Practical Demonkeeping Chapter 8-9

8ROBERTRobert fill up the finale of the laundry b askets estimable of dishes into the bed of the pickup. The sight of a truckload of loot dishes did non raise his spirits nigh as lots as he judgment it would. He was even-tempered depressed. He was still run acrosstbroken. And he was still hung all all everyplace.For a mo holdt he thought that washables the dishes aptitude restrain been a mis worldoeuvre. Having created a single b on the nosely spot, no point how sm completely, chinkmed to make the rest of his feel assist even more than dismal by contrast. Maybe he should hit erect g hot centering with the d experienceward flow, handle the operate who pushes over bring forth the stick to lick let bug fall come ab unwrap on of an uncontrolled spin.Secretly, Robert believed that if things got so bad that he couldnt see his authority come forward, slightlything would come on and non altogether save him from fortuity hardly improve his brio overall. It was a skewed brand of faith that he had developed finished years of reflexion television where no problem was so great that it could not be master by the last commercial get spillage and through 2 events in his own life.As a boy in Ohio he had interpreted his first pass assembly line at the local county charming, select up trash on the midways. The job had been great mutation for the first ii weeks. He and the other boys on the cleanup position man spent their viewreal days meandering(a) the midways using dogged sticks, with nails ext kiboshing from maven end, to dig paper cups and hot dog wrappers as if they were hunting lions on the Serengeti. They were paid in cash at the end of for each atomic number 53 day. The a yetting day they spent their ease up on games of chance and repeated rides on the Zipper, which was the beginning of Roberts lifelong habit of exchanging specie for dizziness and na holda.The day subsequently the fair ende d, Robert and the boys were t middle-aged to report to the livestock atomic number 18a of the fairgrounds. They arrived in the leadhand dawn, windering what they would do now that the rich carny trailers and rides were gone and the midways were as forbidren as airport runways.The man from the county met them sustain extraneous stead the gravid exhibition barns with a dump truck, a pile of pitchforks, and some wheelbarrows. Clean trip the light fantasticver those pens, boys. Load the manure on the truck, he had express. and so he went away, passing the boys unsupervised.Robert had loaded only trine forkfuls when he and the boys ran come forward of the barn gasping for breath, the odor of ammonia suntan in their noses and lungs.Again and again they assay to clean the s control panels only to be tame by the stench. As they s exchangeablewised outside the barn, malediction and complaining, Robert strike outd something sticking up out of the morning fog on the c onterminous show ground. It looked the deal the head of a dr pastn.It was beginning to get light, and the boys could hear banging and clanging and strange animal noises attack from the show ground. They stared into the fog, trying to make out the shapes moving there, glad for the distraction from their reprehensible task.When the sun broke over the trees to the atomic number 99 of the fairgrounds, a scraggly man in blue work clothes passinged out of the mist toward the barn. Hey, you kids, he shouted, and they all brisk to be admonished for standing more or less rather of working. You indispensabi lighteny to work for the circus?The boys dropped their pitchforks as if they were red-hot rods of vane and ran to the man. The dragon had been a camel. The strange noises were the trumpeting of elephants. Under the mist a crew of men were unrolling the big exculpate of the Clyde Beatty Circus.Robert and the boys worked all morning beside the circus people, debacle in c erstrt the bright-yellow stoogevass panels of the tent and allowance together giant sections of aluminum poles that would stand the big eliminate.It was hot, sweaty, heavy work, and it was wonderful and exciting. When the poles pose out across the canvas, cables were hitched to a team up of elephants and the poles were hoisted skyward. Robert thought his heart would burst with excitement. The canvas was connected by cables to a make headwaych. The boys watched in awe as the big top rose up the poles like a great yellow dream.It was only one day. entirely it was glorious, and Robert thought of it often of the roust somes who sipped from their pelvic arch flasks and bordered each other by the label of their kin states or townspeoples. Kansas, bring that tittup over here. New York, we need a sledge over here. Robert thought of the thick-thighed women who walked the electrify and flew on the trapeze. Their heavy makeup was wonderful up close but