Part 2
By: Ted Wallenius
While she gathered her things together at the Broken Pony, packing the things she wanted to keep, making a pile of the things she would throw out, another pile of the shoes, clothes, and costume jewelry she knew the other girls would want, Janey Jones thought about her Dad and his friends.
She remembered them, all of them, sitting in the shop around the corner from the house, Mom in the kitchen making fried chicken and biscuits and Janey, already impatient with the trappings of domestic life, not wanting to see how to make gravy, not wanting to wash dishes ever, not wanting to smell cooking grease or have flour on her hands, waiting for her mother to give her permission to run down to the shop and let her Dad know that dinner would be ready in half an hour.
Janey, pelting down the alley, white Keds tipped with dirt, the dress her mother had made her slashing at her knees and the white paint chipping off the sides of the houses and falling in the heat of the summer evening, running down to the shop where her Dad sat relaxing, waiting for his friends. They would all be there for poker after dinner and she wanted to see them, they always smiled at her and gave her soda pop and sometimes they asked her to run an errand for them: go to the liquor store and talk to Bobby there and bring back the pint he owes me, or get us some club crackers and a salami. Things like that.
Sighing and unbuttoning their vests so she could see the jewelry, the gold chains hanging on their necks and smell their aftershave mixing with the scent of their leather shoes, sometimes they even lifted their hands and asked Janey for advice on their cards, not because they thought she knew the answer but because for that sort of man asking a pretty girl was the same as making your own luck.
Before dinner nobody was there yet at the shop and it was just her Dad sitting with the ledger in front of him. When Janey came in he closed the book and shook his head like he was tired of all those numbers. Then he picked up his guitar and strummed the steel strings. It was a Lowden F- size acoustic with a cedar top and a mahogany and rosewood neck, a beautiful instrument, he’d won the money to buy it playing poker and from bets on football. In her memory he could play it just like Richard Thompson, making the strings go so fast that the air in the shop seemed to vibrate and the sound that came out of it was like twenty guitars, not just one.
Janey’s father was a bookmaker, that’s what he did, until one day when she was twelve years old with her red hair still in pigtails Mom cried in the kitchen and he didn’t come for dinner. Janey ran to the shop but he wasn’t there; there was no one there.
Janey tried to forget the way he’d been short-tempered with them all that week because he didn’t come home ever again, and that wasn’t the way she wanted to remember her father.
She wanted to remember him smiling at her and taking her chin in his hand and saying, “Hey, squirt, how about you run over to the store and get us a couple packs of cigarettes.” His friendswent somewhere else to play poker. The shop with its sashed windows and the paint peeling up from the glazing went too, because there was no reason to pay rent on it, and the guitar also passed into other hands and was gone forever, because then they needed money so they could live.
When she was finished packing, Janey Jones picked up the Hermés bag made of shiny white crocodile leather and took a look around the room that had been her life for ten years. Without her paintings on the wall and the clothes in the closet there wasn’t much to it. Her stuff was stacked on the bed. Janey humphed, knowing she might miss the girls sometimes, the late-night camaraderie, the horror stories, shrieking in laughter about some guy’s twisted dick, commiserating about the crushes the girls were always falling into and, immediately, out of.
Janey knew she was ready to move on.
Janey Jones walked into Tai Botman’s office and set the Birkin bag on Tai’s desk. The bag was stuffed with cash. Some of it fell out the top onto the desk. Tai, who was busy doing the month’s numbers, frowned at the interruption. Then he realized it was Janey, saw the cash, and changed his frown to a smile. Janey Jones was his best girl. None of the others could touch her. They came and went. Some of them started out like gangbusters, on hot streaks that would make Tai think he was maybe on to something, but they always fizzled out, got grumpy, started pleading sickness, found boyfriends to take care of them and lost interest in the business, or just went home to Kansas.
Janey’d been his best earner for over ten years. She wasn’t the prettiest, the narrowest, the most talented, or the nicest sex worker he’d ever met. She just brought them back, again and again, repeat customers like the day is long. Even Tai couldn’t really figure it out.
“This is it,” Janey said.
“What?” Tai replied.
“The last payment,” Janey said. Tai Botman clicked at his keyboard. Janey shifted in her chair.
