What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Five minutes to midnight. The Bull’s Eye. He’s incensed, insulted. Amid the fever-din of voices, laughter, a stoned jazz quartet hyperventilating what sounds like “Mood Indigo.” How Corky got here exactly, he couldn’t have said, but, shit, he’s here and feeling good about it, his Corcoran, Inc., checkbook opened out on the sticky bar, his pen in hand and he’s hot to close the deal: a cool thirty percent down payment on a price of $400,000, his offer, Corky’s price, which is $85,000 below the price Mrs. Demetrius Crowe, the widow, wants for The Bull’s Eye.

  That’s to say, the down payment is $120,000. Corky can make out the check tonight to Mrs. Crowe but he’ll have to postdate it for May 27. Next Wednesday. By which time he figures he can cover the full amount, no problem.

  No problem, Corky?

  No problem.

  What’s capitalism in its essence but the skillful manipulation of funds? Other people’s money, if you’re short on your own.

  The lucidity to which a few drinks, if they’re the right drinks, can bring a man! Where there’s quantum theory, there’s hope.

  Corky’s at the bar of The Bull’s Eye, wedged in among hard-drinking couples and young-wolfish males in packs, also a shrieking contingent of thirtyish females, midlevel office workers out on a Saturday night to celebrate one of their own getting engaged, or possibly divorced, or, who knows, these days, maybe a successful abortion. Attracted by Corky Corcoran’s boyish-battered good looks and his springy red hair, his rumpled but stylish clothes, loosened necktie, his aloneness, these women have been casting flirty eyes in his direction, even boldly offered to buy him a drink, but Corky’s been playing it cool, just smiling murmuring “No thanks!” and keeping his back turned. He’s got it in his head to close the deal with Chantal Crowe tonight, this very night as if sensing he’d change his mind in the cold sobriety of the next day.

  Also, Corky’s had his fill of cockteasing cunts right now.

  Arrived at The Bull’s Eye lurching off the Fillmore exit ramp and up South Main till the landmark revolving Bull’s Eye came into sight, neon-lit above the entryway, found a place on the street amid trashlitter, at about ten P.M. after a few drinks at the Seneca House and he’s limited himself here to Johnnie Walker Red Label, neat: the best. Good whiskey clears the head of crap like it clears the sinuses. And Corky’s sick of ale and beer, believe it or not, Christ he’s had enough today to float a battleship. Pisser’s about worn out from so much liquid running through it.

  God damn Chantal Crowe!—Corky’s a little drunk but at his most winning, making a playful swipe at her as she sidles past, “Hey Chantal, how’s about you and me having a quiet session?—I’m serious,” slapping the bar with the checkbook, grinning but impatient wishing the old broad would cut the shit. Chantal says in her husky smoker’s voice, fluttering her spiky fake eyelashes at him, “Now, Mr. Corcoran, hon!—this is not the time or the place, is it?” How many years, decades, Chantal has been living in the United States, a French war bride of the 1940s, and still she speaks with a French accent. Corky’s thinking, you live in the United States you should speak English the right way, it’s the least you can do. To show respect. To show you’re a citizen.

  Still, the French accent is sexy. Doesn’t grate against the ears like some of these other accents, Paki, Jap, Indian, Mex, whatever they are, half the time somebody foreign-looking, that’s to say darkish-looking, talks to Corky, or tries to, he doesn’t know what the fuck they’re saying. In restaurants it’s bad enough, now they’re showing up in banks, as dental assistants, even at the car wash Corky uses. Even at the Athletic Club, in uniform.

  Corky tries to talk Chantal into at least sitting down at the bar with him, let’s have a drink and discuss this, but she’s elusive, says she has to help behind the bar, has to help wait tables, maybe a little later when things quiet down. Big-boned busty woman in black sequins, brassy-dyed hair, terrific legs for a dame in her sixties at least, and her face isn’t bad—thick makeup, penciled eyebrows and fake lashes and glossy lips. In the daylight she’d look like a peeling wall, Corky thinks, but on her own turf, in this light, smiling that enigmatic smile, one of her eyes half-shut in a wink, old Chantal Crowe looks pretty good. What’s that actress’ name—Ethel Merman. Some wild old sexy dame like that.