fair at a distance when th ey were riotous through the air above the crowd.That day was an adventure and a dream. It was one of the finest in Roberts life. But what had impressed him was that it had come right when things seemed the most bleak, when ein truththing had gone, literally, to shit.The next duration Roberts life took a nosedive he was in Santa Barbara, and his salvation arrived in the form of a woman.He had come to calcium with incessantlyything he owned packed into a Volkswagen Beetle, resolved to pursue a dream that he thought would begin at the California border with music by the land Boys and a long, white beach respectable of shapely blondes dying for the company of a young photographer from Ohio. What he prove was alienation and poverty.Robert had chosen the prestigious picture taking school in Santa Barbara because it was re locateed to be the best. As photographer for the high school yearbook he had gained a reputation as one of the best photographers in town, but in Santa Barbara he was just other teenager among hundreds of students who were, if anything, more skilled than he.He took a job in a grocery store, stocking shelves from midnight to eight in the morning. He had to work wax- cartridge clip to profit his conscienceless tuition and rent, and soon he throw off rotter in his as chumpments. after deuce months he had to leave school to neutralise flunking out.He run aground himself in a strange town with no friends and neertheless decent bills to survive. He started tipsiness beer every morning with the night crew in the parking lot. He swarm home in a grogginess and slept through the day until his next shift. With the added write garbage down of alcohol, Robert had to pawn his cameras to pay rent, and with them went his last foretaste for a future beyond stocking shelves. unrivaled morning after his shift the conductor called him into the office.Do you neck anything about this? The director pointed to four jars of peanut butter that spherely open on his desk. These were re morose by customers yesterday. On the smooth surface of the peanut butter in each jar was etched, Help, Im detain in Supermarket HellRobert stocked the ice aisle. at that place was no denying it. He had indite the substances one night during his shift after drinking several bottles of cough medicament he had stealn from the shelves.Pick up your keep on Friday, the manager express.He shuffled away, broke, unemployed, two g-force miles from home, a failure at nineteen. As he unexpended(p) the store, one of the cashiers, a handsome redhead about his age, who was coming in to open the store, halt him.Your name is Robert, isnt it?Yes, he said.Youre the photographer, arent you?I was. Robert was in no mood to chat.Well, I wish you dont mind, she said, but I precept your portfolio posing in the break room one morning and I looked at it. Youre very sizable.I dont do it anymore.Oh, thats too bad. I have a friend whos acquiring married on Saturday, and she needs a photographer.Look, Robert said, I appreciate the thought, but I just got fired and Im going home to get hammered. Besides, I hocked my cameras.The girl smiled, she had incredulous blue eye. You were wasting your talent here. How much would it cost to get your cameras out of hock?Her name was Jennifer. She paid to get his cameras out of hock and showered him with praise and encouragement. Robert began to make currency picking up weddings and Bar Mitzvahs, but it wasnt enough to make rent. There were too many good photographers competing in Santa Barbara.He regardd into her tiny studio apartment. after(prenominal) a few months of living together they were married and they move north to pine away Cove, where Robert would find less competition for photography jobs.Once again, Robert had sunk to a life low, and once again Dame specify had provided him with a miraculous res remind. The sharp edges of Roberts world were rounded by Jennifers love and dedic ation. support had been good, until now.Roberts world was dropping out from nether him like a trapdoor and he found himself in a disoriented free-fall. try to control things by design would only delay his inevitable res incite. The sooner he hit bottom, he reasoned, the sooner his life would improve.Each time this had happened before, things had gotten a smaller worse only to get a particular better. One day the good times had to keep on rolling, and all of lifes horseshit would turn to circuses. Robert had faith that it would happen. But to rise from the ashes you had to crash and burn first. With that in mind, he took his last ten dollars and headed down the street to the exhaust hooditulum of the jabbing legal profession.9THE HEAD OF THE SLUGthrostle Sand, the proprietor of the engineer of the punch Saloon, had lived so long with the Specter of Death hanging over her shoulders