She pointed at the Birkin and said, “Here’s the last five grand. You wanna give me a hard time for paying it off early, Tai? Charge me a fee?”
Tai steepled his hands. “The last payment? Payment for what?”
“My motorcycle,” Janey said.
Tai Botman shook his head in wonder. He said, “Ten years ago, we took a trip together to Las
Vegas. While we were there, we went to an auto auction. We went out and had that big steak dinner at the MGM Grand and then I wanted to go see the cars. That was how it started. At the auction you saw it. The motorcycle you’ve longed for ever since you were a teenager. Sleek,simple, black and chrome. It was up on a podium at the back. It was just cherry. You’ve always had good taste, Janey.”
“There ain’t nothing beats a ‘52 Vincent and a red headed girl,” Janey agreed.
“They never even rolled it out onto the auction floor,” Tai said. “You begged me to buy it for you. You said you’d pay it off in installments.”
“That’s right,” Janey Jones agreed. “It cost you sixty thousand dollars. I kept my part of the agreement. $1000 dollars a month, for one hundred and twenty months. That’s fifteen percent interest, you leech. You know that? Gimme the keys.”
“What then?” Tai said. “What are you going to do once I give you that bike?”
Janey had the four packed suitcases sitting on the bed in her room, which she’d had to rent from him for ten years too. Four suitcases plus seven dress bags plus ten hatboxes. Four crates of shoes. That was just the best ones. And the jewelry and the furs.
For ten years, she’d had to have an escort when she left her Mound House neighborhood, even to go to the store for tampons. She hadn’t been able to own a car or have a bank account. She wasn’t allowed to go to school, or to have a phone that Tai or one of the bouncers wouldn’t take from her and look over every night. She wasn’t allowed to use a computer that didn’t have all the good stuff locked off.
It wasn’t Janey’s fault if she’d turned Tai Botman’s business into a lucrative gig for herself. It wasn’t her fault if he hadn’t managed to skim off all her earnings, with the rent and the licensing and food and the medical and all the rest of it. It wasn’t her fault if she knew men who had more money than a small-town pimp on the edge of America’s Great Basin, that desolate sink for all that was wretched in humankind, would ever understand.
“Once I’ve got my bike I’m outta here,” Janey said. “I made a deal with myself, a long time ago.
Once I’ve got my Vincent you’ll never see me again.” She was aware as she said it that he wouldn’t like it, but her own feelings on the subject outweighed the smarter decision, which would have been to stay silent. Tai should know. He should know her. He should know how
Janey felt, and he should respect it. It was the new millennium, after all. Well into the new millennium.
“I want you to look at something,” Tai said. He slid the Birkin bag out of the way, spilling more twenties on the desk in the process, and turned his computer monitor around so that Janey could see. On the screen was her motorcycle. It was an online auction site. She couldn’t help but look at the price. The condition said FAIR. The starting auction price said $338,000.
“Now, I hold the paper on the Vincent,” Tai said. “It’s in the safe right over there.” He pointed athis wall safe. “I bought it without your help. And I realize that we talked a bit about how you could take it from me, but I always thought we were just sort of joking around, you know, because we liked each other.”
“What about my thousand bucks every month?” Janey asked. She’d known, of course. She’d known he’d pull this shit.
Tai said, “The value of that motorcycle can’t even be calculated. It’s in mint condition. It’s got 476 miles on the odometer. I change the fluids every sixth months. The brakes, the engine, they’re all pristine. The gas in the tank’s been taken care of, the carb, everything. The battery gets a trickle charge. It’s sitting on new rubber but I even have the original tires in storage. It’s hot, baby, a thousand cc’s of two-stroke, V-Twin glory. Rollie Free used the ‘48 prototype to set a land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats just 400 miles in that direction,” Tai Botman gestured east. “They maybe made thirty of the ‘52’s, and there’s only 19 left that anyone knows about. This is one of ‘em. Maybe the prettiest one. There’s no way I’m giving you that bike for $120,000. That’s ludicrous. I don’t care if your Dad loved the song. I don’t care if he sang it to you when you were a girl. The bike is priceless, Janey.”
