Here’s a little snippet from Phil’s Siren Song, coming soon. The story takes place in Flint, Michigan, during the 80s—hopefully captures it. This is a scene with Phil and Karen after the bar has closed, sitting in a booth at their favorite East Side coney island.
AC Spark Plug takes up nearly 500,000 square feet of space along Davison Road and N. Dort Highway, and although a lot smaller, the nearby junkyard also contributes to the East Side’s industrial aesthetic. The plant, which is where the spark plugs and God only knows what else are pumped out, is surrounded by miles of chain-linked fence, while the crushed cars in the junkyard are stacked and arranged in jagged rusting pyramids. The neighborhoods at this time of night are semi-quiet, awash in the distant rumble and droning of the factory, the splash of air made by trucks on the expressway off in the distance and the constant escape of hot air rushing through convoluted ducts and vents toward freedom. Thoma’s, however, is lively. Club kids coming down. Skate punks with skateboards. Shop rats. Bikers. Old-timers in flannel. Whites. Mexicans. A table of black couples. The short-order cooks are working their sizzling magic. The waitresses are pure and lovely and tough: mothers, daughters, girlfriends, grandmothers. I want to believe that what you see at Thoma’s is what you get here in Flint, and that if given the chance, these women could save all of us. One would never have to leave this GM forsaken village. The idea of a hardworking woman who is always ready to fill your cup, smiles and calls you hon, is a potent fantasy. Older, younger—it doesn’t matter. They all wield an attraction. Their uniforms are like those of nurses: the sound of their whispering polyester slacks pure seduction. Their plain, tired beauty ignites a pleasant flame in my groin.
The waitress sets a plate of chocolate pie with a large wedge of whip cream before me.
“Let me ask you something. Can you balance all of your orders on your arm? Do you have to practice that?”
“Of course, hon.”
“And the plates aren’t too hot?”
“Not as hot as me, right?”
Karen snorts a straw of diet Coca Cola, which has just been placed in front of her, out of her nostrils.
“Oh, hon! Let me get you a rag.”
The waitress sashays her syrupy sweet behind to the counter. There is a sense of community at Thoma’s, especially on rowdy nights—a feeling of drifting in the mosh pit while waiting for a band to play—but it can be deceptive if you aren’t careful. Every once in a while, I snap out of the hypnotic nesting of conversations and clattering dishes and sizzling hamburgers and Koegel Viennas to find myself furtively looking around to pinpoint which miscreant is most likely to punch me in the gut in the parking lot and steal my wallet.
Our waitress returns to wipe up our table.
“Busy,” I say, smiling.
She winks.
Karen is smiling at me as if I am an ass.
I am ever so slightly sliding in the grease beneath the table. The soles of my shoes skate in place like the puck on a trembling electric hockey table, never really completely touching the atoms of the floor, perfectly in alignment with the incomprehensible laws of physics and love.
“You’re such a dufus.”
“Does that mean I’m not getting any tonight?”
“Eat your chocolate pie, goon boy.”
“Would you like a bite?” I offer her a quivering, honking bite of gelatinous, mousse-like chocolate ectoplasm on a fork, which she leans across the table to accept. Our eyes meet. I search for myself in those huge blue irises. The eyes no longer complement the hair which used to be the color of tall, dead grass in an empty lot littered with mulched trash and dangerous shards of metal.
She has dyed it black.
“Mmm,” she says.
“Good, hunh?”
“Stuart,” she sighs. “Stuart, Stuart, Stuart. I am so fucking tired of his shit.”
A hefty waitress bellows out, “I need three up, three fries, three chocolates!”
