stripped-down pickups, the fenders pocked and bleached from road salt. Same loud music, blasting from the doorway each time somebody walked in or stumbled out, music produced by a second-rate sound system that ground the songs down to static, and then wrapped that static in a pounding bass beat. Nobody minded, though, because nobody came here to actually listen to the music. You came here to hide in it. To use it as camouflage. You came here to lose yourself in the loose folds of that music, slipping in between the notes, hoping to disappear. Maybe forever. But at least until closing time.
The Driftwood was where Carla and her high school friends had come when they were feeling bored and reckless, when they were about to climb out of their skins with discontent. The ID check was a joke. That made it perfect. She’d gotten drunk for the very first time in her life right here, when she was fifteen years old, after which Kayleigh Crocker had taken her back to Kayleigh’s house. For all Carla’s mom knew, she and Kayleigh were watching American Idol and giving each other pedicures; in reality, Carla had spent most of the night in the Crockers’ bathroom, puking her guts out while Kayleigh held her hair and dabbed the back of her neck with a cool washcloth. Carla could not even think about tequila anymore without a twinge of nausea.
And here it was, same place, same compellingly disheveled mess: the Driftwood.
She parked the Kia and walked with mincing-stepped caution across the icy lot, grabbing the occasional side mirror so that she wouldn’t slip. It was very cold. Cold permeated the world; it was a force unto itself, almost prehistoric in its bluntness and lack of nuance. This was a deadly, no-nonsense cold. If you miscalculated, if you were trapped outside without protection, it would kill you without a second thought. Or a first one. That gave Carla an odd solace: This cold was a reality that didn’t mess around. It was direct. It couldn’t be bought off or bargained with.
Somebody had thrown up right next to the front door. The stiff puddle of orangey-green vomit had frozen solid. It was, Carla decided, the ideal welcome mat for this place. She took a deep breath and reached for the wooden door handle—dark from decades of groping by other people’s greasy hands—and entered.
The place was packed. She hit a headwind of darkness and swirling, raunchy smells: beer and sweat and Tommy Girl and aftershave and a sort of clinging, moldy odor that even winter could not dispel. Carla fought her way forward. She glanced around. Some people sat at the small round tables, some danced, some just stood there, trying to look cool. She didn’t know a soul, which was just what she’d hoped for. She wanted to be by herself, but not in a quiet place. She wanted distraction. She wanted loud noise and a lot of pointless motion. She wanted chaos. Seething chaos—to match the seething chaos inside her. To balance herself out.
By now she was aware of another level of smell, too, suspended slightly above the alcohol and the body odor and the cologne, a smell that was harder to describe but always present in places like this: the smell of raw human need, mostly sexual but sometimes not, sometimes just the desire not to be alone.
“Hey.”
Her path was abruptly blocked by a short, portly man with a big grin and a bad toupee—it was blond, and it lapped down on either side of his face like a pair of fuzzy saddlebags. Carla had been heading to the bar, a long one that ran across the rear wall. Behind it was a tarnished mirror. A hand-lettered sign taped to the mirror read: NO SHIRT, NO SHOES—COME ON IN, COUSIN!
“Excuse me,” Carla said. She tried to go around him. He stepped to the right, blocking her way again. She went left; he did, too. His grin got bigger.
“Come on,” Carla muttered. “Give me a break, mister. Okay? I just want a beer.”
“Lemme get it for you. Happy to.” He waggled his eyebrows. As noisy as it was in here, as closely packed as the crowd was, she could hear him perfectly well.
She gave him the once-over. She had to, because he would not move. He had bad skin and saggy eyes and a sackful of chins. He was ancient, Carla thought; he had to be at least fifty. He wore a tight blue sweatshirt