Tai stood up. He went to his safe, spun the dial, and opened the door. He took out bundles of hundreds. One hundred bills to the bundle, ten thousand dollars in each one of them, held with its fat strip of glue paper. One, two, he set them in front of Janey, three four. Until there were twelve of them. Then he set down two more. “Interest,” Tai said. “For holding your money. Like a bank. I can even continue to keep it for you, if you want. It’s probably safer than putting it under your mattress, but you do what you want.”
“On that note, Janey,” Tai said, “how are you ever going to get all that stuff you’ve got stacked on your bed out of the Broken Pony?”
“I need to go out,” Janey said. “Will you please call me an escort?”
“Sure thing,” Tai said with a smile.
• • •
“There’s a guy over there wants everyone to smell him,” the bartender hissed at Two-Cents. It was Friday night, and Two-Cents and Stacy had invited their next-door neighbor to go for a beer at the Corner Bar. Now he, Stacy, and Tim Whiting sat huddled in a threesome on stools, alternatively watching the rare bubble rise to the surface of their beers and the bottles in the back bar mirror. “Says a girl peed on him over at the Broken Pony.
“What’s the Broken Pony?” Two-Cents asked.
Stacy kicked him in the ankle from her stool, making him wince his pimple covered cheeks. Shemused how most of the time she couldn’t get Two-Cents to say a word, and when he did talk it was to say something stupid. “What’d you do that for?” Two-Cents demanded.
“You know why,” Stacy said, taking a demure sip from her beer, examining her strappy red platforms for any scuff marks, then returning them to the railing beneath the bar. The shoes were new and she loved them. She had glitter nail polish on her toes.
“You think that really happened?” Two-Cents asked.
“He sure smells like something happened.” The bartender made a face, nodding in the direction
of the customer in question, who was nursing a bourbon at the far end of the bar. “It is not pleasant.”
The door to the Corner Bar blew open and Janey Jones came flying through it. As the door slammed shut behind her, Two-Cents’ pock-marked face turned bright red and he buried his nose in his beer, refusing to look up from the bar-top. Stacy eyed the newcomer with interest. The Corner Bar, which rarely had two females in it at the same time, seemed to grow warmer.
Janey wore acid-washed blue jeans with holes in them and a black shirt covered with rhinestone sparkles.
“I like your blouse,” Stacy told the stranger. Janey’s long red hair shone in the light.
Two-Cents pondered the luck that would have his wife and his moll sitting next to one another at the bar and wondered if he should feign illness, or at least run to the bathroom and do a quick bump.
A troll-faced man lumbered in behind Janey. He sat down beside her and somehow disappeared.
He didn’t actually disappear, it was just that with the sparks flying off Janey they all forgot about him.
Stacy watched, fascinated. Two-Cents, overcome with shame and the need for something to lift his spirits, nudged Tim’s shoulder. The two of them crept off to the bathroom like girls.
“Give me a shot of Patron,” Janey ordered the bartender.
Without taking his eyes off her, the bartender reached for the back bar and brought the bottle forward. He reached below the bar and set a shot glass in front of Janey. He could tell without looking that there wasn’t enough tequila in the bottle.
“You want me to chill it for you?” the bartender asked.
“I don’t care,” Janey snapped. “Do whatever it is you do.”The bartender shrugged, squeezed the last drops of tequila into a tin, added some ice, and started stirring. Frost crept up the metal sides of the tin. He covered it, strained the clear liquid into the glass, hoped against hope it would be enough, saw that it wasn’t.
“I’ll have to go back to get another bottle,” he said.
“Just give it to me,” Janey said.
“It’s not enough,” the bartender protested.
Janey stared daggers at him. “Just give it to me like that, you putz. I’m not paying for it, he is. And don’t you ever argue with me again.”
She drained the tequila without changing her expression and turned to her escort. “Pay the man,” she said, which he did before fading into the background again, like lumpy elevator music.
Stacy couldn’t take her eyes off Janey. “Are you a—” she began. “I used to work at the Broken Pony,” Janey said. She turned on her escort. “Go wait in the car,” she ordered. He didn’t move, just shimmered back into substance on his stool.
“What, you think I’m going to split out the back door? Go wait in the car.”
