Beasts of Burden

by Rich Wright

He wears a pistol on his ankle and carries a condom in his billfold. He never uses either one. The pistol weighs like a guilty conscience, in an elastic holster that swallowed his foot like an anaconda.

She smiles at him across the shithole bar. He carries his beer across the carpet that crunches underfoot like dry grass, through a dank old vomit stink, past bar stools with torn vinyl and exposed foam rubber as dry as cereal, to where she sits in a caved-in overstuffed chair.

“Drink?” He points to her tall glass, empty except for a bent lipstick-stained straw and a half inch of water from melted ice.

“Sure.“ She slurs through a mouth full of spit. She waves the bartender over. The bartender carries her drink and an air of desperate resignation, and the gun toter orders a tequila, and wipes the sweat off his forehead, up, through his flat top. The springs give as he flops into the other chair. He fumbles for his cigarettes in his coat pocket, then shakes a couple out of the pack. The woman takes one, holding it between fingers with broken nails, red polish flaking off, her hands old, lips rubbery, and eyelids heavy purple. Wrinkles spread like cracked glass through her thick makeup.

In her purse she carries a fading wedding photo, herself and her first husband, dead now thirteen years.

She smiles then, her eyes moving independently at first, till they lock onto him, finally, and focus. She pushes her big hair, blonde with dark roots, stiff with spray, and parts her rubbery lips to show her stained teeth. The lines from the sides of her nose to the corners of her mouth could have been carved in wood.

“So,” she says, blowing smoke through her nostrils like a dragon, looking puzzled, like she’s forgotten what she was going to say. “How you doing?”

He looks at her, and wets his lips with the tip of his tongue. He wipes his sweaty palm on the shirt stretched tight across his belly, and swallows the last of his beer. His Adam’s apple jerks as he drinks.

With his elbows on the table, he sits on the edge of the broken chair that wants to swallow him, and leans forward and talks over his shoulder, over the crook of his arm.

“So,” he says, like he’s seen in the movies, “you come here often? This your hangout? You like it here? Huh?”

She laughs, showing an expanse of purple gum, and looks, for an instant, like the girl in the faded photograph, fade included. “Uh, yeah,” she says, and her eyes declare their independence, one from the other, like in a civil war.

“Bartender,” he yells from his perch, “more drinks.”

The bartender, tattoos crawling up his arm like the black death, brings a draft in a warm mug and a shot of gold tequila and another tall glass with whatever clear iced drink she’s having. A lemon peel floats on top like a drowning victim.

“And gimme some nuts, will ya?” He hands the bartender two tens.

The woman’s head slips off her palm and her eyes pop open like she’s been shot, then, recovering, she smiles.

“You okay, sweetheart?” His rough palm goes to her check and he cocks his head to capture her drifting gaze. “Here, you got another drink. Finish your drink.” He pushes the glass into her hand and she sucks on the straw as dutifully as Eva Braun. But she’s fighting a losing battle. Her head drops to her chest and her elbow skids across the table and she’s out, dead weight.

He stands now, and draws her up, his arm around her waist, her arm across his shoulders, and she’s leaning into him, her ear on his collarbone, shuffling her feet, dragging her toe with every step, and he’s pulling her out towards the door, and a few customers look up from their beers, but they’ve seen worse. He’s cooing into her ear, “that’s okay, honey, you’re doing fine, that’s it, I’ll just take you home, everything’s gonna be all right, I got you honey, you’re doing fine,” like a mantra, a gentle babble like the running of a stream, a comfortable meaningless burble of sounds.

And as they get to the glass door, from the other side, a man comes up. He carries roses, and a box of chocolate, and his hair is slick with pomade, a part carefully carved into the side of his head, a black mustache draped across his upper lip like a veil, his sideburns as black and pointy as his boots.

Realization draws across his face like a curtain. His eyes stretch open till you can see the whites all the way around and the blacks of them look like gun barrels. The woman lifts her sagging head to him and smiles as her eyes reconcile, watching as he throws down the flowers and the chocolates and his chest swells inside his suit coat and his arms shoot out from his sleeves as he grabs for the door.

Inside, the first guy’s only starting to comprehend as the door’s yanked open in front of him and some guy with a mustache and greasy hair and a smell like Four Roses pomade grabs him by his shirt front and almost lifts him up as he pulls him and the girl slips away and falls to the floor and then he’s thrown backwards, this guy on top of him, and they crash through a table and drinks spill and he’s going down, the floor comes up with a thud, and he’s rolling, jerked around, but he’s got some lapels in his fists, and people are everywhere, legs, mostly, but also some hands grabbing at them, somebody kicks him in the ribs, they’re rolling, and he remembers the gun, and his hand snakes for his ankle, and his finger tips reach the butt, but this guy’s on top of him now, sitting on his chest just as he gets his fingers around the grip.