Chapter six

  

                 "You son of a bitch!" the woman screeched just as Maxwell eased himself into a chair. Saturday night saw a lot of traffic in and out of the bar and sometimes a few fights. But Maxwell had always remained invisible at the tables away from the bar, another piece of furniture tucked between the cigarette machines. He assumed someone else the target of that yell, one of the many weekend stragglers getting fresh with one of the dancers. He only looked up for a glimpse of the action, catching sight first of the giggling maws of Wolfman's minions, groaning with their usual dark humor, the dark eyes staring furiously over bitten fists, staring straight at Maxwell.

                Wolfman himself gnawed at the stub of an unlighted cigar, his dark stare bursting with rage -- and warning, as if telling Maxwell not to push this thing too far.

                Then, Patty stepped between them, planting her two feet on the floor as if readying herself for a fist fight, though her hands were splayed on her bare hips, her outfit so small Maxwell could have woven it into a hat, two jiggling tassels dangling from two tiny cups over her nipples.

                "YOU stood ME up," she said, her blue eyes slicing at Kenny in a sharp dual of knives. "You, a fucking poet, stood me up!"

                Maxwell hadn't even opened his notebook or took a pen from his pocket yet. Ruth hadn't made a move toward him with beer bottle and napkin, still, he felt drunk or drugged, the world spinning out of control around him.

                What was with this lady anyway? Hadn't anybody told her what happened? What difference did it make that HE --  just one of many patrons in and out of this dump every night -- stood her up?

                "I..."

                "That's no excuse," she exploded and took a bold step forward, her hands suddenly fists before his face. "I ought to send you to the hospital!"

                Behind her, along the west side of the bar, men scrambled up, scattering like panicked pigeons.

                "PATTY!" Wolfman boomed.

                The word reverberated through the nearly silent room, drawing her angry attention away from Maxwell.

                "What is it?" Patty snarled. "Can't you see I'm busy here?"

                Wolfman again gnawed on his cigar, his big, black eyes glaring at Patty for a moment before turning to look at the clock.

                "I know what Goddamn time it is!" Patty shouted.

                Wolfman tilted his head towards ruth, who was shifting five quarters from palm to palm with a dull clinking noise.

                "I'll get there in a minute," Patty said, then glanced at Ruth as if she and the coins were to blame.

                Wolfman's cigar shifted and his gaze turned towards the clock again.

                Patty let out a sigh that sounded like a steam pipe.

                "All right, all right," she said, then glared at Maxwell again. "I'm not through with you. So don't you go anywhere!"

                She snatched the quarters out of Ruth's hand and marched towards the juke box, men scrambling to get out of her way. Ruth hurried over to Maxwell and put down a beer.

                "What the hell is Patty doing dancing two nights in a row and on a weekend?" Maxwell asked.

                Ruth glanced up, her green eyes made more vivid by the black eyeliner and her red hair. She smelled of lilac perfume and of ivory soap, and the bar light gave her skin a satiny appearance that made Maxwell want to run his fingers across her face.

                "She's on vacation from her day job," Ruth whispered, straightening the ash tray on the table though it needed no adjustment, and wiped away imaginary marks from the table under Maxwell's glass. "She's been here every night, making hell for all of us."

                "Should I leave?"

                "I would," Ruth said with a glance over her shoulder at the juke box. "But I'm not sure even that's safe right now."

                "What do you mean?"

                "She had a fit the other night when she found out Wolfman kicked you out."

                "You mean she knows?" Maxwell said, his own gaze making its way through the smokey room to where Patty stood, rump wiggling in front of the juke box.

                "Sure."

                "Then why is she picking on me?"

                Ruth shrugged. "Maybe she figures you should have put up a stiffer fight. She's pretty stuck on herself and expected everyone else to be stuck on her, too."

                "Why wouldn't it be safe for me to leave?"

                Ruth's face grew more intensely red under the bar light, not an embarrassed red, but one manufactured out of something like horror, starting at the neck and rising to her forehead.

                "Just believe me, it wouldn't do for you to leave," she said, then gripped Maxwell's arm. "Just sit here and endure her for about an hour, let her get her wrath out, then calmly get up and go."

