the Bar Studs)

by Levinson, Len

  “Yes?” Teddy asked.

  “Can of beer,” the man said with a grin, “and anything else you might want to throw my way.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Teddy laughed as he walked to the cooler, took out the can of beer, and opened it.

  ‘You know,” the dark man replied when Teddy put down the beer in front of him.

  “Dollar,” Teddy said, looking away and showing him his profile.

  The man reached into his pocket. “You turn me on,” he said softly.

  Teddy felt the beginning of an erection. “Then stick around.”

  * * *

  Bartholomew’s Pumpkin was one of the singles bars on Second Avenue in the East Seventies. Beneath its Tiffany lamps and gilded mirrors, stylish men and women drank liquor and struck poses they hoped made them appear interesting.

  There was a large oblong bar in the center of the floor, and behind it worked four bartenders. Three were handsome young studs, and the fourth was Leo Anussewitz: forty-two years old, short, round-shouldered, fat, and bald. Although his was not the image the owners of Bartholomew’s Pumpkin wanted to project, they employed him because he was very fast, very reliable, and he had the ability to make customers laugh.

  On Saturday nights, however, he didn’t have much time to crack jokes. He poured, stirred, accepted money, and ran back and forth along his station as tiny globules of sweat squeezed out the pores of his face.

  “Hey, Leo—tell me the one about the rabbi and the bishop!” yelled a drunk with long, dark sideburns, who sat beside a dazzling blonde before Leo’s work area.

  “Some other time,” Leo said, flashing his genial bartender smile as he poured, from a bottle in each hand, liquor onto the ice in his cocktail shaker.

  “What in the world is that?” asked the blonde, who held the drunk’s arm as though it were a life preserver and she were adrift in the North Atlantic.

  “A Singapore sling,” Leo told her.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Rum, mostly.”

  “Are they any good?”

  “The way I make them, they are.”

  He poured in the lemon juice, added simple syrup, and slammed on the stainless steel top. Picking up the cocktail shaker, he shook it frontwards and backwards and up and down in a rhythmic motion, noticing the sideburned drunk looking at his fat hips and smiling in a superior way. After a few seconds of shaking he slapped the steel top off and poured the sling into a tall frosted glass. He garnished it with sliced orange and a maraschino cherry, stuck in the straws, and placed the drink down before a girl who wore a blue blazer.

  “Thanks, Leo.”

  Her name was Mary and she was a regular customer at Bartholomew’s Pumpkin. Leo had noticed that she was one of those who went home with different guys all the time. He disapproved of promiscuous women but had sufficient insight to suspect his disapproval was because no one was promiscuous with him.

  “Hey, bartender!”

  Leo looked to his right. A tall couple had stood up and the man was waving his tab. They wanted to pay up so they could go home and fuck. Leo tried to smile as he walked quickly to them on his stubby legs.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “How much?”

  Leo took the tab, totaled the figures, added the tax, and handed it back. It amounted to twelve dollars and change. The tall man picked a ten- and five-dollar bill from his wallet and laid them on the bar beside the tab.

  “Keep the change,” he said, winking.

  “Thanks. Have a nice night.”

  They walked off and Leo imagined they’d have a nice time fucking each other. He’d go home and have his usual Saturday night lonesome-me jerk-off session.

  Out of the amorphous crowd behind the bar stepped Dorrie Caldwell, who sat on one of the stools just vacated. She had long, wavy blonde hair, wore a white blouse and plum slacks, and worked as a stewardess for Eastern Airlines. Leo had jerked off several times to fantasies of her sexy little body.

  “Hiya, Dorrie,” he said. “The usual?”

  “Make it a double.” She wore enormous sunglasses that covered her eyes and most of her cheeks.

  Leo filled the glass half of his cocktail shaker with ice, then grasped the vodka bottle with one hand and the vermouth bottle with the other. He poured vodka onto the ice and let a few drops of vermouth fall. After returning the bottles to their places in the rack on the shelf behind him, he stirred the mixture with his long steel spoon and strained it into a large cocktail glass. When he twisted the sliver of lemon peel, in the dim light he could see its oils spray over the surface of the liquid.

  “I’ll pay you now, Leo,” she said as he set the vodka martini before her. She reached into her leather purse.

  “You don’t look so happy tonight. What’s the matter?”

  “I had a fight with Tony.”

  Tony was the guy she lived with, and Leo had heard he was in the Mafia. But a lot of ordinary Italian guys encouraged that kind of reputation because it made them attractive to women.

  “You’ll make up—don’t worry about it,” Leo said consolingly as he accepted her money.

  “Not this time.” She lifted her sunglasses and showed a bloodshot eye ringed with purple. “He beat me up and threw me out” She looked ready to cry.

  “Bartender!”

  “Wait a minute!” Leo pinched his lips together. “Gee, I’m sorry to hear that, Dorrie. But you’ll get over him, don’t worry.”

  She shook her head, and Leo saw tears roll from behind the sunglasses. “Maybe I will,” she said in a quavering voice, “but I don’t have anyplace to stay. I left my luggage with some married friends but I can’t live with them. Do you know a decent hotel that’s not too expensive?”

  “Bartender!”

  “I’m coming!” He looked at Dorrie. “Don’t go away. I’ll think of something.”

  She nodded her head.

