side; Jack glances toward it out of habit, and discovers he can’t stop looking at the young woman who enters, his breath literally caught for an instant in his chest before he remembers to breathe again, she’s that pretty.
“Rachel,” the Hello Kitty girl tells him, but Jack’s not listening anymore.
Hitching up her short green dress, the woman lifts herself onto a bar stool halfway between Jack and the marine sergeant. Her legs cross gracefully to let one green high-heeled pump dangle. Then she takes it off, puts it up on the bar, and rubs her foot.
“These shoes are murdering me,” she says. The bartender pours her a Wild Turkey straight up. “No wonder they call them Fuck Me pumps.”
The bartender laughs. The young woman in the green dress manages to look around the entire room without making eye contact with Jack.
“I heard about a guy who makes a thing you can put in the heel to make them more comfortable,” the bartender is saying.
“That’s pretty vague. A guy? A thing?”
“Didn’t occur to me to take notes.”
“Ha ha.”
“I thought you were going dancing in Victorville tonight.”
“I thought this all-you-can-eat shrimp deal was supposed to draw customers.”
“Talk to the boss, m’lady.”
“Yeah. As if.”
They both laugh.
Jack pretends to study the oil-swirls in his coffee, so she won’t think he’s staring. But he is, staring. The dim light that falls on her from old recessed spots softens her face to a pleasant blur of pinkish white framed by dark hair that folds to her shoulder. Smudges of mauve eye shadow, serious, impenetrable eyes. A slur of lavender lipstick betrays the sad smile.
One of the old gals, slender, white-haired, stands up with the empty margarita pitcher and brings it to the bar for a refill. Jack tap-taps his cigarette again.
“Excuse me. The girl who just came in—”
Both the bartender and white-haired woman glance at Jack, wondering if he’s talking to them. Jack waits. The older woman smiles, self-conscious. Jack smiles back. The bartender refills the pitcher, delivers it, and looks at Jack. “Yes sir?”
“I’d like to buy her a drink.”
“The girl?” The bartender’s eyes shift to Rachel, still waiting, behind Jack, having so recently evaporated from his landscape that it takes him a second to realize where the misunderstanding could be.
“No, no—” Jack tilts his head toward the young woman in the green dress and meets the bartender’s expressionless gaze with an easy smile.
The bartender tightens his lips. “Okay, one: don’t call her a girl, she won’t like it. And, two: you’ll have to ask her first, because, as you may have keenly observed with your single eye, my friend, I know her and I don’t want to piss her off. She’s ferocious, when she gets pissed.”
Jack blinks.
The older woman turns with her Margarita refill to go back to her friends. Her feet get tangled. She starts to fall. Jack reacts, grabs the pitcher—it sloshes, doesn’t spill—and simultaneously catches her by the arm, gallant. The old gal’s friends spontaneously applaud, delighted. Jack steadies the woman, hands her the pitcher.
“You all right?”
Blushing fiercely, she nods, “Fine. Yes. I’m—sorry. My feet . . .” Jack cuts his eyes toward the young woman in the green dress again, but discovers Rachel and her backpack sliding purposefully onto the stool beside him, directly in his line of sight.
“Rachel,” she says.
“I know. I heard you the first time.”
“Oh.” She catches the bartender, “Hey, can I have some water, please?”
The bartender frowns, annoyed. “I have to charge you a dollar.”
“For water?”
“Put it on my tab,” Jack says.
The bartender looks at him a little irritably, and moves away to get a glass.
“Thanks.” Rachel studies Jack for a moment, critically, as if he were a math problem, then picks at the nail polish on her thumb.
“Where are your parents, Rachel?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” she says in a rote monotone.
The marine sergeant slides heavily off his stool and walks over to the woman in the green dress, who stares straight ahead, measuring his approach in the mirror. Sipping her whiskey and shaking her head slightly in response to whatever the marine is asking her, she never stops smiling, even when the sergeant steps back, almost as if slapped, and runs his thick hand across the level playing field of his flattop. Regrouping, he asks something else. She turns to him, her whole body facing him, and talks to him kindly for a moment longer.
Jack watches this, his heart in his groin. And then, shamelessly, he commits himself, suddenly, predictably, to wanting this woman as much as he has ever wanted anything; to fold her into his arms, soothe the disappointment from her smile, to move into one of those slant-roofed shacks on two hundred acres of barren desert, homestead, depurate himself, court her, win her, earn her. Well, and sleep with her, yes, but—it plays out for him in fast-forward, like a Lifetime channel TV movie, and, Jack realizes with the usual tinge of disappointment, that it actually was a Lifetime movie, a ten-hankie chick flick in which he played the part of the foolish marine who never stood a chance.
Jack wants to sleep with her, and he knows from experience that he probably will, it’s just a matter of mechanics now. The real sergeant has retreated, fallen back to his stool and beer and is standing there, looking at nothing, square shoulders round, defeated. The young woman in the green dress sips her drink, nonplussed, eyes straight ahead again. Jack considers his opening gambit.
Serendipitously, Rachel, petulant and feeling ignored, takes the glass of ice water the bartender has delivered and tilts decisively off her stool; she stands directly behind Jack and pours most of it down the neck of her sundress, front and back. Water splatters onto the waxed, worn linoleum under her feet.
She’s got Jack’s full attention now. She’s got the whole restaurant’s attention. She makes a squeaking noise. The water is cold.
“The hell are you doing?!” the bartender growls, and starts to come from behind the bar, but Jack intercepts him calmly, acutely aware that the woman in the green dress must be watching all this, too.
“I’m sorry. She’s with me,” Jack says, about Rachel. “It’s okay. She’s my sister.” He takes the towel off the bartender’s shoulder, tosses it at the girl’s feet and starts to mop up the ice water. “She’s got—issues,” Jack is ad-libbing, and he says this loud enough to be heard halfway down the bar. “Impulse control issues. I’m really sorry, man. I’ll clean it up.” The old ladies in the booth are buying it, their faces showing sympathy and relief (that Rachel isn’t their problem). The bartender knows it’s bullshit, but seems relatively disarmed by Jack’s complete commitment to the role. The jarheads never look up from their plates, just want to eat before the shrimp gets cold; their dates look like they will probably believe anything.
“Are you hungry?” Jack asks Rachel, for the benefit of his intended audience just down the bar, but she’s on his blind side and Jack can’t tell if the woman in the green dress is even paying attention anymore.
“A little,” Rachel says, going with the performance.
Jack flags the waitress, who’s hurrying past with empty shrimp plates. “My sister wants to order some dinner,” he says. “Can you put it on my tab?”
“You like shrimp, hon?” the waitress asks absently.