  “C’mon let’s talk,” Corky says, reaching for Chantal’s fattish bare arm, and Chantal slaps at him like he’s a naughty boy, “Mr. Corcoran, not just now!” and Corky says, “No better time than now, Chantal,” and Chantal’s behind the bar, reaching for a bottle, giving him a good look at her ass as she stretches, and the backs of her remarkable legs in black-patterned stockings. Old Demetrius Crowe’s widow. Rolling her eyes at Corky, or at the fact of Corky, drunk and persistent and brandishing his checkbook like it’s his cock in his hand. Sure she knows him, her husband knew him, both of them with a weakness for betting, especially on sports. Corky Corcoran’s a high roller in Union City, a wheeler-dealer in local real estate, close buddy of Oscar Slattery and the City Hall crowd that’s been in power for years, a friend too of Vic Slattery which puts him on a slightly higher moral plane—doesn’t it? Sure she finds him attractive, he’s a good-looking guy. He’s got money, too. Sure she wants to unload The Bull’s Eye, much as she’d loved it when her husband was alive, she must be desperate to sell Corky’s thinking so what’s her game?

  My price, thinks Corky, $400,000. Or it’s no deal.

  The thought skimming his brain but his brain is too saturated with Red Label to absorb it that Howard Greenbaum’s going to be incredulous: what the fuck is Corcoran, Inc., doing buying a heavily mortgaged jazz nightclub in downtown Union City, not even checking out the books, the insurance, the actual condition of the premises, what madness in the midst of Corky’s own financial problems and in the depths of the recession! Corky flinches seeing Greenbaum’s pouchy eyes and shrewd frog-face, how to explain to him what The Bull’s Eye has meant to Corky since the age of sixteen, how to speak of the heart’s desire, impossible.

  All Greenbaum would see, looking at The Bull’s Eye, is it’s an architectural oddity, Art Moderne plunked down among dumpy foursquare buildings, South Main in the shadow of the Fillmore Expressway. Maybe he doesn’t even know, or care, that it’s a local landmark, built just before the start of World War II, and how bold for its time—the facade’s ebony porcelain-enamel with vermilion and lemon-yellow stripes, sleek horizontal lines in mimicry of the lines of the automobile; above the recessed entryway, like something in a Technicolor fantasy, there’s the neon vermilion-green-yellow bull’s eye, six feet in diameter, revolving. (Revolving when the place is open, that is. When it’s closed the sign is shut off and shut down.) Inside, The Bull’s Eye divides into two spaces: the outer is a funky restaurant, lots of tinny chrome and Formica surfaces and imitation leather seats, a 1950s diner; the inner, the rear, is the nightclub, with a spectacular curved ebony bar and recessed lighting, smoked mirrors, crowded tables. For a while during the swinging 1970s The Bull’s Eye was a disco, a Union City hot spot for singles. (Corky’d taken Charlotte there, showing her off. Ross Drummond’s daughter doing those wild dances with him. How long ago, now—disco!) Demetrius Crowe owned the place for twenty-five years, kept it open through lean times out of a love for it Corky supposes, what else, you find yourself harboring such obsessions, your life twisted around some freaky thing like undergrowth twisted together. Poor bastard Crowe dropped dead, Corky’d heard, in the back room, right on the premises, screaming at some asshole delivery-men who’d fucked a delivery up. Coronary thrombosis. And the widow Mrs. Crowe inherited.

  Corky thinks that, someday, places like The Bull’s Eye will be on the National Historical Register. Records of their eras. Small-time, anonymous America. Not just the architecture of the rich and famous but what you’d call the extraordinary-ordinary.

  “And I want a piece of that history.”

  Restless, primed for action. Sipping his, what’s it, third whiskey?—fourth?—and it’s going down smooth. Sweet l
iquidy flame mild to Corky as maple syrup. On another occasion in such a state he’d be hot for a woman, tonight he’s aloof, ignores the perfumy broad beside him (a hooker?) who keeps nudging him, low-cut gauzy dress showing practically her nipples, Corky’s alarmed thinking it’s Kiki at first, the same frazzled-kinky hair and hyper manner nudging against him giggling, “Excuse me, mister!” but Corky mumbles coolly, “Excuse me,” and ignores her. He’s got eyes exclusively for Chantal Crowe watching the shrewd bitch deft and quick on her feet as any of the young waitresses, as at home behind the bar as the bartender. Feminine, but a businesswoman, you can see that. Eyes in the back of her head. (She’s aware of Corky, for sure. Talking and laughing with other customers, but always glancing back at him.) Corky’s getting excited, Corky’s primed.

  Few sights in life so lovely as a well-stocked bar, illuminated sparkling glasses, bottles of all sizes, shapes, and a mirror behind. Lights reflected in glass, gorgeous as a Christmas tree. Corky’s eyes mist over, he’s in love.

