Two Black Eyes and a Rabbit Fur Coat by Robert L. Penick

I met her one night while shooting pool at Bennie’s Billiards with my buddy Tricky Dick Moranti, who later changed his name to the Honorable Richard Moranti after graduating law school and winning a judicial election. The joint’s empty and I’m holding my own against Tricky Dick because he’s on his second beer and has no kind of alcoholic fortitude. When I break on the third game, feeling like Fats Domino—I mean Minnesota Fats—this old guy pushing maybe seventy walks in and lets the door close on the mongrel woman who’s with him. I don’t like rude people, even if they’re geriatric or possibly experiencing dementia. 

The two strangers walked up to the tiny bar where Bennie leaned his big frame, reading the Racing Form, her following behind like a half-trained and disinterested bird dog. Once Bennie put two cans of beer in front of them, the old dude began to regale him with some non-stop verbiage. We’ve all seen bullshitters before, and this guy was world class. I was too far away to make out the content, but could see the yoke go on the owner, the mechanical nods and involuntary look of annoyance. The woman took a healthy slug of beer and began to drift along a wall, looking at the old boxing posters and black and white photos. I dinked in a couple of balls, then scratched. Tricky Dick was sitting down, reading the label of his can of Pabst. 

“That label has said the same thing for at least forty years,” I told him.  He smirked and looked past me.  

“I’m always impressed by a man with a big stick.”

The woman had eased up behind me. Startled, I turned and took stock of her: a well-traveled thirty-five, so ten years older than myself, with high miles. Not highway miles, either. I’m talking in-city driving, hitting every pothole and jumping every curb that presented itself. She wore a jacket of what I hoped was synthetic fur. If not, it had once been an extremely unattractive animal, possibly one with a drug habit. Beneath that, I recognized her t-shirt as being from a five kilometer race a local charity hosted each spring. Thrift stores received them as donations when runners gave up and got too fat to wear them. What really grabbed my attention were the shiners, one for each eye. At first I thought it was some garish makeup. She caught me staring.  

“My now-ex-boyfriend and I had a disagreement. Either you think Bon Scott was the best singer AC/DC ever had or you’re a nitwit with a closet crush on Axl Rose. We agreed to disagree.”

“He hit you over that?”

“Well, it was a lot of things. And I might have hit him first. I can get pretty passionate about classic rock lineups.”

“The Who died with Keith Moon,” I opined.

“Yes!” She leaned over and bit my upper arm. “You understand! Once you water down the original lineup, you lose the magic of the chemistry.”

Behind her, Tricky Dick gave me a cockeyed look. I stepped away and lined up a shot that didn’t come close to going in. The bite stung a bit, like an electric jolt or hitting something with your funny bone. Only in a good way. We walked over by the wall and sat down. 

“You have a very enigmatic face,” she told me.

 
“That’ a kind way of putting it.”

Her head darted over again and she kissed me on the cheek. She didn’t smell like booze, though she looked like she’d been knocking back the drinks. She put off a pretty scent, something akin to strawberry shampoo. I ran my hand down her leg before catching myself.

“Hey, your date’s gonna kill me.” Across the room the old dude was still yammering away at the proprietor.  

 
“Not. My. Boyfriend,” she announced in staccato. “Don’s my ex’s uncle. Lives in the same building, down the hall from us. Hope he’s not wanting sloppy seconds. My name’s Caryl, by the way. With a Y. Your name is Vladimir and you’re a Russian count whose family fled the Bolsheviks almost a hundred years ago. There’s a fortune in gold buried outside St. Petersburg, but no one remembers where.  It’s lost, lost in time.”

“My name’s Mike. I install replacement windows and come from a long line of Irish drunks.”

“So I was close. I’d buy you a beer, but at the moment I’m overdrawn at the Bank of Life.”

“Yo, Vladimir,” Dick hooted. “Your shot.”

“Get us a round.” I handed her ten dollars and she trucked it over to the bar. I caught Dick’s stare as I leaned over the table.  

“Never you mind,” I told him. I sank one and scratched one, and Caryl was waiting with my change when I sat back down.  

“You know, I’m no expert, but I believe you pretty well suck at this game. Stick with it, though. Maybe you’ll get the hang of it.”

“He’s been playing since he was a kid. His dad had a table in the garage,” Dick announced before drilling the eight ball into the corner pocket. “Rack ‘em, Mikey.”

