Right as Rain (4 page)

He walked along the fence bordering the old Canada Dry bottling plant, turned, stood with his hands buried in his jeans, and watched as a Red Line train approached from the city. His long sight was beginning to go on him, and the lights along Georgia Avenue were blurred, white stars broken by the odd red and green.

He looked across the tracks at the ticket office as the passing train raised wind and dust. He closed his eyes.

He thought of his favorite western movie,
Once Upon a Time in the West.
Three gunmen are waiting on the platform of an empty train station as the opening credits roll. It’s a long sequence, made more excruciating by the real—time approach of a train and a sound design nearly comic in its exaggeration. Eventually the train arrives. A character named Harmonica steps off of it and stands before the men who have come to kill him. Their shadows are elongated by the dropping sun. Harmonica and the men have a brief and pointed conversation. The ensuing violent act is swift and final.

Standing there at night, on the platform of the train station in Silver Spring, he often felt like he was waiting for that train. In many ways, he felt he’d been waiting all his life.

After a while he went back the way he had come and headed for Rosita’s. He was ready for a beer, and also to talk to Juana. He had been curious about her for some time.

J
UANA
Burkett was standing at the service end of the bar, waiting on a marg—rocks—no—salt from Enrique, the tender, when the white man in the black leather jacket came through the door. She watched him walk across the dining room, navigating the tables, a man of medium height with a flat stomach and wavy brown hair nearly touching his shoulders. His face was clean shaven, with only a shadow of beard, and there was a natural swagger to his walk.

He seated himself at the short, straight bar and did not look at her at first, though she knew that she was the reason he was here. She had met him briefly at his place of employment, a used book and vinyl store on Bonifant, where she had been looking for a copy of
Home Is the Sailor,
and Raphael had told her that he had been asking for her since and that he would be stopping by. On the day that she’d met him she felt she’d seen him before, and the feeling passed through her again. Now he looked around the restaurant, trying to appear casually interested in the decor, and finally his eyes lit on her, where they had been headed all the time, and he lifted his chin and gave her an easy and pleasant smile.

Enrique placed the margarita on her drink tray, and she dressed it with a lime wheel and a swizzle stick and walked it to her four—top by the front window. She served the marg and the dark beers on her tray and took the food orders from the two couples seated at the table, glancing over toward the bar one time as she wrote. Raphael was standing beside the man in the black leather jacket and the two of them were shaking hands.

Juana went back to the area of the service bar and placed the ticket faceup on the ledge of a reach—through, where the hand of the kitchen’s expeditor took the ticket and impaled it on a wheel. She heard Raphael call her name and she walked around the bar to where he stood and the man sat, his ringless hand touching a cold bottle of Dos Equis beer.

“You remember this guy?” said Raphael.

“Sure,” she said, and then Raphael moved away, just left her there like that, went to a deuce along the wall to greet its two occupants. She’d have to remind Raphael of his manners the next time she got him alone.

“So,” the man said in a slow, gravelly way. “Did you find your Jorge Amado?”

“I did find it. Thank you, yes.”

“We got
Tereza Batista
in last week. It’s in that paper series Avon put out a few years back —”

“I’ve read it,” she said, too abruptly. She was nervous, and showing it; it wasn’t like her to react this way in front of a man. She looked over her shoulder. She had only the one table left for the evening, and her diners seemed satisfied, nursing their drinks. She cleared her throat and said, “Listen —”

“It’s okay,” he said, swiveling on his stool to face her. He had a wide mouth parenthesized by lines going down to a strong chin. His eyes were green and they were direct and damaged, and somehow needy, and the eyes completed it for her, and scared her a little bit, too.

“What’s
okay?” she said.

“You don’t have to stand here if you don’t want to. You can go back to work if you’d like.”

“No, that’s all right. I mean, I’m fine. It’s just that —”

“Juana, right?” He leaned forward and cocked his head.

He was moving very quickly, and it crossed her mind that what she had taken for confidence in his walk might have been conceit.

“I don’t remember telling you my name the day we met.”

“Raphael told me.”