                "But I didn't come here to get into a fight."

                "I know, and you won't get into one if you do things my way. Wolfman knows the score. The drinks are on him tonight. Just don't buy Patty any more than two."

                "Who says I going to buy her any?"

                "You will," Ruth said and grinned painful, as she started to move away. "Just sit through it, okay?"

                She was gone before Maxwell could reply, back around the south end of the bar, where she paused near Wolfman, bent her mouth to his hear, spoke a few words as he nodded slowly. Wolfman's black eyes rose, floated over his thick beard like two open barrels to a shotgun, full of grim warnings Maxwell didn't totally understand.

                "Don't you hurt that girl," Wolfman's eyes seemed to say.

                "Me? Hurt her?" was Maxwell's imagined reply, though he doubted anyone could read his own shocked expression better than the giggling, anticipating pigs at the bar. Even the northsiders seemed to straighten up on their stools, needing that extra inch of height as to not miss anything of what was to come.

                Madonna's "Like a Virgin" burst out of the bar's stereo system, the first of Patty's juke box collection. She finished pushing buttons and then strutted down the east side of the bar, out of Maxwell's sight for the moment, though he could see her passing in the heads of patrons turning and by the sound of their shifting chairs, a chain reaction moving ahead of her down to the end of the bar -- where, finally, like a king waiting to deliver a judgement, Wolfman sat with folded arms.

                "No funny business tonight," Wolfman told her when she passed through the gateway to behind the bar.

                She threw back her head, letting her brown hair clear always from her cold blue eyes. She smiled, but the revelation of her teeth was like cracking ice. She moved on without a word, down the east side of the bar's interior, with those same men shifting and turning again. She mounted the stage, her tassels swinging this way and that, though few sets of the eyes along the bar starred at her breasts, squinting instead to make out her face now dark against the backdrop of the stage's lights. Others cast glances in Maxwell's direction. Most, however, just stared down into their drinks, their faces clearly revealing their doubt about coming. They cast occasional glances at the door, but also doubted if they could escape the wrath of Patty if they tried.

                "Hey you!" Patty shouted, once mounted, as one sharp forefinger pointed in Maxwell's direction.

                Maxwell looked up slowly.

                The forefinger curled like a fern returning to its tight, spiraled nub.

                "What?"

                "Didn't I tell you I didn't like people sitting out there by the tables. Now get up and come over here where I can keep an eye on you."

                She hadn't. But Maxwell wisely chose not to point this fact out. "There's no room," he said.

                Patty stared down at the line of men who had sat along the narrowest section. Two men nearly fell off their stools in their attempt to escape her stare, leaving the stools rocking as they headed for the front door.

                "Well?" she asked.

                Maxwell started to shake his head -- and caught the dark glare from Wolfman at the south end of the bar, and the slow warning shake of head from Ruth serving drinks nearby.

                "Did you or did you not hear what I said?" Patty asked, her voice rising in volume above Madonna's.

                Maxwell sighed, and, bravely, longingly glanced towards the door and the growing dark showing through its three small windows, the blue and red bar lights blinking on and off against the rhythm of the string of tiny-sized Christmas lights someone -- most likely Ruth -- had strung around the front and side walls, on and off, off and on, the contradiction of patterns stirring something stark up inside Maxwell's head, something very primitive, something darker than fear.

                "Look, I don't want to have to tell you again," Patty said, her voice made louder by the sudden stop of the song, her voice replacing Madonna's now. "Are you moving or do I have to come down there and drag you over to the bar?"

                "I'm coming," Maxwell said, as the new song came on, Prince's dirty guitar leading into Purple Rain, its sadness striking him as he gathered up his pens, and pad and drink and shuttled them across the short space to the now vacant section along the bar, his new location side by side with the newcomers. Their faces struck him as sadly as the song -- no pudgy newcomers tonight to distract Patty -- but newcomers with pain in their gazes, and lonely lives, and no prospects for curing their ache except as spectators to this endless, crazy masturbating dance. Many were not really newcomers at all, but irregulars who spent each Saturday at one of the many clubs, as if the change of location altered the fundamental flaw of their existence, new faces spreading out their despair into a thinner, less obvious coating.

