Whiskey Sour Noir (The Hard Stuff) (2 page)

Avery suckled his juice and said like it was nothing, “Just got out of prison. Five years on a child porn charge. Didn’t do it. I was set up.” He looked right at me. His eyes were clear blue-gray, like the sea on a stormy day. “I’m not into the kiddies. I like grown-up women.” My stomach lurched. I held my breath. “I was a geography teacher at Coconut Palms High School,” he said, as if that documented his purity.

I was on my second shot, my last one. I wouldn’t have had that one, but when Avery brought it over it felt too rude to turn down. Peter chugged his and kind of dozed off with his eyes open. Like he’d heard it all before.

“Lost my job, of course. They came and got me at home. Six in the morning on a Monday, perfectly timed so that my neighbors could watch me get hauled out of the house in my altogether and tossed ass-end up into the back of a black-and-white.”

He shook his head and his bangs landed all fluffy like on his high forehead. His hair looked softer than an egret’s feathers and shiny clean.

“My wife gave me all of five minutes to try to explain myself, then she wrote me off like a dirty check. Moved back to western Mass. Now she’s in love with an old friend of ours. A woman.”

He shook his head again. Life had kicked the cat around all right. My right hand was itching to reach over and smooth his fur.

“Any kids?” I asked. My voice shook a little, like it does whenever I want somebody so bad I’m reverting to a teenager. I’m twenty-three and this kind of crap still happens to me. It’s embarrassing. I blush, too, when I’m hot for a guy. They think it’s cute, thank God, because I can’t control it. Like a lot of things my body does without my permission.

I slurped my beer, trying to cool off my hurtling blood.

“No kids. We were in the trying stages. While I was inside, she adopted a baby girl from China. With her girlfriend. Hurtful shit, man.”

He had one of those jutting jaws you see on mannequins and matinee idols, super hot male models. He lifted his bristly, perfectly shadowed chin and said, “I’m living up the street now. My first week in town. I walked in here on Friday, hoping like hell for a break. And they gave me one.”

I nodded. Chet Riley, the bar owner, had a problem with beating up women. Violently abusing his intimate partners, as we say in the business. But other than that, he was a mushy-hearted old pig who gave a lot of down-and-outers the chance to earn a paycheck.

“You got the job and now you just have to prove you deserve to keep it,” I said.

Peter woke up and giggled. “Chet goes through bartenders like this little lady here goes through fuck-buddies.”

I punched his arm and he laughed until he coughed. He was right on both counts.

I said to Cat Avery, “You got to be real reliable. Chet doesn’t kid around with his business. This is one of three bars he owns with his partner. From what I hear, Chet’s partner is the kind of guy you don’t want to ever have to meet.”

For some drunken reason, Peter giggled again. Ignoring him, I said, “If you steal from Chet, you’re out. If you drink his inventory, you’re fired. If you show up late, that’s it for you. Most of the bartenders willing to work here are not the type to adhere to those rules.”

“I know rules and those are nothing compared to what I’ve got on me now. My P.O. is a goddam stickler.” Avery gave the high sign to somebody behind us then went on. “For the next fifteen years, I’m on probation. That means I report in to my parole officer on a goddam regular basis. I’m restricted where I go, who I see, what I do. I’m monitored and drug tested, even though I don’t drink, don’t smoke or do any kind of mind-altering substances. I love consensual sex with my fellow adults, but I haven’t been with a woman in more than five years. And the registry rules don’t make it easy for me to rectify that. No nights out, home with the tracker on between ten and six. What woman wants to go home with a sex offender, anyway?”

Plenty of women,
is what I thought to myself.
Because I work with these women every day
. They sleep with their abusers, they make a life with the very men who threaten them with a loaded pistol, a serrated bread knife, two thick hands around the throat. What’s a little peek at a photo of a naked kid compared to that?

I myself, knowing better but not prone to doing it, was dying to go home with Cat Avery. Even if he was bitter, beaten down, and right out of the federal prison on the southwest tip of the Everglades.