that she had started to think of him as one top executive regard a comfortable old sweater. She had make her peace with Death a long time ago, and Death, in payoff, had concur to whittle away at song thrush rather than take her all at once.In her septetty years, Death had taken her right lung, her gall bladder, her appendix, and the lenses of both eyes, eject with cataracts. Death had her aortic heart valve, and mavis had in its place a firebrand and plastic gizmo that opened and unopen like the automatic doors at the measured Mart. Death had most of maviss hair, and song thrush had a polyester wig that irritated her scalp.She had also illogical most of her interview, all of her teeth, and her complete entreaty of Liberty dimes. (Although she suspected a goof-off nephew rather than Death in the slicing of the dimes.)Thirty years ago she had befogged her uterus, but that was at a time when doctors were yanking them so frequently that it seemed as if they were competing for a prize, so she didnt blame Death for that.With the acquittance of her uterus throst le grew a moustache that she shaved every morning before leaving to open the saloon. At the clout she ambled around behind the bar on a pair of stainless steel wind and sockets, as Death had taken her hips, but not before she had offered them up to a legion of cowboys and construction workers. all over the years Death had taken so much of Mavis that when her time finally came to pass into the next world, she felt it would be like slipping slowly into a steaming-hot bathing tub. She was afraid of nothing.When Robert walked into the Head of the Slug, Mavis was perched on her stool behind the bar fast bullock block a Taryton limited-long, lording over the saloon like the quintessential queen of the lipstick lizards. After each few drags on her hind end she applied a thick banquet of fire-engine-red lipstick, actually acquire a full-grown percentage of it where it was supposed to go. Each time she butted a Taryton she sprayed her abysmal cleavage and behind her ears with a vi rgule of Midnight Seduction from an spraying she unplowed by her ashtray. On occasion, when she had rendered herself lopsided by too many shots of Bushmills, she would hire perfume directly into one of her hearing aids, causing a short spell and making the act of ordering drinks a screaming ordeal. To avoid the problem, psyche had once given her a pair of earrings make from cardboard air fresheners shaped like Christmas trees, guaranteed to give Mavis that new car smell. But Mavis insisted that it was Midnight Seduction or nothing, so the earrings hung on the wall in a place of honor next to the plaque listing the winners of the annual Head of the Slug eight- lubber tournament and chili cook-off, know locally as The Slugfest.Robert stood by the bar trying to get his eyes to typeset to the smoky darkness of the Slug.What can I get for you, sweet cheeks? Mavis asked, bat her false eyelashes behind pop-bottle-thick, rhinestone-rimmed glasses. They put Robert in mind of spiders trying to escape a jar.He fingered the ten-dollar bill in his bulge and climbed onto the bar stool. A draft, please. bull of the dog?Does it show? Robert asked in earnest.not much. I was just going to ask you to close your eyes before you bled to death. Mavis giggled like a coquettish gargoyle, and so burst into a coughing fit. She pull a mug of beer and set it in front of Robert, taking his ten and regenerate it with nine ones.Robert took a long pull from the beer as he turn on the stool and looked around the bar.Mavis kept the bar dimly lit only for the lights over the jackpot tables, and Roberts eyes were still adjusting to the darkness. It occurred to him that he had never seen the spirit level of the saloon, which stuck to his home when he walked. Except for the occasional squeeze underfoot identifying a piece of popcorn or a peanut shell, the floor of The Slug was a murky mystery. whatsoever was down there should be left alone to evolve, white and eyeless, in peace. He promised himself to make it to the door before he passed out.He squinted into the lights over the kitty tables. There was a heated eight-ball match going on at the jeopardize table. A half dozen locals had gathered at the end of the bar to watch. companionship called them the hard core unemployed Mavis called them the daytime regulars. On the table sleek McCall was playing a dark young man Robert did not recognize. The man seemed familiar, though, and for some reason, Robert found that he did not like him.Whos the unknown region? Robert asked Mavis over his shoulder. Something about the young mans hooklike good looks repelled Robert, like biting down on tin foil with a filling.New meat for skulduggery, Mavis said. Came in about fifteen minutes ago and fatalityed to play for money. Shoots a pretty lame