Tom Waits Tribute
It was 7:30 p.m. The evening stumbled home with its tie undone and the moon’s teeth marks were on the sky. I was shivering as I ambled down the desolate street. It was colder than a well digger’s ass.
A thin and tattered bum hollered religious rhetoric on the corner as I passed.
“Just see if you can come up with a figure that matches your faith!” he bellowed at me. I dug into my pocket and tossed him a few coins.
“You can tell me that it’s gospel, but I know it’s only church,” I said.
“Ha! Jesus blood never failed me yet,” he replied, indignant, and then, under his breath, “We got to keep the devil way down in the hole.” He threw the coins into his overturned baseball cap lying on the pavement.
“Hey bud,” I said. “You know there ain’t no devil, there’s just God when he’s drunk.”
He stared at me, mortified, and then looked up, as if expecting thunderbolts.
“Well, my Jesus gonna be here soon!” he muttered, eyes darting.
Just then the wind swept in, bringing a few spatters of chilly rain. I turned away, pulled my hands inside my coat sleeves, and continued down the street.
A few minutes later I came upon a dark huddle at the bus stop, umbrellas arranged in a sad bouquet. As I came closer I noticed all the damp commuters were averting their eyes away from a hooker leaned against a graffiti wall nearby. She had tangled hair, smeared make-up and thick ankles, but to me she looked hot and ready and creamy and sugared. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I figured there was nothing wrong with her that a hundred dollars won’t fix. But then again, I’m so horny the crack of dawn better be careful ’round me.
She wasn’t alone. A greasy looking fellow wearing a long dark coat and colourful shoes was angrily waving his hand in her face. With his other hand he obsessively fingered the keys to an old Cadillac parked beside them, exhaust billowing from its tailpipe. She was rolling her eyes. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
I suddenly remembered something my great aunt always used to tell me as a child.
“Never trust a man in a blue trench coat and never drive a car when you’re dead, son,” she had warned, tottering maniacally in her rocking chair and sucking an unlit pipe. Crazy old bat.
By this time the rain had passed and the yellow biscuit of a buttery cue ball moon was making an encore appearance. But I was still freezin’ on the restless boulevard so I tore my eyes from the mysterious plight of this alluring prostitute and looked around for shelter. A neon sign, crookedly hung on the door of a nearby diner, blinked a half-hearted welcome.
Once inside, I quickly realized the joint had the kind of atmosphere you only find at bars that offer warm beer and cold women. It was the kind of place that might as well serve up its barely edible food with a sign that reads: Hello sucker. We like your money! But I wasn’t about to turn back now so I grabbed a seat. I had decided this was my night for rolling over to the low side of the road.
The sparse menu offered the standard greasy spoon fare and the top of each flimsy page read: Beware! The large print giveth and the small print taketh away! I chuckled, scanned the options, and finally decided on eggs and sausage and a side of toast. Yeah I know that’s breakfast food but I had a hankering.
While I waited for my meal, I noticed an old double-knit character wearing Purina checkerboard pants eyeing me from his perch in the opposite booth. I gave him a friendly nod.
“On my gravestone I want it to say: I told you I was sick,” he said.
“Are you sick?” I asked.
“No, but I will be before I die. My kids don’t pay attention. They’ll just let me rot.”
“Hmm,” I murmured, not really knowing what to say. Thank god my food had finally arrived. I turned my attention to shoveling runny eggs down my gullet.
He didn’t take the hint.
“You know, I have this neighbour who does all kinda crazy things in his garage,” he said, sliding over into my booth. “I mean, what the hell is he building in there? All this strange clinking and clanking and weird noises all hours of the night. I just don’t understand some people.”
I nodded, slurped back the weak coffee.
“This one time, I was out in my yard, and I took a quick peek over the fence,” he leaned in for emphasis. “Wanna know what I saw?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Well, this guy was dancing around in the buff with his scraggly mutt of a dog yipping at his feet!”
“Uh huh.”
“I mean, I was naked to the waist with my fierce black hound, too,” he admitted. “And it sure ain’t no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones, but this guy was jiggling all over. I mean, it was obscene.” He snorted and leaned back, crossing thick arms over his chest.
