The Lives of Angels
Mike Lee
It was one of those nights; the freaky snowstorm that only comes once a comet’s pass here in this part of Texas, ending in Alan’s car breaking down in the back of beyond in Travis County, the slippery trudge on the shoulder of the Ranch Road through three inches of snow. The first time we had a winter storm in this part of Central Texas was in 1978, and coming upon a roadside beer joint, thrown up conveniently where years later it was likely going to be torn down for a 7-11, a strip mall, a row of condos and faux food joints.
That was the future, but for now the beer joint served as our oasis, and for a cold and wet Alan and me, we could load up on coffee while hoping for Amber, Alan’s wife, to pick us up. Although she tends to take her time, Amber was a better option than asking for help from a stranger, especially out here.
We staggered through the door, trying to look as pathetic as possible without leaving an impression of being too fucked up to want to get near and wearily made our way to an empty booth.
We took a look around while waiting to order. The beer joint was one of those dreary southern affairs with walls adorned with the requisite Pabst and Pearl beer signs, interspersed with softball team poster going back to the mid-70s, and fish fry winners’ ribbons. After 10 minutes, we figured that one of the customers had a thing for Barbara Mandrell, judging by the incessant plays on the jukebox.
I felt a sense I was someone else. I thought I had to realize that things don’t run as I wanted but understanding that things are not as bad as they could be.
The walls were painted a greasy yellow, with cracks and lights that just made it look worse, kind of how an archeological dig at old Carcosa would probably have looked. The booths were a tan vinyl, patched up here and there with grey electrical tape, which matched the Formica tabletops, an aesthetic choice which felt startling. The floor, once a black and white checkerboard, had turned into the plains of Nazca, chipped and stained, missing panels and revealing a soft gray under board. The bar was in a not too bad shape; the red top did not match the rest of the roadhouse, but since this place looked so sleaze central, it served as a counterpoint signature, a clean dotted “i” on an otherwise sloppy flourish.
The customers matched the décor. So nondescript, I almost mistook them as the furniture, but after a while I understood there were individual traits in each that did set them apart from the Formica, fading signage, and photographs. The man in the booth in front of us wore his loser’s face under a red Chevy cap, and his funky green hunting vest resembled a lifejacket. He had nothing going for him, nor did his wife or girlfriend next to him. She had the bleached mannequin thing going on.
After we sat down, they seemed to fade into the décor. In retrospect, I wondered what they thought of our conversation, if they were even paying attention, or if they saw us as just as much as a nothing as I saw them.
The guys at the bar lolled on their stools, and none of them had noticed our entrance or at least pretended not to. All of them lamely put on a tough face in the onrush of adversity as their lives unknowingly sank into the earth. Like, tough man, getting their farming and ranch subsidies cut out from under them by Reagan, then voting for the bastard en masse because he was bringing America back.
I thought, smooth thinking, move up to the head of the class so I can laugh my ass off behind your back. “Oh my, how the mighty have fallen, oh yeah, have the mighty fallen,” I’d say, knowing their way of life is passing in front of their blinded eyes.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I was raised country. In fact, my first fifteen years were spent hunting squirrels on the side of a mountain in the middle of Nowheresville, North Carolina before I moved down to the bright lights, big city of Austin. I actually have grown to despise the city as much as the backwoods, but in the country, there aren’t any decent record or bookstores.
So, in the city I shall remain.
While I appraised the sum total of the place in play money, Alan ordered coffee and two Falstaffs from the waitress. I added another coffee, feeling this was going to be a very long night for us if we couldn’t cage a ride before the bar shut down at two.
We looked around for a television so we could catch the Saints game, but there was not one, but didn’t mind since they would have lost anyway. We also began to suspect that our unacknowledged entrance would make it extremely difficult for us to find a good Samaritan to get us out of our predicament and away from this place.
