Taft by Ann Patchett Page B

appreciate that," he said to me. "She works hard, you know."
    "She does a good job."
    Carl was looking away from me, over to the little stage in the far corner where nobody was. "She likes you. I wonder what my dad would have said about that." He turned back around to me. Fay passed by us, half smiled and disappeared into the kitchen. "I don't mean that disrespectful."
    I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but I put up my hand to show him no disrespect was taken.
    "It's just something to think about," he said. "You never think your dad's gonna be wrong, but I know what he would have said, and he would have been wrong about this. He wasn't that kind of guy, you know, one of them. He had a pretty open mind. Lots of the guys he worked with at the plant were." He nodded his head towards me rather than say black. "He always treated them equal. Never even thought about it. It's just with Fay, well, when you've got a kid I guess it's always going to be different. I mean, hell, if I didn't know you myself maybe I would have thought the same way. You have any kids?"
    I said I had a kid.
    "Well then, you know what I'm talking about. I shouldn't have said it anyway. Now you're just going to think bad of my dad and you shouldn't. There's not a bad thing to say. I just need to shut up. Shut up shut up shut up." Carl looked at me and then at his hands, which he had to put between his knees to settle down. There was such a look of panic on his face you'd have thought I'd come over just to scare him.
    "I think I'll see if she's ready," he said in a little voice. A rabbit voice. "Is that okay? She can go?"
    "Sure," I said. I still wasn't exactly sure what Carl was talking about. All drug talk was babbling as far as I was concerned. There was no point wasting your energy trying to make sense of it. One thing I was sure of, I was ready to see both of them go. They came out of the kitchen and Fay went to get their coats.
    "You don't need anything else?" she said.
    "Go on home," I said.

    That night coming back to my apartment was the first time I realized there weren't enough places to go. I could have stayed at the bar or gone to another bar that would have been just the same. I could have gone home or to any motel room in the city that had a bed in it. I could have gone and seen Marion's parents, the Woodmoores, who thought of me as family by now, but I could only see them on Sundays after church and even then I gave a phone call for plenty of advance notice. My own parents in West Memphis over the river I didn't see much. There was my brother in Little Rock. Old friends were music friends and that was just sticking a knife in it, not that I didn't do it from time to time. Other people worked for me or I sold them drinks. I thought of the skinny woman with the pale green cigarette box. I thought of her pretty hands and how I would have kissed them just then.

    The next night while I was up in my office filling out orders for booze, Cyndi was down in the bar drinking. I knew it even before I saw her because Elvis Presley was on the stereo when I came downstairs. She'd done it like this before. It was music I might have liked if I lived in another town where it only came on the radio every now and then, but in Memphis Elvis follows you from the minute you're born. All you can do is try your best to keep away from it. She'd put on the
Blue Hawaii
record, the one she said ruined her, and she sang in her own pretty voice. She didn't try to sing like Elvis, the way most people do when they'd been drinking and somebody puts one of his records on.
    "Turn it off," I said. "You're going to scare the customers away."
    "This is what people come to Memphis for," she said. "Not that whiny crap you listen to." She put one hand flat against her stomach and reached her other arm straight out to the side and stood there like she was waiting for somebody to ask her to dance.
    "You not going to work tonight?"
    "Good of you to ask, sensitive. Yes, I'm