The Barkeep (38 page)

“Maybe, but I’m glad to do it for him without payment,” she said, which was about the most unlawyerlike thing Justin had ever heard a lawyer say. “It’s an honor representing your father.”

“An honor?”

“He’s quite a man,” she said. “Unique. And on top of that, he’s an innocent man sentenced to jail for the rest of his life. How many lawyers get a chance to right such a wrong?”

“And you’re sure he’s innocent?”

“Aren’t you? After the suicide and the evidence they found in the Moss house, what else could you think?”

“That’s right,” said Justin. “What else?”

“That’s why I am so excited to meet you, Justin.” She leaned forward and patted his knee. “You’re a big part of his life, and I have the feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other.”

There it was again, the sense that she was coming on to him. He pulled back, stood up from the chair, wandered around the office, knowing all the while that she was staring at him. It was a fairly large office, bigger than most of the others he had spied while being led down the hallway, a partner’s office. But even so, the furniture was stock and the photographs on the walls were routine shots of Philadelphia: the fountain in Logan Square, the art museum, Independence Hall. Nothing too
personal, no family photos. And her left hand, the one that had patted his knee, was bare of rings. He started having a weird feeling about this room and this woman and being here, like he was touching something soft and moldy.

“How did you meet my father?” he said.

“He was one of my students,” she said, swiveling around in her chair to follow Justin’s wanderings.

“Students?”

“I was an English teacher before I went to law school. My passion was Shakespeare. When I was still trying to make partner, I was advised that I needed some public-interest work to burnish my credentials. So, though I am embarrassed to admit it, I only started teaching in the prison to get ahead at the firm. Shakespeare for the incarcerated. A stupid idea, I suppose, but it worked. There was much more interest than you would imagine, and the discussions were quite lively. Truth is, I learned more about Shakespeare from the inmates than I ever did from my professors or at the Old Vic. Last year we were putting on
Henry IV, Part 1
, when your father joined the group. In all my classes at the prison, I had never met anyone like him.”

“I bet not.”

“He was so quick, and had such keen insights. And Justin, you’ll like this. He told me he had a son that reminded him of Prince Hal in the story. He was referring to you.”

“I don’t know the play.”

“Oh, you should read it. Fabulous. Prince Hal is the play’s true hero, who fights the battle at the end that saves his father’s crown. Stirring, actually. The performance was quite well received by the other prisoners. Here, let me show you.”

She stood, went over to her desk, pulled open a drawer, and pulled out a photograph in a simple wooden frame.

“Here,” she said. “I cast your father as the king.”

“He liked that, I’m sure,” said Justin as he took the photograph.

A group of men, scraggly in their prison togs, with just a few accessories to define the character each was playing. The men stood around Sarah Preston, who looked much less spiffy in the picture, her hair not done, her face not made-up, her clothes not Nordstrom. Something had changed in Sarah Preston from when this photograph was taken, and Justin, sadly, had an idea of what that was.

He picked his father out of the photograph right off, standing next to the lawyer with a Burger King crown on his head. There was a bearded inmate with a pillow under his shirt. There was a young prisoner with another crown and a sword. And off to the right, an old man, also with a sword, who looked a lot like…No, it couldn’t be.

“Who’s that?” said Justin, pointing at the old man with the sword.

“Hotspur,” said Sarah. “He’s the villain of the play, the great warrior trying to unseat the king. It’s Hotspur who fights Prince Hal at the end.”

“No,” said Justin, “I mean who is he, for real?”

“Vern.”

“Vern?”

“Yes. Vernon Bickham. He was in for forgery or something. But I think he’s out already.”

“Vern,” said Justin.

And then he stopped speaking. Because this Vern wasn’t just another old man with bad teeth who looked a lot like Birdie Grackle. He was an old man with bad teeth who looked enough like Birdie Grackle that he could have been Birdie Grackle’s twin. Except the sleeve of the shirt on the arm
holding the sword was rolled up to the elbow and there, on the forearm, was Birdie Grackle himself, with a crown of thorns. No twin at all.