In the meantime, I drank my coffee, while letting the Falstaff sit for a bit before I felt ready to drink. It was only 8:30 so there was plenty of time. I looked through the window to see snow was beginning to slow down, a very good sign .
Alan and I passed the time talking. We made a good pair of Jacks. We’d been through a lot together since high school and remained on speaking terms, a fact that shocked others in our social circle.
We do, however, have our differing personalities. Alan was raised in Houston before moving to Austin in junior high, and is usually quiet, unassuming, with a sentimental manner—the kind of guy who is great around children and drunks while I am a fiery cracker from the sticks, with nary a kind word for much or many, and an arrogance that a teacher back in high school called positively Churchillian. That certainly showed itself in college, where I had lazily planted myself for the past six years, sort of floating along, taking just enough classes not to be threatened with probation, though keeping a three seven five grade point average since the day I entered. Alan graduated and is taking a break before graduate school.
We are both outcasts, both where we grew up and here in Austin, and that held our friendship together. Also we had managed to work out the delicate intricacies of the art of conversation. We talk up a hell of a storm. Fifty years ago, we would have made a great comedy team, but nowadays we’re able to sometimes disgust or amuse, but always catch the attention of our friends and acquaintances with our endlessly relentless flow of words.
We share many interests, such as obscure German novelists, music—mainly old rock and roll and blues—tastes in certain types of modern art, television shows, politics, sports, history, sociological theories, Jungian psychology, but mostly , in all our glory, we expounded upon the peeves, prats and peccadilloes of our friends, enemies and the unknown every person who happened to cross our path with oratorical skills that would shame Daniel Webster. We slapped one-liners on the table like we had the winning card in a high stakes blackjack game.
In a word, we are assholes.
So, we annoyed everyone within listening until Amber, arrived to fetch us from the storm.
Amber was high. Very high, and excitable. She majored in modern dance and was a painter. I ended up sitting shotgun, because Alan was well into his cups and snoring by the first downhill curve back into town.
I was buzzed, but with Alan out of commission and Amber on something psychedelic and babbling nonsense, I felt more than a twinge of terror as we drove through the snow, flying sideways against the passenger window. I kept my eyes on the road and that wide expanse of light ahead, my hands gripping the dashboard, determined to survive.
She talked about a book titled The Rose Cross and the Goddess, and it was hard to keep up with her banter about universal symbolism, side references from Jung, and how wisdom can be found in a tomb decorated with a phoenix. It would have been hard for me to keep up even sober.
Amber sure liked her Sun Ra. Plutonian Nights was playing, which normally would be pleasant, but Amber kept talking over the music. Either rambling about the revealed mysteries of Isis, saying things, like “go man go,” like she was a 1958 Beat at a Greenwich Village coffee house listening to Ginsburg, Kerouac and Corso reading. I sort of liked Corso, but the other two were excessively unhinged and thus off the margins for me.
But Sun Ra was cool. Just wished I could enjoy the smooth time changes, but Amber was in Technicolor mode and I had to focus on the highway, which came up and down like a rollercoster through the Texas Hill Country.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Amber asked why I didn’t have a girlfriend.
“Well, it isn’t like I’m not trying,” I said, not wanting to touch on the subject.
“I know somebody! Do y’all want to meet?”
“Sure.” I looked to make sure she was keeping her eyes on the road. She was, but her brown eyes were severely dilated, and I remained concerned until we finally hit the suburbs.
From that point, it was hoping she picked the correct traffic light while acid dreaming. She did, and we arrived at their house.
I thought about taking a cab home, but instead asked to crash on the couch.
Woke up to Rip It Up by Orange Juice playing somewhere in the back of the Craftsman house Alan inherited from his grandparents. Still kept up, but they weren’t into mowing the yard.
I dumped my shirt on an original Eames chair with a broken back. That came from Alan’s parents. The father was a mucky muck at Chevron. The chair broke during a party when my old band played in the back yard. During a cover of Say I Am by Tommy James and the Shondells, if I recall.
