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Theo’s laugh didn’t sound like a laugh, not if you knew him. “I’m too old?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that’s why both of us should go in. Separately. Because someone might approach me who wouldn’t approach you. And vice versa. And that’s why we need to keep an eye on each other.”
“Targeting,” Theo said.
Auggie looked at him.
“What you’re trying to say is that we know who they might be targeting. And you’re going to make yourself a target.”
“Theo—”
“So we’re both clear on what’s happening.”
“That’s not—”
“Is that the plan?”
“I understand that there’s a lot to be worried about here, and I’m going to be careful—”
“Is that our plan?” When Auggie didn’t answer quickly enough, Theo said, “Ok,” and got out of the car.
“God damn it,” Auggie said. He clutched the keys, digging the teeth into his palm, and started counting to a hundred as Theo headed inside the club. For a moment, Theo was outlined by the streetlight, detail obliterated until he was only a shape. Then he was through the door and gone.
Auggie kept counting. And swearing.
When Auggie got out of the car, the night air was shaggy with summer, and he instantly wanted another shower. The smell of old smoke and fresh weed came to him, along with something else, the nose-tingling chemical burn that he was pretty sure was meth. In the cab of a truck a few stalls down, a lighter flared. The effect was like a photo flash: an impression of deep-set eyes, the dash of cheekbones, the glint of glass. And then darkness again, and the hint of smoke curling against the windows.
Inside, Auggie had to wait in a vestibule while a heavyset man in a black polo carded him. That part, Auggie hadn’t counted on. Theo probably hadn’t been carded. This guy would take one look at Theo, at that beard, and wave him through. Auggie would probably still be getting carded when he was forty. A few weeks before, at the Piggly Wiggly, a pimply teenager behind the register had called his manager to check Auggie’s ID. Auggie could tell the little wiener had thought he’d busted Auggie. That’s right, boner, Auggie thought. Trying to buy a six-pack of White Rascal to party with my boys.
The bouncer handed back Auggie’s ID without a word, and Auggie twitched aside the curtain and entered the Cottonmouth Club proper. Jem had described it to them, and to be fair, his description had been accurate: the sludge of brownish light, the tables spotted with water rings, the private booths behind velvet curtains, the bar with bottles catching the light like cat eyes. The air was arctic compared to outside, stinging with the scent of cheap alcohol and even cheaper body sprays.
The stage, of course, was designed to draw and hold your attention. Two white girls—one skinny, and one heavier—were walking around a pole, doing identical versions of a stiff-hipped strut. They both had hair fried to white blond, and they both wore nothing but bikini bottoms with a few bills sticking out. An old white guy, his hair roostered up in back, had dropped his trousers in front of the stage. It looked like he was going for his dick, but a couple of no-necks in matching black polos grabbed him under the arms and dragged him toward an exit. At another table, a pouchy guy was huffing and shaking his head, obviously in some sort of argument with the other men. As Auggie watched, the man snapped something to his companions and pushed away from the table. Nobody seemed to care about that either.
Nobody looked at Auggie. Nobody dropped a glass in shock, or gasped, or screamed. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting—not that, a part of his brain insisted, but, at the same time, maybe something. His heartbeat was hammering so hard in his ears that he couldn’t make out the music, and he forced himself to take a deep breath. Somebody bumped into him from behind and swore, and Auggie stepped out of the way. A middle-aged, moon-faced man with a silver belt buckle stepped into the club, glaring at Auggie before he continued toward the bar.
Ok, Auggie thought with a giggle rising inside him. I’m doing great.
The crowd was mostly men, mostly white, and if appearances were to be trusted, mostly blue collar or working poor. Some of them—a kid with big hands and a cowlick, for example, with hay still clinging to his boots—probably worked on the farms in the area. It took Auggie a moment to spot Theo; he’d taken a seat at the bar, and he had a pint in front of him, head down: universal body language for fuck off and let me drink. He looked like any other guy in the joint; if Auggie hadn’t known him, he never would have picked him out of the crowd.
Auggie, on the other hand, was painfully aware that he didn’t blend in. He wasn’t the only brown guy in the room, but the others looked like they were probably laborers—and, if Auggie had to guess, based on the realities of this part of the world, probably migrant workers. There was an older man, dark from the sun, in a faded Cali t-shirt that didn’t hide how painfully thin he was. There were a couple of hard-thirties guys, maybe brothers, who had the same look of men who made their living outdoors. Maybe not brothers, Auggie decided after another moment of considering them, but with the kind of closed-off attachment of people who know they are outsiders and have banded together. A few others, sprinkled here and there throughout the white crowd. But not enough that Auggie wouldn’t stand out. The Wrangler t-shirt. The jeans. The clothes looked like what they were: relatively new, and perfectly clean. Fuck, he wanted to say, what was I thinking?
But he was committed; if he left now, he’d be abandoning Theo. So, Auggie picked an empty table near the stage—and, more importantly, close to the hall that led to the bathroom and, hopefully, an emergency exit—and navigated through the room toward it.
He dropped into the seat, pulled down the brim of his trucker hat, and stared into the middle distance toward the stage. It took a few minutes, but his pulse slowed, and the ocean’s rush of blood in his ears quieted. The music was Rihanna. “Birthday Cake.” And when Auggie recognized it, he couldn’t help the crazy grin that spread across his face. A waitress swooped in, with washed-out eyes and chipmunk cheeks, and Auggie ordered a shot of Jose Cuervo and a Bud Lite. She smiled automatically, not even really seeing him, and drifted away again. Look at me, Auggie thought, blending in.
Yeasty breath blew across his ear, and a voice said, “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Auggie jerked upright in his seat. He twisted, but at the same time, a man came around the table into his field of view. Rockabilly hair, an orange spray-on tan, a golden cross the size of a paperback swinging from his neck, the guy could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five. His arms and legs were thin, but under his white polo, he had a potbelly. The polo had a little lizard, and the little lizard had a little grin, and Auggie thought it looked like the grin on this guy’s face.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You know you’re not supposed to be here.”
Auggie didn’t look over at the bar, but he wanted to. He kept his gaze on the man in front of him. For a lot of his life, Auggie had thrived on this, excelled at it. Knowing what people wanted from him. Knowing how to give it to them. That part of him was still there, still ready to come forward. Some days, he had to fight to keep it buried. Like a mask. Or, as he had often thought of it, a cutout figure, something to stand in his place. Cardboard Auggie.
He went for goofy. “Am I that obvious?”
“Kid,” the guy said and laughed.
Kid, Auggie thought. I can play kid.