“So you wanna know what I did?”
“What.”
“I grabbed my shotgun, stuck it through a knothole in the fence and fired!”
I choked on a piece of sausage.
“I was tryin’ to kill him but I got the mutt instead,” he was grinning like a lunatic. “Never could stand that dog.”
I lowered my eyes and kept on eating. Wow, this guy was crazy.
“Well,” he said, pounding the table with his fist, “don’t you have anything to say?”
“Um, sure,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “I’ll tell you all my secrets, but I lie about my past.”
Hrmph,” he stood up. “You know, I always say that it’ll be champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends, and let me tell ya buddy, you sure as hell ain’t no real friend!” He slammed the table one more time and retreated to his own booth, glowering.
Suddenly the diner door burst open, hurtling the neon sign to the floor and revealing greasy trench coat man and his still-very-seductive hooker. Just the sight of her made me harder than Chinese algebra.
“Komme nie zu spat!” he shouted. The spattering of patrons turned for a moment and then quickly looked away. “Sei punkt lich! For Christ’s sake, where the hell are you?” he had a thick German accent and a pulsing temple vein. The hooker looked bored.
I scanned the room, bewildered. Who was he yelling at?
“What are you screamin’ at me for? You’re the one who’s late,” my double-knit sham-friend emerged from his booth and motioned for the two to join him. “What the hell did you bring her for?”
“I got plans for her later,” Trench Coat barked, yanking her arm.
“Well I don’t want her listenin’ in on our business,” Double Knit snarled. “Tell her to go sit with that loser over there. He don’t talk much. Shouldn’t be no problem for you.”
Trench Coat looked wary, but agreed. She shrugged, slid into my booth and pulled out a cigarette.
This was my chance. I offered her a light, leaned across the table, stared straight into her mascara-ringed eyes and whispered, “You know what I’d like?”
“I could take a pretty good guess,” she said, an edge to her voice. She was so certain she’d heard it all before.
“Many years from now when I’m old and gray, I’d like to sit contentedly on some rickety porch somewhere and remember quiet evenings trembling close to you.”
She didn’t say anything. Just looked back at me, blew smoke sideways out her mouth.
“I can see you’re lonesome just like me,” I said.
She blinked, took another drag on her cigarette.
“I got two kids,” she said, finally. “They’re so creative. You know, the way they just draw off the page and onto the wall? I wish I could be that open.” She stared at me, waiting.
“I’d like to see their drawings,” I said.
She snorted. “Right, I bet you would. I suppose you’re the kind of guy who’s got all kinds of aspirations too.”
“Well I used to have aspirations, but I got rid of them. A little penicillin and that was it. Killed those fuckers dead,” I said.
She laughed and stubbed out her cigarette on my plate.
“Look,” I said. “I just wanna leave this place better than the way I found that it was, don’t you?” I watched her carefully. She averted her eyes. I could see that I'd pushed a button.
We sat in silence for a while. Double Knit and Trench Coat were still yammering in the other booth. They paid no attention to us. A sad song about a woman named Martha played on the radio.
“Every time I hear that melody something breaks inside,” she murmured. Her eyes welled up. I handed her my napkin.
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I said. “There’s gotta be some place that’s better than this. We could leave together right now.”
She shook her head. “There’s no way he’d let me just go away with you. Are you crazy? What do you think this is? Some kind of cheesy Hollywood movie? He’d kill us both.”
She leaned back, closed her eyes and sighed. “This life I’m leadin’ is drivin’ me insane. Every town I go to is like a lock without a key.”
She seemed so desperate, but I was so close. No way I was gonna give up now.
“We all do crazy things when we’re wounded and everyone’s a little bit insane,” I said. “I know misery’s the river of the world. But listen, I have an idea.”
“Whatever it is, it won’t work,” she took out another cigarette. “I just need to sleep off all this craziness that’s inside of my brain.”
“Just hear me out,” I motioned her to lean in close. She eyed me warily. I kept her gaze.
Jesus, she was beautiful. From the nape of her neck to her lipstick lips.
Finally she leaned over. I could see her cleavage. I whispered my plan in her ear. She arched a penciled brow and leaned back. Several minutes passed before she said anything.