“And now you’re going to tell me you like the way it sounds. That my name sings, right?”

“It
does
sing. But that’s not what I was going to say.”

“What, then?”

“I was going to ask if you like oysters.”

“Yes. I like them.”

“Would you like to have some with me down at Crisfield’s, after you get off?”

“Just like that? I don’t even know —”

“Look here.” He put his right hand up, palm out. “I’ve been thinking about you on and off since that day you walked into the bookstore. I’ve been thinking about you
all
day today. Now, I believe in being to the point, so let me ask you again: Would … you … like … to step
out
with me, after your shift, and have a bite to eat?”

“Juana!” said the expeditor, his head in the reach—through. “Is up!”

“Excuse me,” she said.

She went to the ledge of the reach—through and retrieved a small bowl of chili
con queso,
filled a red plastic basket with chips, and served the four—top its appetizer. As she was placing the
queso
and chips on the table, she looked back at the bar, instantly sorry that she had. The man was smiling at her full on. She tossed her long hair off her shoulder self—consciously and was sorry she had done that, too. She walked quickly back to the bar.

“You’re sure of yourself, eh?” she said when she reached him, surprised to feel her arms folded across her chest.

“I’m confident, if that’s what you mean.”

“Overconfident, maybe.”

He shrugged. “You like what you see, otherwise you wouldn’t have stood here as long as you did. And you sure wouldn’t have come back. I like what
I
see. That’s what I’m
doing
here. And listen, Raphael can vouch for me. It’s not like we’re going to walk out of here and I’m gonna grow fangs. So why don’t we try it out?”

“You must be drunk,” she said, nodding at the beer bottle in his hand.

“On wine and love.” He saw her perplexed face and said, “It’s a line from a western.”

“Okay.”

He shot a look at her crossed arms. “You’re gonna wrinkle your uniform, you keep hugging it like that.”

She unfolded her arms slowly and dropped them to her side. She began to smile, tried to stop it, and felt a twitch at the edge of her lip.

“It’s not a uniform,” she said, her voice softening, losing its edge. “It’s just an old cotton shirt.”

They studied each other for a while, not speaking, as the recorded mariachi music danced through the dining room and bar.

“What I was trying to tell you,” she said, “before you interrupted me … is that I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Terry Quinn,” he said.

“Tuh—ree Quinn,” she said, trying it out.

“Irish Catholic,” he said, “if you’re keeping score.”

And Juana said, “It sings.”

Chapter
4

W
here’s your car?” asked juana.

“You better drive tonight,” said Quinn.

“I’m in the lot. We should cut through here.”

They went through the break in the buildings between Rosita’s and the pawnshop. They neared Fred Folsom’s sculpted bronze bust of Norman Lane, “the Mayor of Silver Spring,” mounted in the center of the breezeway Quinn patted the top of Lane’s capped head without thought as they walked by.

“You always do that?” said Juana.

“Yeah,” said Quinn, “for luck. Some of the guys in the garages back here, they sort of adopted him, looked out for him when he was still alive. See?” He pointed to a sign mounted over a bay door in the alley, a caricature drawing of Lane with the saying “Don’t Worry About It” written on a button pinned to his chest, as they entered an alley. “They call this Mayor’s Lane now.”

“You knew him?”

“I knew who he was. I bought him a drink once over at Captain White’s. Another place that isn’t around anymore. He was just a drunk. But I guess what they’re trying to say with all this back here, with everything he was, he was still a man.”

“God, it’s cold.” Juana held the lapels of her coat together and close to her chest and looked over at Quinn. “I’ve seen you before, you know? And not at the bookstore, either. Before that, but I know we never met.”

“I was in the news last year. On the television and in the papers, too.”

“Maybe that’s it.”

“It probably is.”

“There’s my car.”

“That old Beetle?”

“What, it’s not good enough for you?”

“No, I like it.”

“What do you drive?”

“I’m between cars right now.”

“Is that like being between jobs?”

“Just like it.”

“You asked me out and you don’t have a car?”

