25 - The Club House Saloon
Peggy called a few hours later,
establishing what would be a predictable pattern that would wake me out of a
sound sleep.
Since I had not seen a phone in her
apartment, I assumed she was calling from some place else, and I later learned
that she frequently used her mother’s apartment on Ray Street as a
communication center, a place from which she made and received calls, and where
she picked up her mail.
“Are you coming to see me dance
tonight?” she asked.
Still foggy from lack of sleep, I
reminded her that I had been banned from the My Way.
“Not the My
Way, silly, the Club House Saloon.”
As it turns out, the Club House was located on 1&9 in Fairview,
near Route 46, in a strip mall along on the south bound side of the highway, a dark
little dive in a stucco building with squat windows.
I recall several visits to the Club
House, which had a violent reputation due to a stabbing that occurred there a
year earlier. A lone guy got into a conflict with two men who claimed they knew
karate. He stabbed both of them and then someone else in the bathroom.
I knew none of this when I agreed
to meet her there that night.
“You’ll
come?” she asked hopefully
“Sure, why
not?”
“I thought
for sure you’d be sick of me by now,” repeating the phrase she had used at our
parting a few hours earlier.
“What makes
you say that?”
“I thought
maybe I turned you off.”
I laughed.
“I’m
serious,” she said.
“If you
turned me off, I wouldn’t have gone crazy looking for all that Giants stuff,” I
said, recalling the marathon I had undertaken through Willowbrook Mall and
other places. “My friends thought I was nuts.”
“You talk
to your friends about me?”
“Some.”
“I can only
imagine how you describe me to them, some bimbo you met in some strip joint in
“I wouldn’t
say anything of the sort,” I said.
“All men
do. Did they ask if you got lucky?”
“Peggy,
that’s not the kind of talk I have with my friends.”
“So I’m not
good enough?”
“That’s not
what I said.”
“But it’s
what you meant.”
“That’s not
true.”
“I know
men,” she said. “They’re always bragging about how they get laid, and yet they
never call me back the next day to ask about me.”
“I’d call
you if you had a phone,” I said. “What about the movie you suggested?”
“Meet me
tonight at the club and we’ll talk about it then.”
She hung
up.
After the
phone call, I took a walk in the rain – a misty, warm rain that wet my face
like a sloppy kiss, yet under my umbrella I felt secure.
These walks
in this kind of weather always helped me think.
And I had a
lot to think about.
I no longer
felt in control of my life and this scared me.
Worse, I
wasn’t sure I wanted to be in control.
As the name
implied, the place had a western theme. The room had a stucco ceiling and a
shingled roof that hung over the bar – which ran long ways along the wall
opposite the front door. The entrance to the bar was so narrow that bar maids
had to squeeze in and our at one end so that they could serve men at the
tables.
Imitation
Tiffany lamps hung over each of the table, with several more over the bar,
giving the place a dimness the owner like to call atmosphere. Two ceiling fans
in the center of the large room stirred up the volatile mixture of cigarette
smoke, booze, body odor and hormones. To the right, through two arches, a juke
box, several video games, a gambling game or two, and a cigarette machine
formed a kid of arcade separated from the rest of the bar. Electric wall
candles made that part of the bar seem even dimmer than the bar itself.
The popularity of the place varied
on the weather and season, and on this night, the place was sparsely attended.
The dance
stage was inside the bar at a place where the bar and its roof bulged out,
illuminated by two pink flood lights and a mirrored wall.
Peggy was
on stage when I came in and was too busy talking to two men at the bar to
notice me right away.
She shouted
over the music at the men, who while teasing her about her odd manager of
dance, she told them to get stuff.
When she
saw me, she frowned, then when her set ended she came over to where I sat at
the bar.
“What are
you going here?” she asked, sounding a little drunk, which surprised me.
‘You told
me to meet you here,” I said.
“I did?
When?”
“When you
called me to thank me for our date.”
She looked
even more confused. “I called you?”
“This
morning.”
“I don’t
recall that at all.”
“I suppose
you don’t recall the boxes of stuff I gave you either.”
“That was
you?” she said, harshly.
“Yes, is
something wrong?”
“You called
me a fanatic.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
“You say
you’re a Giants’ fan.”
“So?”
“Fan is short for fanatic.”
“You’re
full of shit.”
“Then why
are you wearing the Giants’ t-shirt I bought you?”
“I’m cold,”
she said, staring away as she blew out a lung full of cigarette smoke.
