Angel's Share

Angel and I bartended for a place called The Bird, named for an old Jazz musician Charlie Parker, in eastern Kentucky. The owner, Harlan, he came up with the name. Told me he got the idea from a docu-drama about the saxophone player of the same name—The Bird. I suspected straight off he didn’t know a whole lot on the subject of Jazz. For one thing, he was convinced Forest Whitiker was actually Charlie Parker. One day he says to me, “I didn’t know The Bird could act.” (He always used that name—The Bird—like he was some old jazz cat.) I asked where he got that idea. “Oh you know,” he said to me, “He was real solid in that Crying Game picture.” I wasn’t sure how to respond to that one. I just kind of looked at him, and finished drying some Collin’s glasses.

This was all a while back when I’d first got the job. When I was new to Kentucky. This was before Angel and I got together. Back when Harlan and Angel’s marriage was doing pretty good, at least, from the outside. From where I could see, they seemed to be doing fine—for their type of people. No big fights like I’d seen other couples having. Like my parents had. But my parents were altogether different. They were in a whole different place with their lives. At least that was how my sister phrased it, when the subject was raised. If I compared my parent’s situation with some other couple’s, she would say, “They’re in a different place, Kyle.” She would say, “They’re twenty-five odd years into it.” But Harlan and Angel were in their own situation. And somehow I managed to get myself mixed into it. I never actually knew anyone personally who had an affair. Everyone I knew just settled into a comfortable chair and watched their marriage crumble. They may have accepted it as inevitable, I don’t know. But they didn’t go looking for someone else to drag into the whole mess. I did it purely to instigate change. I wasn’t happy about where my life was heading. I was even unhappier not being happy. I wanted to get happy again. And that led me to start something with Angel. It hadn’t had to be Angel. It could have been anyone. She just happened to be available. Not in the traditional sense, granted, she was married. That didn’t seem a big deal to her.

Harlan worked late. We all worked late, but Harlan worked later. He constantly had his nose in the account books. Not much of a head for figures, Angel told me. Bars were what he knew real well. Been around them his whole life. He started drinking early in the game, from what I gathered. He always looked old for his age. He had no trouble getting in the bars at fifteen. He knew the ins and outs of bars. But he never made it far in school. Stopped going altogether after the seventh grade. Angel explained it to me once. “You’ve got to understand this part of the country,” she explained. Kennelworth, Kentucky. “It’s hard enough with the ones who actually show up every day. This state doesn’t have the time or money or organization to send a person to every house a kid doesn’t show one day.”

Being from Massachusetts, this blew my mind. My teachers called my folks at work if I was an hour late. “Interesting,” I acknowledged. So, needless to say, figuring the bar's financial situation took Harlan until near dawn.

Angel got talking about it one night, Harlan leaving her alone at the house all the time. A trumpet player was on the stage blowing a slow number. The crowd had gotten pretty stoned, and he, the musician, was drawing these tough, long notes. People weren’t moving back and forth to the bar so much. They were drunk and content. This left Angel and me without much to do. So she started talking. I was listening, just not very intently. I was watching the tables. Looking at faces. Examining relationships. She caught my attention when the subject of her sleeping alone came up. Angel is a real looker; a blonde with thin legs and waist, nice, full, orange-round breasts. Images started popping in my head. How did she sleep? Did she wear clothes? Perhaps she just rolled herself in a set of cotton sheets? Maybe she wore one of Harlan’s T-shirts and nothing else. These thoughts drew me into what she was saying. All this stuff about Harlan: His lack of education; his mathematic illiteracy; his obsession with the bar. I stopped watching the people and half-listened to Angel. I began thinking about my own situation.

I moved out to Kentucky for a number of reasons; one of which was to spend some time with my sister who I hadn’t seen in about four years. She was newly married and purposed the idea of my moving in with her and her new husband over lunch the previous Christmas. She said, “Move out to Kentucky, you can stay with me and Toby. You’ll have a rent-free place. Spend some time outside New England, it might do you good.” It seemed a good suggestion. She and Toby worked all day and I’d have their place to myself. So I did. Kentucky held nothing for me intrinsically. However, I had my own ulterior motives. Things I didn’t tell anyone. Things I knew for myself. It was these things I started thinking about when Angel mentioned sleeping alone every night.

“I don’t think he gets it,” she admitted. “I don’t think he sees where I’m at. It’s such a crucial time for me, as a woman. I’m closer to thirty than ever before in my life. I don’t think he gets what that means. Leaving me alone every night. What do you think he expects doing that?”

That is the phrase that started me thinking. The word expects seemed intended. Her statement was not directed at some group.

She stood there ringing a dishrag in her hands. The pianist returned from the back room where he and Harlan were smoking dope. The piano player twinkled the keys just barely with his fingertips, while the trumpeter started firing these quick, pin-sharp notes.