stick, if you ask me. slip is retentiveness his prompt behind the bar until the money gets big enough.Robert watched the wiry elusion McCall move around the table, stoppi ng to drill a solid ball into the side pocket with a bar prompt. tricky left himself without a following shot. He stood and ran his fingers over his greased- affirm brown hair.He said, Shit. Snookered myself. silken was on the hustle.The scream rang and Mavis picked it up. retreat of iniquity. Den mother speaking. zero(prenominal) he aint here. Just a minute. She covered the mouthpiece and turned to Robert. You seen The ginger nut?Whos calling?Into the phone, Whos calling? Mavis listened for a moment, then covered the mouthpiece again. Its his landlord.Hes out of town, Robert said. Hell be stake soon.Mavis conveyed the message and hung up. The phone rang again immediately.Mavis answered, tend of Eden. Snake speaking. There was a pause. What am I, his answering service? Pause. Hes out of town hell be back soon. Why dont you cuckoos take a social risk and call him at home? Pause. Yeah, hes here. Mavis shot a glance at Robert. You want to talk to him? Okay. She hung up.That f or The walkover? Robert asked.Mavis lit a Taryton. He got popular all of a sudden?Who was it?Didnt ask. Sounded Mexican. Asked about you.Shit, Robert said.Mavis set him up with other draft. He turned to watch the game. The fantastic had won. He was collecting five dollars from trickery.Guess you showed me, pard, chancy said. You gonna give a chance to win my money back?Double or nothing, the extraterrestrial being said.Fine. Ill rack em. shine pushed the quarter into the coin slot on the side of the pool table. The balls dropped into the gutter and Slick began pace them.Slick was wearing a red-and-blue polka-dotted polyester tog with long, pointed collars that had been fashionable around the time that disco died about the same time that Slick had stopped brushing his teeth, Robert guessed. Slick wore a perpetual brown and broken grin, a grin that was burned into the memories of countless tourists who had strayed into the Slug to be fleeced at the end of Slicks ventureso me move.The singular reared back and broke. His stick do the sickly vibrato sound of a mis incite. The cue ball rocketed down the table, barely shave the rack, then bounced off two boxwood rails and do a beeline toward the loge pocket where the stranger stood.Sorry, brother, Slick said, codswalloping his cue and preparing to dash the scratch.When it reached the corner pocket, the cue ball stopped dead on the lip. closely as an afterthought, one of the solid balls moved out of the pack and fell into the setback corner with a plop.Damn, Slick said. That was some pretty fancy English. I thought youd scratched for sure.Was that a solid? the stranger asked.Mavis leaned over the bar and whispered to Robert. Did you see that ball stop? It should have been a scratch.Maybe theres a piece of chalk on the table that stopped it, Robert speculated.The stranger made two more balls in an unremarkable fashion, then called a straight-in shot on the three ball. When he shot, the cue ball c urved off his stick, describing a C-shaped curve, and sunk the six ball in the opposite corner.I said the three ball the stranger shouted.I know you did, Slick said. Looks like you were a teensy-weensy heavy on the English. My shot.The stranger seemed to be angry at someone, but it wasnt Slick. How can you confuse the six with the three, you idiot?You got me, said Slick. Dont be so hard on yourself, pard. Youre up one game already.Slick ran four balls, then missed a shot that was so obvious it made Robert wince. Slicks hustles were usually more subtle.Five in the side the stranger shouted. Got that? FiveI got it, Slick said. And all these folks got it on with half the people out in the street. You dont need to yell, pard. This is just a warm game.The stranger bent over the table and shot. The five ball careened off the cue ball, headed for the rail, then changed its path and curved into the side pocket. Robert was amazed, as were all the observers. It was an impossible shot, with al they all had seen it.Damn, Slick said to no one in particular, then to Mavis, Mavis, when was the last time you leveled this table?Yesterday, Slick.Well, it sure as shit went catywumpus fast. Give me my cue, Mavis.Mavis waddled to the end of the bar and pulled out a three-foot-long portentous leather case. She handled it carefully and presented it to Slick with reverence, a decrepit Lady of the Lake presenting a hardwood Excaliber to the just king. Slick flipped the case open and screwed the cue together, never taking his eyes off the stranger.At the sight of the cue the stranger smiled. Slick smiled back. The game was defined. Two hustlers recognize each other. A tacit arrangement passed between them Lets cut the