The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,135

too. Prove you’re not the chickenshit, gutless dimwit everybody says you are.”

I hung up and sat at the bar and watched two men shooting nine ball, my ears popping so loudly I couldn’t hear the balls drop into the leather pockets.

I WENT INTO THE men’s room and washed my face and looked in the mirror. My heart was tripping, my breath coming hard in my throat, beads of water trickling down my face like moisture on a pumpkin. The room looked a hundred years old. There was a flush tank with a chain high up on the wall; the floor was wood, dark with stains and soft as cork from toilet overflow or urine that had missed the bowl. A dirty towel hung in a loop from a machine above the toilet. There was not one inch of graffiti written or carved on the walls. These may seem strange details to notice, but they each represented in some aspect the situation I found myself in. I had broken the hands off my own clock and sealed myself inside an era and a culture that had more to do with the past than the future. Maybe my spells were an incremental journey to this spot, a retrograde place that was grimed and smelled of piss, where you dared not scratch your name on the shithouse wall unless you wanted your fingers broken.

I went back to the telephone and called Valerie. Through the plastic panels in the door, I saw the bartender watching me. Valerie picked up on the second ring. “Is that you?” she said.

“It’s me.”

“Where are you?”

I told her.

“What are you doing in there? It’s full of criminals.”

“So is the whole town.”

“What is going on with you, Aaron?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to talk.”

“Saber called and said you were at his house and talking crazy.”

“He’s exaggerating. Look, I have to take care of some things, Val. Will you do me a big favor?”

“What?”

“I’d like for you to talk to my mother. I’d like for you to be closer to her. She’s strange in her ways, but her heart is in the right place.”

She made a sound like she was blowing her hair out of her face. “Either come to my house right now or I’m going to that pool hall.”

“I’ll try to get there directly.”

“Directly? I hate that word. It’s what ignorant people say when they want to sound folksy. When did you start talking folksy?”

“I love you, Valerie.”

The line went silent.

“Did you hear me?”

“What’s wrong, Aaron? Is it that man from the campground? Did you see him again?”

“No, I didn’t. Don’t worry anymore. Tell Saber I’ve got it under control.”

“I’m babysitting the child from next door. I can’t leave. Don’t do this to me.”

“I’ve got to go now. Remember what I said about my mother, okay?” I eased the receiver back onto the hook.

I ASKED THE BARTENDER for another cup of coffee. His shoulders and chest had the solidity of concrete; the backs of his fingers were tattooed with illegible letters. He poured into my cup but set the coffeepot down on a towel rather than back on the stove. “What are you doing in here?”

“Waiting on somebody,” I replied.

“This isn’t a social center.”

“I didn’t mean to bother anybody.”

“Who you waiting on, kid?”

“They didn’t give me their names.”

He put the coffee back on the burner and picked up the towel and wiped the wet spot the pot had left on the bar. “Where you from?”

“Houston.”

“Where in Houston?”

“The southwest side.”

He gazed through the front door at the street. “The warm-up is on the house. Drink up.”

“You’re telling me to leave?”

He huffed air out of his nostrils and filled his chest with air. “Don’t complicate my day. That’s the operating rule here. Think you can abide by that?”

“Yes, sir. Have you seen any strange guys around?”

“What do you mean by strange?”

“Greaseballs.”

“This isn’t a cuddly place. That’s not a good word.”

“Guys who carry guns and shoot other people,” I said.

He threw his towel into the air and caught it, then walked away.

I watched the clock. Five minutes passed, then ten. The two nine-ball shooters stacked their cues and ordered draft beers and started peeling hard-boiled eggs at the end of the bar. The bartender was reading a newspaper he had flattened on the bar. I saw him look up and study something or someone out the front window. When I turned on the barstool, I saw a maroon Packard station wagon, one with real wood paneling and whitewall tires and chrome-spoked wheels; it