I liked waking up to the music. The album is also from a while ago—evoking nostalgia. Orange Juice was summertime at the lake and beers over breakfast tacos by the tamale stand. Remembered listening to it in Alan’s dorm room, around the time he met Amber in a Classical Philosophy class.
After taking a shower I passed the kitchen. Amber was at the table, complaining of a headache.
Alan was making migas. Deadpan, he said, “Microdot is cut with strychnine. No wonder you have a migraine.”
Amber moaned in response.
“Baby, you haven’t been this sick since you ate the train food in India,” Alan said.
“I still see that chicken in my dreams,” Amber said.
While dressing, I contemplated the things they have because of money. They can do stuff like travel to India, live in a house gifted by grandparents, and own a broken Eames chair used as a coat rack in winter. Yes, they are different from me, but not enough to lack commonalities in what we deem important. Such is the complicated job of being human, and friendship in particular. Class is relatively unimportant, at least until it is not.
Dressed, I entered.
“Sit yourself down, man,” said Alan. “Coffee is on the counter. Migas are on the way.”
“I think I am approaching functional,” said Amber. She wore shorts and a chopped-up Julliard t-shirt. She spent a year there before transferring down here.
“Denise is coming by,” she said. “The drummer.”
“Cool.” She was in a couple of bands I didn’t like very much, but she was good at what she did and certainly far better than the idiot I played with in my former band. Wasn’t interested in playing again, though. I wanted to be a writer and focused on writing record reviews and the occasional feature for the local weekly while waiting tables to make the rent.
There was a knock on the screen door. “C’mon in, Denise.”
I looked over. Denise didn’t look like a drummer, but she sure as hell was. Orange-red dyed hair, cut in a pixie, wearing a vintage plaid green dress with a Peter Pan collar and black ballet flats. When she entered the kitchen I instinctively stood up. I was raised by old school Texans. Proper etiquette was pressed on me from toddler to adult.
We all sat down to eat. Still coming down from the aftereffects of the microdot, Amber stared at her food while we ate.
Out of the blue, Denise asked me. “Who taught you how to eat?”
I was taken aback. “Um, my grandmother.”
“You eat like a gentleman,” she said. “Guys I know wolf down their food like stray dogs.”
“Well,” I said. “I am different.”
“Just raised right,” Denise said. Her voice had a West Texas twang that evoked Bob Wills songs and small-town teachers and preachers. Soft tone, but affirmative. It was attractive.
We talked about bands and respective jobs. She had a gig working in the university registrar’s office. She knew I wrote and complimented me on a review I wrote on The Replacements latest release.
Alan got up and put Lives of Angels on the Nakmuchi cassette deck on the counter.
“I like them, but not the drum machine,” Denise said.
“Never heard of them, but I like the sound,” I said.
“Good for mornings, though. Laid back.”
While the music played, we all did small talk until finishing breakfast. Amber excused herself to lay down, mussing with my hair as she passed.
“Do you still play? I’m jamming over at Dwight Keeley’s house. You’re welcome to come over.”
“Sorry, I can’t. I have a shift at the restaurant. Working noon to eight.”
“Maybe next time. I hope so.” Denise smiled and dug into her bag, wrote out her telephone number on a slip of paper and handed it to me. Her hand hesitated and pressed her fingertips into my palm. Our eyes met. She had the softest green eyes.
“I’m done at eight,” I said. “Want to do something?”
“I can stop by when you’re done. We can go out for ice cream,” she said.
I folded the paper into my wallet. In the meantime, Alan switched the tape to Neu! Hallogallo filled the room.
After Denise left, Alan gave me a thumbs up.
“Glad we survived,” I said. “I gotta go. I have just enough time to walk home and change clothes.”
“Good luck,” Alan said. “Sorry, I can’t give you a ride. We have to go get the car. Um, eventually.”
Rising from my chair, I responded. “S’ok. Thanks.”
I paused.
“She’s a good drummer.”