“They let
you dance like that?”
“When
nobody’s around,” she said. “Say, are you going to buy me a drink or do I have
to let one of those two losers do it, and put up with them hitting on me the
rest of the night?”
I signaled
the bar maid. She nodded and began to mix the concoction she knew Peggy drank.
“Men must
hit on you all the time,” I said.
“They do.”
“Then you
should be used to it.”
“Use to it?
I’m sick of it,” she said, draining the glass as soon as the bar maid slid it
in front of her, and held out the empty. “More.”
I nodded at
the barmaid, whose name I later learned was Vidda, a big-haired polish Jersey
Girl, who flirted with me even as she refilled Peggy’s glass.
Peggy
appeared not to notice.
When Vidda
said it was time for Peggy to get back up and dance, Peggy refused.
The other
men in the bar had left so that it was only the three of us, me, Peggy and
Vidda.
“Why should
I dance to an empty bar?” Peggy asked.
A short
time later a guy named Red wandered in. He reminded me of a guy I knew growing
up, the same scrawny frame, the same lumberjack boots, jeans and shirt, even
the same BMW logo on his hat.
He also had
the same intense look of loneliness I had seen on dozens of men in bars like
this, and he was clearly taken with Peggy, sitting on the other side of her,
supplying her with even more drinks that she didn’t need.
She seemed
a little taken with him, too, trading quotes of lyrics to songs playing on the
jukebox. She didn’t even stop him when he kept touching her, and kept urging
her to spend the night at a local motel with him, or if not that to come out to
his car with him.
She didn’t
go with him, but never said she wouldn’t either, letting him paw2 her as long
as he kept buying her drinks which he did until his money ran out and then he
left.
Then Vidda
laid out drinks for the three of us, and we three slowly got drunk.
Finally,
Peggy sighed and said she was hungry.
“I’ll buy
you some breakfast,” I said, wondering if I had enough cash left for the both
of us.
“I’m not
going through that crap again,” she said.
“Then we
can buy something to go and bring it back to your place,” I said.
“I’m not in the mood for that
either.”
“In the
mood for what?”
“You know.
All I want to do is eat and go to sleep. No monkey business. I have to get up
early tomorrow for work.”
“I didn’t
know monkey business was an option,” I said.
“Don’t be a
wise guy, Alfred. But if you’re serious, you can get something from the all
night deli near my house. You can stop there, then come up for a little while.”
“Fine with
me,” I said. “If you want I’ll give you the food at the door and then go home.”
Peggy
actually looked shocked at my suggestion.
The deli lights scaled my eyes with white fluorescent light
after so many hours in the dimness of the strip club.
The clerk,
a blonde-haired jock looked bored right up until I ordered the turkey club
Peggy said she wanted, and then he squinted at
Peggy’s car
was parking the lot when I got to her place, and the lights in her apartment
window glowed like two bright eyes in the dark landscape. I hurried up the
stars to her apartment. The door was unlocked. She was in the living room
waiting for me.
I sat down
beside her on the coach, and put the sandwich on the coffee table. Then I
noticed the wall and the dozen photos of John Wayne which decorated it, John
Wayne as a cowboy, soldier, sailor and himself.
“Don’t tell
me you like John Wayne,” I said.
“I love
him. I would fuck his brains out if I could. But I can’t. He’s dead. Does that
make you jealous?”
“That he’s
dead?”
“No, silly,
that I want to fuck him.”
“I don’t
know. Should it?”
“Maybe.
John Wayne is my kind of man. He’s the only man I could ever trust. He’s the
only man I ever really loved. I cried like a baby when he died.”
She
mentioned that she once gave her heart away to a man who didn’t deserve it, a
man who had come into her life and hurt her dearly, destroying things that were
precious to her.
“That’s
never going to happen again,” she said.
I leaned
closer to her.
“Do you
mind if I kiss you?”
“If you
have to ask, forget it.”
I tried
anyway. She pecked my lips.
“Behave,”
she said, and then stood up.
“Where are
you going?” I asked.
“To get
undressed.”
“What about
your food?”
“I’ll get it when I get back.”
She
vanished into the kitchen, then into the bedroom beyond and returned a moment
later wearing nothing but a short maroon smock.
“There’s
that look again,” she said.
“What
look?”
“Like
you’re embarrassed. You shouldn’t be. Sometimes I walk around here completely
naked. I hate clothes.”