                Even as the song started, Patty waited, her polished finger nails tapping her bare hip, waited for him to finish his transition, waited for him to look up, Prince fading into Paula Abdule -- and still she made no move to dance.

                Wolfman stirred, slammed down his huge hand on the bar, the contact sounding like one misplaced beat of the bass drum in an otherwise flawlessly smooth song. Patty's face showed now sign she had heard, her blue icy gaze remaining fixed on Maxwell's face, and Maxwell, squirming under that gaze.

                "What do you want now?" Maxwell finally barked. "You want me to move somewhere else? To the Pool table? The bathroom?"

                "A drink would be nice," Patty said in a tone so utterly reasonable, Maxwell blinked. But others, more familiar with Patty's moods, spread the alarm and face after face turned towards her, squinting to make out the details of her expression. Ruth -- who apparently recognized just how bad a sign this was -- rushed down from the north side, grabbing glass, lime, vodka and seltzer on her way, slopping the final product into the glass before Maxwell could signal her for the drink.

                Then, when all the pieces of Patty's puzzle had fallen into their proper places, she turned abruptly away, lifting her chin with all the injured indignity of an insulted queen. She didn't look at Maxwell again. But she did ease into her grinding dance, bending her will towards the upturned faces of the newcomers along the opposite, western side, treating each of those hungry-eyed men to a little of that honey she usually reserved for her pudgy victims, each man squirming under her attention before she moved onto the next, each man waving frantically to Ruth for one more drink for themselves and one more for the gal on the stage.

                A few semi-regular inbetweeners -- men who had come here long enough not to be newcomers yet had found no place on the north or south end of the bar -- made the mistake of hooting their encouragement only to cease when pinned by Patty's hard stare.

                No word came from the stern northsiders. Only giggles rolled out of the nervous fits and slumped shoulders on the south side. Wolfman's bearded face turned like a territ, his cannon eyes studying each elements of his suddenly besieged empire, his mouth gnawing his cigar.

                Perhaps things weren't as bad as he thought, his face seemed to say. Perhaps this is some new game of hers that Wolfman hadn't seen before. After all, the girl was full of surprises, and didn't always stick to the same pattern when he expected her to.

                He seemed to grow calmer and more relaxed, his eyes taking on that easy gaze he adopted when Patty was at her best, and he silently compared her to those dancers from an earlier era when owning a club in Paterson had been interesting. At times like these, Wolfman was prone to stifle his own outbursts, keeping himself from shouting out that which he had shouted to strippers when he was a boy, begging them with hoarse cries for them to "take it off" as the girls in the old burlesque houses had. Remarkably, the man said nothing, obviously suddenly imbued with the good will from a memory, and only this one dancer among all the girls he now managed could evoke these images and feelings in him.

                Between songs, Patty drank, taking up the first of a dozen identical glasses with lime floating in gin or vodka like a green worm. She drank Maxwell's first, but only because that had arrived first and the melting ice threatened to dilute its flavor into ruin. Up went the glass. Back went her head. Down went the liquid as if no more trouble drinking than a glass of water. She wiped her mouth with a napkin, thoughtfully and routinely provided by Ruth with each drink, crumpled the napkin in her fist, dropped it as she took up the next drink, then the next, repeating the pattern until the music came on and she had to continue her dance.

                At some point in the middle of all this, she glanced at Maxwell again, a darting stare at first, from the corner of her eye, that slowly evolved into a more open study. Maxwell looked smaller than he was, his posture always drawing his large bones and broad shoulders into narrower space, like a sheep dog or German Sheppard folding itself into the shape of a terrier. His longish brown hair hung over his forehead and eyebrows. When he looked up at her, his eyes cringed behind that curtain of hair. His clothing, clean and neat, had frayed edges -- the blue work shirt showing a bit of white around the cuffs and stitching as if it would fall off him at any time.

                The fact that he watched her now seemed to please her, and she actually smiled -- a crisp smile that spread her red lips and showed a line of bright white teeth. It had all the warmth of female dog's snarl, and was more a sign of victory than one of friendliness. Her sharp blue eyes, outlined in thick black, seemed to say: "You keep watching me, boy. I'm the only thing in this room that should interest you."

