Free Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips Page A

demon. She’d say that and slap Dude on the ass.
    She’d boil those stark black Colombian beans on a stove in their flat and it’d heat up the kitchen so we’d have to sit out the window on the roof. By this time the town was near silent and steaming slow like a wet iron. Always drink hot coffee on hot nights, she’d say, Brings the sweat to the outside and lets you sleep. Dude dozed with his head in her lap and she’d turn to me, ask me, oils are on sale and could she borrow a few bucks till next week. You know, she’d say, twisting his hair in her fingers, Them stars are just holes in the sky after all. And while I’m sleeping in that hot bed everything I ever thought of having falls into em.
    Finally I’d go to bed and hear them in the hall going back and forth to the bathroom, him usually drunk by then and tripping at the door. People up and down the hall behind doors yelled at him to shut up. Her arms reaching in the yellowblouse to grab the light string, her hips moving in their funny bumbling slow walk past my door, not quite touching his legs, and the mosquitoes louder than her quiet laughter: this was 4 A.M . in El Paso.
    I saw him a couple of years later in Toledo, said he was into racing junk cars, said it was some kick. Said you’re tearing around and around under the lights in these things that are all going to fly apart and pile up. Said he heard she was living down in Austin with some dyke. Said cracking up those cars was great, said he was making money and cracking them up was some kick, it was really something.
    BIMP
    When I opened the place in ’46 I didn’t think no one could pull nothin over on me again. I was in the war just like anyone else, ain’t no one gonna tell me I got any debt. I had enough tin food and muddy boots and hair lice to last me. One goddamn big lie is what it was, I figured that out. There ain’t no losing or winning anywhere is what I figured out, ain’t nobody gonna pitch me into no fake contest again. I sailed into San Fran with a knee like a corkscrew and the salt air made it ache like a bitch. I came back home and opened the place and I figured I was standing ground. Back then the Mexicans used to skunk around at the alley door till I told em to beat it. I can see em now, slinking off in their red shirts under that one streetlamp between the trash cans. My own grandmother was a Mex. She smelled like a rotten cantaloupe and raved in Spanish about the goddamn Church that did nothin but bury her endless brats and the man that beat her. There ain’t no losing or winning. These black-eyed thieves and yellow Mex boys think I got something theywant, let em swagger in the front door so what. I could tell em if they ask—no matter what they got they got more to get and the thing don’t end. Gaining like a squirrel on a wheel, sure. When I saw them three kids I knew what the game was. Her saying what I needed was a dancer, the dude pretty as a rodeo star, and his sidekick one of them hunched-up watchers. I said Listen, I got me a dancer, and she said Try me out. The dude stood there grinding a butt into the floor in his high-heeled boots. I said Well I don’t allow no dancers in here without escorts, gets plenty rough in here ya know, this ain’t Philadelphia. She said she was from La Rosa, one of them dirt-eating border towns, and I laughed, said You didn’t get far didja. She smiled, her mouth dark pink and those flashy Spanish teeth strong as an animal’s. The cowboy finally looked at me, said, rolling the filter of his cigarette, We’ll be here at nine. The watcher stood there looking from face to face like he was judge of the whole damn game and I said Suit yourselves.
    DUDE
    Back then I was a carpenter like everyone. I quit school and went down to Texas, air so thick and slow it’s like swimming. That flat-out heat comes after you and drinks you up; she’d been there all her life. The steam in her; I lost what I was thinking in rooms thick, full of us; her