Peter filled me in after Avery left to wait on a pair of wobbly townies a few seats down. “Mandatory minimum even though there was a lack of corroborating evidence. I had Joyce look it up.” Joyce was Peter’s daughter from his first marriage, and she worked as a criminal defense lawyer up in Jacksonville. “He did his time, but maintained his innocence. Like they all do.”

Whatever. As long as he didn’t prefer little kids, I’d surely take him on. At least for a night or two or three. I liked my men desperate and backed-up horny. I wasn’t a mercy fucker exactly, but I’d been known to take on some pretty hard cases. My after-hours caseload didn’t exclude ex-cons or the so-so labeled. I had needs and so did the men I was fated to attract. I wasn’t proud of that, still aren’t.

In a few minutes he came back with a second pitcher for us and another glass of juice for himself. “I know why Chet hired me all right.” Peter poured us both a frothy beer and we settled back to listen. Boy, that man could talk.

He got the job, Avery told us, because he’s big, has bulky jailhouse muscles, looks tough, and he isn’t afraid of drunks and no-goods. He’d sure seen worse where he’d been. He told us a few long-winded tales, complete with sharpened toothbrushes and rough-house soap-bar sex. Then he said, “I wasn’t harmed myself, but I saw too much of that kind of sickness. This place is paradise compared to where I was only a week past. The end of the Gulf Stream is less scary to me than the things I witnessed in the pen.”

“The Kettle’s a good bar,” Peter slurred. “You’ll make some good money and meet some fine folks.”

“Right. And this place is no loser, either. Chet does all right,” Cat Avery informed us. “I’ve been on for a few days now and I can see how the money piles up. The Kettle turns a good business, with the Center down the way open twenty-four seven and all the drunks over there falling off their wagons almost every day. Plus, there’s always the east Duskies looking to grab a dollar beer, college kids and office workers from Jax who decide to slum it. The Kettle isn’t exactly a hot spot, but they do okay here. They make the rent all right.”

We nodded. Peter and I spent considerable time and money at the Kettle. And there were plenty of people like us around.

Overhead, a toothy, too-slick weatherman spoke entirely too fast about the trifecta of greenhouse gasses, melting polar ice, and the missing Gulf Stream. He predicted a dire outlook for summer vacationers heading to the now cooling Mediterranean.

“Sing us something,” Peter said suddenly. Turning to me with a rosy snort, he said, “Cat Avery here’s a singer-songwriter. Along the lines of a Dylan or a Nora Jones.”

Avery and I laughed. Peter was funny when he had more than twelve drinks. Less and he was a depressive, a moody weeper, sorry for all his past sins.

For a while, Avery entertained us with stories about his attempts at song writing. He even sang us a few bars of some lyrical little piece he was working on. Something about rocking hard-times women, looking deep in their tired eyes. No kiddie lyrics or bubble gum rhymes. He liked a mature love, if his song was any measure. He kind of sang into my own tired eyes. After, my wrists felt too weak to pick up my beer mug.

His voice wasn’t good, but it sure wasn’t bad. Good enough to get a certain kind of chick hot. He could work up a low-life girl nice and easy, I was sure of it. Especially with that rangy down-at-the-heels look the young actors try to achieve by not shaving much and tatting up their inner arms. His soulful eyes, sappy love songs, and the obvious way he went for women and got off on them, all that was in Avery’s favor. Despite the bad times, he was keeping it real, and that would make a lot of girls want him enough to overlook his sordid past.

I realized that first day how Avery was going to be catting around something fierce. If I wanted my turn, I had to step in front of the line formation. He said he chose Cat to honor Cat Stevens, an inspiration and someone who wasn’t using the name anymore. But I think his choice of nickname, stage name, whatever, might have been a subconscious one. Only Dog would have been a better fit. In my mind, Cat Avery was going to sleep with every appropriately aged pussycat in west Dusky Beach. And make them love it. Him. I knew the sex offender label wouldn’t hold him back on that score.

Besides, in this part of town, we all knew a few too many guys who got tagged S.O. for nothing. In the midst of a bad divorce with a scheming wife with control issues regarding custody rights, caught red-handed soliciting gay sex from undercovers. Or lured in by the wrong chick, one who looks ten years older than she turns out to be. It’s a dangerous world out there, boys, so be careful who you stick it to.

