The bar was in the first floor of a small hotel on the outskirts of San Antonio. Cooper made himself a bet as he walked in. Neon signs for Shiner Bock, smoke-stained drop ceiling, jukebox in the corner, pool table with worn felt, chalkboard with specials. Female bartender, a blonde showing dark roots.
The specials turned out to be on a dry-erase board, and the bartendress was a redhead. Cooper smiled. About half the tables were occupied, mostly men but a few women too. The tabletops held plastic pitchers and cigarette packs and cell phones. The music was too loud, some country-rock act he didn’t know:
Normal was good enough for my grand-daddee,
Normal’s all I want to be,
Normal men built the USA,
Normal men taught me how to play.
Cooper pulled out a high-backed stool, sat down, tapped out the beat on the bar with his fingertips. He’d heard once that the essence of country music was three chords and the truth. Well, the three chords part still stands.
“What can I get you, hon?” The roots of her red hair were dark.
“Just coffee.” He glanced sideways. “And get her another Bud, would you? She’s about done with that one.”
The woman on the stool beside him was peeling the label off her longneck. The knuckles of her right hand brightened for a moment, and her T-shirt tightened at the shoulders. “Thanks, but no.”
“Don’t worry.” Cooper flashed a wide smile. “I’m not hitting on you. Just had a good day, thought I’d share the mood.”
She hesitated, then nodded, the motion catching light on a slender gold necklace. “Thanks.”
“No trouble.”
They went back to looking straight ahead. A row of bottles lined the back of the bar, and behind them faded snapshots had been tacked up in a collage. A lot of smiling strangers hanging on each other, holding up beer bottles, all of them seeming to be having a great time. He wondered how old the photos were, how many of the people in them still drank here, how their lives had changed, which had died. Photographs were a funny thing. They were out of date the moment they were taken, and a single photograph rarely revealed much of anything. But put a series together and patterns emerged. Some were obvious: haircuts, weight gained or lost, fashion trends. Others required a particular kind of eyes to see. “You staying here?”
“Sorry?”
“Your accent. You don’t sound local.”
“Neither do you.”
“Nope,” Cooper said. “Just passing through. Be gone tonight, everything goes well.”
The redhead returned with his coffee, then pulled a beer from a cooler, the bottle dripping ice water. She spun an opener from her back pocket with easy grace. “Four dollars.”
Cooper set a ten on the bar, watched the woman make change. She was a pro, returned six singles rather than a five and a one, made it easy for him to tip extra. Someone at the other end of the bar yelled, “Sheila, sweetheart, I’m dying here,” and the bartendress headed away with a practiced smile.
Cooper took a sip of coffee. It was burned and watery. “You hear there was another bombing? Philadelphia this time. I was listening to the radio on the way in. Talk radio, some redneck. He said a war was coming. Told us to open our eyes.”
“Who’s us?” The woman spoke to her hands.
“Around here, I’m pretty sure ‘us’ means Texans, and ‘them’ means the other seven billion on the planet.”
“Sure. Because there aren’t any brilliants in Texas.”
Cooper shrugged, took another sip of his coffee. “Fewer than some other places. The same percentage are born here, but they tend to move to more liberal areas with larger population density. Greater tolerance, and more chance to be with their own kind. There are gifted in Texas, but you’ll find more per capita in Los Angeles or New York.” He paused. “Or Boston.”
Alex Vasquez’s fingers went white around her bottle of Bud. She’d been slouching before, the lousy posture of a programmer who spent whole days plugged in, but now she straightened. For a long moment she stared straight ahead. “You’re not a cop.”
“I’m with the DAR. Equitable Services.”
“A gas man?” Her pupils dilated, and the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
“We turn out the lights.”