                He tried to look down at his notebooks just to see if he still could, his fingers even curling around the pen as if preparing to write. But a glance up at the stage again revealed the flared out nostrils and the cold, demanding stare. His hands fell away and, like the other men around whom she had weaved her web, he stared up in helpless, required adoration, the spell of which was broken only when the music ended and Patty bent to finish off the rest of the drinks, one after another, and then, she climbed down off the stage.

                The room itself seemed to sigh -- like an old car run too long, too fast, the heat now draining out it with clicks and groans, its worn parts easing from the tension. One head bowed after another as Patty passed down the inside of the bar. Even the giggling minions paused, coughed, stared away -- grins vanishing into grimaces and then back to relieved grins when she was beyond them.

                Wolfman's grin was more nontelic, and it took him a moment to blink back to the present in time for him to scowl at Patty's passing, his cigar jerking rigid as she slipped out the gateway.

                "I thought you were losing it for a while there," he said, gnawing at the cigar.

                "Me?" Patty said, her own snarl like a cat's just before an attack, warning Wolfman she was in no mood for any of his sermons. "Since when have I lost anything?"

                "Every time you fall in love you lose it," Wolfman said.

                "In love?" Patty said, her penciled eyebrows rising. "And just who am I supposed to be in love with this time?"

                Wolfman’s stare remained fixed on Patty's face, though the man himself seemed to lean in Maxwell's direction, and Patty's gaze followed the slight movement, and then, her mouth fell open.

                "Him? I'm supposed to love him?" she howled.

                "You've done worse," Wolfman said.

                "But he's a goddamn bookworm!"

                "I wouldn't underestimate him," Wolfman warned. "There's more to him than you'd expect. He's capable of hurting you, girl."

                Patty's mouth closed and the lips pressed tight, her eyes turned as sharp as diamonds.

                "Hurt me?" she said, her fingers curling into fists. "Let him try. I'll give as good as I get."

                "That's not the kind of hurt I meant," Wolfman said. "You and the lugs you go out with can batter each other day and night and you’ve never get as hurt as bad as this guy can do."

                Patty stared at Wolfman as if she still didn't quite understand, though after a moment, she laughed.

                "Richard, you are crazy," she said. "Nobody hurts me like that because I don't let them."

                "With this guy you might not have a choice."

                "I always have a choice. And I don't see what business it is of yours anyway. Who ever invited you into my bedroom?"

                "You're dancing is my business," Wolfman said, in a flat voice.

                "And you think this creep can hurt me bad enough to make me want to stop?"

                "I've seen it happen before."

                "Not with me."

                "There's a first time for everything."

                "Then you don't know me half as well as you think you do," Patty said, jerking her head around so that her sweat-moisten hair swirled around her face and mouth. "I know how to take care of myself and no nerd like him will do anything to me."

                Wolfman sagged a little, as he sucked on his cigar again. A sad look came into his eyes, though he seemed to anticipate Patty's reply and accepted it with a sigh. It was the only answer anyone would get from a woman like Patty, and the same answer Wolfman had received from all those women who had come before her, it was inevitable they should come to ruin in his way.

                "We'll see," he mumbled, then dismissed her with a sweep of his hand.

                "We certainly will," Patty said and proceeded towards the woman's room, although she still had another set to dance.

                When She reappeared, Patty looked as she before: the two tassels dangling from the points of her breasts, her hair unkept. Perhaps she had needed to relieve herself of the vast amount of alcohol she had consumed during her dance, although Maxwell noticed a redness to her face absent early, particularly around the nose, as if she had come down with a sudden cold. She looked a little lost, too, her gaze searching the bar, squinting at the flash of blinking Christmas lights, and the glow of sink and bar lights, as if all -- as dim as they were -- were still too bright and she preferred deeper darkness. Then, her gaze fell on Maxwell, and she slowly smiled, her lips twisting into the shape of a lemon peal. The haze vanished from her eyes. She paraded up the west side of the bar, tapped the wide shoulder of the man who had settled next to Maxwell and motioned for him to give up his seat.

