Dark End of the Street

As U drove closer to the address we had for Bobby Lee Cook, my stomach twisted and my head pounded more, knowing the only one who could help us hated me beyond words.

“Remind me to stop pissing off people,” I said, watching the front of his truck hugging the road, passing million-dollar houses with wrought-iron security gates.

“It’s a talent,” U said. “You’re too good at it.”

At the peak of the Bluffs, U pulled in front of a Mediterranean Revival number with lots of stucco and a red barrel-tiled roof. Two vans and Cook’s Cadillac was parked outside. U pulled in, close to the front door, and shut off his engine.

“You want to do this alone?” he asked.

“Could use someone to watch my ass.”

U pulled off his shades. “Cool. Didn’t want to have to tell Abby and her mean-ass cousin how you got it shot off.”

Two girls in sweaty long-sleeve T-shirts and jeans were pulling weeds by a wide marble staircase flanked by squatty palm trees. One was blond, her hair up in a bun, no makeup. The other had red hair pulled into a ponytail and extremely long legs. They were both dirty and grass-stained but I knew from one glance they worked for Cook.

The women were used to spinning on brass poles in air-conditioning, swindling old men into having ten-dollar drinks, and telling tales to customers about dreams they’d never had. I had to laugh. Cook had them doing real work.

We rang the bell and within a minute, the lithe bartender I’d met at the Golden Lotus, the one with short brown hair and a nice stomach, opened the door. She had on an apron and was drying her hands on a towel. I’d really hoped all these women would’ve been hanging out by his pool in bikinis. Not doing manual labor.

“Cowboy,” she said, a tight smile in the corner of her mouth.

“Howdy,” I said. “Cook home?”

She looked over at U and then back at me.

“Don’t make trouble here. He has people, too, you know.”

“No trouble.”

“Just a friendly warning,” she said, tossing the towel over her shoulder and hooking her thumbs into belt loops along her small waist.

“Appreciated.”

She told us to wait in the foyer. We did.

A massive chandelier dripped down from a high ceiling. Big marble statues of naked women eating grapes stood out from the garish red walls. The foyer spread in to an open living room with a sunken pit like the Beatles’s pad in HELP! Zebra- and Cheetah-printed furniture. Class with a capital K.

U nudged me and I looked by a coat rack near the door. In a glass case for all visitors to see, stood three large trophies celebrating second, third, and fifth place in local bodybuilding championships for men over fifty.

I said, “Always wanted to be Mr. Senior Mid-South.”

“Me, too,” U said. “What’s that say, Airport Holiday Inn?”

“Yeah.”

“First class, brother.”

Glass walls covered the entire back half of the house as if it had been built in a cutaway to show the interior. Outside, there was a small wooden deck with iron chairs and a table with a Cinzano umbrella. No women. Damn it.

Wind from the Mississippi made knocking sounds against the huge sheet of glass, and outside I could see small, immature pines bending.

A door opened from the southern edge of the house and I heard some awful post-Eagles, Don Henley music blasting from a far room. “All She Wants to Do Is Dance.”

Two more young women followed him, both looking tired as hell, as he began pointing to the black granite floor. “Mr. Clean. All over. Watch the carpets. Don’t even think about getting them wet.”

They nodded but made faces at his back as he passed.

Cook wore tight bicycle shorts, circa nineteen eighty-seven, and this bizarre satin tank top that was just plain disturbing. It really didn’t qualify as a shirt since it darted below his nipples and lotion-tanned chest.

He fluffed up the spikes on his gray head and crossed his arms over his chest in order to make his balloon-sized biceps even larger. A massive leather weight belt covered most of his stomach.

“Five minutes,” he said.

He walked ahead, back to the weight room, with the bad music blaring, and I looked at U and shrugged. “Maybe he’ll give us six… Six would be nice.”

He’d filled the room with rows of chrome Nautilus equipment and several racks of free weights. A back wall of windows overlooked the river, but the others were covered in mirrors. A beefy guy in a Golden Lotus T-shirt lay sprawled on a weight bench while being spotted by a guy who, although bald, could’ve been his twin. The same tanned hide and veined puffy look of a steroid addict.

“Man, this is a hell of a lot better than Saints camp,” U said. “Remember?”

“You mean the junkyard? Hell, yes. Had to drive through all those wrecked cars just to get to practice.”

“You come here to swap little tales, or to talk?” Cook said, sitting his Spandexed ass on a Nautilus machine and working out his neck in a perpetual nod.

“Don’t,” U said, waiting for me to drive a truck through his comment. “Fight it.”