Hooligans

LIGHTNING PEOPLE

All the way back to the hotel I was thinking she had probably called and left a message canceling out.

It kept building up in my mind until I broke out in a sweat, the way you do when you want something

so bad you‟re sure you won‟t get it. I started getting pissed and by the time I got to the hotel I had this

dialogue between us worked out in my head. I would get it all off my chest, once and for all.

Then I got to the room and there were no phone calls or messages. It was almost a letdown.

I was still in a sweat so I peeled off my shirt and pants and sat down in front of the air conditioner in

my shorts. I sat there until got chilled. That took about fifteen minutes, which meant I had four more

hours to go.

I kept waiting for the phone to ring, expecting her to call the whole thing off. The suspense was awful.

I took the phone off the hook but it started screeching like bad brakes do and I hung it up. I sat on the

bed and took it off the hook and waited until it screeched; then I‟d depress the little bar and wait a

minute and let it up again. I killed another fifteen minutes that way until my finger got tired.

About six o‟clock I ordered a steak, potatoes, salad, and coffee. I had forgotten how bad room-service

food is until I took the first bite. I wasn‟t hungry anyway. The coffee was in one of those ugly purple

Thermos pitchers that always look dirty and it was lukewarm but I drank it because it was something

to do.

I was killing time. Hell, who am I kidding, I was watching it crawl by on its hands and knees,

checking the clock every five minutes. In desperation I started to read Cisco‟s report on Dunetown. It

might just as well have been written by the chamber of commerce for all it told me. I dropped it in the

wastebasket and stared at the television set for another thirty minutes.

At about seven I decided to take a bath, soak my tired muscles, and kill another half hour. I turned on

the spigots and the radio. The water was so hot it took ten minutes f juggling and dipping before I

settled in. A bath is great therapy,, particularly when it‟s just about too hot to bear. It opens up the

head, clears away the cobwebs, helps you sort the real stuff from the bullshit. Kind of like medication.

About ten minutes after I got into the tub the muses began to whisper to me. They were saying things

I didn‟t want to hear. The muses don‟t always cooperate.

Wake up, Kilmer, the voices said, you made Dutch a promise. No scandal, you told him, and he took

you at your word, no questions asked.

Wake up, Kilmer, you can‟t erase twenty years with a kiss and a smile and a roll in the hay. 1963 is

history. You had prospects then. What have you got now? Stick spelled it out, the Holiday Fucking

Inn, that‟s what you‟ve got. Now that would really give Doe a laugh—for about the first five minutes.

Wake up, Kilmer. You don‟t even know what‟s real and what‟s fantasy anymore.

I was getting pretty fed up with the muses, and the radio didn‟t help. It was set on one of those easylistening stations and Eydie Gormé was singing “Who‟s Sorry Now?” Just what I needed, background

music with a sob in every note.

I lifted my foot and turned on the hot water with my toes and waited until I had to grit my teeth to

stand it. The water was reaching the boiling point when I turned it off. That killed another fifteen

minutes.

I needed to get a little perspective on things, separate what was real and what I wanted to be real. I

needed to be objective.

But that‟s not what! did. What! did was think about that place at the base of her throat, the soft spot,

the one where you can see the pulse beating. I used to stare at it and count the beats. I could tell when

she started getting excited.

I thought about the way she closed her eyes and parted her lips about a quarter of an inch when I was

about to kiss her. She had the softest lips. You could get buried in those lips. I never felt her teeth. I

don‟t know how she did it. Her lips were as soft as a down quilt.

Three years, that‟s how long I had waited, watching her grow from a fifteen-year-old tease to an

eighteen—year-old woman, playing the brother-sister act when they came up to Athens for football

weekends. That was to appease Chief. When she was about sixteen, her good-bye kisses started

getting softer. And longer.

Talk about strung out.

Get off it, Kilmer. Think about something else. Details, concentrate on details. And events. Reality is

what we‟re after here.

I concentrated on her eighteenth-birthday party. It came to me in flashes, like a movie when the film

breaks and they lose a few frames.

She wouldn‟t let me see her all that day. The way she acted, you‟d have thought it was her wedding

day. About midmorning Chief, Teddy, and I went to the Findley office on Factors‟ Walk. It was part

of the ritual when we came down for the weekend, going to the office on Saturday morning. We had

to wear ties and sports jackets, setting an example so the workers wouldn‟t get the feeling that they

could take it easy because it was the weekend. Chief was big on setting examples. The office was only

open half a day, so the employees thought they were getting a break. “Gives us four hours‟ jump on

the competition come Monday morning,” Chief said with a wink. He winked a bit for emphasis, a

habit Teddy had picked up.

He‟d always pull off some kind of deal, usually on the phone, just to show us how it was done. When

he was wheeler-dealing, his left eye would close about halfway. Teddy called it the Evil Eye. When

the Eye started to narrow, watch out, he was on to something, closing in for the kill. It‟s one of the

things the rich inherited, that predatory sense. I guess that‟s why they‟re rich— they have a built-in

instinct for the jugular.

I never got a true handle on the business. They were into everything. Cotton, shipping, real estate,

industry, farming, you name it. All it did was bedazzle the hell out of me. I don‟t think Teddy got into

it either, He was more interested in hell-raising. And poon. That‟s what he called it, poon. “Let‟s go

down to the beach, Junior, check out the poon.”

I got another flash. On that particular morning the office was closed in honour of Doe‟s eighteenth

birthday. When we got there, the janitor let us in and we went up to t}e third floor. I always loved that

building. It was all brass and oak and everything was oiled and polished so it sparkled.

