Small Town

He made the bed, and when he put his tweed cap on his head and left the room it looked unoccupied. His clothes were in the cigarette-scarred mahogany dresser—a few changes of socks and underwear, a couple of plaid shirts like the one he wore, an extra pair of dark trousers. But, unless you pulled open a drawer, you wouldn’t know anyone lived there.

He bought a sandwich and a can of V8 juice at a nearby deli. He walked a mile downtown, stopping along the way to salvage that morning’s Times from a trash can, and a block below Fourteenth Street he came to Jackson Square, a little pocket park with benches and ornamental plantings. There was a fountain, turned off on account of the drought.

Fountains don’t use water, they recirculate the same water over and over, and the loss from evaporation doesn’t amount to much.

But they look as though they use water, so the law requires that they be turned off during water shortages.

He found this fascinating.

He ate his sandwich, drank his V-8, and read his newspaper.

When he’d finished he put the paper and the sandwich wrapper in a mesh trash can and set the empty juice can on top of it, where it could be easily retrieved by one of the men and women who made a living redeeming cans and bottles.

Then he left the park and walked south and east on West Fourth Street.

I T W A S O N A N afternoon like this one, a lazy overcast afternoon in the middle of the week, that Eddie Ragan had first realized material success was not likely to come his way.

He’d been behind the stick at the Kettle, with a pair of beer drinkers at one end and a regular, Max the Poet, drinking the house red at the other. The TV was on with the sound off, and the radio was tuned to an oldies station, and Eddie was polishing a glass and thinking how this was the time he liked best, when the place was empty and peaceful and quiet.

And that’s exactly why you’ll never amount to anything, a little voice told him. Because nobody makes any money working a shift like this. When you’re jumping around playing catch-up with fifty thirsty maniacs, that’s when the tips roll in. And that’s when an ambitious bartender rises to the occasion, and loves every minute of it.

There were bartenders who wanted to make a lot of money so they could spend a lot of money—on cars, on travel, on the good life. They wanted a Rolex on their wrist and a babe on their arm, wanted to fly out to Vegas and leave their money on the craps table or stay home and put it up their nose. And there were others who wanted to make a lot of money and use it to get their own joint up and rolling, so they could put in even longer hours and make even more money—or bust out and start over, if that’s how it played out.

And there were guys who were just doing this for a little while, waiting for a chance to quit their day job (or night job, or whenever the hell their shift was) and make it as an actor or a painter or a writer. And yes, he’d been one of those wannabes himself for a stretch, taking acting classes and getting headshots taken and making the rounds, even picking up small parts in a couple of showcases. But he was no actor, not really, and by the time he’d gotten a third of the way through a screenplay (about a bartender who got laid all the time, which was art improving on life, wasn’t it?) he realized he wasn’t a writer, either. One thing about paint, he didn’t have to try it to know he’d be no good at it. He’d helped a girlfriend paint an apartment once, and that was plenty.

Nope, he was a lifer in the bartending trade. He knew that, and as of that particular weekday afternoon—he figured it was something like two years ago, though he hadn’t marked the date on his calendar—he’d known he wasn’t going to be a great success at it, either. The thought, which he’d instantly recognized as wholly true, had depressed him at first, and that evening he drank a little more than he usually did, and the next morning he felt a little crummier than usual, and took three aspirins instead of two, plus an Excedrin to keep them company.

By the time the hangover was gone, so was the depression. The fact of the matter was that he’d never really wanted to get anyplace. He just thought he ought to want to, like everybody else.

But he didn’t. His life was fine just the way it was. He never had to work too hard, he never worried much, and he got by. There were things he’d never have or do or be, but that was true for everybody.

You could be the richest, most successful man on the planet and there’d always be one woman who wouldn’t love you back, one mountain you couldn’t climb, one thing you wanted to buy that nobody would sell to you.

He had a good life. Especially on lazy afternoons like this one, when he didn’t have much to do, and the perfect place to do it in.

The Mets were playing a day game in Chicago, and the set was on with the sound off, so you could watch Mo Vaughn take the big swing without some announcer telling you what you were seeing.

On the radio, the Beach Boys were proclaiming the natural superiority of California girls. Max the Poet sat with his usual glass of red, reading a Modern Library collection of Chekhov’s stories, and an older dude with a tweed cap was at the corner by the window with a bottle of Tuborg, and two semiregulars, wannabe actors or writers, he couldn’t remember which, were drinking glasses of draft Guinness and talking about the woman whose household goods they’d just moved from her ex-boyfriend’s place in NoHo to a studio apartment in the Flatiron district. She was nice, they agreed, pretty face and a great rack, and the tall one said he got the feeling she liked him.

The other one shook his head. “That was flirting in lieu of a tip,” he said.

