How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,17
in Gallatin.
“Lone Ranger at four o'clock,” I shout over Tim McGraw's “Cowboy in Me,” indicating a guy down the bar in a shiny orange leather jacket who's been checking her out.
“Let's dance,” she says.
“Okay.” I finish my drink and lead her out to the floor. We shimmy to Carrie Underwood's “Before He Cheats,” or rather, she shimmies and I sway. I look around to see if Susan's got an audience, and sure enough, Mr. Leather Jacket is standing at the edge of the dance floor, watching. At the end of the song, I lean over and whisper in her ear. “Keep dancing,” I say. I turn and walk away, heading to the men's room, even though I don't really have to go. I linger there and fix my hair in the mirror, then go back to the bar and order another margarita, forcing myself not to look over to the dance floor until I've paid for my drink and taken a long swallow. Sure enough, now he's dancing with Susan, grinding up against her while Alison Krauss sings “Simple Love.” I feel a tingling buzz that's like the first wave of a coke rush.
What can I say. It turns me on watching Susan turn other men on. Is that so hard to understand?
I settle in at a table where I can occasionally glimpse them through the crowd. Susan eventually spots me and maneuvers her partner closer so I have a better view, then starts making out with him. I mean really sucking face. This guy can't believe his luck. Which is, strangely enough, just how I feel.
But then, just to torture me, she drifts back into the sea of bodies until I can't see either one of them anymore. It's making me crazy. I wait a few minutes, then circle the place, but I can't see them anywhere. What the hell? I look everywhere. Did she take him out to the parking lot? On a sudden inspiration I bolt for the men's room. Sometimes she trash-talks about doing some guy in the men's room because she knows it's a turn-on in theory, but in real life that's a taboo, one of the boundaries we've established. When you're playing outside the regular borders, it's important to have rules and boundaries. We've learned that the hard way.
I stop at the men's room door and take a deep breath, trying to compose myself, to think what I'll do if I find them in there. I push the door open. A couple of good old boys in Stetsons, propping themselves up against the urinals. No one in the stalls, which is a relief, I think.
I finally find her at the bar, alone, sucking down a margarita.
“So?”
She shakes her head. “Let's get out of here.”
In the car, she says, “He told me he wanted me to meet his mother.”
“He must get a lot of pussy with that line.”
“Actually, I think he was serious.”
“So where to?”
“Let's go to Tini's,” she says.
“You sure?” I'm still sober enough to feel some trepidation about Tini's. The last time we were there, somebody got stabbed, although we didn't actually see the fight.
“If we're going to go for it, let's just go for it.” Her earlier diffidence seems to have evaporated. “Turn it up,” she says, when “Mr. Bright Eyes” comes on Lightning 100.
It's early for Tini's, but the Friday-night house band's already playing. We settle in at a table and order drinks. Mostly old drunks and a few friends of the band so far. A fat mama in a gold bustier calls out, “Tell it!” and “Play it!” in between choruses. It would be easy to imagine these losers are playing the same song over and over, the same twelve bars on an interminable loop, but every once in a while a lyric emerges or the guitarist cuts loose and at some point I make out Sonny Boy Williamson's “Fattening Frogs for Snakes.”
Then I see him approaching, rolling like an aspiring pimp, gold chains bouncing on a voluminous white T-shirt. He grabs the empty chair at our table and flips it around, then straddles the back of it. He's not much more than twenty, if that, very dark-skinned.
“I seen you here before,” he says.
“That's possible,” I say.
“Yeah, I seen you all right.”
“I'm Susan, and this is Dean.”
It's true: I remember him. We partied with one of his friends.