As I clop toward the Golden Nugget, a wooden building with an unlit sign, two teenagers wisp by on trick bikes and disappear into an alley behind a Mexican grocery store. Street lamps blink spastically as lighters flick sparks in the shadow of the tin awning. It’s as if I’m an extra in some sort of modern-day Western.
“How are you doing tonight?” a friendly voice calls through the tobacco cloud. Rows of teeth stretch across his kind face. “ID please.” This man isn’t your typical bouncer dressed in all black and an observant scowl. This man is in dad denim, sporting a T-shirt from an event he most likely attended.
A shorter, round woman wearing a gray sweat suit with a matching cap and white sneakers stops me from pulling the fogged glass door. “Can you help me?” she asks, frantically. “We have to call Domino’s before they close, but we don’t know the number!” An elderly woman shoots up from her smoking bench and pulls the largest pink phone I have ever seen from her white shorts. “I have a smartphone!” she announces. “I’ll find it.” She presses her index finger onto her screen as if she’s making a selection at a gas pump, scrunching her face and leaning closer to the tiny television in her hand. Her face droops to disappointment when her battery immediately dies. “Rats.” After several swipes and a few clicks, I hand my phone to the desperate woman in gray. Her eyes ignite as she recites her order, and I feel like a hero.
Inside, a lonely pinball machine blinks next to the bar, where the regulars weave between one another as if they’re playing a chatty game of musical barstools. Occasionally one patron peels away and joins one of the boisterous groups at high-top tables in the center of the room, where purses are left unattended by women on cigarette breaks who like to order Domino’s on a stranger’s phone. An elaborate vintage beer can collection gathers decades of dust behind fogged Plexiglas. The stage, to the right, features a one-man electronic/acoustic act who plucks the melody to “Bitter Sweet Symphony” with his teeth.
I wander into the bathroom, where a slender woman draped in a smoky silk dress smears red lip clay across her open mouth, towering on the toes of patent-leather heels. Her nose hovers centimeters from the mirror over the solo sink stretching across the narrow back wall. An ancient, steel pay phone tests gravity with a frayed chord dangling above the dripping faucet. “Stall is open,” she says in a sweet Australian accent.
“So is this your favorite spot in town?” I ask as I return to the sink. She lights up and bends into a Hollywood laugh, bouncing her chin-length haircut. “The Nugget? I love the Nugget,” she sings, still Australian. “My husband and I are here every weekend to see friends. Sometimes I just wish there were more good-looking people here.”
I grab a High Life and a bench on the patio. Then the door flies open, and the energy flips from calm to tense. A petite brunette stumbles through the door and plops onto a bench, Bud Light clutched in her tiny grasp. “I paid for this,” she calls, dramatically leaning toward the open door. “You can’t take it from me.” She sways and hoists her body back to an upright position. The back of her head smacks against the wall, but she doesn’t react. The bouncer, no longer chipper, has found his observant scowl. “Did you or did you not pee in the sink?” he asks with a raised eyebrow and pointed finger. The accused leans away from the question, and her face disappears behind her long and thick hair. “That’s what I thought,” he says as he flips his phone open. “You can leave now or the police can pick you up.” The dull ringing against his ear sends the woman and her Bud Light into the velvet shadows.
“They really do need another stall in there,” says a bleached blonde with a burning cigarette. “But I mean, come on, she could’ve used AIDS alley.” I immediately sit up, unsure what to think. “AIDS alley?” I ask.
“Don’t worry, hon. That’s just what we call it,” she says, laughing. “When the line is long and you can’t wait, that’s where you go.”
She points her glowing ember to my right and stares in the same direction, waiting an awkward length of time for me to follow her gaze. I stand up and slowly make my way down the imaginary path. I creep past the glass storefront of the neighboring barbershop and peer into the alley it shares with a Mexican restaurant. It’s as dark as a cave and narrower than two average-size people standing shoulder to shoulder. I catch movement in my peripheral vision and a pang of sheer terror stabs my gut and takes my breath. I pivot to find an army of bobbleheads nodding at me behind barbershop glass, confirming it is time to head home.
Written by Wesley Bacon
This article appears in the September issue of Louisville Magazine. To subscribe to Louisville Magazine, click here.
