Kelly's Bar Read online

two who maintain they have a special aptitude for bedroom calisthenics. So any group of men should be inured to someone like Stag. The fact, therefore, that he is considered a pain-in-the-ass by all of Kelly's other regular customers just goes to show how excessive Stag's sexual boasting is.

  Stag, of course, is a nickname, one he chose for himself. His name, he proudly tells everyone, reflects the fact that, above all, he is all man, a man so uniquely capable of fully and completely satisfying a woman's every sexual desire that he has no need to seek out sexual partners. Once a woman has experienced his bedroom services, he claims to have her hooked for as long as he wants her. His assumed name also is intended to reflect Stag's resolute bachelor status. Men who marry, he derisively charges, submit to a form of self-imposed slavery for the sole purpose of obtaining sex. Because he is so extraordinarily capable in bed, Stag arrogantly brags, he has no need for such self sacrifice. Any woman he ever bestows his favors upon, he conceitedly and repeatedly alleges, will forever come back begging for more. If any of Kelly's married male customers ever should, in even the smallest way, complain about his wife in Stag's presence, the braggart will condescendingly tell the complainer that he is only getting his just deserts for the sexual inadequacy which forced him into marriage.

  Stag does claim a regular woman partner. But in keeping with his anti-marriage attitude, she only shacks up with him in his house. She works in the office of one of the nearby trucking firms, but she isn't a Kelly's customer. The firm's drivers see her in the office and know who she is, but none of them know her personally because she is quite shy. The drivers think she is as reserved as she is for the same reason why she never comes to Kelly's. Since she must know how Stag is always going on about his sexual prowess, they think she finds it embarrassing to interact with people whom she knows have listened to these boasts.

  Stag is such an unpleasant man to be around that Lefevre has often thought of telling the blowhard to take his business elsewhere. But as Kelly's owner will shamefacedly admit, he doesn't do so because while Stag is a pain, he also is a regular paying customer, not only at lunch, but in particular, he is a regular customer at the time of day when there are few other customers. Every afternoon, between the end of the lunch rush and the beginning of the much smaller but not insignificant supper business, Stag is away from his work and in Kelly's for an hour or more, shooting pool, drinking beer and running his mouth. He has some kind of supervisory job which, if it doesn't allow his perpetual work ditching, at least allows him to get away with it. And while his absence from work may not help his employer, it helps Kelly's. Business in the after-lunch hours is very slow. So Lefevre has been reluctant to run away the man who accounts for a sizable proportion of it.

  IV

  As I've said, everybody at Kelly's thinks Stag is a pain-in-the-ass. But one person in particular has a burning hatred of him: Chico. It all started a couple years ago, one afternoon when, as usual, Stag was absent from his job and in Kelly's instead. At this time of day Chico keeps busy with all the organizational work needed to keep a commercial kitchen operating; inventorying, ordering, restocking and, especially, preparing foodstuffs. In between these activities Chico schedules periodic major kitchen cleanings. Usually these after-lunch tasks are interrupted and slowed by a few occasional customers coming in for a late lunch. On this day, however, not only did Chico have few such chores, but also there were no interrupting customers, so he got all this work done early and was sitting at the bar, drinking a cup of coffee and discussing menu changes with Lefevre.

  The same absence of late lunchers which enabled Chico to finish his work so quickly left Stag without any pool partner, so the braggart challenged Chico to a game at fifty cents a ball. Chico declined, explaining that his wife has a deep hostility to gambling, and he had promised her he would never gamble in any way. Such deference to a wife was certain to trigger Stag's canned anti-marriage cant. Chico, the blowhard condescendingly charged, was just another married slave, a pusillanimous, pussy-whipped pansy, so incompetent in bed he couldn't keep a woman in any other way except by cowering before her.

  With his customary affability Chico smiled off the loudmouth's diatribe. But Stag never let up. Ever since that event he always calls the cook by a demeaning, mocking moniker: Chicken. And if Chico should come out of the kitchen when Stag is around, the braggart makes a clucking sound and repeats his charge that the smaller man is sexually deficient, and only able to keep a woman by unmanly submission to her.