  After that incredible shit with Thalia tonight. Thalia, Corky’s own stepdaughter! Playing that trick on him slipping away not even taking a shower (he’d checked the towels, none of them damp), if that’s what it was, a trick, and not a symptom of madness. Fuck it don’t think about it, a cunt’s a cunt.

  Corky concentrates on the music. Liking the way the saxophonist, a tarry-black guy with veiny hooded eyes and rubbery lips, handles the deep alto notes. Ain’t been blue. No, no, no. As Chantal returns to the bar flashing Corky a squinty smile, a winking smile, but Corky gets the idea she’s actually afraid of him. That’s it! He feels a prick of elation. Saying, “O.K. Chantal, let’s cut the shit: my price is four hundred thousand dollars, a hundred twenty thousand up front,” waving his checkbook, and Chantal grimaces like he’s laid his hand on her pussy, “Mr. Corcoran, I have turned down six offers higher than that!” which Corky knows is a shit-faced lie but he’s too much the gentleman to challenge her.

  Earlier, Chantal told Corky looking him direct in the face that The Bull’s Eye had only been on the market for five months, not knowing that Corky, thanks to Agnes at Ross Drummond’s office, knows better.

  So that’s how it is. Can’t trust the cunt.

  So what else is new?

  There’s Corky Corcoran in The Bull’s Eye restaurant aged sixteen, squeezing into a booth with his buddies. His bony face freckled and pimply in about equal proportion, in his nervous excitement he’ll pick at his pustules not knowing what he’s doing. Draws blood sometimes. Fingernails edged with it. Sixteen but so skinny he looks younger. A happy kid, good-natured kid, joking a lot and taking the brunt of jokes, you could say he’s a clown, but a shrewd watchful calculating clown, grateful to be laughed with, or at.

  So long as they call him, as they’ve started to, led by Vic Slattery’s example, “Corky.”

  Squeezing into the vinyl booth, Corky and his friends from St. Thomas. Vic Slattery, Heinz Meuller, Eddy Darnton, sometimes the Weisbeck kid, and Vic’s cousin whose name Corky has guiltily blotted out, poor bastard would one day die in Vietnam, a Navy pilot. And there might be Vic’s girlfriend Sandy Sherman pretty and arch and sure of herself, Sandy from Marymount the girls’ Catholic school, and Beatrice Ryan who was Sandy’s friend, and who went out occasionally with Darnton, pretty wide-eyed Beatrice with her habit, which was considered cute, of bumming cigarettes from the guys, including Corky, whom otherwise she ignored. (No, Corky was never to ask Beatrice Ryan out. Vic urged him, go on, call her, she’s waiting, she likes you, what’ve you got to lose? but Corky never called Beatrice Ryan. He had too much to lose.)

  Crowded into a red-vinyl booth, their habitual booth, at the rear right, in the corner by the jukebox (The Bull’s Eye jukebox!—it’s still in the restaurant, unless it’s a precise replica, complete with a half dozen Elvis Presley selections), Corky Corcoran and his friends.

  His friends, sure. And he’s a friend of theirs.

  So you’d think, seeing them. Loud-laughing high school kids, not public school but private school, something special about them, in their midnight-blue satin jackets with ST. THOMAS scripted in white on the backs. Corky’s the skinny red-haired one, Corky’s got a high-pitched braying laugh, he’s fidgety, funny, a bit of a smart-ass, a dirty mouth to him too, as daring or maybe more than filthy-minded Heinz Meuller, at least when no girls or adults are within earshot. Corky’s reputation among these rich kids is he’s tough, he’s short but scrappy, quick to flare up, prepared to fight. He’s from Irish Hill, still lives in Irish Hill, he’s the real thing. A terrific guy, everybody’s friend. Everybody who matters, in any case. Corky Corcoran, not Jerome Corcoran. Sure, everybody in Union City knows how his father was killed, but with Corky it’s never an issue, absolutely never comes up, he never talks about his family never even his mother who’s alive but in some kind of rest home or mental hospital, you don’t need to be embarrassed around Corky, he’s just like everybody else, real normal like everybody else, it’s like he’s forgotten his background so you can forget it too.

