He wasn't sure what sorta drinks the men around these parts ordered. This wasn't the city with its cranberry and Absoluts. Just a beer, he figured. Can't go wrong with a beer, ever. Then maybe follow it with a whiskey, a whiskey clear as the river where he'd caught two trout that morning; a petty five inches each, but trout nonetheless. Maybe two whiskeys. Then he'd be able to sleep. The cabin he'd rented was authentic, though built less than a decade ago. But it was correct down to the last detail; logs as crossbeams, splintery rafters, and only a tiny space heater. He'd slept in it around the same time last year and didn't remember it being so chilly; sweetish memories always lose their bite.
The Snake's Tooth's screen door squeaked when he opened it. The sparse layout of the saloon made it seem vast. The twin fireplaces painted the place-- the mounted antler's heads, the mountainous landscapes-- in a flickering orange glow.
And then, eyes. Dazzling blues ones. Round ones winged in purple, ones immersed in mascara. The eyes were scattered in every level of concentration, some squinted, some timid, dull, bored, many predatory.
The eyes, like the thimble-sized mosquitoes nearby the river at dusk, swarmed away but then gradually returned, one at a time, as Cunningham strode to the bar. Body parts buzz when they're being stared at, they heat up, tingle, itch. Cunningham felt as if he was being eaten alive, sucked dry, pore by pore.
In the marbled bar mirror, between the colorful fence of bottles, Cunningham could scope pretty much the whole of the tavern. The back wagon-wheel tables, hidden in the dim, had silhouetted couples, sitting there, staring straight ahead, empty mugs before them. The rest were women, all women, in groups and alone. The women were youngish, tight-figured. Some might even be called girls.
Three men were sitting at the bar, one of them had tiny features sunken in waves of wrinkles. The other one could very well have been the first's father. The third seemed normal, an authentic flannel-and-boots bumpkin. The bartender, halter-topped, was still very much a woman for her age, her eyes violently violet. Cunningham felt comfortable around her because she was the oldest, the least likely to expect him to be attracted.
"Howdy," Cunningham said to the bumpkin. He dusted a stool with his leather gloves and then sat.
"Hi," the young man said. He had had a few, and then had had a few more.
"Just up here for the week," Cunningham said. "It's my favorite place in the world."
"That so."
"Yeah, I like fishing. Had some good luck. You fish?"
Suddenly from the bartender, "Hey there can I get you...?" Her elbows were on the counter, she was leaning in. Cunningham shifted his gaze from the spread of her sagging, freckled breasts up to her lips. "Anything to drink?" she repeated.
"A beer, um, please."
"Any particular type?"
"No, any draft will do fine. How much is that?"
She swirled, pulled a handle, and set the mug before him almost instantaneously. "On the house," she said, and then floated to the other end of the bar, where she chatted with a waitress, also halter-topped, but in a sleazier way somehow. The waitress was staring directly at Cunningham, anybody could tell. She was staring and grinning, pretending to chew gum.
Cunningham tilted the beer, sucked away the foam, wiped his lip. More and more of the women were checking him out now, the back of his neck was burning. When he looked into the mirror and tried returning gazes, the stares fluttered aside. He could be imagining things, but then again, he and his new pal were the only eligible men around. To give everyone a thrill, he sat up straighter.
"Not many guys here tonight," Cunningham told his pal. "I mean, as compared to the ladies."
"Gives you a better chance, I guess, huh," the man snorted. Both men lifted themselves a long sip of beer.
"I'm married," Cunningham said, quietly.
"What you doing here all lonesome then, boy?"
"Ann doesn't like nature, much."
"Bullshit, boy. A man leaves his little woman only when he wants to."
Cunningham lifted his beer. "Or when she wants him to." He downed it.
"Sorry to hear that, that's an awful shame," the young man said. The peaks of his face were scarlet.
"Well, it's not exactly like that. She's a tax lawyer."