  Stag's unending insults of Chico couldn't be missed by anyone, but they particularly caught the attention of Lefevre. He preferred not to lose as consistent a customer as Stag. But if there was any possibility the blowhard's badgering would drive away his topnotch cook, Kelly's would just have to get along with one fewer customer. So he spoke to Chico. If Stag was getting under his skin, Lefevre offered to order the braggart out of Kelly's permanently. Chico thanked his boss, but said he could take anything Stag handed out. Lefevre said he didn't have any doubts that Chico could handle Stag, but while he personally wouldn't mind it if his kitchen commander took one of his knives and carved up the pain-in-the-ass, he didn't want to give up the best cook in town to the state prison.

  And that's the way things went at Kelly's for some time. Stag continued to bore everyone with his unending boasts of such superb sexual skill that no woman he ever allowed onto his bed would ever leave it. And he continued to mock Chico as grossly sexually insufficient and therefore wife dominated. Lefevre kept his eyes open, alert to the possibility that the blowhard might eventually so antagonize his cook that the pain-in-the-ass would have to go. But Chico quietly endured the ridicule. However he also kept his own eyes open, looking for some way to get even with Stag, some way short of risking prison by carving the bullying braggart into sirloin tips.

  V

  One of the most frequently encountered businesses in the industrial area of every town is trucking, and the area around Kelly's has several of these firms, for example the company where Stag's shack up partner works. Trucking companies, especially the over-the-road or long distance haulers, have and always have had a major problem: Hitchhikers. No trucking company I've even known about allows its drivers to pick up these people. But no trucking company I've ever known about is able to suppress the practice. How could they? It is the nature of over-the-road driving to be alone on the open highway. So how could a company stop a lonely driver on a lonely highway from picking up someone to possibly provide a little companionship? Sometimes the companies put out decoys or spies, fake hitchhikers whose job it is to report on a driver who violates the cardinal rule. But truckers develop an uncanny ability to spot these people. Being female, young, pretty and suggesting of a willingness to provide a little libidinal compensation for a lift, for example, is a dead giveaway.

  One day a couple years after Stag's badgering of Chico began, a driver from a trucking company with a depot a few blocks from Kelly's violated the cardinal rule. Early one morning when he was refueling at a truck stop a couple hours from town a young gal carrying a duffel bag and a suitcase came up and asked for a ride. Since she was female, young and not unattractive, the driver immediately put up his spy antenna. He declined her request, giving company policy as the reason. But when he went into the coffee shop for breakfast he asked about her and learned she had been working there as a waitress for several months. Clearly, then, she was no spy.

  So while he was awaiting his breakfast the driver went back out and told the gal he'd haul her to town if she could get some local to take her a mile or so down the road where no prying eyes would see him pick her up. She happily agreed and pointed out an old jalopy parked beside the coffee shop. She said she'd be waiting in it a couple miles down the road.

  After breakfast neither the gal nor the jalopy were to be seen. But when the trucker got a couple miles away, at a place where there was plenty of shoulder room for him to pull his rig off the road, both were wai
ting. The trucker pulled up behind the jalopy, a teenage guy got out and helped the gal store her bag and suitcase in back of the truck cab's seats. Then the gal thanked the kid, climbed into the cab, and they were off.

  The driver asked his unauthorized passenger her name, and she said it was Billie. He asked her reason for traveling. She answered that she was just moving on. She didn't elaborate or provide any details, but between the lines it seemed pretty likely that she was running away from some kind of broken romance. She said she had no particular destination, just some place where she could find a new job. He said he had asked about her at the coffee shop, so he knew she is a waitress, and he remarked that a lunch place near his company's depot in town, a place called Kelly's, had been looking for a part-time waitress when he left town two days ago. Probably the job wasn't still open. But it might be, and if she was interested he'd tell her how to find Kelly's. It wasn't very promising, but she decided she had nothing to loose by checking it out.

  The trucker couldn't take Billie to Kelly's. It's too near his company depot, too risky