Driving wind blew into the Corner Bar as Janey’s escort opened the door and made himself scarce.
“That’s a bitter, bitter woman,” the bartender said to no one in particular.
Two-Cents and Tim Whiting came back from the bathroom, sniffling like they’d had a good cry together. They turned up their noses when they passed the lonely peed-on man at the other end of the bar and hurried back over to where Stacy and Janey sat.
“Hi, Two-Cents,” Janey said.
“You two know one another?” Stacy queried. Two-Cents turned red again.
Tim Whiting thought of an incident he’d seen with Stacy and her husband Two-Cents. He’d been in his living room, slouched on the couch, a can of beer in one hand and the remote in the other, nothing important on the television set. There’d probably been drool hanging from his lip or pillow lines on his cheek. It was around five o’clock, summertime, quitting time for people who still had to go to work.Two-Cents pulled into the driveway and sat like he usually did, a shadow behind the tinted windows, working on some business deal or other, checking over his accounts, or contacting his dealer, or whatever it was he did in there. For some reason, Tim stood up and went over to stand behind the curtains and look over at his neighbors’ drive across the street.
Unbeknownst to Two-Cents, bent over his phone in the driver’s seat, Stacy came out the front door into the driveway and crept like a ninja along the side of the truck. As Tim watched, she ducked down to pass the driver’s side window and crept towards the back corner of the truck, where she paused, lying in wait like a mongoose.
When Two-Cents opened the door and stepped out, distracted, she bunny-hopped towards him from behind and reached up to put both her hands over his eyes. At first Two-Cents straightened in surprise, perhaps even anger or fear that he was about to be robbed, but then he realized it was his wife. He turned and wrapped his arms around her, and then the two of them went into the house together, smiling.
Now Stacy turned on Two-Cents. She had rage in her eyes. “Is this the girl you’ve been stepping out to see?” she demanded. “Don’t bother lying to me, Two-Cents. I know it is.”
Two-Cents set his head on his hands on the bar. He glanced at his beer.
“You know, you’re really a piece of work,” Stacy said. “Does the word ‘husband’ mean anything to you?”
Two-Cents didn’t say anything. What was he going to say?
“Do you remember when we took our vows? In the church? In the church, Two-Cents. Your mother was there. You know, it’s not just me you’ve got to please, it’s the man upstairs. He’s judging you too, since it doesn’t seem like you have any ability to judge yourself. Or restrain yourself. How much of our money have you given this woman?”
Embarrassed, Tim Whiting turned to his other side, where Janey Jones sat on her stool, out of arm’s reach of the jilted woman. No one had better say Janey didn’t earn her money. And no one had better say if you took better care of him at home. If anyone on either side of Tim said either one of those two things he knew it would start the whole bar on fire, with him sitting right there in the middle.
Stacy’s anger was reserved for her husband. “You know, it’s bad enough that you’re nothing but a low-life drug dealer, but on top of that you’re not even a faithful low-life drug dealer.” She pulled Two-Cents away, over to the dark end of the Corner Bar, leaving Janey and Tim alone on their stools.
When Tim said, “Love is so complicated” to himself, Janey overheard him.“Love?” she demanded from her stool. “What’s that? I just need someone to help me get back my motorcycle.”
Tim perked up. The cocaine buzzed around in his brain. Tim liked motorcycles. “What kind of bike?” he said. “Where is it? I’ll get it for you.”
Janey appraised him with slitted eyes. “You ever been to the Broken Pony?”
“Nope,” Tim said, not sure if he should be embarrassed about the admission. It was one thing to talk about the whorehouses with guys like Two-Cents. It was another to talk about them with someone who worked there.
“Hmm,” Janey mused. “That’s good. Tai knows everyone who’s ever been to the Broken Pony, and he’s got cameras everywhere. If he recognized you there’d be no way. But if you’ve never been there . . .” she trailed off, thinking.
“I’ve never been there,” Tim repeated. “And who’s Tai?”
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Janey said, and explained it to him.
“Are you sure he’ll come back out?” Tim Whiting asked.
They both looked to the dark end of the bar, where Stacy continued to berate her husband.
“Oh, he’ll come back out,” Janey said. “He always comes when I call. They all come when I call.”
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