The girl with red wings just laughs like this is a typical day in her life. Then she squats down—butt out and knees spread like a music video vixen—and starts pouring measured shots of alcohol into each of their waiting mouths.
I can’t hear anything over the AC/DC song. But she leans down to murmur something into the ear of each guy after she “feeds” them and tips the bottle back up. Then she smiles and plucks the twenty-dollar bill out of his hand before moving on to the next dude.
As she moves down the line of open-mouthed bikers, they look exactly like the image she painted when she called them to the bar: leather-clad baby birds, eager and waiting to be fed by their mama.
For some reason I can’t figure out, an ugly jealousy boils in the pit of my stomach. I’m tempted to go over there and start slamming heads into the bar. Just because she’s touching them, and not me.
But the thing is, I’ve actually dated video vixens. Dated them and passed them on to members of my entourage when I was done. I don’t get jealous. Especially of some chick I just laid eyes on a few seconds ago.
Still, when I try to look away, my eyes stay glued right where they are—on her as she makes her way down the length of the bar. Once, then back again for a second line of guys, then back again when a third line replaces those guys. And yet again, when a few of the guys from the first couple of lines come back for second shots. By the time she picks up the mic again, her waistband is stuffed with twenties.
“Thank you!” she calls out. “Mama Red Bird's all out of shots. But I’ll be on the stage in a little bit for tonight’s Deep Cut.”
The bikers she baby-bird-fed shots hoot and holler as she descends from the bar and disappears from my sight, which abruptly releases me from the trance I fell into while watching her.
“Who is she?” I demand as soon as Crash, Rowdy, and Hyena return to the table. “You know what, actually, her name doesn’t matter.”
I grab Rowdy by the shoulder and turn him back toward the bar. “Tell her to come over here. I want an upstairs meeting.”
“Upstairs meeting” is always code for “sex” when it comes to roadhouse girls. But for once, Rowdy doesn’t immediately jump to do my fetching.
“Aw, Rockstar, don’t even bother, man,” he advises, even though he’s usually my biggest cheerleader.
“She's a dick tease,” Crash adds with another apologetic look. “You cain’t get close to her unless you’re waving a twenty.”
Even Waylon decides to weigh in. “She’s been here since Thanksgiving, and just about every biker in here’s tried with her. But she’s turned all of them down.”
“Even Hades,” Hyena adds as he plops back into his seat and takes a swig of beer.
Gotta admit, the Hades thing surprises me.
The girls that work behind the bar at the nameless roadhouse are strictly off-limits. Everybody knows that. But sometimes, they can be coaxed upstairs. For the right price or for the right guy. And Hades, with his smooth New Orleans accent and next-level flirting game, are what most girls working at the roadhouse would consider the right guy.
I've seen him drop a few honeyed words into the ear of a waitress he likes and her set a whole tray of drinks down to follow him upstairs to one of the fucking rooms.
But the girl with the wings turned him down.
The crowd erupts into cheers before I can finish processing all this new information. And the chick who called herself Mama Red Bird appears above us again, this time on the roadhouse’s stage where I’ve been known to perform Garth Brook’s “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places” when I’ve had a few too many.
The girl’s wings have disappeared, but that doesn’t make her any less mesmerizing, especially now that she’s carrying a guitar under those fantastic tits.
“Hey, everybody, I’m Red! Y’all ready for tonight's Deep Cut?” Her slow drawl lets me know she’s a local Tennessee girl, not a Nashville transplant like me, or from one of the twangier lower southern states like Hyena.
“What’s a Deep Cut?” I ask Crash and Rowdy.
“It’s this game she plays,” Crash answers.
And Rowdy adds, “She sings a song, and if you can guess it—”
“Ssshhh!” Waylon hisses, cutting him off. “I wanna hear. I almost won last night.”
When Waylon gives an order, none of the Reapers dare to disobey it. Crash and Rowdy immediately clamp their mouths.
But up on stage, the girl with long cherry-red hair explains everything, as if she heard my question.
“I play a song, and if you know the name of it, shout it out. Whoever guesses first gets a free beer on me. But fair warning, this is Waylon’s favorite game, and boy, does he hate when folks cheat. He will pull a gun if he catches you Shazaming or looking up the lyrics any other way. So keep your phones in your pockets and just remember rule number four.”