Apparently this explained enough, for no more questions were asked. Cunningham pulled out a fiver, ordered another two-dollar beer, and was treated to another peek of cleavage. He downed the drink then asked:
"So are the men around here just not drinkers? Or is this bar sorta where the ladies hang out, and--"
"Hi, stranger." A body seated itself beside Cunningham, the hem of the skirt lifting atop her knees. A quick glance described her as a pleasant enough woman to look at, though something was a little askew about her lower lip. The blues of her irises matched the potbellies of the clouds which had mesmerized Cunningham while he stood knee-deep in the river, bored of trying to cast the line of his two-hundred-fifty dollar rod. Her hair was that light county color that's neither golden nor platinum, the color of easy.
Cunningham nodded a hello.
"That's Esther," the bumpkin said, squeezing Cunningham's shoulder. "You can like her plenty so long as you close your eyes during the ride."
"Aw shut up now, Tim," the woman said, and then to Cunningham, "Yes, yes, I'm Esther. Who might you be?"
"My name's Ralph," Cunningham lied. Ralph McLord was Cunningham's co-worker. Ralph had the type of gut that he had to keep tucking back into his pants; he referred to all women as whores. Ralph McLord liked to brag all the time about his affairs. He conquered a new whore each month, if you believed his stories, which were all pretty wild.
"Would you like a drink?" Cunningham offered.
"Why don't we both have one, Ralphie. I'll buy," she said. She ordered two whiskeys. The bartender served them a few inches worth of the drink in lowballs, not shotglasses; that's how it's done in the country. Esther gave the 'tender no money.
"To life," Esther said, immediately drinking her poison. Cunningham drank his, it tightened it throat. Cunningham ordered two more, being careful not to look at the bartender's cleavage.
"Down the hatch, cutey," Esther said.
"You from around here?"
"Right up the route," Esther pointed. "You're from the city, aren't you?"
"How'd you guess?"
Esther laughed, Cunningham tried to laugh with the same volume. The mosquitoes were getting fiercer, braver, noisier as they sensed Esther and the stranger conversing, bonding.
"Hell of a turn this weather's taking, huh?" Cunningham said facing forward, turning to Tim, then Esther.
"It's dropping like a bomb," Esther nodded.
As the second whiskey washed over him, the night felt as if it was getting darker and darker. He knew he'd begin to worry about driving if he got any drunker. Cunningham said he had to be going.
Esther frowned and waved bye and Tim didn't do much of anything. As Cunningham rose the gazes, like mosquitoes, returned full force. This time he heard accompanying chatter, laughter; he sensed people pointing. Stumbling only a bit, he exited the bar, afraid to turn around though he would've liked to have seen Esther one last time.
He drove down the valley, to the cabin, very carefully. His headlights were on bright, and other than the fan of road ahead of him, all was blackness.
The cabin was annoyingly crisp, despite the space heater, which was still blaring. It was too cold to undress. Cunningham scraped off his shoes and slid into the sheets. The windows, the creaking of the wood, the silence of the forest, was unfamiliar, and Cunningham had a tough time summoning sleep. His mouth tasted awful.
He imagined what it would be like if he'd brought Esther, or one of the other women, back. There were so many, and they all were so desperate, so hungry. It had been cruel of him to leave by himself. Ann would never have known. He could've had a night of chilly sprawling nudity and nobody would get hurt. A body would've been heaven, its heat, its smell, a leg bent between his, hands clutching his back. Cunningham reached into his jeans, beneath his underwear. His penis was shrunken. He fiddled with it a bit, but nothing stirred. Cunningham curled up tight and shivered, holding himself like the cork-handle of his fishing rod.
A few days after that, Cunningham remembered and called up the airline and found out there was no connecting flight that went through Denver, so when his wife came home he yelled at her before she even stepped into the doorway.
Ann started yelling back, saying thing about how she was fucking another man and was proud of it. It was an awful lot of yelling especially when Cunningham punched her a few times in the face, punched until she stopped punching back. He knew the front door was open and the neighbors would get antsy, but he sat on her anyway and squeezed her throat until she stopped jerking around. Her eyes lost their light, not their hatred. He watched her, but his mind was elsewhere. He was thinking the whole time how he could've had a great piece of ass from that slant-mouthed Esther back at the Snake's Tooth.
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