From The Pen Of Frank Jackman:
…he could hear her cry for liquor even before
she knocked at his four in the morning door, even before she came into his walk
up flat apartment building where they had started their, what did she called
it, their “love town love,” he
could sense it in the walls or windows or something. He too could almost smell
that gardenia perfume smell that
meant she was coming back (and that always lingered a little in some corner of the apartment air, her air), coming
back for the he no longer could count how many times, assured, always assured
that she would have entrance and his bed when she came back. Maybe, as many
times as he had tried to spill the damn stuff down the toilet, that is why he
kept a flask for her, their, favorite scotch, Haig &Haig Royal Bonded, in
the back kitchen cupboard. So she would come back, he did not know. One time he
did spill it down the kitchen sink thinking to exorcise the demons but ten
minutes later he was down the street at Mel’s Liquor buying another quart. Holding that thought sure enough a couple of minutes later he heard
the knock, knock three times, their knock, and her patented purr, “Daddy,
Daddy, let me in, your Laura’s back home, back home for good.”
He
opened the door and there she was, a little drunk as always at that hour if she
was up, and she usually was, a slight whiff of reefer, low-grade reefer so he knew she was flat-busted, coming off her clothes, and that
sweet mama smile, the one that assured (and she knew assured) that she had not
knocked on the wrong door. He thought “here we go again” with that here we go
again feeling but he was glad this time to see her, it had been a few months, maybe four. He noticed that her clothes, her
low- cut blouse, low-cut that he had insisted one time did not help
enhance her small breasts, and her skirt, her short skirt that
did, no argument, highlighted by her well-turned legs and ankles, were
a little disheveled, a little back seat of some car, back room of some gin
mill, or of some flophouse room quickie disheveled that meant she had either
been working her butt or some pick-up guy had gotten angry at some foolish
stunt of hers and kicked her out early. Probably the former since she liked,
with every guy she tangled with non-professionally anyway, to what she called
“do the do” in the morning then take a shower right after and wash that love
sweat and jimson off.
Yah, as
he had looked more closely, he could tell that she had been doing a trick or
two of late to keep her in liquor and dope. Like he said he was glad to see her
and although she looked a little the worst for wear this time she still had
that Anne Hathaway-like girlish look that had attracted her to him when they
first met at Jimmy’s Pony Lounge almost four years before. He thought too
though that at the rate she was going, as he noticed small etched crow’s’ feet
forming around her eyes, eyes puffy from lack of sleep, too much liquor,
high-shelf or not, and a little too many off-beat bed tumbles as well, that she
would not age well, not age well at all. And still be attractive to him.
There
she was though in all her Madonna angel
child street whore persona and as he invited her in (as if she needed an
invitation) she gave him that long wet kiss, a french kiss, that meant she was
back, back for a little while anyway. He noticed too while they were kissing
that she had something on her tongue. He asked her about it and she showed him
a pierced tongue ring, a fad among some women in the new multiple piercing
world after having seen Rosanna Arquette wearing one as a sexual
stimulant in the film Pulp Fiction. She also said, if he was good, she would
show him how she used it. Yah, Laura was her old self; ever inventive in every
field she put her mind too. After that introduction he went out to the kitchen
to perform step one of being good. As he
went to that kitchen cabinet to get her a drink he also thought back, as he
always did when she came back, about their stormy history right from the
beginning.
That first night,
a Monday night, as usual a kind of slow Monday, at Jimmy’s he had heard her
singing, singing the blues, singing Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie –style
barrelhouse blues. Stuff like Me And My Gin, Bedbug Blues, and Bumble Bee in
front of a pick-up blues band, a pretty good band and her with a pretty good
voice. Stuff that had plenty of double entendre meaning with the crowd who came
to Jimmy’s looking to pick up a stray this or that, nothing serious, and known
around town as a spot for just that purpose. And that was
the attraction for him then, and her too. She with that doe-like sweet
Madonna home to mother look and belting out those very sexually suggestive
lyrics with a look like maybe you could spend a lifetime trying to figure out
whether she was an angel or a whore. And not mind the effort. He ordered her
a drink, a scotch, after asking the waitress what she drank, and had it sent
over to her table at break. She came over and said thank you
but Haig &Haig was all she drank. He ordered the drink, and was hooked.
Hooked
bad, hooked bad even when about a fifteen minutes later as she went back the bandstand
to do the last set she said while leaving that if he waited she would go home
with him but that the band thing was just a guest gig and that she only
did it that night because work was slow.
Work being, as she explained straight out, working the bar for tricks. She said
if he wanted a good time, and she knew how to give a guy a good time, he would
have to show his appreciation with some dough. They could negotiate that later.
Like he said he was hooked and so he waited for her, waited to take the ticket
and take the ride. Later, early that
next morning, after they had done the “do the do” (and she had taken her
shower) as she was leaving she threw the money he gave her back on the bed. She
said her asking for money was her way to be her own boss, in control of her own life, and if she liked a guy, and she liked
him, then that was that. A few weeks later she moved in for the first time, and
stayed, stayed until she found the next guy on whose bed she threw the money
back. But thereafter she always came back, came back to walking daddy,
her walking daddy who knew his sweet mama, and she always would.
And he
thought as he passed her the scotch that he always would take her back, take
her back just like that first time. What was guy to do. And just then as if to
weld that thought into his brain she said, “daddy, walking daddy,
the sun is almost up and I am sleepy, let sweet mama show you what that tongue
ring is all about. Ah, Laura…
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