“So it’s your nickel for the gas.” Quinn zipped his jacket. “I’ll get the oysters and the beers.”

THEY
were at the bar of Crisfield’s, the old Crisfield’s on the dip at Georgia, not the designer Crisfield’s on Colesville, and they were eating oysters and sides of coleslaw and washing it all down with Heineken beer. Quinn had juiced the cocktail sauce with horseradish and he noticed that Juana had added Tabasco to the mix.

“Mmm,” said Juana, swallowing a mouthful, reaching into the cracker bowl for a chaser.

“A dozen raw and a plate of slaw,” said Quinn. “Nothin’ better. These are good, right?”

“They’re good.”

All the stools at the U—shaped bar were occupied, and the dining room to the right was filled. The atmosphere was no atmosphere: white tile walls with photographs of local celebrities framed and mounted above the tiles, wood tables topped with paper place mats, grocery storeought salad dressing displayed on a bracketed shelf… and still the place was packed nearly every night, despite the fact that management was giving nothing away. Crisfield’s was a D.C. landmark, where generations of Washingtonians had met and shared food and conversation for years.

“Make any money tonight?” said Quinn.

“By the time I tipped out the bartender … not real money, no. I walked with forty—five.”

“You keep having forty—five—dollar nights, you’re not going to be able to make it through school.”

“My student loans are putting me through school. I wait tables just to live. Raphael tell you I was going to law school?”

“He told me everything he knew about you. Don’t worry, it wasn’t much. Pass me that Tabasco, will you?”

He touched her hand as she handed him the bottle. Her hand was warm, and he liked the way her fingers were tapered, feminine and strong.

“Thanks.”

A couple of black guys seated on the opposite end of the U, early thirties, if Quinn had to guess, were staring freely at him and Juana. Plenty of heads had turned when they’d entered the restaurant, some he figured just to get a look at Juana. Most of the people had only looked over briefly, but these two couldn’t give it up. Well, fuck it, he thought. If this was going to keep working in any kind of way — and he was getting the feeling already that he wanted it to — then he’d just have to shake off those kinds of stares. Still, he didn’t like it, how these two were so bold.

“That’s not fair,” said Juana.

“
What
isn’t?”

“You been asking about me and you know some things, and I don’t know a damn thing about you.”

You
been.
He liked the way she said that.

“That accent of yours,” he said.

“What accent?”

“Your voice falls and rises, like music. What is that, Brooklyn?”

“The Bronx.” She shook an oyster off her fork and let it sit in the cocktail sauce. “What’s yours? The Carolinas, something like that?”

“Maryland, D.C.”

“You sound plenty Southern to me. With that drawl and everything.”

“This
is
the South. It’s south of the Mason—Dixon Line, anyway.”

He turned to face her. Her hair was black, curly, and very long, and it broke on thin shoulders and rose again at the upcurve of her smallish breasts. She had a nice ass on her, too; he had checked it out back at the restaurant when she’d bent over to serve her drinks. It was round and high, the way he liked it, and the sight of it had taken his breath short, which had not happened to him in a long while. Her eyes were near black, many shades deeper than her brown skin, and her lips were full and painted in a dark color with an even darker outline. There was a mole on her cheek, above and to the right of her upper lip.

He was staring at her now and she was staring at him, and then her lips turned up on one side, a kind of half smile that she attempted to hold down. It was the same thing she had done back at Rosita’s with her mouth, and Quinn chuckled under his breath.

“What?”

“Ah, nothin’. It’s just, that thing you got going on, your
almost
smile. I just like it, is all.”

Juana retrieved her oyster from the cocktail sauce, chewed and swallowed it, and had a swig of cold beer.

“How do you know Raphael?” she said.

“He came in the shop one day, looking for Stanley Clarke’s
School Days
on vinyl. Raphael likes that jazz—funk sound, the semi—orchestral stuff from the seventies. Dexter Wansel, George Duke, like that. Lonnie Liston Smith. I knew zilch about it, and he was happy to give me an education. I call him when we buy those old records from time to time.”

“You always worked in a bookstore?”