I take a shot.
I aim to please. You have met my circle, enjoyed the company. We have discussed literature, philosophy, science, touched on religious belief, and you expect the conversation to continue on that level. You deserve due warning.
I have another acquaintance. “Nothin to worry about, bub.” He has no acquaintance with the truth. “Yer in safe hands.”
“Said Jack the Ripper.”
“I’m here for ya.”
“The work needs serious application, and a steady hand. So the answer is no.”
“Yer lucky day, bub. I have a lil free time. Start tomorrow.”
“My mind is firm, as usual.”
“An’ my dick is hard, as usual!” The diction is a hardship, as usual.
“No vital qualification for the job.”
“Gimme a break, bub.”
“I gave you a break last year. Against my better judgment.”
“Last year is last year. I’m clean now.”
“You’re a wreck. You’re shaking. You can’t look me in the eye. Can we get serious for one second? The dog had diarrhea last night. You’re as clean as the kitchen floor.”
“Medical condition, bub. Born shaking.”
Is there a doctor in the house? A tremulous emergence from the womb seems a stretch, although the dissolute creature can control neither limb nor tongue. And they find him irresistible. So he says! I shut up shop Mondays and we had strayed into a bar. Dick’s House holes a wall on El Camino, my drinking companion overstaying his welcome at the city’s more particular watering holes. Eleven in the morning, the establishment had no other sign of life. And we were supposed to serve ourselves? Dick himself hung in a frame, at the wheel of a faded Coupe de Ville. An inflatable Elvis in full Vegas lorded over the desultory dance floor, and snowboarders hotdogged across a humongous screen, the hour offering little live sporting diversion. The Yankees had just won another World Series, as they have to remind us.
The door burst open. “I run a respectable establishment!” The buxom brunette betrayed some pain of facial feature. But the wronged party was not unpleasant to behold. I nodded politely, my companion whistled his welcome. “A threesome?” She acknowledged our presence. “No thank you!”
“Excuse me, ma’am?” I might be keeping questionable company, but really!
“Lowlifes!” She pointed a finger. “I’m a decent woman!” The bejeweled digit was directed at the street, where a white van was slowly pulling away, the King of Pop blasting through a rolled down window. I wanna rock with you. The decent woman took a stand on the business side of the bar. All night!
“Begorrah!” My companion had his own business in mind. “Top of the morning to ye, me lass.”
“Missy!” She wiped the counter. “You don’t mess with Missy.”
“I’ll keep that in me mind.”
“What will it be, gentlemen?”
“I’m thirsting for a lovely Guinness, if ye please.”
“Irish, huh?”
“And very proud, I am.”
“We have a band here weekends. The Dubliners.”
“Grand music, I have no doubt. Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.”
“The girls do love the accents.”
“Ye should visit us sometime. The Emerald Isle! A bonnie lass is always welcome, she is. Don’t forget to kiss the old Blarney Stone.”
I issued a warning. My companion is an exception to the rule, the acquaintance unrewarding. And the creature is an unusual specimen, in the manner of the mouth. Mother Nature has her magic. The regular chirps of the Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, modulate to lilting courtship song in spring. The guttural croaks of an American toad, Anaxyrus americanus, transform to tuneful trill in mating season. Not to be outdone, the inarticulate grunts of a common pig, Porcus vulgarius, resolve into sweet Irish brogue, in the presence of the female.
The joint enjoyed a jukebox. “I fought the law”—Missy’s belt was off-key and unabashed—“and the law won.”
“Ain’t that the truth, begorrah!” My company has long acquaintance with the law. “I was mixed up in the Troubles, so I was. The military police were about t’ throw me in the slammer. Torture, I have no doubt. I had to get me breeches out of the old sod quick.”
The wanted poster? Well, Eddie is the name, Squirt the sobriquet. And the sorry character needs no further encouragement. A pair of diseased lungs added to the cacophony, and I took the law into my own hands by ordering replenishment.
Dick’s was a dive. A string of Christmas lights had no respect for the season. The bartender would never make the guest list, at one of Gloria’s parties. But a man of vision can make out a diamond in the rough.
“Missy, we have a lot in common. I own a bookstore. A very successful business, by the way. But the public can be a problem.”