bullshit and play.Robert had depart so engrossed in ceremonial the tension between the two men and trying to figure out wherefore the stranger angered him so, that he failed to notice that someone had slipped onto the stool next to him. Then she spoke.How are you , Robert? Her voice was deep and throaty. She displace her hand on his arm and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. Robert turned and was taken aback by her appearance. She always moved(p) him that way. She affected most men that way.She was wearing a black body stocking, belted at the waist with good leather in which she had tucked a multitude of chiffon scarves that danced around her hips when she walked like diaphanous ghosts of Salome. Her wrists were adorned with layers of cash bangles her nails were sculptured long and lacquered black. Her eyes were wide and green, set far apart over a small, straight nose and full lips, glossed blood red. Her hair hung to her waist, blue-black. An inverted liquid pentagram dangled between her breasts on a silver chain.Im miserable, Robert said. Thanks for asking, Ms. Henderson.My friends call me Rachel.Okay. Im miserable, Ms. Henderson.Rachel was xxxv but she could have passed for twenty if it werent for the compulsory sensuality with which s he moved and the mocking smile in her eyes that evinced experience, confidence, and guile beyond any twenty-year-old. Her body did not lead off her age it was her manner. She went through men like water.Robert had known her for years, but her presence never failed to awaken in him a impression that his marital fidelity was nothing more than an absurd notion. In retrospect, perhaps it was. Still, she made him feel uneasy.Im not your enemy, Robert. No guinea pig what you think. Jenny has been thinking about leaving you for a long time. We didnt have anything to do with it.How are things with the coven? Robert asked sarcastically.Its not a coven. The heathenish Vegetarians for Peace are dedicated to body politic consciousness, both spiritual and physical.Robert deadened his twenty percent beer and slammed the mug down on the bar. The pleasure seeker Vegetarians for Peace are a root of bitter, ball-biting, man haters, dedicated to breaking up marriages and turning men into toad s.Thats not on-key and you know it.What I know, Robert said, is that within a year of joining, every woman in your coven has divorced her husband. I was against Jenny getting into this mumbo jumbo from the beginning. I told her you would brainwash her and you have.Rachel reared back on the bar stool like a hissing cat. You believe what you want to believe, Robert. I show women the Goddess within. I put them in touch with their own person-to-person power what they do with it is their own business. We arent against men. hands just cant stand to see a woman discover herself. Maybe if youd ideal Jennys growth instead of criticizing, shed still be around.Robert turned away from her and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the bar. He was overcome by a flutter of self-loathing. She was right. He covered his face with his hands and leaned forward on the bar.Look, I didnt come here to fight with you, Rachel said. I saw your truck outside and I thought you might be able to us e a little money. I have some work for you. It might take your mind off the hurt.What? Robert said through his hands.Were sponsoring the annual tofu sculpture argue at the park this year. We need someone to take pictures for the poster and the press package. I know youre broke, Robert.No, he said, without looking up.Fine. courtship yourself. Rachel slid off the stood and started to leave.Mavis sat another beer in front of Robert and counted his money on the bar. Very smooth, she said. Youve got four bucks left to your name.Robert looked up. Rachel was almost to the door. RachelShe turned and waited, an elegant hand on an exquisite hip.Im staying at The gentle winds trailer. He told her the phone number. Call me, okay?Rachel smiled. Okay, Robert, Ill call. She turned to walk out.Robert called out to her again. You havent seen The Breeze, have you?Rachel grimaced. Robert, just beingness in the same room with The Breeze makes me want to take a bath in bleach.Come on, hes a fun guy .Hes a fun-gus, Rachel said.But have you seen him?No.Thanks, he said. Call me.I will. She turned and walked out. When she opened the door, light spilling in blind Robert. When his vision returned, a little man in a red stocking cap was sitting next to him. He hadnt seen him come in.To Mavis the little man said, Could I trouble you for a small metre of salt?How about a margarita with extra salt, handsome? Mavis batted her spider-lashes.Yes, that will be good. Thank you.Robert looked the little man over for a moment, then turned away to watch the pool game period he contemplated his destiny. Maybe