  Shutting his eyes seeing looming gigantic as in a dream his friends’ faces, Vic’s and Heinz’s and Eddy’s and Weisbeck’s—the girls’ pretty-powdered vacuous faces—that corner of the restaurant gauzy with cigarette smoke: yes but he can’t see his own face, can’t recognize his own face, my God no. Don’t look, don’t risk it, asshole. You know better. But unable not to look, and unable not to think of those moments of sick worry, the choking sensation in his throat, the fear in his gut of how, say he’s meeting the guys at The Bull’s Eye and hasn’t come with them, or even if he’s already there with them but has to go back to the john, he’ll discover somebody else has taken his place in the booth: one time it’s Brian Cudahy who’s a good friend of Vic’s, another time it’s Gordon Stearns with his date from Marymount, two chairs pulled up to the table so there isn’t any room for Corky and nobody notices him not even Vic Slattery distracted in the midst of happy innocently brutal adolescent-male laughter. So Corky’s standing there weakly smiling his face hot with blood, Corky’s standing there not knowing what to do, how even to retreat unseen. Tough shit, “Corky.” Not that we don’t like you, “Corky,” sure we like you, “Corky,” you poor fuck “Corky,” we just forgot you, “Corky,” can you live with that?

  Can, and will.

  The combo’s drifted into a new piece so woozy, unless it’s Corky who’s woozy, he almost can’t identify it, has to listen hard, ponderingly hard, finally hears it’s an old favorite of his “Angel Eyes” a true alcohol-soaked song, Corky nods and taps his foot and feels his body yearn to move in sympathy with—exactly what, beyond the music, he doesn’t know. Don’t think of it, of her. Of either of them. Don’t. He’s in a state not unfamiliar to him where the present tense is all he wants to deal with, the present tense is all there is.

  Which makes impeccable scientific sense, doesn’t it: maybe on the subatomic level you can reverse time, not that Corky for all his insomniac reading can comprehend one one-hundredth of that shit, but sure as hell on the atomic level and all levels beyond, you can’t.

  The shitty trick that Thalia played on him, the shitty trick that Christina’s been playing, fuck them both. They’re all cunts, that’s the bottom line. You can’t trust a cunt. Any of them.

  Tiredness in Corky’s bones, Christ he’s an old man of forty-three, never should have lived so long, yes but fuck it he’s having a terrific time grooving with the jazz, jazz-y is sex-y, jazz is sex, that’s the secret. Telling Chantal Crowe who’s sitting now on a bar stool beside him sipping a club soda through a straw how he’s crazy about The Bull’s Eye, since he’d been a kid he’d been crazy about the place, so many happy memories here so he’s got to buy it, can’t let anybody else buy it, he’s determined. Eyes misting over as he confides in Chantal Crowe pouring his heart out to this woman he scarcely knows and does not in fact trust except in his woozy-mellow state he’s forgotten and she’s nodding encouragingly, smiling listening without hearing, wai
ting patiently for drunken Corky Corcoran to get down to business and meet her price, she’s sensing the end is rapidly approaching, and thank God, she’s been on her feet for hours only now managing to sit down, it’s 1:40 A.M. and twenty minutes till closing and the place is emptying out though still loud, shrill-drunk jabbering and wheezing laughter and the jazz combo jiving like their instruments too are laughing coarse and slurred, and here’s Corky Corcoran the high roller bleary-eyed and swaying even on his bar stool so drunk Chantal will have to send the poor fool home in a taxi to be delivered like a bundle of sodden laundry, but he’s talking urgently, with growing desperation, waving his checkbook in Chantal’s bemused face, “—Won’t take four hundred thousand, O.K. then Chantal how’s about four hundred twenty-five thousand?” and Chantal hesitates, about to shake her head no but before she can Corky says, “O.K. then I’ll raise my price: how’s about four hundred fifty thousand?” a look in his eyes like his balls are being twisted and seeing Chantal is still about to shake her head no he says, frantic, furious, face hot with blood and the bruise on his forehead throbbing, “—O.K. fuck it I’ll go to four hundred sixty thousand but that’s my final price,” and at last after a pause and a sigh Chantal gives in, a murmured, “Alors, Mr. Corcoran—four hundred sixty thousand dollars is a price I will accept,” batting her spiky eyelashes at him, like all these hours it’s her precious cunt she’s been guarding and what pleasure now to give in, to surrender, “Yes, Mr. Corcoran, four hundred sixty thousand dollars for The Bull’s Eye is a price Demetrius would allow me to accept.”

  Corky says quickly, “It’s a deal!”

  Though rubbing his knuckles in his watery eyes and blinking and staring, he’s disbelieving, incredulous, but God! how happy!—repeating, “It’s a deal! It’s a deal! It’s a deal!” so it comes about that Corky Corcoran with fingers he has to steady with his left hand as he writes makes out a check from Corcoran, Inc., payable to “Chantal Crowe” for a down payment of thirty percent of $460,000 which is $138,000 postdated May 27, 1992.