A guy with a ponytail approached the bar with an empty glass. I took down a fresh one from the rack above my head, shuffled ice into it, and gave it a long pour. He found a cigarette in his pocket and lit it. He gave the cigarette a tap in the clean ashtray on the bar. He smiled at me. He returned with the glass to his table. A girl wearing a blue dress was sitting with him. I remember that dress clearly.

Angel started talking again, as soon as that guy was gone.

“There was no doubt in my mind Harlan was a good catch when we married. Not many people have their own place this way. He wasn’t even twenty-five and owned a house and a business. There is security in that.”

This seemed true enough from what I could tell in the short time since I arrived in eastern Kentucky. Not only did people not have much, but there also wasn’t much here. If I examined myself, I was pushing up towards twenty-five and I had nothing. Sure I had a college degree, but everyone had that where I came from.

“When I was a kid,” she went on, “I worked as a stable hand. I shoveled out barns every day after school from three until it got dark. I was happy to have that job. I stuck with it for a few years. I would have done it all through high school, but something changed. Do you want to know what changed? I became pretty. It was the funniest thing really. One day I was this gawky thing—too skinny for my own head. A big old mouth didn’t fit the rest of my face. The next day people were stopping to get another look. Opening doors so I could walk through first. All of a sudden, I was pretty and I didn’t have shovel out stables anymore.”

I had a general idea where she was headed. I never knew anyone who did what I suspected she was going to tell me she had done. Everything she was about to say was written all over her face. It was in the air between us.

So I asked her, “That’s how you met Harlan?”

“No, no. It wasn’t like that. It was localized to the guys from the ranch. They started paying me. It wasn’t a hard decision . . . I mean . . .. I remember one of them—Joe—he had this scar on his back. I could feel it with my fingers. He would be on top of me, and I would trace my fingers down it. It was rough and thick like a rope. I knew every inch of it. It ran the whole length of his back. He got it from a combine blade. He had his back to his dad when they were in the yard. The blade broke off and flew right into his back. He told me he didn’t even see a doctor. His mom just kept forcing new rags into the wound until the blood finally stopped. He said it got so bad he almost passed out from the pain. I admit that I was glad it happened though. I know that’s terrible, but it gave me something to keep my mind occupied.”

She stopped. I could tell she was thinking of Joe and that scar. I knew there was more she wasn’t able to explain. Probably something like that scar went with each of the guys who worked that ranch.

A few nights later I was in bed with Angel. Lying on top of her. Holding my body above her with my face buried in a fat pillow and twisting my hips around.

This was the first major step in my plan for change. Moving my body around on top of someone else’s was the surest way I knew to get the ball rolling. The relationship I was trying to get out of was seven years and counting. I couldn’t convince myself for sure that I wanted out so I knew another method needed to be implemented. After Angel’s story and all her talking about thirty catching up and being alone every night, she seemed someone least likely to be hurt by the whole thing.

This girl back home was from a good Massachusetts family. We had started dating during high school. We had even been voted class couple our senior year. We both were accepted at fine New England colleges and maintained our relationship over the phone and with letters we wrote. Everyone expected we would be married after graduation. For my part, I was bored and scared. I could see my whole life pass-by as a tedious slide show presented for a church potluck supper.

I don’t know how long it had been, but it wasn’t long, and soon enough we were both propped up on pillows. All the lights were off. Through the window, furthest from the bed, light from the brightening sky was falling in the room. I took a second to check the clock on the nightstand. I was worried when Harlan usually came home.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ve got ’till sun-up before he’ll show.” She’d caught me checking.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Fine. Just fine.”

“Fine,” I asked? “Or just fine?”

She nodded.

The sheets were all wadded at the bottom of the bed. We were both naked. I couldn’t stop looking at her breasts. They were even more beautiful than I imagined.

“We have to keep this to ourselves,” she started. I of course hadn’t the slightest intention of saying anything to anyone and was glad she felt the same. “I’m not saying that for any reason. I just wanted you to know if Harlan finds out he’ll kill you. I don’t mean that to frighten you. It’s just a fact.”

“Good. That’s important to know.” I didn’t know if there was some better way to respond. “I could get used to this, you and me. If you liked it, that is? If you were to want this?”

“If that’s the case,” she went on, “I thought you ought to know that it should be between just you and me. I just thought you should know.”

“Absolutely,” I said in the most reassuring tone I could muster. “That’s pretty important. Of course, I wouldn’t have told anybody. There really isn’t anyone to tell, if you want to know. The only people I know are my sister and her husband, I wouldn’t tell them. They wouldn’t really see it the same way I do.”

“And how do you see it?”

I told her, “I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“I know that I would like this to be between us. I’d like this again, I know that.”