What a peculiar coincidence, thought Justin in the first blush of recognition, when his mind was still befogged by the shock of it all. What an amazing coincidence. And then the fog lifted and the amazingness of the coincidence fell apart as the reality of what it all meant slammed into him.

Like a fork in the eye.

57.

MOUTHFULS OF VODKA

T
he knock on the door came when Annie Overmeyer was packing to pack it all in.

It was late, and she was a little drunk, and that would have been the obvious explanation for why she was throwing shift and shirt into her bag. But her packing to leave, to flee actually, was no drunken folly. It was, instead, a failure of the alcohol to soothe what normally it soothed.

She had tried drinking it away, the emotions that had overwhelmed her the night before after Justin Chase had spurned her completely, the anger and self-pity, the hurt, the sadness, the pathetic yearning to be something other than she was. She had tried to drown it all and yet, unhappily, alcohol had failed her. It had been such a friend, along with bad sex and the occasional vampire novel, just what she needed to keep her mind from the truths of her life. But the bottle wasn’t working just now, the vodka she had downed didn’t numb. Instead it perversely made her more aware of what had happened to her life.

There should have been a warning label on the bottle.
Caution: life as viewed after drinking contents may appear more pathetic than you can bear.
And the only response she could have had was, “Really now, how is that possible?”

You get into a habit of low expectations, which gives you a sort of contentment. You go through life as if through a mist, seeing little farther than your nose and scorning all that only appears wispy and faint. Then a bolt of lightning splits the mist and gives you a glimpse of all you might be missing. And doesn’t that just ruin the hell out of your day? That’s what Justin Chase had been in their night together, a bolt of lightning that allowed her a glimpse of all she had let drift out of her life.

It wasn’t the sex, which was fine, really, but still just sex. She could find cocksmen in any dive in the city that could give Junior a run for his money. And it wasn’t that he was so superspecial a guy. Really, all that Zen crap was fake nineties bullshit that made her teeth ache. And, to top it all, he was just a bartender; Mark from King of Prussia pulled in more in a month than Chase could dream of making in a year behind the bar. And no one knew better than Annie how much she liked her creature comforts: facials at the spa, a bright new pair of shoes that lifted her calf just so. So what was it?

It was their way together. Lying in bed beside him—and yes beneath him and above him, too, belly to belly, hand to hand, tongue to breast—there was no subterfuge, no abject neediness, no sense of obligation or payment owed, no unbalanced emotions or subjugation. They weren’t there making up for childish slights, playing out their adolescent neuroses, searching for the emotionally distant daddy or seeking revenge on the cheerleader who cut them in high school. It was just easy and fun and intimate in such a naked way that it seemed almost obscenely pure. She’d had, for a single evening, the type of relationship that she had always thought was merely the mewling fantasy of romance novelists and lonely country-club wives. She had glimpsed what was, for her, the holy grail: a relationship of equals without the usual dose of self-loathing.

It had been a lie, of course. Justin Chase had proven to be no different than every other self-satisfied scoundrel who had talked his way between her legs, just a more convincing actor with a unique line of patter. But the promise of the thing she had glimpsed, that intimacy, was what she had tried unsuccessfully to numb with the vodka and why she was packing now. Because it had exposed with the brightest of lights what was truly absent in own her life, and how much less she was settling for night after unsatisfying night. And if she couldn’t drown that promise in mouthfuls of vodka, then she would do the only other thing that was sure to numb her spirit.

And so she was packing, filling a suitcase for a quick and unplanned getaway to Minnesota, to her girlhood home, so her parents could give their unbidden advice and tell her exactly what she should do with her life. A week in that gray Lutheran landscape and she’d be pawing at the door like a dog, desperate to head off to some new place, any new place. Mom and Dad were always good for that. Every day at home was like Thanksgiving, filling her soul with the true spirit of thankfulness that she was not, thank God, living at home anymore. Minnesota was such a great place to be from.

And then the knock at the door.

