FIVE
Bug Light
Miriam's been walking for a half-hour, and the thoughts that run through her mind have serious legs. Terrible thoughts jog swift laps.
The man, the trucker, the Frankenstein. Louis. He is going to die in thirty days, at 7.25pm.
And it is going to be a horrible scene. Miriam sees a lot of death play out on the stage inside her skull. Blood and broken glass and dead eyes form the backdrop to her mind. But it's rare that she sees murder. Suicide, yes. Health problems, all the time. Car accidents and other personal disasters, over and over again.
But murder. That is a rare bird.
In a month's time, Louis is going to say her name right before he dies. Worse, he looks at someone before the knife punches through his eye and into his brain, and then says her name. He sees her there. He's speaking to her.
Miriam goes over it and over it in her head, and not once does it make sense.
She cries out some hybrid of "fuck" and "shit"– she's not really sure – and punctuates it by picking up a hunk of broken asphalt from the shoulder and chucking it against the dead center of an exit sign. It clangs. Wobbles.
And just past it, she sees the place: Swifty's Tavern.
Neon beer signs glow bright against the storm-tossed, late-night sky. The bar is a bug light, and she is the fly (fat from feeding off death). She makes a bee-line for the place.
Her mouth can taste it already.
Inside, the bar is like the unholy child of a lumberjack and a biker wriggling free from some wretched womb. Dark wood. Animal heads. Chrome rims. Concrete floor.
"An oasis," Miriam says out loud.
The place isn't busy. A few truckers sit at a table, playing cards around a foamy pitcher. Bikers mill around a lone pool table toward the back. Flies orbit a mess of old cheese fries that have dried into a shellacked mound to the left of the door. Iron Butterfly growls from the jukebox. Inna Gadda Da BlahBlah, Baby.
She sees the bar, its edges bordered with heavy gauge chain.
It will be her home, she decides, until they evict her.
She tells the bartender, who looks like a pile of uncooked Pillsbury dough stuffed into a dirty black T-shirt, that she needs a drink.
"Fifteen minutes until close," he mumbles, and then adds: "Little girl."
"Cut the 'little girl' shit, paleface. If I only have fifteen minutes, then I want whiskey. Your cheapest and shittiest. Think lighter fluid mixed with coyote piss. And you can put a shot glass down, but if you're amenable to it, then I'd damn sure like to pour my own."
He stares at her for untold seconds, then finally shrugs. "Sure. Whatever."
Paleface plunks down what might have once been a plastic jug for antifreeze, and from the look of the murky whiskey within, antifreeze might be the healthier choice. He waves away a haze of gnats. They're probably getting high off the vapors.
He uncaps it. He leans back coughing, and rubs his eyes. The smell – or, really, the sensation – hits Miriam a few seconds later.
"It feels like someone is pissing in my eyes," she says. "And up my nose."
"Buddy of mine across the Tennessee border makes it. He uses old oil drums instead of oak barrels. He calls it bourbon, but I dunno."
"And it's cheap?"
"Nobody'll ever drink it. Whole jug'll go to you for five bucks, you want it."
It smells like it'd burn barnacles off a boat hull; she can't imagine what it will do to her insides. She needs that. She needs to purge. She slaps down a five-spot, and then taps the bar.
"Then all I need is the glass."
Paleface thunks a shot glass next to the fiver, then grabs the money with a greasy hand.
Miriam takes the antifreeze jug and tops off the glass. Liquid spills on the bar, and she's surprised it doesn't eat through the lacquer.
She stares into the muddy whiskey. Flecks of something float at the top. But something else floats to the top, too: Louis. His face. Two ruined eyes. A mouth moaning her name.
Suck it up, she tells herself. None of this is new. This is how it's been for eight years. She sees death everywhere. Everybody dies, just like everybody poops. This guy's no different than anybody else (except, a little voice says, the part where he gets stabbed in the eyes with a rusty fish-gutter and he says your name before getting his brain skewered), so why should she care? She doesn't care (she does), and to prove it, she drinks the shot. One gulp.
It feels like firecrackers soaked in Drano going off in her throat and belly. She can feel it start to explode her liver. It is the worst thing she has ever put in her mouth.
Perfect. She pours another.
Paleface watches, amazed.