If I hadn’t been so star-struck on that first afternoon with Cat Avery, I might have told him about Doreen. My friend from high school, Doreen fell into a mess when she was sixteen by sleeping with her boyfriend after he turned eighteen. They’d already been together three years, but all along her parents didn’t like it. They were against normal sex because they were big on church and all that. So they hauled in Johnny Law. No court case, but that was it for those two lovers. Doreen was going to marry that guy, too. Now she works on Market Street in a cruddy convenience store and does every single drug you can name. Bath salts are on her short list, I’m pretty sure of it. I can’t hang with her anymore because she’s a negative influence and I have problems enough keeping myself out of trouble.

At one point, when Avery had finished singing and looked kind of embarrassed, he took a moment to ask me where I worked. When I said the DIC, he seemed surprised. “I’m a counselor there,” I explained, and he got a look. Like the cat that sees the birdseed pile has suddenly turned into a real-life canary.

I have a degree in criminal justice. Go figure, I had an interest. I got my job at the DIC after doing an internship my last semester at Beachside Community College. For like three months, I handed out clean but used clothes to people who needed them, freshly washed and wrongly sized, pre-owned stuff donated by do-gooders. I thought I’d embarrass folks, outfitting them in a skirt from the 1980s or a pair of beat shoes that needed to be stuffed with newspaper to stay on a pair of yellowed feet, but people were grateful. I pretended they were shopping and I was the helpful store clerk. “That looks good on you,” I’d say later on, in group or in a session or whatever. When you’re down, a kind word helps. I know this, so it comes natural. When Lulu offered me the full-time counseling position soon as I graduated, I snapped it up. Been at the DIC ever since.

In this economy, with a lot of kids hanging around after college, worrying about their killer student loans, I was one who got lucky. Plus, I liked it at the DIC. My life was maybe one step up from my clients, and that made me the grateful one.

But this story isn’t about me and my crapcake life. It’s about Cat Avery. He’s the one you want to hear about, believe me. That man is a gold medal example of what’s wrong with a lot of shit that goes down in our society today. I studied the law a little on my way to an associate’s degree, so I know. There’s things that are downside up with how we treat people accused of wrong-doing. Bad treatment can lead to bad results. But not always. Cat Avery illustrates the boomerang in this throwaway culture of ours almost perfectly.

Of course, that wasn’t what I was thinking the day I met him. What I was thinking then was how much I’d like his calloused hands all over my damp, naked skin.

Chapter Two

I didn’t sleep with Cat Avery that first time we met. Although I would have, given half a chance. Instead, I left the Kettle of Fish part way through the second pitcher. I don’t like to drink too much. It makes me maudlin. And I don’t suffer hangovers when I can avoid them. I had to be to work early the next day, my shift being six to three. I go to the Kettle after my shift for one drink, maybe it gets stretched as far as three. But that’s my personal limit.

Avery was still behind the bar when I left. I waved and he waved back. I figured if he wanted me, he’d eventually have me. Maybe he figured the same.

Next time I saw him was Wednesday afternoon on my way home from work. Another bitched out day at the DIC. My girl Fannie had bounced back after just one week on the outside. She’d been to see her ex and he’d knocked her hard for seeking treatment. Now she had one less front tooth than she’d had the previous week. A dentisty smile can be hard to find in west Dusky Beach.

The televisions were off for a change and that cheered me. Peter wasn’t in his usual seat and I wasn’t in the mood for shots and beers. I plopped onto a bar stool and Avery hustled over with a friendly grin.

“Hey, Tami Lee. What’s your intoxicant of choice today?”

That made me laugh, which eased my nervous stomach a little. On Tuesday, I’d gone down the block for my after-work beer, hanging out at the Bent Elbow with the off-duty cops. I’d had a good ten percent of them already and wasn’t in the line for more. Too much testosterone, not enough romance. But I had myself a cold brew and a few laughs with Dusky Beach’s finest then went back to Love House. Alone. Avoiding the Kettle entirely. I even walked on the far side of the street. All because of my growing fear of facing what I really wanted on the other side of the bar.