Archie's

Years of sitting on a barstool, from Virginia to Arizona to Louisiana to North Carolina to Florida and back to many of those places again hasn’t eased the loneliness one bit.

Friends always tell you that time heals all wounds. I have a tough time with that. Yes, it dulls the ache of the pain. But heal it? Fuck no. It’s why someone holds on to a picture of the past. To remember the good, but also to feel the pain.

Why? Because feeling is better than not feeling.

A cutter will slice up their legs or arms or torso just to feel something. Maybe it’s to feel something different than loneliness or sadness or rejection.

But then you start to wonder if you’re a borderline personality disorder candidate…

I walked into a new bar today, hoping that something new would kindle something good. The place was called Archie’s. Seemed to be a decent joint. Folks were still smoking inside and out. The beer selection was horrible, but cheap. The jukebox was a cd player behind the bar, which the barkeep – not named Archie by the way – would let you put your own discs in. “Unless it’s fucking Slipknot. I will slit your throat if you try to play Slipknot in my God damn bar!” he told any customer who wanted to insert a cd, including me the first time I tried.

As that may tell, this bar became a favorite spot for me.

Not because it was great, because it was far from great – with great being Quentin Tarantino’s bar in the movie “Death Proof” or what I imagine the Whitewater Tavern in Little Rock, Arkansas to be like – but instead because it didn’t have a history with me.

It was in Ryland Heights, Kentucky. Not too far from Cincinnati or Lexington. And if one was in an adventurous mood in the winter – Indianapolis.

This was a town I’d never been to. Never heard of. And that was perfection.

At 41 years old and single, I figured I wouldn’t have too many suitors to fend off. Probably as many as publishers begging for me to write the next great work of American prose.

So that July afternoon when I walked in to Archie’s it never dawned on me that I’d end up spending most of my days and nights there for the next six months. Of course, it never dawned on me that I wouldn’t. A new way of looking at life, I’d tried to take up after quitting my copy editing job in North Carolina on a whim one early summer night.

The cast of regulars in Archie’s was all right with me.

There was Mona. A 47 year old mother of six whose husband was a state trooper. She was blonde and had fake tits. Liked to drink Mimosas on a good day and Vodka on the rocks on a bad one. Lately, the goods had outnumbered the bad.

There was Steven. A 25 year old former minor league baseball catcher. He was in a bus crash that claimed the lives of all the other 24 players on his Double-A team, all the coaches, trainers and media folks as well. He played one more season – hitting .111 in 135 games at Triple-A before quitting. He was still dogged by old coaches and scouts who wanted his former second-round talent back in the game.

Then there was Manning. I never figured out whether it was his first or last name, and never really cared. I asked once, and was told it was because he looked like Archie Manning the quarterback. This guy was about 40, drank only Miller Lite from a can, poured into a pint glass, and ate Kit Kat bars. He loved The Who, hated Hank Williams Jr., and wanted to one day go to a Utah Jazz basketball game.

Finally, Cora and her dog Rexington. Cora was a 29 year old former stripper who had half of her body tattooed and the other half blank. On purpose. And Rexington was her chocolate Labrador retriever who liked to fetch beer cans that we all tried to throw through an old Nerf basketball hoop located above a cut out of Rush Limbaugh’s mouth. Rex loved to lick the beer off of old Rush’s face every time as well.

I didn’t know these folks outside of Archie’s. Even though I ended up renting a double-wide just a little over two miles away, near the Waffle House and Circle K. I figured as long as the royalty checks kept coming from my one successful short story anthology, I’d keep shopping and eating and drinking at these three places.

And none of these new friends knew a thing about her.

Pretty Vacant

No Vacancy.

I found it rather amusing. That sign on this shitty hotel. In the middle of the desert. There weren’t any cars in the parking lot. There were no lights on in the rooms. There was a light on in the front office.

I walked up to the door. It was open. There was a squirrelly looking cat sitting behind the desk. He had on a Social Distortion T-shirt that had to be 20 years old. His hair was slicked back with some kind of grease. It looked like it smelled. I didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out.

“You got any rooms?” I asked.

He sighed. Folded up the issue of Penthouse he was reading and looked up at me. For a good 10, 15 seconds he stared at me. It didn’t make me feel uncomfortable, just annoyed. I scanned the room. There was a movie poster from “Die Hard 2: Die Harder” on the wall. Right next to a red couch. An old television set flickered in the background. Some public access show was on. The guy looked like he might be funny.

“What does the sign out front say?” he finally said.

“No vacancy.”

“Well, there’s your answer buddy,” he said, re-opening his Penthouse. I noticed his fly was unzipped.

“But seriously, man, there aren’t any cars out there. There aren’t any lights on. It’s 8 p.m. Where is everybody that’s staying in those rooms?”

“They’re sleeping I guess.”

“But no cars? Not even a motorcycle?”

“They don’t drive or ride.”

“They?”

“Yeah, they. And if you don’t leave soon, you’ll get to meet ‘em.”

Feeling a bit like I was in a 1984 horror flick, I decided I’d take his advise and get on out of there.

“Where’s the nearest hotel, then?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I’ve never left this place. Now, can ya leave. I’ve got something to do.”

“I guess you do.”

“Hey, a guy’s got to do what he’s got to do to get off,” he said as he whipped his half-hard cock out of his pants. Waving it at me. “Bigger than yours, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. But mine doesn’t have those spots on it either.”

