The Barkeep (16 page)

Sometimes you only saw yourself clearly in the eyes of those you’ve left, and what you saw was a horror.

If she hadn’t been drunk, she might have tried to figure out how the girl in the high-school hallway, who always intended to be good, had let her life slip so brutally away from her. But that was the question she had been drinking to avoid, and now, drunk and tired, avoidance was successfully achieved. No questions to be asked, no answers to be sought. As she approached her apartment building, a converted town house on Pine Street, she looked forward to nothing but the oblivion of a dreamless stupor-like sleep. She would lurch through the foyer and up the steps, scrape her key into the lock, kick off her heels the moment she stepped in the door, and collapse gratefully atop her king-sized bed, only to awake in the morning still in her skirt and shirt, with a line of drool marking the pancake on her cheek. Her life was too marvelous to—

“Annie. Finally. Where have you been?”

It took a moment to shift her focus from anticipation of the sweet relief of sleep to the man now barring her from her building’s door, a small, fastidious man with pale skin and rimless glasses.

“Gordy,” she said in a light, slurry voice. “I mean Gordon. What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. Wondering where you were.”

“I was out.”

“Tramping around, no doubt.”

“Don’t pout, Gordy.” She closed her eyes and waved her hand at her mistake, remembering that Gordy didn’t like the
diminutive form of his name, being diminutive enough as it was. “Gordon. Pouting is unbecoming a man of your position. Yes, I was out tramping. Lawyers lawyer, doctors doctor, tramps tramp. None of us can help ourselves.”

The man twisted his thin lips in disgust. “You’re drunk.”

“You think so? By golly, I was wondering why the world was spinning right around me, as if it were an amusement ride designed to make me throw up. Can you feel it? No? Then I guess you’re right, it is only me. Funny, I only went out for a drink and here I am drunk. How does that happen, do you think?”

“I’ve been calling you over and over. Why don’t you return my calls?”

“Because you’ve been calling me over and over.” She looked a little more carefully at his neatly cut hair and his handsome face, lost her balance for a moment and regained it, saw the pain in his eyes and was strangely glad. Why should she be alone? “You’re a sweet man, and we had fun, but we had this scene already, didn’t we? And I’m of the opinion that the first is always the best. I’m moving on and you’re going to go back to your wife, we both decided.”

“You decided.”

“Yes, isn’t it marvelous?”

“My wife won’t have me back. She’s filing for divorce.”

“It seems to happen more and more. A plague of divorces spreading about me like…like the plague.”

“She says she can never forgive me and it’s over. And she’s right, it is over. I don’t want her, I want you. I can’t stop thinking about you. The way you feel and smell, the way you—”

“I get the idea.”

“I gave up everything for you.”

“And don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”

“I love you, Annie.”

“Maybe it’s just something you ate. Did you have any shellfish? It’s not the season, you know.”

“I need you. I can’t live without you.”

“You’d be surprised what we can live without.”

“Annie, I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“Of course it does. To you. You’re sweet,” she said, lurching forward and placing a hand on his cheek. “But I need to get to sleep. Good-bye, Gordy…Gordon. Good luck.”

He grabbed her wrist and jerked it down. “Why are you being such a bitch to me? Why are you acting like a drunken bitch whore?”

“Don’t forget cunt,” she said. “If we’re going to pick out the juiciest of epithets, let’s not forget the juiciest of all.”

“You ruined me.”

“You ruined yourself. Though I can’t say I didn’t enjoy watching. But don’t tell me it wasn’t worth it, darling. You blubbered like a baby in gratitude.”

He twisted away from her, like her words were a slap, and then, while still holding on to her wrist with his right hand, he backhanded her face with his left. She could feel the force of the blow as it spun her to the right and drove her knee to the ground, but it wasn’t painful. Yet. It would be, she knew, her face, and the bark on her knee from falling, once the alcohol wore off, would hurt like hell. Now she really had to get upstairs. She didn’t want to be awake when the pain came.

“I’m sorry,” he said, letting go of her and stepping away. “Oh, God, Annie, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I suppose now we’re even.” She put her hands on the cement and pushed herself to standing. Without looking at him, she went straight to her door. “Good-bye, Gordy.”

