[*Anya*]

Peter Applebome's "Bad Hemingway"

In the late summer of that year we lived in a condo in North Dallas that looked across the tollway to the discos and honky-tonks of the Rue St. Bubba. We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a French restaurant.
"The Great Landry says the Cowboys will be back,'' said the girl.
"Then it must be so," I said, though I knew it was a lie.
"When football season comes, then it will be cold. Like Switzerland. But not now. The cold will come later.
"Pass the Doritos,'' I said, and her eyes shone like the stars
over Amarillo.
I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of
her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. And the pain was washed away, but the image of the woman stayed with me like a blessing and like a curse. We went that summer to many clubs. We went to the Longhorn
Ballroom and the Palm and to a honky-tonk in Fort Worth that was what Harry's Bar would have been like if it had eighty-five cent Pearl Beer and a barmaid whose peroxide hair could damage your eyes as if you had seen an eclipse. That night we visited them all, but as we drove home I did
not think of the Pearl Beer and I did not think of the peroxide. I did not think of the girl who sat beside me. I thought of the woman of the tollway and I could feel my heart pounding in the heat of the summer night.
"Stop the car," the girl said. There was a terrible look of
sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a quiet peace I will never forget.
"I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the
tollway belle's for thee."
The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.