She edged over to my side of the bed, and laid her head in my chest. With her mouth twisted way over she kissed my chest. I put my hand on her hair.

“I’m glad,” she said.

“Me too,” I said. I pushed my hand through her hair and then smelled it.

The following week, I was on the porch at my sister’s place, smoking. She and her husband rented from a sprawling apartment complex with a gym, indoor and outdoor swimming pool, and Jacuzzi package. Their unit was in the back, and the view of the porch was of a spiky brown, wood fence, segregating the complex from a street of cookie cutter suburban split-levels. Slight gaps in the fence-work provided a view into the yards of real family houses. It was late winter when I moved in and most nights I could see the fire through the duel sliding glass doors in the back of one of those houses. I never saw the family, just a man, constantly on his feet poking the flames; then back in his gaping armchair reading a magazine.

He wasn’t there this night. And there was no fire burning. The place was dark. Outside was darker still, with no moon visible through the black clouds. I had got to thinking, how everything was going to hell back at The Bird. It was tough being around Harlan. He would come over to me, explain some new idea he had to spruces up the bar, and I couldn’t get myself to look him in the face. I would work at occupying my attention with something under the bar. There were always bottles to marry, glasses to wash, juices to sniff, stuff like that. But if he caught me away from the bar, I’d find a spot on his shirt, or in the background to focus on. As though someone was walking in the door.

His very presence rattled my nerves, anytime he found the odd thing to say, right down to the score of a K.U. game. But damned if this didn’t do a thing to affect my seeing Angel. I looked forward to it everyday.

Down the street, I a dog started barking.

Around eleven, on a Thursday night, Toby and I were finishing a pot of coffee while we played poker with his friend Rich. Rich was the only graduate student I ever met who didn’t drink coffee.

My sister was no night owl, in bed before ten, and most nights the three of us—Toby, Rich and I—played cards. Toby was big about bluffing his last card. He had baskets of change all over the house and every game I played with them Rich ended up scribbling I.O.U.s on scraps of notebook paper. Rich just couldn’t get it through his head a straight flush beat a full house. He always complained, “There’s no way the odds go that way. I know a straight flush is more likely.”

The game was winding down, the coffee gone, and I kept looking at the clock over the kitchen stove. Angel was getting off soon and I had a half-hour’s ride to her place.

When I passed the house she was at the door sticking her key in the lock. I honked. She started a bit. I swung in the drive and parked.

She was holding the door for me while I jogged up the walkway. I pressed my body into hers, backing her in the door and gave her a wide-mouthed kiss.

She pulled me hard into the house. Then slammed the door.

“Are you out of your mind?” she said. “I’ve neighbors, you know. You ever think about that? Neighbors, for Christ sakes.”

“Sorry,” I explained, straightening my shirtfront she crumpled when she grabbed me. “I didn’t mean to get you all worked up. That wasn’t my intention. Well, I mean . . . not in that way at least. It wasn’t what I was thinking about.”

“No kidding, I know what you were thinking,” she said, and put her hand on the front of my jeans. “That could have caused a real mess. Everybody on this whole road knows Harlan. Damn it, we bar-b-q with these people every summer.”

The whole time she reamed me out she was pulling at my fly, trying to get it down. She managed to pull me out. I wasn’t quite there yet, so it just hung out of my pants.

She rammed her index finger at my chest, “So, don’t do that again.”

I said, “I’m sorry.”

I leaned out the bedroom window, smoking into the late night, early morning air.

Angel was naked on the bed. She pulled at her pubic hair with a couple fingers. It looked as if she were fluffing a small pillow.

“Why are you doing that?” I asked.

“Because it gets so stiff all tucked in my underwear. It’s wet. I’m trying to dry it.”

“But we might go again.”

“No we won’t.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, a little confused by her tone.

“I don’t want to,” she answered.

“Why not?”

“You ask a lot of questions. Anyone ever say that to you before?”

“No.” Which was the truth, no one ever had. I decided to focus my attention out the window before asking my next question. “Was I bad?”

“You weren’t as good as I’ve seen you, I’ll say that much.”

Outside a car raced by on the street. In the moonlight I could see the dew shining on her neighbor’s lawn, and on another lawn across the street. Dew was on all the lawns I could see down the road.

“It doesn’t matter though,” she began again. “You know that, right? I don’t care. It’s not that important to me if you’re good every time we do this.”

There were lights on in the house across the street. I could make out two figures. Both naked, dancing to music I couldn’t hear. They waved their arms around above their heads. Then down by their waists. The man took one of the woman’s hands and gave her a spin. I wondered what they were listening to.

Harlan found out. A week later I was walking across the parking lot to The Bird. It was starting to get dark, and I was running late for my shift. The after work crowd was pulling in.