                The big man, with huge belly bulging over his belt and a crop of greasy hair poking out from under the sides of a faded New York Yankees hat, glanced over his shoulder and frowned.

                "Move," Patty said, jerking her thumb towards one of the seats at the cafe tables.

                "Huh?"

                "I want your seat, stupid," Patty said. "If I had to drag you off, you'll really be sorry later."

                The man's Adam’s apple bobbed. He nodded, grabbed his cash, drink, pack of Larks and scrambled off the seat, big belly quivering in his retreat.

                Patty took his place, propping her head on her hands and her elbows on the bar.

                "Buy me a drink," she told Maxwell.

                Maxwell lifted his hand and Ruth -- serving some one on the South end -- hurried through the ritual of putting down napkin, drink and change -- rushed over, snatching up a glass enroute, sloshing in the contents when she arrived, the lime last.

                "So," Patty said, drawing out the word into what amounted to a long sigh. "Is it true you come here to write your poetry?"

                "I write some poetry," Maxwell admitted in a low voice, though those men nearest him could hear him even with the loud music and the slap of the other dancers ungraceful step on the stage. "But not in here."

                "Then what are you so busy writing when you come here?" Patty asked, tapping on sharp red nail on the cover of his black notebook.

                "Observations."

                "Oh?" Patty said, her painted eyebrows rising. "About what?"

                "About people mostly."

                "About me?"

                Maxwell hesitated, glancing up from the heal of her hand which rested on his book to the sharp blue gaze that focused on his face. He sipped his beer, swallowed the now warm liquid slowly and mumbled: "Some."

                "Show me."

                The bar seemed to close in around Maxwell, even though the men on either side of him stared at the stage, not him. Yet some of the more knowing of Wolfman's minions discretely watched Patty and so did some of the sterner Northsiders -- all seemed to sit up on their stools in the expectation of an explosion.

                "I don't think this is the appropriate time or place," Maxwell finally said.

                "SHOW ME!"

                Maxwell let out an uneasy sigh, took another sip of beer, then reached for the book. He did not have to search the pages long to find something. References to Patty peppered many of the pages to this book as well as other books.

                "There," he said, sliding the book along the bar to her, pointing to a substantial passages of handwritten notes, somewhat smudged due to the water-soluble ball point pend he had used on that particular night.

                Patty squinted, her small straight nose crinkling as if she'd smelled something bad.

                "You can read this chicken scratch?" she asked, holding the notebook in both hands, moving it closer, then farther away, then closer again.

                "Of course."

                "But the writing is so small."

                "These hard-covered books are expensive," Maxwell said. "I write small to fit a lot in them."

                "Fine," she said, trusting the book back at him. "You read what it says to me."

                Maxwell cringed and cast one more glance around him as if expecting to be rescued or thrown out, little relishing an audience of theses hard and cynical faces.

                "Here?" he said, shock clear from his face. "You want me to read this stuff here?"

                "You wrote it here, didn't you?"

                "Writing is different from reading."

                "I don't care. If it's about me, I have a right to know."

                Maxwell wanted to dispute it, but Patty's determined stare discouraged him and he signed and began to read in a very low voice.

                "I can't hear you," Patty snapped.

                Maxwell's voice rose slightly.

                "I still can't hear you."

                Maxwell let out one more weary breath and began to recite the passage he already knew by heart.

                "She dances like a trapped child, each movement a small fist pounding against the walls of her small world, each blow leaving bloody marks on the faces of the men who watch her."

                If anyone else heard, none gave sign. But Patty -- who had heard every word stared at Maxwell for a long time, her hard blue eyes suddenly harder and more brilliant, like two polished stones caught in a gleam of noon time sunlight. No shadow showed in them. No soft haze smoothed out the stark outline of her growing wrath.

                "You wrote that about me?" she said in a voice so cold the works seemed to break as she spoke. The ice in her empty glass shifted. The fingers of her left hand curled around the edge of the bar until the knuckles went white.

                "Yes," Maxwell said, as Janet Jackson's voice bellowed from the jukebox and the puppet dancer's feet pounded on the state in a passionate, but inappropriate march, more the moves of a cheerleader than a go-go dancer, her large head of blond hair and her huge breasts taking the place of pom poms.