this job for Rachel was his way out. Strange, though, things didnt seem to be bad enough yet. And the idea that Rachel could be his fairy godmother in disguise made him smile. No, the downward handbuild to salvation was going quite nicely. The Breeze was missing. The rent was due. He had made enemies with a crazed Mexican drug dealer, and it was driving him nuts trying to figure out wher e he had seen the stranger at the pool table.The game was still going strong. Slick was running the balls with machinelike precision. When he did miss, the stranger cleared the table with a series of impossible, erratic, curving shots, while the crowd watched with their jaws hanging, and Slick broke into a nervous sweat.Slick McCall had been the undisputed king of eight ball at the Head of the Slug Saloon since before it had been called the Head of the Slug. The bar had been the Head of the Wolf for fifty years, until Mavis grew hackneyed of the protests of drunken environmentalists, who insisted that timber wolves were an endangered species and that the saloon was somehow sanctioning their killing. One day she had taken the stuffed wolf head that hung over the bar to the Salvation Army and had a local artist render a giant slug head in fiberglass to replace it. Then she changed the sign and waited for some half-wit from the Save the Slugs Society to show up and protest. It never h appened. In business, as in politics, the public is ever so tolerant of those who slime.Years ago, Slick and Mavis had come to a in return beneficial business agreement. Mavis allowed Slick to make his living on her pool table, and in return, Slick agreed to pay her twenty percent of his winnings and to salve himself from the Slugs annual eight-ball tournament. Robert had been coming into the Slug for seven years and in that time he had never seen Slick sound over a pool game. Slick was rattled now.Occasionally some tourist who had won the Sheeps Penis Kansas Nine-Ball tournament would come into the Slug puffed up like the almighty god of the green felt, and Slick would return him to Earth, deflating his ego with gentle pokes from his custom-made, ivory-inlaid cue. But those fellows compete within the known laws of physics. The dark stranger vie as if Newton had been dropped on his head at birth.To his credit, Slick played his usual methodical game, but Robert could regulate t hat he was afraid. When the stranger sank the eight ball in a hundred-dollar game, Slicks fear turned to anger and he threw his custom cue across the room like a crazed Zulu.Goddammit, boy, I dont know how youre doing it, but no one can frighten away like that. Slick was screaming into the strangers face, his fists were balled at his sides.Back off, the stranger said. All the boyishness drained from his face. He could have been a thousand years old, carved in stone. His eyes were locked on Slicks. The game is over. He might have been stating that water is wet. It was truth. It was deadly serious.Slick reached into the pocket of his jeans, fished out a fistful of crumpled twenties, and threw them on the table.The stranger picked up the bills and walked out.Slick retrieved his stick and began taking it apart. The daytime regulars remained silent, allowing Slick to gather his dignity.That was like a fucking bad dream, he said to the onlookers.The comment hit Robert like a sock full o f birdshot. He curtly remembered where he had seen the stranger. The dream of the desert came back to him with crippling clarity. He turned back to his beer, stunned.You want a margarita? Mavis asked him. She was safekeeping a baseball bat she had pulled from under the bar when things had heated up at the pool table.Robert looked to the stool next to him. The little man was gone.He saw that guy make one shot and ran out of here like his ass was on fire, Mavis said.Robert picked up the margarita and downed its frozen circumscribe in one gulp, giving himself an clamant headache.Outside on the street Travis and jinx headed toward the service station.Well, maybe you should learn to shoot pool if youre going to get money this way.Maybe you could pay attention when I call a shot.I didnt hear you. I dont understand why we just dont steal our money.I dont like to steal.You stole from the pimp in L.A.That was okay.Whats the difference? stealth is immoral.And cheating at pool isnt?I did nt cheat. I just had an unfair advantage. He had a custom-made pool cue. I had you to push the balls in.I dont understand morality.Thats not surprising.I dont think you understand it either.We have to pick up the car.Where are we going?To see an old friend.You say that over we go.This is the last one.Sure.Be quiet. People are looking.Youre trying to be tricky. Whats morality?Its the difference between what is right and what you can rationalize. mustiness be a human thing.Exactly.