“Trying to make ends meet.” Missy was mistrustful, likely taking me for an undercover cop. “A girl has to take what comes.” Her respectable establishment did provide some half-decent liquor, so I made no inquiry into ownership. “I’ve seen some things, I tell you.” Her audience could say the same. Bending over the sink, she gave her jugs an extended rinse.
A man will get ideas. The woman’s charitable top offered an eyeful, her inclination food for thought. In contemplative silence, your philosopher studied the scene. My acquaintance favored the dialogic mode. “Ye can’t win them all, me lass.” The scholar is also a fount of wisdom.
A man has his needs. But though he creates us equal, God does not equally distribute the wealth. Sharing the tribulations of single motherhood, the raconteuse bent close and blessed the needy, to the good fortune of one and forlorn hopes of the other. A physical impediment abets his wandering gaze, the cross of tangled eyes. The runt boasts of manly success, but women just pity the sorrow. At least they should.
A man will take a shot. “Missy, I bring good news.” A born leader took an emphatic belt of bourbon. “My bookstore has a welcome mat.” For the record, the bookstore owner is tall, features distinguished graying hair and blue eyes, and had ordered top shelf. “You should come over and enjoy the riches.” And as you see, he has a silver tongue. “We take pride in the women’s section.” I can carry a conversation. “You’ll find it most extensive.” I had her full attention.
I also had company. And the lost soul found his tongue. “Lassie, I also bring ye good news.” My echo had an accent. “Me house has a welcome mat.” The lowlife has a house now? “Ye should come over and enjoy the riches.” Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. “Ye’ll find it most extensive”—he had her full attention—“in me trousers, b’Jaysus!”
“Sir! A respectable establishment! For shame!”
Talking of shame. The theft was brazen, the thief returning to brag. I have put his offense behind me, really bear no grudge. Yes, I was wronged, but heedful of eudaimonia, no true Aristotelian obsesses over sin. I rarely think about the crime, to set the record straight. And justice has been served. Will you look at the wretch! A scrawny frame twitched on the stool, thin hair hung in a ponytail, hollowed chest expelled a horrible hack, and an unkempt mustache glistened with my subsidy. The damaged goods still find female employment, to believe his advertisement. But he can’t even buy a beer.
The widescreen went to wrestling. And the narrow saloon saw more business, an elderly patron with a stick and baseball cap shuffling through the door. “Mornin, Frank.” Our comely concierge acknowledged the old-timer without a glance, preoccupied with a fresh tale of woe. Frank’s impatience grew and grew until the cane rapped on the counter. After an interval adequate to her displeasure, Missy upended a bottle of well whiskey over a shot glass in his vicinity.
“Do a bang up job for you, bub. I need cash, bad.”
“I’m not an ATM.” Anselm Thomas withheld the full truth.
“Trying to make an honest living. No work in this town. Fricking economy, what can you do?”
“The economy, my grandmother’s bunions! I’m not a complete fool.”
I am a complete fool. My resolve would suffer the fate of an iceberg in the tropics. Practically pleading for punishment, I would give him the project and plunge into an inescapable vortex of melodrama, incompetence, and need.
Noblesse oblige? Well, I enjoy a higher elevation on the social ladder, but no snobbery runs in the family, I assure you. I may have bristled when the working stiff chatted up my wife, but the wretch would make Karl Marx reconsider. We formed the band in my first years at law school. Squirt was born Edward, and a card, pinned to the board of a Boston music store, made a call. Ramblin’ Eddie is looking to sing the blues. Respect for the roots overcame my better judgement. And Anselm’s other life dispensed some cool in the regard of fellow law students, my Fender making regular inroads into the female cohort, you will be pleased to discover. We were the 69th Airborne, other personnel drifting in and out. I wrote the songs and Squirt fronted the outfit with a shirtless abandon that compensated for our inability to provide fans a stable lineup. We enjoyed a local following, free beer, and a write-up in the alternative weekly. Squirt was banking on a future as the next Robert Plant.