I gathered the balls for a new game. Dick broke well and resumed my annihilation. I sucked at my Pabst like it was a can of oxygen.

“I’m gonna hit the ladies room.” Using the steady, balanced gait of a practiced inebriate, she made for the only bathroom.  

“I don’t want to rain on paradise here, but I’ve got to be in Constitutional Law tomorrow at nine a.m. Get the raccoon’s phone number, if you want, but we’ve got to split after this game.”

As soon as Dick turned back to the table, the old man was in front of me. He seemed much bigger up close, and less feeble.  

“I don’t know if you’ve got a death wish or what, boy, but she’s with me. If she needs a beer she can ask me and I’ll buy it for her.”

He had an alcoholic’s misshapen nose and a milky white film covering the pupil of one eye. His face looked like someone took some chops at it with a fistful of razor wire. 

“Settle down, sir,” I said in my best TV cop voice. “I was just being neighborly.”

“Fuck you, neighbor.” Pulling his jacket back, he exposed a handgun in his belt. 

“I guess you use your good eye to shoot people, huh?  Just keeping that yucky one in reserve?”

“Hey, we’re just cutting out of here. Everything’s cool,” Tricky Dick announced from the other side of the table. Not being one for conflict, he put our cues back on the wall.  

“Fucking right you are.” Old dude turned and walked lead-footed back over to Bennie, who looked a little bit concerned, a little bit pissed.  

“Dick, you just forfeited that game.”  

“I’m not gonna die on this particular hill, getting shot by some hundred-year-old guy over your rivalry over a disturbed and distressed vagrant. We’re getting out of here. Now.”

His ‘now’ coincided with Caryl’s return.  

“Y’all aren’t takin’ off, are you?”

“Yeah. Your friend’s pissed, and he’s got a gun. We’re checking out,” Dick told her, then pushed past and returned the tray of billiard balls to Bennie. The old guy stood at the bar, drumming his fingers.  

“Fuck this shit. I’m my own person,” she announced to the room. “I got 18 college credits and a commercial driver’s license. I don’t need to suck some old man’s dick. I don’t need to suck anybody’s dick. One good friend and I’d be set.”

The old man’s hands tightened into fists, but he didn’t move. Dick pivoted and headed to the door, his hand shaped like a pistol and pointing in the direction he wanted me to move. I paused on the way past her and put my hand on her back.

“We’re in the blue Chevy, outside,” I murmured. “Slip out in a couple of minutes.” She nodded her head, but didn’t look at me.  Instead, she seemed to study a stain on the wall. I shuffled out the door.  

“Whoo-hoo!” Dick hooted as we stepped into the gravel parking lot. “Those were some seriously impaired individuals, there, genetically speaking. Maybe Hitler wasn’t completely wrong on the eugenics question.”

We piled into his car and I broke the news.

“We need to hang out for a couple of minutes.  Caryl may be coming along.”

“WHAT?”  The word was so huge he had trouble getting it out of his mouth. “Her? In my car? No. N-O. I’m not sure she’s house-trained.”

“You can just drop us at my place. We’ll just switch to my car, or whatever. I don’t even know for sure if she’s coming out.”

“You did not get that drunk off of two beers. Three beers. Whatever it was. She looks like she has mange or something.”  

He put the car into gear and I opened the door.  

“I can find my way home. Rematch next Friday?”

“You’re serious about this?”

“Friday, man. Drive carefully. And stay lucky, you nut.”

I closed the door. From inside the car I heard Dick whoop, “I’m the nut?” After a moment he drove away and I was left standing in a dark parking lot three miles from home. I studied the lone street light, then the grimy, peeling door of the pool hall. What I couldn’t tell Tricky Dick is that Caryl was a mirror, that she looked on the outside the way I felt on the inside, that I thought I could learn something from her, that I could look into myself by looking at her. Some such nonsense. I didn’t feel sorry for her; she was someone I wanted to get to know, if she wasn’t too dangerous. There were several reasons I was stuck in a parking lot on a Tuesday night. Some of them I wasn’t even aware of. The only sure things were the night, the flicker of a solitary street light, and the anticipation of a door opening, or not, of something being brought out of nothing, there in the dark.

The poetry and prose of Robert L. Penick have appeared in over 100 different literary journals, including The Hudson Review, North American Review, Plainsongs, and Oxford Magazine. His latest chapbook is Exit, Stage Left, by Slipstream Press, and more of his work can be found at theartofmercy.net