”
I nosed out onto Ocean Boulevard, prepared to turn left, back to the Meridian. “No,” Jeri said. “Go right.”
“What for?”
“Let’s go up to North Myrtle Beach.”
“What for?”
“A drink, maybe a dance. Explore.”
I was going to say “What for” again but decided not to push my luck. She was still tough, not drunk enough for me to risk another rib shot. And although it was nearly ten o’clock here, it was three hours earlier in Reno. I decided I could stay awake another hour or two.
I got onto Business Route 17, drove past the Carolina Opry, then merged with freeway traffic rolling north on Highway 17. The river of lights flowed past dark golf courses, tidal flats and lakes on one side, the Intracoastal Waterway on the other. Up past Briarcliffe Acres and the town of Atlantic Beach, then into North Myrtle Beach. We ended up at Crazy Zach’s on Second Avenue near Tilghman’s Pier. Zach’s was a huge place surrounded by palms, featuring four different bars, each with a different kind of music, take your pick, the whole thing more or less contained under one roof.
We parked, walked through splashes of neon, ground lighting, and the laughter of kids. To me, now pulling forty rather than pushing it, kids meant men and women Jeri’s age or younger, further evidence that life is not only unfair, but that the good years are too damned short. We went inside, out of a rising wind coming off the ocean, making palm fronds rattle. Somewhere out there, Beryl was on the way. I thought it would be fun if they name the “D” storm Dori or Doreen, after my mother. Mom would make a terrific hurricane.
I steered us away from “Get Ur Freak On” and into what seemed like the tamest of Zach’s bars, at least for the moment. A song was playing that I didn’t recognize, no surprise there, but at least it wasn’t ear-shattering. And it had a modicum of musical quality to it.
When the Beatles first hit America I wasn’t yet in the planning stages. I was raised on “Help!” and “Penny Lane” and “Hey Jude,” which weren’t quite oldies at the time, but getting there. If there was any sort of message or subtext to any of those songs, it went right by me. Of course, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” referred to LSD, but I didn’t pick up on that either. I was too busy spinning donuts on my hot wheels. These days, you can tune into exploitative sex, instructions regarding suicide or homicide, and encouragement to kill policemen or rape your ho. Our de facto youth guidance counselors, many of them rappers, sometimes end up in prison, which seems like a damn good idea to me. The garbage in their songs turns to shit in the real world. They hit the wall and burn. I smile and sleep better every time that happens.
Jeri and I sat at a table with a candle on it in a dark corner of the room, twenty feet from a dance floor of polished wood. The room held about forty people. I ordered a Bud Lite and Jeri got a strawberry daiquiri in a glass the size of a birdbath. It was a Monday night, quiet enough that we could talk, if we kept our heads close together. She told me more about her brother Ron, and her father, mother, and a sister, Alyson, twenty-five years old, with two out-of-control kids, a self-destructing marriage and an on-again-off-again drug habit—cocaine, a step up from marijuana. Alyson was living proof that if it was handed to you, you might still not end up with any of it, because “it” was vapor, illusion. You can’t hold the hard work of others in your hands. Only you are real, who and what you are, what you make of your life. Jeri’s words, not mine. Too bad, since they rang so true.
When I asked her about powerlifting, her face came alive. She told me it was her drug, that and judo, Aikido, a little tae kwon do.
“Not private eye work?” I asked.
“You kiddin’?” By then she was working on her third daiquiri, stirring the icy slush with a thin red straw. I’d dropped down to Diet Pepsi, letting the sugar high lapse. “Six years ago I weighed a hunnerd ’n’ fourteen pounds. Good pounds, ’cause of the judo, but I’m one thirty-two now, you believe that? I’m twenny-eight years old, Mort, five three an’ a half, and I’ve never felt better or more thorou’ly alive in my whole life.”
She was also more than a little thorou’ly drunk, face flushed, eyes bright. I said, “You missed blood pressure, cholesterol count, waist and shoe size, and all kinds of important astrology stuff.”
She stared at me for a moment, then laughed. “I just mean…I feel great.”
“I’m glad.”
She punched my shoulder. “You shit.”
“No, I mean it. Christ, you look terrific.” I rubbed my shoulder. Maybe I could get the hotel to send up an ice pack for it later.
“Yeah?”
She was pleased, I could tell. Her eyes were out of focus and her mouth looked softer, almost kissable—an unexpected thought that made me uncomfortable.
“Yeah,” I said.
She sipped her drink. “I’m a Libra. I wear size seven shoes. Waist is twenny-six, an’ I’m a thirty-four B.”
Yep, drunk as a skunk. Otherwise that 34-B thing wouldn’t have made it out of her mouth.
Ten minutes later, I was ready to call it quits. That’s when she ordered her fourth daiquiri, drank a quarter of it as soon as it