Mike Lee
It was one of those nights; the freaky snowstorm that only comes once a comet’s pass here in this part of Texas, ending in Alan’s car breaking down in the back of beyond in Travis County, the slippery trudge on the shoulder of the Ranch Road through three inches of snow. The first time we had a winter storm in this part of Central Texas was in 1978, and coming upon a roadside beer joint, thrown up conveniently where years later it was likely going to be torn down for a 7-11, a strip mall, a row of condos and faux food joints.
That was the future, but for now the beer joint served as our oasis, and for a cold and wet Alan and me, we could load up on coffee while hoping for Amber, Alan’s wife, to pick us up. Although she tends to take her time, Amber was a better option than asking for help from a stranger, especially out here.
We staggered through the door, trying to look as pathetic as possible without leaving an impression of being too fucked up to want to get near and wearily made our way to an empty booth.
We took a look around while waiting to order. The beer joint was one of those dreary southern affairs with walls adorned with the requisite Pabst and Pearl beer signs, interspersed with softball team poster going back to the mid-70s, and fish fry winners’ ribbons. After 10 minutes, we figured that one of the customers had a thing for Barbara Mandrell, judging by the incessant plays on the jukebox.
I felt a sense I was someone else. I thought I had to realize that things don’t run as I wanted but understanding that things are not as bad as they could be.
The walls were painted a greasy yellow, with cracks and lights that just made it look worse, kind of how an archeological dig at old Carcosa would probably have looked. The booths were a tan vinyl, patched up here and there with grey electrical tape, which matched the Formica tabletops, an aesthetic choice which felt startling. The floor, once a black and white checkerboard, had turned into the plains of Nazca, chipped and stained, missing panels and revealing a soft gray under board. The bar was in a not too bad shape; the red top did not match the rest of the roadhouse, but since this place looked so sleaze central, it served as a counterpoint signature, a clean dotted “i” on an otherwise sloppy flourish.
The customers matched the décor. So nondescript, I almost mistook them as the furniture, but after a while I understood there were individual traits in each that did set them apart from the Formica, fading signage, and photographs. The man in the booth in front of us wore his loser’s face under a red Chevy cap, and his funky green hunting vest resembled a lifejacket. He had nothing going for him, nor did his wife or girlfriend next to him. She had the bleached mannequin thing going on.
After we sat down, they seemed to fade into the décor. In retrospect, I wondered what they thought of our conversation, if they were even paying attention, or if they saw us as just as much as a nothing as I saw them.
The guys at the bar lolled on their stools, and none of them had noticed our entrance or at least pretended not to. All of them lamely put on a tough face in the onrush of adversity as their lives unknowingly sank into the earth. Like, tough man, getting their farming and ranch subsidies cut out from under them by Reagan, then voting for the bastard en masse because he was bringing America back.
I thought, smooth thinking, move up to the head of the class so I can laugh my ass off behind your back. “Oh my, how the mighty have fallen, oh yeah, have the mighty fallen,” I’d say, knowing their way of life is passing in front of their blinded eyes.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I was raised country. In fact, my first fifteen years were spent hunting squirrels on the side of a mountain in the middle of Nowheresville, North Carolina before I moved down to the bright lights, big city of Austin. I actually have grown to despise the city as much as the backwoods, but in the country, there aren’t any decent record or bookstores.
So, in the city I shall remain.
While I appraised the sum total of the place in play money, Alan ordered coffee and two Falstaffs from the waitress. I added another coffee, feeling this was going to be a very long night for us if we couldn’t cage a ride before the bar shut down at two.
We looked around for a television so we could catch the Saints game, but there was not one, but didn’t mind since they would have lost anyway. We also began to suspect that our unacknowledged entrance would make it extremely difficult for us to find a good Samaritan to get us out of our predicament and away from this place.
In the meantime, I drank my coffee, while letting the Falstaff sit for a bit before I felt ready to drink. It was only 8:30 so there was plenty of time. I looked through the window to see snow was beginning to slow down, a very good sign .