                "How dare you!" Patty said.

                "I didn't mean to offend you. I wouldn't have read it to you even, but you insisted."

                "But you wrote it -- about me."

                "I write a lot of things about a lot of people. It's what I do."

                "It's a disgusting habit," she said, spitting out the words as if the whole conversation now had a bad taste.

                "I'm sorry. I won't read any more to you if that's how you feel."

                "There's more?" Patty said, her voice full of rising horror.

                Again, Maxwell's voice fell. "Yes."

                "How much more?"

                "I couldn't tell you the number of pages."

                "PAGES?" Patty screeched, drawing attention from men on all sides of the bar -- including Wolfman. "You've written pages of this stuff about me?"

                "Yes."

                "In that book?"

                "Some."

                "Give it to me."

                "What?"

                "I want the book."

                "Why?"

                "Don't argue, just hand it over."

                "No."

                "I can have someone take it away from you," Patty warned, her gaze shifting towards the southend of the bar where Wolfman had sat up on his stool, his black eyes staring across the long part of the bar like a watch dog's.

                "You could, but it wouldn't be right," Maxwell said. "I have a right to compose if I want."

                "Not about me, you don't."

                "About anyone."

                "That kind of thing could get you in deep shit," Patty said. "That's like peeping into somebody's soul."

                "Then it hit home with you?"

                "What the hell do you mean?"

                "The words said something that you found true?"

                "I never said that."

                "Then why are you so upset?"

                "Because someone could believe it is me," Patty said in a hurried gush of whispered words. "And around here, with all these sharks, anything soft gets hurt."

                "I can't believe that."

                Patty stared, her cold blue gaze working over the details of Maxwell's jagged face like a police searching for a match with a mug shot, delving into each aspect as if seeking a flaw, stopping where she had begun with his eyes.

                "Read me more," she demanded.

                "I don't think we ought to..."

                "READ ME MORE!" she shouted. "Or I'll have Richard beat the crap out of you. And he'll do it, too. He'll do anything for me, even kill you if I ask."

                This time, Maxwell stared, noting no sparkle of humor in her eyes. He sipped his beer, draining the last of the foam from the bottom, then put down the drink carefully, gathered up his five singles -- Ruth had refused to take payment for the drinks.

                "I think I'd better go," he said and slipped off the stool.

                "Hey!" Patty said, grabbing his arm, her eyes surging with sudden panic. "Don't go, please!"

                "I'm afraid I don't take kindly to threats."

                "I was kidding," Patty said, letting loose a completely unconvincing laugh. "Can't you tell when a girl is kidding?"

                "Usually I can."

                "Well, then?" she asked, motioning for him to sit again.

                Maxwell sagged, but didn't sit.

                "Look, Patty," he said finally. "I've had a hard day and I'm in no mood to play games."

                "I said I was sorry. What more do you want?"

                "Eight hours of sleep," Maxwell said. "Let's just call it a night. All right? No hard feelings. I'll come see you another night."

                "When?"

                "When do you dance again?"

                "Tomorrow. But that's a private party, you can't come to that," she said.

                "You mean like Wolfman's birthday party."

                "No, something upstairs," she said so sharply, Maxwell dropped his inquiry, although his gaze seemed to betray his questions just the same.

                "Look, I'm working extra to get money for Superbowl tickets," she said. "Come tomorrow and bring your notebook. I'm want to hear more poetry you've written about me."

                "It's not exactly poetry."

                "Well, whatever it is. Just bring it with you. Promise now," Patty said, tightening her grip on his arm. "I won't let you leave unless you promise."

                Maxwell looked down at her hand and the sharp red nails pressing into his wrist like claws. Then, he looked into her deep blue eyes and saw in them a trapped child begging.

                "All right," he said. "I promise."

                "Good," she laughed, releasing him. "Very good, Mr. Poet. I'll see you here Monday. Same bat time, same bat channel." Then, in a lower voice, she said: "Stand me up again like you did last time and I'll have your eyes out. You understand?"

                Maxwell nodded; Patty grinned.

                "Go get your beauty sleep, Longfellow," she said. "You're going to need it."

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