Chief stood in his office, which seems now like it was maybe half the top floor. He stood there and

swept his hand around.

“I‟m going to divide this room up into three rooms, boys,” he said. “I‟ll take this corner. One of you

can have the river view; the other one, the park.” Then he flipped a coin.

“Call it, Jake,” he cried. I don‟t remember what I called. He covered the coin with his hand and

peeked under it, looked up very slowly, and smiled at me. “You win, Jake. Take your choice, river or

park?” I figured Teddy wanted the river and he had a right to it because it was obviously the choice

view, so I picked the park.

And I remember Chief looking at me and that left eye narrowing down for just an instant, and then he

said, “That‟s very generous of you, Jake.”

The Evil Eye. Looking back on it, I think Chief saw that move as a sign of weakness. To him, it was

winner take all.

The more I got into it, the faster arid faster the flashes came. The way the place looked, Daisies all

over Windsong, hundreds of them. And candles—my God, there must have been ten thousand

candles. It was a fire hazard there were so many candles.

And people. Three hundred maybe the top of the list. Black tie, a live orchestra, champagne, the

„works. Chief had seen to that. It‟s what you call taste, another thing the born rich inherit.

“I got to give you credit, Junior,” Teddy had said as I was straightening his black tie. “Three years,

man, you really stick in there.”

Was that it? Was it a test?

Before the guests arrived, Chief took the two of us out onto the porch and popped a bottle of

champagne and we stood there watching the sun go down. We drank a toast to Doe and threw our

glasses at the big oak tree at the corner of the house.

“One more year, boys,” Chief said. “And you‟ll be off to law school. The time‟ll fly. You‟ll be back

here in business before you know it.”

That was another part of the trap, Chief laying it all out for us that way, planning our lives. Only then

it felt good. When you‟re on the inside, it always feels good. When he put his hand on my shoulder,

there was lightning in his fingers. That‟s the way Chief was. That‟s the way all three of them were.

They were Lightning People. You could feel their aura crackling around them.

“It‟s a helluva night, lads,” he said. He didn‟t know the half of it.

It was dark and all the candles were lit and the guests were all assembled when she made her entrance

I still have trouble breathing when I think about that moment. My mouth gets dry and my hands shake

thinking about her walking into the eerie candlelight, dressed in white, with a scarlet sash that

tightened her waist and molded every magnificent line of her body. Talk about lightning. Everybody

applauded when she came in. She went straight to Chief and kissed him. Chief always came first.

Then she came to us and that soft spot was twitching like crazy and it was all I could do to keep my

hands off her. It was like that all night. I couldn‟t get close enough to her. I guess I never will.

The party ended about three in the morning and we were all a little drunk from champagne. Teddy had

latched on to this kind of dippy girl and the four of us piled i9to the dune buggy and drove out to the

beach. He threw me the keys. He was in the back, working up a little poon. When we got in the car it

was all Doe and I could do to keep our hands off each other. Well, we didn‟t. She leaned over and put

her hand down inside of my thigh and wrapped her fingers around my knee and squeezed it hard and

the electricity started humming.

When we got out there we took some dunes and spun around a few times in the moonlight. Teddy

popped a bottle of champagne, shook it up, and used his thumb to squeeze off a stream of it. We were

all soaked with champagne and the dippy girl jumped out and ran down to the surf and jumped in,

clothes and all, Teddy right behind her. We drove off and left them there, clawing at each other in the

surf.

And I remember Doe saying, „Stop soon, Jake. Please!” I never heard that tone in her voice before,

Husky, with a lot of breath behind it. I topped a dune and slammed on the brakes and we tumbled out

before the buggy was fully stopped. It tolled down to the bottom of the hill and stalled.

We were like animals freed from a cage. Touching, feeling, pulling. I found the soft spot in her throat

and when I kissed it I could feel her heart beating in my mouth and she cried out and pulled her dress

down and her breasts jumped free and I slid my lips down to her and opened my mouth as wide as I

could and sucked her up into it, feeling her nipple grow hard under my tongue. Then her hands

reached down and found me and she turned me sideways and began stroking me. Finally I unzipped

the dress and slid it down over her feet and she hooked her thumbs in the sides of her panties and slid

them off. „Then she helped me undress and we lay back for a minute and just stared at each other.

Then there was more touching and pulling and stroking until finally I felt her open under my

fingertips and she pulled me over on top of her and guided me into her, enveloping me, crushing me,

devouring me with her soft muscles

Nice going, Kilmer. That‟s putting it all in the proper perspective. Objective, right?

Sure.

26

SILVER-DOLLAR WOMAN

Oh, Jesus, just keep it in me!

Take it, take it all, baby.

Oh, god, don‟t stop!

You‟re all alike, can‟t get enough, can you, baby?

Never!

There...

More. . . oh, yes, MORE!

There.

What are you doing?

There...

Come on, you bastard, fuck me!

Hereitcomes, hereitcomes.

OH. . . ohoh, nownow, ohoh, nownow...

Here comes the fuckin‟ freight train!

Now. . . yes, now...

ONE potato, TWO potato, THREE potato, FOUR...

Oh, you. . fucking. . . m-m-machine...

GodDAMN!

Don‟t stop now, oh, sweet Jesus, don‟t stop now!

Gonna.. luck you. . . dead. . . l-a-a—a-d-e-e-e

Oh. . . God. . . NOW!

Yeah.

NOW!