“She tipped us.”

“She tipped us five apiece, which is the next thing to stiffing us altogether. In fact it’s worse, because when they stiff you maybe they didn’t know any better, or maybe they forgot.”

“You know Paul? Big Paul, got the droopy eyelid?”

“Only sometimes.”

“What, like you only know him on months that got an r in them?”

“The lid only droops sometimes, asshole. And I know what you’re gonna say, because I seen him do it. He never gives ’em a chance to forget, or not know better, because he tells ’em in front that a tip’s expected.”

“‘Just so you know, sir, we work for tips.’ Takes brass balls, but only the first time. Only I have to say I’ve seen it backfire.”

“I guess you got to know when to do it. He works it right, they’re scared of him, they overtip. The only thing is it feels like extortion, and for chump change at that.”

“Well, chump change is what we just got, all right, but maybe it’s all she could afford. I still say she liked me.”

“You gonna make a move?”

“I might. Give her a chance to settle in first.”

“Give her a chance to forget all about the studly moving man.”

“You think? How long is too long, that’s the question.” Jesus, Eddie thought, he could listen to this shit all day.

He turned to see how the guy in the cap was doing with his Tuborg. The bottle was still there, the glass still filled to the brim, but the guy was gone. He’d come in what, half an hour ago? Sat there with his tweed cap halfway down his forehead and his plaid shirt buttoned up to his neck and his shoulders hunched forward, never spoke a word. There’d been a Tuborg coaster on the bar, and the guy had picked it up and tapped it with his forefinger. Eddie’d said, “Tuborg? Only got bottles,” and the fellow nodded, and put a twenty on the bar. Eddie hadn’t said anything when he brought the beer or when he came back with the guy’s change, and whenever he’d glanced over there the guy was in the same position, and so were the glass and the bottle.

And now he was gone. Unless he was in the john, which was possible. He turned to the TV to see how the Mets were doing, and somehow the score had gotten to be seven to four, with the Mets on the short end of it. They’d been up four-three last time he’d noticed.

Maybe Sosa’d hit one out. When the wind was blowing out, your grandmother could hit the ball out of Wrigley. And Sammy Sosa, shit, he could do it when the wind was blowing in.

He watched the Mets go down in order, then went to refill a glass for one of the moving men, and he checked on the Tuborg, and it was still there, the bottle and the glass, and the guy was still missing.

And he wasn’t in the john, because Max was just coming back from there, and there was only room for one at a time. He asked Max if he’d seen the man leave, and Max didn’t know who he was talking about, hadn’t even seen him come in.

He could have ducked out for a breath of air, or to buy a newspaper. Or cigarettes; the ashtray where he’d been sitting was empty, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a smoker, and he could have discovered he was out and gone out to buy some.

But he’d been gone too long for that. And he’d scooped up the change from his twenty. Some people did that automatically, just as others left the change on the bar top until they were ready to call it a day or a night. This man, this fucking enigma in the tweed cap, had originally left the change in front of him, never touching it or his Tuborg, and now he was gone. Vanished into thin air, just like Judge Crater, except he didn’t even walk around the horses first. Just plain disappeared.

The record ended, and there was a commercial, and on the television set someone hit one over the ivy. A Met, evidently, because they had the usual shot of one of the Bleacher Bums throwing it back. Remarkable, he thought, that people still did that, showing their disdain for balls hit by anyone but their beloved hometown losers. Suppose you were from out of town, suppose you didn’t give two shits about the Cubs, and you caught a home run ball hit by the visiting team. Would they be able to pressure you into giving it back, the way Big Paul, Droopy-eyed Paul, pressured people into tipping him?

Another record played, the Stones with “Ruby Tuesday,” and he looked over and the beer was still there and the guy was still gone.

Something wrong with the beer? He went over and sniffed it, and it smelled like beer, and he was going to take a sip and thought better of it. He got a fresh bottle of Tuborg from the cooler and poured an ounce or two into a glass and held it to the light. Clear enough, and he took a sip and it tasted fine.

He got two clean glasses, divided the remaining beer between them, and set them in front of the two movers. “Taste test,” he said. They gave him a look, shrugged, and sipped the beer.

“Well?”

“Tastes like Tuborg,” the tall one said.

“Meaning you saw the bottle. It taste all right?”

“It’s not going to win me over from the black stuff, if this is a marketing thing.”

“I just wondered if the case was off,” he said. “Guy ordered a beer, didn’t touch a drop. Look at it, full to the brim.”

“There a fly in it? That’d put a person off.”

“No fly, and wouldn’t you say something if there was?”

“This asshole? He’d drink it, fly and all.”

“Protein,” the other agreed. “You’re gonna drink, you gotta eat.

Maybe he quit drinking.”