“Well, the hookers here bite.”

That was my cue. I turned around. The sun was just disappearing behind a big butte off in the distance.

“Looks like you’re gonna meet ‘em,” the guy said, hand still on cock.

“If they’re like you, no thanks.”

“They ain’t like me. Hell, they don’t even like me.”

“Can’t understand why,” I said, finally leaving the joint. I felt a cool breeze. Odd. It was 98 degrees according to my dashboard thermometer. The only thing electronic that still worked in my car. But she’d taken me 346,237 miles as of 10 minutes ago when I pulled into this shithole. And I guess she was gonna have to do a few more tonight.

A coyote howled in the distance. Pretty cool, I thought. Somewhere in the parking lot, I heard shuffling. Lots of shuffling. Like the foot steps of zombies in a really low-budget movie. Just sliding on the pavement. The shadows started jumping about too. I decided I didn’t want to see if they were coming to get Barbara.

Back in my car, I started up the engine on the first try. Always a dicey proposition since I passed the 210,000-mile mark a year ago. Man, I’d put a lot of miles on her since. The CD player belted out “Pretty Vacant” by the Pistols.

Two vacant references in 15 minutes. My mind must be playing tricks on me. Just an hour ago I was on my cell phone, an old flip phone by Samsung. I wondered how many people still have them in 2014? I’d had this phone since 2008, well, this brand. I threw my other one against a wall in a hotel room after a drunken night watching Lucero play and a great girl ignore me when I was paying attention to her, only to have her watch me while I was singing along. She was great at teasing me. And she knew she had me in the palm of her hands. Putty, the old romantic novels would call it.

While on the phone, I was talking to my lady friend of the moment. She seemed to be mad at me because I was 1,000 miles away on her birthday. I told her it was better I was here, trying to write my novel than in a cubicle at a dying newspaper. Because that’s where I’d be if I was at home. Working is my addiction. Well, it was. When I loved it. It never loved back. I figured it out one day. Sober, even. On that day, it became a job instead of a passion.

That’s when I started writing for myself. She never got it. She met me before the epiphany. She was a waitress at a Waffle House. I was reading a book. She didn’t ask me what I was reading for, instead, she asked me what I was reading. I told her it was the new Nick Hornby book. She smiled at that, but didn’t say anything.

I watched her the next three hours. She smiled too much for someone working in a Waffle House. Guys were nice to her. Ladies weren’t. It was 3 in the morning. I was driving down Saint Claude when I saw the darn place. Glistening in the night air. I hadn’t ever noticed a Waffle House in the New Orleans area before. So, I stopped. Looked inside and decided I wanted a waffle and bacon.

Her name was Lenore. At least that’s what my ticket said. I stared at it for a good while. She must have noticed.

“Something wrong with the bill?” she said, smiling, of course.

“Not at all. I just noticed your name.”

“It means torch,” she said.

“Kind of a beacon of light in a run down place, huh?”

“That might be pushing it,” she said, blushing slightly.

Wow, I thought. She blushed. I haven’t made a gal blush in a long, long time. I moved to New Orleans to be away from my past. Away from distractions while I washed dishes, checked 20 year old’s Ids at a bar door and write the great American novel.

I ended up a garbage man with two published short stories and a bunch of newspaper clippings three years later. Now I was staring at a waffle waitress, wondering if she’d go home with me.

“Lenore, when do you get off work?” I asked.

“4.”

I looked at my phone. It said 3:57.

While I was doing that, she sat down at my booth. “You want to go somewhere and get a drink?”

“You read my mind.”

She blushed again. We went to Nick’s on Tulane. It certainly wasn’t the same Nick’s from my youth. But I’m sure that’s what old guy who was 45 sitting there when I was 22 said too. I got a Dixie. She a Miller Lite. This seemed vaguely familiar.

“Can I have a quarter?” she asked.

I didn’t reply immediately. I was staring at our reflection in the stained mirror. Randy and Lenore. That sounded strange.

“Hey, goon show, you in there?”

“Huh?” I managed.

“A quarter? For the juke.”

I fished into my pocket. Drew a dime, a nickel, two pennies, and finally a quarter. I looked at it real fast. It was from 1996. Not a bad year. I handed it over.

“Don’t play any bullshit.”

The barkeep looked at me. “Ain’t no bullshit. You made sure of that with your conversations with Albert.”

Albert was the owner. I tried endlessly to get him to hire me when they were rebuilding back in 2011. Wow, that was four years ago. The only thing he wanted to talk about was the jukebox. I told him to get an old AMI Continental. Like the one in “Death Proof” by Tarantino. He hadn’t seen it. I showed it to him on Facebook. He fell in love. Got one. I stocked the 45s. I guess, in a way, it let me live out one of my dreams.

She plunked the quarter in. Pushed some buttons. Walked back over. Just as she sat down, the song started -- “Ooh, La, La” by The Faces. I think I could dig this girl, I thought to myself.

Now, I’m in the desert. Sitting in a car in front of a hotel that apparently only houses vampires. Thinking about our last conversation. It ended with me calling her vacant.

I’m such a fool, I thought as I put the car in drive. Pushed the pedal and pointed it east.

“Time to go home,” I said out loud.

“Not yet,” a voice from the backseat said.