Alan and I passed the time talking. We made a good pair of Jacks. We’d been through a lot together since high school and remained on speaking terms, a fact that shocked others in our social circle.
We do, however, have our differing personalities. Alan was raised in Houston before moving to Austin in junior high, and is usually quiet, unassuming, with a sentimental manner—the kind of guy who is great around children and drunks while I am a fiery cracker from the sticks, with nary a kind word for much or many, and an arrogance that a teacher back in high school called positively Churchillian. That certainly showed itself in college, where I had lazily planted myself for the past six years, sort of floating along, taking just enough classes not to be threatened with probation, though keeping a three seven five grade point average since the day I entered. Alan graduated and is taking a break before graduate school.
We are both outcasts, both where we grew up and here in Austin, and that held our friendship together. Also we had managed to work out the delicate intricacies of the art of conversation. We talk up a hell of a storm. Fifty years ago, we would have made a great comedy team, but nowadays we’re able to sometimes disgust or amuse, but always catch the attention of our friends and acquaintances with our endlessly relentless flow of words.
We share many interests, such as obscure German novelists, music—mainly old rock and roll and blues—tastes in certain types of modern art, television shows, politics, sports, history, sociological theories, Jungian psychology, but mostly , in all our glory, we expounded upon the peeves, prats and peccadilloes of our friends, enemies and the unknown every person who happened to cross our path with oratorical skills that would shame Daniel Webster. We slapped one-liners on the table like we had the winning card in a high stakes blackjack game.
In a word, we are assholes.
So, we annoyed everyone within listening until Amber, arrived to fetch us from the storm.
Amber was high. Very high, and excitable. She majored in modern dance and was a painter. I ended up sitting shotgun, because Alan was well into his cups and snoring by the first downhill curve back into town.
I was buzzed, but with Alan out of commission and Amber on something psychedelic and babbling nonsense, I felt more than a twinge of terror as we drove through the snow, flying sideways against the passenger window. I kept my eyes on the road and that wide expanse of light ahead, my hands gripping the dashboard, determined to survive.
She talked about a book titled The Rose Cross and the Goddess, and it was hard to keep up with her banter about universal symbolism, side references from Jung, and how wisdom can be found in a tomb decorated with a phoenix. It would have been hard for me to keep up even sober.
Amber sure liked her Sun Ra. Plutonian Nights was playing, which normally would be pleasant, but Amber kept talking over the music. Either rambling about the revealed mysteries of Isis, saying things, like “go man go,” like she was a 1958 Beat at a Greenwich Village coffee house listening to Ginsburg, Kerouac and Corso reading. I sort of liked Corso, but the other two were excessively unhinged and thus off the margins for me.
But Sun Ra was cool. Just wished I could enjoy the smooth time changes, but Amber was in Technicolor mode and I had to focus on the highway, which came up and down like a rollercoster through the Texas Hill Country.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Amber asked why I didn’t have a girlfriend.
“Well, it isn’t like I’m not trying,” I said, not wanting to touch on the subject.
“I know somebody! Do y’all want to meet?”
“Sure.” I looked to make sure she was keeping her eyes on the road. She was, but her brown eyes were severely dilated, and I remained concerned until we finally hit the suburbs.
From that point, it was hoping she picked the correct traffic light while acid dreaming. She did, and we arrived at their house.
I thought about taking a cab home, but instead asked to crash on the couch.
Woke up to Rip It Up by Orange Juice playing somewhere in the back of the Craftsman house Alan inherited from his grandparents. Still kept up, but they weren’t into mowing the yard.
I dumped my shirt on an original Eames chair with a broken back. That came from Alan’s parents. The father was a mucky muck at Chevron. The chair broke during a party when my old band played in the back yard. During a cover of Say I Am by Tommy James and the Shondells, if I recall.