She bangs back the second shot, and a creeping numbness starts to settle in. It fuzzes the edges. It takes those terrible thoughts running laps in her head and loops a piano wire around their necks. It drags them to the edge of a filthy kiddypool. It holds their heads underwater. They kick and thrash. They start to drown.
One last thought wriggles free from the pack.
She thinks of a Mylar balloon floating up over a highway.
She shuts her eyes and pours another shot. Miriam doesn't hear the bar door open. Doesn't even notice when someone sits next to her.
"You gonna drink that shot, or is this just foreplay?"
Miriam looks up. He's got a boyish face. Oily black hair in a tangle, like a teepee made from raven wings. Clear eyes. A boomerang smile with a sharp edge.
"I woo all my drinks," she responds.
"You drink that one, I'll buy you another." He looks at the jug. "Or something that doesn't look like mop water."
"Just let a girl die in peace."
"C'mon," he says. "You're too pretty to leave for dead. Even with that black eye."
She can't help it. Her heart skips a beat. She feels a tingling between her legs. He's got a pretty voice. Lyrical, almost, like he could sing the wings off an angel. But not feminine, either. A cocky, balls-to-the-wall confidence lives there. No Southern accent, to boot. He looks like bad news. That turns her on. She likes bad news. It starts to make her feel normal, whatever passes for normal where Miriam is concerned.
Though – his face looks familiar. She just can't place it.
He orders a beer from Paleface. Tips it back. But he watches her. Studies her.
"What do you tell a girl with two black eyes?" she asks him.
"Nothing you haven't told her twice already," he answers, whip-quick.
"Way to blow the punch line," she says. "I thought I had one up on you."
"Nope. Not me." That smile again. Sharp. Too sharp. So hot. Shit. "Besides, I only count one black eye on you."
"Then maybe I haven't learned my lesson, yet."
"My name's Ashley. Ashley Gaines."
"Ashley's a girl's name."
"That's what my dad would say before he'd beat my back with a belt." He says it, but the smile never leaves his face. In fact, it gets bigger, broader.
Miriam's mouth forms an O. She winces and laughs. "Holy shit, dude. You know the punch line to my joke and then you come back with a knee-slapper about child abuse? You know what? Fine. When the apocalypse finally comes, I promise to let you live. My name's Miriam."
"Miriam's an old lady's name."
"Well, I do feel old."
"I can make you feel young again."
She rolls her eyes. "Oh, hell. You were doing so well."
"Tell you what, how about this one?," he says, idly peeling the label from his sweat-slick beer. "I'm going to go to the Little Wrangler's room, paint the urinal a prettier shade of yellow. Then I'm going to preen in the mirror, because I want to look good for you. I'll wash my hands, of course. I'm dirty, but not that kind of dirty. When I'm done, I'll dry off, and then come back out here."
"Thanks for the play-by-play. You gonna diddle your balls while you're in there?"
He ignores her. "If you're still out here, then it's on. I'm going to hit on you like kids on a pi?ata. You'll laugh. I'll laugh. You'll touch my hand. I'll touch your hip. And you'll come home with me."
Ashley smirks, crumples up the wet label, and shoots it right into her shot glass.
"Ass," she says.
He gets up and strolls to the back.
She watches his ass as he walks. Bony. Enough to grab hold of, though.
She watches as he passes a trio of bikers hovering around the pool table. An old guy peers out from behind a curtain of feathered gray hair. Fella next to him is short and stocky, his whole body stacked like a pack of hot dogs. The last guy, looking like an extra from Thunderdome, is a living, biological mountain. Six-six, his big bones layered with a topography of muscle and fat. His treetrunk arms are home to a mess of ink: an old lady's face, a tree on fire, a bunch of skulls, a motorcycle on fire. He's a Fat Dude.
Fat Dude is just about to shoot. Stick back. Giant melon head peering over it.
Ashley pushes past him. His bony hip bumps the pool stick.
The stick scrapes the table green and nudges the cue ball into the corner pocket.
A scratch.
Fat Dude turns on Ashley. If they were outside, he would block out the sun. The ground would tremble. Magma might belch up from the fractured earth.
Ashley smiles. Fat Dude seethes. A fly – probably fattened from an earlier meal of floor-stuck cheese fries – is caught in the airspace between these two, then hurries it the fuck out of there.
"You fuckin' prick," Fat Dude says. "You fucked my shot."
Ashley just smiles that smile, and that's when Miriam knows they're in trouble.