The Beasts of Juarez, R.B. Schow [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

He looked around and said, “Are you sure that was me?”

“You’re Scotty the Hottie, right?” she asked, deadpan. He started to say something, but then she cut him off and said, “Yeah. It’s you. Last time you just sat there drinking beer after beer while staring at my tits.”

“Are you sure that was me? Because that doesn’t sound like me.”

“I’m positive,” she said.

“Holy cow,” he replied softly, “I’ve become a cliché.”

“You weren’t always one?”

“Not really. But if I sit here and tell you my troubles, I will only further my bad reputation. So can I have whatever’s on tap and I’ll stare at the TV and mind my own business?”

“No coke in the bathroom.”

“Jeez, I didn’t even know I did coke.”

“Yeah, well, you bought it in back, so maybe it was your first time. Either way, you were chopping lines on the toilet lid. Do you know how thick the piss fumes get in that bathroom? Dudes with spray spouts for peckers just hosing everything down like it’s their own home.”

“That’s disgusting,” Scotty said.

“This guy Bart—you don’t know him—well, he said he had kidney stones and was gonna piss them out before the night was over. That was his big introduction to me at the start of the night, like I give a single crap about his kidney stones.”

“Kidney stones are no joke,” he said, thinking he really needed to start drinking.

“Please stop interrupting me,” she said. “It’s rude.”

His eyebrows shot up but he raised both hands in surrender. Her willingness to serve him tonight was his only real hope at salvaging the day.

“Anyway, Bart drank like there was no tomorrow and we had to drag him out of here by his heels just before last call. When it came to his stones, though, we weren’t sure if it was mission accomplished for him or not. But then we saw the bathroom stall and it was like a toddler flung sticky yellow paint all over the walls. Do you know what we did when we saw all that piss?”

“Besides vomit and curse your job?” he asked, now just wanting a beer.

“Close,” she said, staring right at him. “We pulled you out of there because you were snorting lines on the toilet seat and having an argument with yourself.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said, suddenly not feeling well.

“Yeah, Scotty the Hottie for sure.”

“So, yeah, whatever is on tap will be good.” He was dying to change the subject. She started to speak, but he held up a hand and said, “No coke and no gazing at the mammaries, I got it. Can I have that beer now? Please?”

She scrutinized him a long time, then she added, “And no fighting.”

“Did I pick a fight, too?” he asked.

She filled a glass with beer then handed it to him along with a cocktail napkin. “No, but I see a fight inside you wanting to get out. It’s in your eyes. You look like what guys who get into bar fights look like right before they go off.”

“If you want these eyes to settle, then you’d better get that beer ready.”

“It’s eleven p.m.,” she said. “Be sure to pace yourself.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, looking only at her eyes.

While he drank, he thought of Alabama Hargrove, the look on her face in the picture he managed to get, and he wondered what the hell happened to her. She was there one minute and then a ghost the next. The fact that he was still working the case piecemeal bothered him immensely. But that was the deal no matter how much it bothered him. Unfortunately, it bothered him plenty. He could never really get Alabama out of his mind.

Beer after beer after beer only seemed to take him further from the Hargrove case or any understanding of it. Fortunately, the dive bar was beginning to fill up. After learning the bad news about his wife, Scotty had developed a wandering eye. He found himself looking at the women in the bar, not judging any of them, but taking in all the little details. And then he wondered where he and his wife had gone so wrong. She tossed thirteen years of marriage right in the shitter.

Scotty was a good-looking guy with more money problems than resources to solve them. His wife had no problem reminding him of that. He was good to her, attentive when he was around her, supportive of the things she wanted to do. Unfortunately, she was just one of those types of women who couldn’t leave when things were over, so he never even saw the affair until it was too late. For a private detective, that was pretty pathetic.

“You’re just another asshole, Scotty the Hottie,” he said to himself regardless of whoever else heard him in the bar.

He finished the rest of his fifth beer, or was it his sixth? There was no way to be sure unless he asked the bartender with the dreamy rack where he was at on his bar tab. He waved her down to ask for another beer but she pointed to the clock and then held up five fingers. Did she really want him to wait five minutes?

“This is horse shit,” he called down to her. She then held up six fingers and served a younger man and his friends.

Two college girls sat at the stools next to him and though he wanted to talk because they were young, hot, and full of energy, he knew it would lead to nowhere good. Then, one of them turned and said, “Hey, I know you.”

“I’m sorry?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she replied, laughing. “You were the guy doing coke in the bathroom last time you were here. The guy I was with, he’s