“Well, what the hell, it just might work,” she muttered, finally. “What have I got to lose? You seem like a nice enough fella. Can’t possibly be worse than him.”
“Yeah well, don’t listen to all those rumors about me, ‘cause I ain’t half as bad as they make me out to be,” I grinned. She laughed and stood up, nervously tapping her cigarette ash onto the cracked linoleum floor. Finally she sauntered nonchalantly over to the other booth.
“We’re not done here,” Double Knit growled. “What the hell do you want?”
“Figure I can make fifty bucks off this guy while you guys are talkin’,” she said. “Just gimme your car keys for a sec. I’ll do ’im in the back seat.”
“Fine, whatever,” Trench Coat tossed her the keys. “Don’t take too long. We’ll be finishing up in about ten minutes. Make sure he pays you up front.”
“Fine.”
She turned towards the door without looking at me so I tossed a couple of fivers onto the table to cover the bill and followed her outside. All trace of rain was gone and the moon was a silver slipper pouring champagne stars. The Cadillac was parked in the same place. I got behind the wheel and waited for her to get settled. She got in, put her knees up on the glove compartment and took out her barrettes. Her hair spilled out like root beer.
“I think that I just fell in love with you,” I said.
She laughed. “No you didn’t.”
“How do you know?” I watched her thighs glow in the moonlight.
She looked away and said, “Down through the ages all of the sages said don’t spend your wages on love. I think that’s good advice, don’t you?”
“I think the only kind of love is stone blind love, and that’s the way I like it,” I said.
She looked at me. “You sure are strange.”
“Yeah well, I like being puzzled and coming to my own incorrect conclusions,” I chuckled. “Now which direction?”
“Anywhere you point this thing, it’s gonna beat the hell out of the sting of going to bed with every dream that dies here every mornin’,” she said and rolled down the window to dangle her arm outside. "Every dream I ever had died slow."
“Don’t worry, baby,” I said. “All the greatest songwriters say you’re innocent when you dream.”
She smiled. “Well thanks, but let’s just get the hell outta here, OK? He’ll be coming out to look for us any minute.”
“Don’t we have to pick up your kids?”
“Nah, they live with my mom. I don’t see ’em much.”
I turned the key and the engine came to life with an earthquake rumble. I backed out of the ally and pulled onto the street.
Just then Trench Coat burst out of the diner with Double Knit close behind. The thundering engine must have roused them.
“What the fuck?” Trench Coat bellowed. I could see Double Knit shaking his fist in my rearview mirror. He was shouting, “Real pain for you, fucker, real pain.”
“Let’s go to your place,” she said. “They won’t find us there.”
My apartment was small and untidy. She kicked off her shoes and headed to the kitchen.
“You got anything to drink?”
“Just a splash of brandy. Look in the cupboard.”
She reappeared with two topped up glasses. “You ain’t no alcoholic are ya?”
“Nah, I don’t have a drinking problem, ’cept when I can’t get a drink.”
“Such a joker,” she smirked. “Let’s go to bed.”
“OK, but I gotta warn ya. There’s a lone gust of wind in the bedroom,” I said. “Hasn’t been a woman in there in years.”
“Well it’s time we changed that,” she touched my face and gave me a sweet sultry kiss so soft it was barely there.
Well, the dawn cracked hard just like a bullwhip and I woke up alone with a splitting headache. No note, no sweet good-byes. Just one strand of hair on my pillow to remember her by. She took my wallet and my radio. Left the door unlocked behind her. Rode the Cadillac off into her own lonely sunset. She must have put something in that brandy.
I got up and wandered outside. It was raining, and colder than a ticket-taker’s smile. Other people, you know, they take apart their nightmares and they leave them at the door. But not me, man. Not me.
I know the rain washes memories from the sidewalks, but I wanted to keep mine close. I'd already lost my equilibrium and my car keys and my pride.
The tattoo parlor looked warm, so I hustled there inside.
And with the grindin’ of the buzz-saw, he said, “What you want this thing to say?”
And I said, “Just don’t misspell her name, buddy, she’s the one that got away.”