I saw Angel scampering toward me, waving her arms over her head. She was doing this to get my attention. Once she was close enough I could see the fresh bruises all over her face. Her upper lip was split in two places. A big, dried welt stained her chin.

She stopped a foot short of me, breathing hard against my face. She grabbed my shirt to keep balance.

“You can’t go in there,” she gasped. “Harlan’s out of his mind. He’s been waiting for you all day. He’s ready to kill you.” I could tell by her face how serious it was. “Harlan is not afraid. No one who’s come in today has been allowed to leave. It’s like some kind of prison. He figured they would warn you. All afternoon he sat on the bar wiping his shotgun with a rag. He wouldn’t let me out of his sight all day. I don’t know how I got away. It doesn’t matter. I’m talking too much. For Christ sake, just leave.”

“Look at you, he beat you,” I said, so shaken I didn’t know what else to say. “You’re a fucking mess. I can’t run off like this.”

“He’s done with me. He loves me. We’re over, but he won’t kill me. He doesn’t even really like you. He’ll kill you. He really wants to. Just get back in your car and leave. But don’t go to your house. Fuck-in-a, don’t do that. My God, he knows where you live. He’ll go there when you don’t show up. He doesn’t care, he’ll do it there.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“But I’ll never see you again.”

“That’s the point.”

I rented a room at the Lincoln Motor Lodge, in Bardstown, Kentucky. The town where Abraham Lincoln was born.

I’ve been hold-up here ever since. Sorting out what I should do next.

Angel told me, just before I got in the car, that it was a neighbor who told Harlan. This old lady, who lived next door, had been watching out her window. She was just lonely and couldn’t sleep. She wasn’t waiting for something to happen. Angel told me the old bird never liked her. When she saw me kissing Angel on the front stoop it was just the ticket she had been waiting for. This old bird believed some trailer trash with a nice ass had suckered her way into getting a good husband.

The next day, after Harlan found out, I called my sister and Toby to explain why I didn’t come home. But she and Toby already knew.

“What the heck you get us into,” she fumed? Even at a time like this my sister refused to swear.

“What are you talking about?” I lied like a child with cookie crumbs on his lips.

“You know what I’m saying. Some crazy man busted in our apartment last night looking for you. He beat Toby with a gun. Practically knocked his eye out. Claimed we were hiding you. Kept saying he was looking to kill you. Said you screwed his wife. Toby had to have twenty-seven stitches. The man hit Toby with his gun.”

“Jeez,” I said.

“Is that all you have to say. Your brother-in-law can’t work on account he can’t see out of one eye.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say? I’m sorry.”

I could hear her pacing the kitchen floor over the phone. I had really started something. Toby must have been in the next room from her, but I could still hear him. I heard him shout: “Is that your worthless brother on the phone?”

“Did you sleep with that guy’s wife?” My sister wanted the truth. He kept saying we were hiding his wife’s lover.”

I apologized as much as I knew how and then Toby finally hung up the phone. I knew my sister would want to call me back, figure out where I was, but she didn’t have my number. It wasn’t right for me to call her back, not after all I had done.

I’ve been pacing this little room ever since. I don’t even let the maid in to clean. I put a false name on the register, and paid a week upfront. Maybe I’m taking too many precautions. I guess I just don’t really know what I’m up against. I imagine Harlan’s been checking hotels, motels and Inns throughout the whole state.

When I moved, Kentucky seemed an opportunity to experience a new world. Observe the type of people I would never have found in New England. Maybe I thought I’d find salt of the earth types. People who came home dirty from a hard day’s work. People in my community drank martinis and knocked each other with subtle ironies they read in books. My parent’s friends listened to classical music after eight. They imagined their yards, through the blanket of February snow, visualizing how the landscaper would design it come spring. I believed people in the middle of the country acquired some secret I missed growing up on the north shore of Massachusetts. In all I gained at private school and with a $100,000 college degree I thought I lost something simple. Now I realize I have stumbled onto some strange cliché. Meeting a blond in a bar named Angel. Having been chased out of my home by some hillbilly turned entrepreneur. Somehow my experience seems unreal.

The only thing I’ve done right—or, as I intended—was finish that relationship back east. Theoretically it’s still on, as of now. But twenty-seven stitches are hard to hide. My sister will inevitably mention it to my parents, next time they talk. My mother, who has nothing better to do then talk, will eventually tell that girl’s mom. She tells everybody everything. And when that girl finds out I’ve screw some other guy’s wife we’ll be over. So, I’ll save her the trouble and just never talk to her again.

Now I am sitting on my bed with the US atlas I keep in my car spread open. I will pick a spot where I will go next. There is no sense returning to the east. Wyoming seems like a pretty original place. Perhaps Idaho? I will likely avoid Texas, Montana, California; they seem the likely places people go. These places have been exhausted. Places like that have all been done to death.