But still
she didn’t sit down. She went back into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle out of
the refrigerator, and then returned with it and two glasses.
“What’s
that?” I asked.
Champagne.”
“With a
turnkey club?
“Champagne
goes with anything as long as it is good champaign.”
“And this
is good champaign?”
“I don’t
drink anything else.”
The champagne
went to my head in a way beer never did. I started talking about my
dysfunctional family and how my grandmother had raised me, and I did not look
forward to when she might die.
Peggy
stiffened and snarled at me.
“Don’t talk
like that,” she said.
“Like
what?”
“About your
grandmother dying.”
“It’s only
a matter of time,” I said. “She’s 88 and frail. I’m not sure how much longer
she has.”
“My
grandmother is 94,” Peggy said. “And she’s going to live forever.”
Peggy said
she couldn’t even attend the wake of anybody close.
Much later,
I learned that her grandmother lasted eight more years, dying at the rip old
age of 103 in 1995 – at a point when
Peggy had just moved back into the
Finally,
she stood up and said, “It’s time to go to sleep.”
“I’ll go,”
I said, standing as well.
“Please,
don’t,” she said.
“But if
you’re going to sleep…”
“I don’t
sleep right away. Just sit with me until I do.”
So I
followed her out of the living room, through the kitchen to the bedroom. It was
a remarkable world filled with unicorns, novelty unicorns, stuffed unicorns,
even posters of unicorns on the walls.
“You have
quite a collection here,” I said, fingering a small unicorn made of blown
glass.
“Men hear
that I like them and give me more,” she said, rolling down the covers to her
bed which was tucked into a corner of the room. She had four or five pillows
which she plumped up. Then she rolled out a TV carts with a black and white TV
on it, then climbed into bed with her back against the pillows.
“I watch TV
until I fall asleep,” she said. “Sometimes the TV stays on all night. Sometimes
I turn it off before I nod off. Sit with me.”
She patted
the bed beside her and I sat.
“Not like
that.,” she said. “Take off your shoes and lean back against the pillows.”
I complied.
It felt
strange get wonderful lying so closer to her after all the barroom fantasizing,
and remarkably tender, barred from doing anything but keeping her company.
The talking
heads on the
“I really
like you, Alfred,” she mumbled. “You’re not like any other guy I’ve known.”
Then after
a few more minutes, she flicked off the TV.
“Time for
sleep,” she said, already more than half there.
I started
to rise.
“No, don’t
go,” she said, clutching my arm.
“But you
said…”
“Wait until
I’m a sleep, please. Keep me company until I’m asleep.”
So I
settled back down and she curled up against me, one arm across my chest,
slipping into sleep.
At this
point, I realized that I could not move without waking her, and I wondered what
exactly I should do.
Even the
lamp on the night stand near my head remained illuminated, its dim light allow
me to just make out the number on the lock radio progressively flipping over in
a nonstop advance of time.
The air
grew chilly and I managed at one point to pull some of her blankets over enough
of me to keep my teeth from chattering.
Curious
about the whole arrangement, Jesse, her black cat, climbed up onto the bed,
over me, then over her, before settling into some corner I could not see, yet
purred loudly enough for a while before even that faded and all I could hear
was the hum of the clock and the more distance sound of an occasional car
traveling down Harrison Avenue outside.
I tried to
move.
But each
time I did, Peggy’s fingernails dug into me, clutching me closer with some
sleeping desperation I could only guess about.
She mumbled
things I didn’t catch, but with such terror this reminded me of the sleeping
scene from Breakfast at Tiffanies.
Eventually,
I nodded off, too.
When I
opened my eyes again, the room glowed with sunlight through the door to the
kitchen as well as the window above the night stand. The clock said
Peggy was
still asleep.
I shook her
shoulder gently.
“It’s
morning,” I whispered.
Her eyes
popped open.
She stared
at me so long I wondered if she was actually awake.
Then, she
sat up, and – still fully dressed, I stood.
“What the
fuck are you still doing here?” she asked, feeling around at the bed for
something although it wasn’t clear what it was, and clearly, she did not find
it.
“I fell
asleep,” I said.
“Get out.”
“What?”
“I said get
the fuck out!”
I looked
around for my shoes – found one, kicked the other, the whole time Peggy glared
at me as if wishing me out of existence. I could not move fast enough and
stumbled into the hall and down the stairs clutching my coat as the latched
locked to her door behind me.
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