Her first response was annoyance. When she was half-drunk and in the middle of a self-pity party she didn’t want anyone trying to sell her on vacuum cleaners or Jehovah. But then she wondered how the solicitor had gotten past that front security door without ringing her up first. And then she thought about Mrs. Moss, dead in her chair, and the glimpse she caught along that darkened hallway of the strange figure tearing out of the house. And then she grew scared, damn scared.

Another knock, the muffled sound of a voice.

She grabbed hold of a lamp from her bedroom and headed into the living room. Something jerked back her arm like she was being grabbed. A jolt of terror hit before she realized the thing jerking her back was just the power cord. She kneeled down and pulled the plug before advancing again, the twelve-dollar piece of pottery and pressed steel a pitiful little cudgel.

More knocking.

“Who the hell is it?” she said, gripping the lamp more tightly.

“It’s Justin,” came the voice. “Justin Chase.”

She lowered the lamp and leaned her back against the door. “I know your last name, Junior. What do you want?”

“There’s something I need to say.”

“Then say it.”

“Through the door?”

“Sure.”

“Let me in, Annie.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. We both had our fun, and you made yourself perfectly clear that all you wanted after was to get the hell away and stay away. I understand, it’s a characteristic of the species
malepenus stupidius
. And you’re right, we can both do so much better. It turns out I have a date tonight with that guy who you let buy me a drink. We’re going ballroom dancing.”

“I didn’t know you liked ballroom dancing.”

“I don’t, but he’s an investment banker. Do you know how much he makes?”

“No.”

“Enough for me to spin like a top if that’s what he wants.”

“Come on, Annie. Open up. I don’t want to make a scene for the neighbors.”

“They’re used to it by now. I could set up bleachers, sell tickets.”

“Okay, you’re right. I’m an asshole.”

“A pretentious, self-righteous, narcissistic asshole.”

“Exactly.”

“Say it.”

“I’m a pretentious, self-righteous, narcissistic asshole,” he said. “Not to mention the king of the bullshitters. I pretended to see the world more clearly than everyone around me when all the time I was the world’s biggest dupe, a Zen faker who was twisting ancient
kōan
s to convince himself of the virtue of taking the easy road out. Which makes me a fraud and a coward too. And I sing like a hoarse crow. Do you want to hear?”

She could feel herself weaken with every word, every confession. Even if it was only a new line of patter, it was having an effect, but then the best lines of patter always do.

“I wouldn’t say you were the king of the bullshitters,” she said through the wood as she pushed herself off the door, turned around, twisted open the bolt. “More like the idiot prince.”

She heard the knob turn, and slowly the door opened, and then there he was, so close it was almost shocking. He was big, bigger than she remembered, and strangely disheveled. It wasn’t like him to look so unkempt, as if he had been run over by a huge animal. She watched him stare at her for a moment, and then his gaze drifted slowly downward.

“It works better if you plug it in,” he said.

She followed his gaze and noticed the lamp in her hand. She had forgotten she still was holding it. The reality of it, the hard feel of the pottery, brought her out of some sort of trance and back into her situation.

“I was taking it with me to the bath,” she said. “It puts a
sizzle into the enterprise. What do you want, Junior?”

He stepped through the door, closed it behind him and stared at her, stared so closely it was like he was peering through her flesh.

“Is there something on my face?” she said.

He stepped toward her and put his thumb on her lip, and she felt a spark jump between them. He rubbed her lip gently with his thumb and then, with the same hand, he caressed her cheek. She wanted to be immobile, as still as a statue, not even dignifying his unsubtle attempt at seduction with a jerking away, but her neck betrayed her and bent into the touch. His hand slid from her cheek into her hair and he gently held her in place as he leaned toward her and kissed her.

He kissed her and something went weak inside. Her eyelids fluttered, her bones wobbled. She sagged into his hard body and let go of everything.

Crash.

The shock of the sound pulled her away. She looked down. The lamp lay in shards about her. She stared at the ruined lamp for a long moment, trying to piece everything together, and then she looked up at him, tilting her head.

“So that’s what this visit is all about. A little breakup sex, huh, Junior? You’re all pathetic, the whole lot of you.”