The Airborne flew a regular circuit. We knew the drill, drank with the bouncers, found familiar faces on the floor. And we could hope for wider renown, our self-proclaimed manager—Squirt’s recent cellmate—somehow scoring us a spot opening for Creedence at a cavernous club on the shore. The Airborne overshot the runway. But the story gets it all wrong. I really heard no jeers, although the misfortune did close that chapter. I was well-enough attuned, the band a diversion, and put the debacle behind, trust me. But the other founding member never escaped a rut of fantasy and substance abuse. The hobo followed me out West, to form a one-man band of petty criminal, incompetent handyman, and skilled welfare recipient. And he casts a doleful eye—I could have been somebody!
You let him down? Joe, let it go! Guilt, too, fails as explanation—I have already suffered a surfeit; my conscience is clear. And an analyst really has nothing more to go on, as you can take on another authority: The Last Refuge offers a haven for my fellow philosophers, and for a reasonable $17.50 you could benefit from A Treatise on Human Nature—the real cause is fool’s gold, a tale told by a third party. But suppose the party is closer to home, a man doesn’t know his own mind? He just has more stake in the story!
—Fair enough, Holmes, you did deduce who done it, but what about the why? That question is another story. The corpse is cold, to the confirmation of your touch; the murderer left a footprint, for the inspection of your glass; the weapon is lodged in the back of the victim, for the gawk of any witness. But what about the motive? That curiosity lies in the eye of the beholder.—
The acquaintance is compromising? Sam, get with the program! Can the anthropologist not live with a cannibal tribe without developing the taste? And the student of primitive behavior has no need to voyage to New Guinea, the dive bar has its natives.
Need a good laugh? Like an incontinent infant, a freak had found forgiveness, the buxom barkeep following his excursions on the Celtic tongue as if a metamathematical proof. Let’s not dwell on the sorry attempts at humor—his hearer was hysterical, but a server will stop at nothing for a tip! I might be laughing too, but the funny was all peculiar.
“Too late, my friend. I’ve already talked to a moving company.” I had talked, but balked at the quote. Have no fear, I could afford the service, would not suffer the gouge. Christine and I bought, before the present boom in real estate, a modest two-story next door to a day care center that offered safe parking, but little peace. I leveraged the equity to pay off the divorce settlement and rented the top floor to her cousin, a reserved teacher fleeing the war zone of inner-city high school for the quiet of a seminary. The sale spared me some reminders, but not all debt, and I duly joined my housemate in an inhospitable rental market. Chancing on a small apartment in need of repair, I haggled the slumlord into waiving three months for the work, but had little time for manual labor, still less the inclination. Kowalski keeps it close, but he was honored to acquire a distinguished tenant. At least he should have been.
The giggling was galling? Well, Missy was pleasantly plump, the years little wearing out the cushion. Her big brown hair agreed with lipstick of auburn hue, and her perfume offset the vinegar I had liberally sprinkled on fish and chips, risked from the adjacent takeout. Diligently polishing the counter, she acknowledged an uplifting visit to her poor premises, as you will also appreciate. The hard luck story she was spinning both lowered her in my estimation and raised my worldly hopes.
Opportunity came knocking. Old Frank downed his whisky and took his leave of her lounge. And she bounced my clueless competition—the episodic Irishman had compounded his verbal offense by lighting a cigarette under her No Smoking sign.
“Your friend needs to watch his tongue.”
“I hardly know him. And believe me, if I’d any idea he’d . . . ”
“A decent woman!”
“I cannot apologize enough.”
“I couldn’t believe my ears. Irish, too!”
“Missy, we have the same problem. Great minds think alike!”
I could now give her undivided attention. Taller than the bum, she found me more pleasing to the eye and rewarding of conversation. The cool customer complimented her fine establishment and extended the comedy to his own flourishing concern. My wallet holds a few vintage business cards, one of which was now destined for a purse. If she must insist! I alluded to the radio show, brought up the success of my book, gave her to believe that I owned a house on a desirable street—a claim not literally false, the sale yet to close.
The table was set. The counter was mine. The goods were on display. An occupational tease? Your skepticism will be silenced, before the night is through! My interlocutor was a well-rounded conversationalist, whom I engaged with admirable aplomb, given a lower back distraction. Curtail your conjecture, the bar stool has no mercy! The bar steward was more forgiving, greeting my literary license with no discernible distress. And she inspected my card with some interest, filled a new glass with a knowing smile. Missy was no miser, gave a generous pour. And the extravagance had not ended.