“No Annie, please, you can’t, I didn’t mean—”

She felt his hand on her arm, and then the hand was gone. Along with his voice. Replaced with a constricted gasp like a death rattle. When she staggered around to see what had happened, Gordon was being held back by an arm around his throat and his face was reddening alarmingly. Gordon was grabbing at the arm with his pale, manicured hands, but his flailing wasn’t doing any good as the arm suddenly lifted him into the air. Annie’s focus went from Gordon’s face to the face of the man holding him aloft. A stranger, young, but without a touch of anger in his dark eyes.

“You’re going to kill him,” she said calmly.

“Death is relative,” said the stranger.

“Before we turn all metaphysical and misty, why don’t you let the poor man down before he croaks.”

“If that’s the way you want it,” said the stranger before dropping Gordon splat onto the ground. Gordon, sitting on the sidewalk, grabbed his throat and gasped for air as the young man stepped over him as if the middle-aged man were a piece of trash. The stranger was tall and thin with broad shoulders, a bruised cheek, and dark shoulder-length hair. And he was way young, like a kid really, pretty much her own age.

“Who the hell are you?” she said. “And why are you playing superhero?”

“You don’t remember me?”

“What, did I fuck you too?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“Annie,” said Gordon, still on the ground, hands still rubbing his throat. “Who the hell is this? Another of your toys?”

“Give me a minute,” said the young man to Annie before he turned and stooped down so that he was face-to-face with the sitting Gordon.

“Let me tell you a story, Gordy. It is Gordy, right?”

“Gordon.”

“Okay. So listen and think on this, Gordon. There was a Chinese Zen master who once asked a student if a heavy stone by the fire was inside or outside the student’s mind. The student thought about it for a bit and then replied, ‘From the Buddhist viewpoint, everything is an objectification of the mind, so I would say that the stone is inside my mind.’ The master looked at the student for a moment and then said, ‘Your head must be very heavy.’”

Gordon simply stared, as if there had to be more.

The young man lifted his hand and flicked Gordon in the forehead. “Lighten up, Gordon,” he said.

Annie couldn’t help but laugh.

Without rising, Gordon started crawling away like a crab. “Get away from me, you freak. Do you know who I am? I’m going to sue you into a Camden row house you touch me again.”

The man with the long hair stood and turned around, and there was something in his hard stare that made Annie’s throat catch.

“Wait,” she said, the familiarity of the face coming into focus now. “I met you once. And I’ve seen…No, you’re kidding, right? Are you who the hell I think you are?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Christ. And I thought this night couldn’t get any worse.”

23.

STRAWBERRY MULE

W
hen she felt the cold kiss on the high arch of her cheekbone, Annie quickly opened her eyes. No, it wasn’t all just a god-awful dream. The Chase boy was here, in her apartment, leaning over her like an accusation even as he gently held something up against her face while she sat, shoeless, on her couch.

“What’s that?” she said.

“Ice.”

“Wouldn’t it be better in a glass with some alcohol?”

“No. Nice selection in your refrigerator, by the way. Diet ginger ale, an unopened carton of rotting strawberries, two desiccated limes, and a half bottle of cheap and bitter vodka swallowed by ice in the freezer. When was the last time you defrosted?”

“What did you say you were doing here?” she said as she put her hand over his, and took hold of the frigid plastic bag.

“I was saving you bodily from your disappointed suitor.”

“Spare me the hero rap. I didn’t need your help to handle Gordy. He’s a pussycat, really, with such soft hands. It’s just things haven’t worked out well for him since he met me. Were you walking on by and happened to spy our little scene, or were you lurking?”

“Lurking.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes. “You don’t know how disappointed I am to hear that.”

“Have you heard from my father lately?”

“Is that what you were lurking to ask me?”

“Partly.”

“He writes me letters. I get one every month. They come as regularly as the cable bill. Sometimes I even read them. So yes, I have heard from your father.”

“What does he say?”

“He coos like a pigeon. Sometimes I coo back out of pity. What are you doing here, Junior?”

“I have some questions.”

“Maybe you should go to a priest; he’s bound to have more answers than I do.”

“I left any faith I had in priests on the floor with my dead mother.”