I liked waking up to the music. The album is also from a while ago—evoking nostalgia. Orange Juice was summertime at the lake and beers over breakfast tacos by the tamale stand. Remembered listening to it in Alan’s dorm room, around the time he met Amber in a Classical Philosophy class.
After taking a shower I passed the kitchen. Amber was at the table, complaining of a headache.
Alan was making migas. Deadpan, he said, “Microdot is cut with strychnine. No wonder you have a migraine.”
Amber moaned in response.
“Baby, you haven’t been this sick since you ate the train food in India,” Alan said.
“I still see that chicken in my dreams,” Amber said.
While dressing, I contemplated the things they have because of money. They can do stuff like travel to India, live in a house gifted by grandparents, and own a broken Eames chair used as a coat rack in winter. Yes, they are different from me, but not enough to lack commonalities in what we deem important. Such is the complicated job of being human, and friendship in particular. Class is relatively unimportant, at least until it is not.
Dressed, I entered.
“Sit yourself down, man,” said Alan. “Coffee is on the counter. Migas are on the way.”
“I think I am approaching functional,” said Amber. She wore shorts and a chopped-up Julliard t-shirt. She spent a year there before transferring down here.
“Denise is coming by,” she said. “The drummer.”
“Cool.” She was in a couple of bands I didn’t like very much, but she was good at what she did and certainly far better than the idiot I played with in my former band. Wasn’t interested in playing again, though. I wanted to be a writer and focused on writing record reviews and the occasional feature for the local weekly while waiting tables to make the rent.
There was a knock on the screen door. “C’mon in, Denise.”
I looked over. Denise didn’t look like a drummer, but she sure as hell was. Orange-red dyed hair, cut in a pixie, wearing a vintage plaid green dress with a Peter Pan collar and black ballet flats. When she entered the kitchen I instinctively stood up. I was raised by old school Texans. Proper etiquette was pressed on me from toddler to adult.
We all sat down to eat. Still coming down from the aftereffects of the microdot, Amber stared at her food while we ate.
Out of the blue, Denise asked me. “Who taught you how to eat?”
I was taken aback. “Um, my grandmother.”
“You eat like a gentleman,” she said. “Guys I know wolf down their food like stray dogs.”
“Well,” I said. “I am different.”
“Just raised right,” Denise said. Her voice had a West Texas twang that evoked Bob Wills songs and small-town teachers and preachers. Soft tone, but affirmative. It was attractive.
We talked about bands and respective jobs. She had a gig working in the university registrar’s office. She knew I wrote and complimented me on a review I wrote on The Replacements latest release.
Alan got up and put Lives of Angels on the Nakmuchi cassette deck on the counter.
“I like them, but not the drum machine,” Denise said.
“Never heard of them, but I like the sound,” I said.
“Good for mornings, though. Laid back.”
While the music played, we all did small talk until finishing breakfast. Amber excused herself to lay down, mussing with my hair as she passed.
“Do you still play? I’m jamming over at Dwight Keeley’s house. You’re welcome to come over.”
“Sorry, I can’t. I have a shift at the restaurant. Working noon to eight.”
“Maybe next time. I hope so.” Denise smiled and dug into her bag, wrote out her telephone number on a slip of paper and handed it to me. Her hand hesitated and pressed her fingertips into my palm. Our eyes met. She had the softest green eyes.
“I’m done at eight,” I said. “Want to do something?”
“I can stop by when you’re done. We can go out for ice cream,” she said.
I folded the paper into my wallet. In the meantime, Alan switched the tape to Neu! Hallogallo filled the room.
After Denise left, Alan gave me a thumbs up.
“Glad we survived,” I said. “I gotta go. I have just enough time to walk home and change clothes.”
“Good luck,” Alan said. “Sorry, I can’t give you a ride. We have to go get the car. Um, eventually.”
Rising from my chair, I responded. “S’ok. Thanks.”
I paused.
“She’s a good drummer.”