She opened her eyes and stared at him. This was heading exactly where she didn’t want it to head, yet there didn’t seem to be too much choice. He had lurked, he had arrived with flash and violence, and he had questions. God save her from questions. Yet he wasn’t hard on the eyes, Annie noticed, though in a generic sort of unshaven way, with a cute little bruise on his cheek that undoubtedly now matched hers. They were like coordinated T-shirts that read “I’m with Stupid.”

“Do you know how to make a drink, Junior?”

“I’ve had some experience.”

“Fill me a glass with some ice and that vodka you found. Let me get out of this skirt and maybe you can ask your questions. I’ll decide then whether to answer them.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

As she wiped off the blood and her makeup, and changed
into an overlong nightshirt, she heard all kinds of noise coming from the kitchenette, which alarmed her, but not enough for her to go see what the hell he was doing. She was back on the couch, legs curled beneath her, when he returned from the kitchen holding a glass filled with ice and crushed strawberries and a slice of lime. A spoon stuck out beyond the rim like a jaunty accent.

“What is that?” she said.

“It’s sort of a Strawberry Mule, with a few necessary modifications based on the paucity of your pantry.”

When she tasted it, her mouth fizzled with the clean, sweet flavor of strawberry. “It’s pretty damn good.”

He sat in a chair across from her. “There wasn’t much juice left in the lime and ginger ale is not ginger beer.”

“Still.”

She took another sip and then a gulp. She needed something to help her deal with this serious boy out to find all the sad answers in his sad little life. In fact she would have preferred just the vodka straight, but this sure was tasty.

“You’re not going to join me?” she said.

“I don’t drink.”

“And yet…” She lifted her drink in tribute. “So here you are, the grieving son, sober as a stone and trying to get to the bottom of the tragedy of his past, is that it?”

“I’ve gotten beyond the grieving part.”

“Is there a beyond? And without drinking?”

“I could show it to you.”

“This will do just fine.”

“You know that my father is trying to get a new trial.”

“After what happened to his friend, Flynn, I just assumed that was over. And to tell you the truth, it’s a hell of a relief.”

“Flynn’s death was a relief?”

“What did you think, Junior, that your father was the love of my life and that I’ve been waiting dutifully all these years hoping they let him out so we can resume our torrid affair?”

“Something like that.”

“I don’t mean to disappoint you if you were waiting on me to be your stepmom, but he was just another mistake in a long line. And not the first, either. But seeing how it turned out, maybe the most spectacular.”

He looked at her and struggled a bit to come up with the right words. “This thing you had with my father…what was it all about?”

“You go right at it, don’t you?”

“I’m trying to understand what happened.”

“I’ll keep it simple for your simple little brain. It was a fling. They’re messy and fun and stupid. And ours was drunken, which always adds to the hilarity. And of course, like most, it was a mistake.”

“Were you in love?”

“God, you are grabbing all the clichés, aren’t you?”

“That’s all I have at the moment.”

“I guess I felt something, but I don’t know if it was love. It was dirty and grown-up and transgressive and thrilling in its perverse little way, all the things I couldn’t help being attracted to, being as I’m nothing myself if not perverse. And it always feels safer with someone older, who has more to lose than you do. No future, you see, nothing that could really call for a commitment, which seems to be what I always fall for. There was an affair with an older professor in college that sort of began the pattern. And then your father.”

“You didn’t want to marry my father?”

“God, no. He was already married. And marrying him, what would I gain?”

“He was rich.”

“Not that rich. And he was old. And he had a family. I didn’t want to wreck your happy home, believe it or not. He said I was all part of this arrangement he had and I was ready to believe him. But he sure wanted to marry me. He kept on asking, and I kept on telling him the obvious, that he was already married.”

“So it was all him.”

“Not all. You know, when you’re lying in bed with someone, naked, after, feeling some sort of glow…” She laughed at the boy’s obvious discomfort. “However much you don’t want to hear it, that part wasn’t bad. But in bed you can feel a certain magical closeness that makes everything else seem distant. And I don’t know, in those moments, with your father, maybe it seemed possible. And here’s the kicker, Junior. Even now, somehow those moments, in bed with some old married guy, with both of us drunk and him pawing at my chest, those moments might just be the last innocent moments I have left in my life. When I can still feel like it was before.”