  Calling him was a party of three carefully groomed couples, and their drink order comprised a grasshopper, a brandy Alexander, two scotch sours, a Jack Rose, and a pink lady. Leo scooped ice, poured liquor, shook, stirred, and poured. They had to be assholes to drink stuff like that. He rang up their tab and returned to Dorrie, who had already gulped down her double martini.

  “Make me another one, Leo.”

  He worked in front of her and spoke under his breath. “Listen, I got an extra bedroom over my place and you can use it until you get straightened out, if you want. I wouldn’t bother you or anything like that.”

  Since so little of her face showed, it was difficult for him to determine her reaction. “You live alone?”

  “Yes, and it’s a pretty big place so I wouldn’t be getting in your way.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Over on West End Avenue. It’s an old prewar building still under rent control. My parents used to live there.” He placed the fresh martini before her.

  She smiled. “That’d be wonderful, Leo. What a lucky break!”

  Leo blushed. “This is what friends are for.”

  “Would you give me the keys now so I can pick up my luggage and take it over?”

  “Sure.” Leo reached into his pocket, pulled out his ring of keys, and removed three keys. “This one’s for the door downstairs, and these are for the apartment.” As he told her his address and apartment number, he could hardly believe his good fortune. A beautiful girl would be living with him for a while, and she might even give him a little pussy.

  “Oh—one more thing, Leo. I won’t get paid until Wednesday. Could I borrow some money for cab fare?”

  “How much you need?”

  “Ten dollars?”

  “Sure.” Leo reached into his pocket, took out his folded bills, and gave her the money. “Here you go.”

  “Leo, you’re a doll.” She gulped down her drink and stood up. “You’ve saved my life.”

  He waved his hand like a king dispensing favors. “See you later, kid.”

  He watched the wiggle of her ass as sh
e walked away, and then picked up her empty glass and dropped it into the sink. He heard footsteps approaching him behind the bar and looked to his left. It was Harry Ryker, bartender on the next station. Harry had a sunlamp tan and worked as a model sometimes.

  Harry smiled incredulously. “Did I actually see you give your apartment keys to little Dorrie Caldwell?”

  “She doesn’t have” anyplace to stay so I’m letting her use my place for a few days.”

  Harry raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t think you were her type.”

  “I’m not. She’ll just be at my place until she finds a place of her own.”

  “Oh, come on, Leo.” Harry gave him an elbow in the ribs.

  “I’m serious.”

  “You mean you’re not going to try to get into her pants?”

  “I couldn’t do that. The poor kid doesn’t have anyplace to stay, for crying out loud.”

  “Poor kid, my ass. If she had as many cocks sticking out of her as have been stuck into her, she’d look like a porcupine. I thought she was going with that Tony Catarella guy.”

  “They busted up.”

  “He probably caught her with another guy. You ought to try to fuck her while she’s handy. As my daddy used to say: ‘a slice from a cut loaf will never be missed.’” Harry did the Groucho Marx thing with his eyebrows.

  “Naw, we’re just friends.”

  Harry placed his hand on Leo’s shoulder. “There isn’t any reason why friends shouldn’t fuck each other,” he said solemnly.

  “Bartender!”

  The voice came from Harry’s station, and Harry launched himself in its direction.

  “Leo!”

  “Yessir.”

  The caller was a bleary-eyed man in a black toupee. “Gimme a J&B on the rocks, and by the way, do you know who won the double at Hialeah today?”

  “Little Pistol and Trafalgar.”

  “Oh, shit, I had Little Pistol in the first—I should have wheeled him!” He pressed the palm of his hand to his forehead.

  Leo filled the old-fashioned glass with ice, and reached for the green bottle of J&B. He couldn’t wait to get home.

  * * *

  Inside the brightly lit Reno Tavern on the Bowery, bartender Jake Griffin rested his elbow on the bar and held his chin in the palm of his hand. He needed a shave, his white shirt and white apron were dirty, and his beer belly hung over the apron.

  The Reno was about half-full of bums, not bad for a Saturday night, and there’d only been two fights, which Jake ended by showing the adversaries his crowbar. The wood-planked floor was covered with spit and cigarette butts, and paint peeled from the bespattered gray walls.

  Jake reached up and scratched the crew-cut brown hair atop his head, which was shaped like an artillery shell.

  “Hey, gimme anudder glass of muscatel!” called out a bum down at the end of the bar.

  “Yeah—yeah,” grumbled Jake. He tromped down the bar, grabbed the bottle of cheap wine, and poured it into the bum’s empty glass.

  “Thirty cents,” Jake said.

  The bum reached into his pocket and took out a quarter and a nickel, which he dropped, each coin separately, onto the bar. “You can’t get well without mus-ca-tel,” he muttered, drooling all over his beard. He focused his old sad eyes on Jake. “You won’t believe me, but I useta be a doctor.”

  “You’re fuckin’ right I don’t believe you.” Jake didn’t believe anybody.

  “I really was. A general practishoner in Nutley, New Jersey.”

  “And your wife ran off with your best patient, right?”

  The bum’s jaw dropped. “How’d you guess?”

  “Because I’m a fuckin’ genius, that’s how.” Jake took the coins and rang them up on the register. They all had the same stupid stories. It annoyed Jake when they blamed the fact that they were bums on somebody else. They were bums because they were bums, that was all.

  “Hey, barkeep!”

  “Whataya want?”

  “Gimme a shot and a beer!”

  Jake looked at the filthy slobbering bum calling him, and wondered where he got the money for a shot and a beer. Maybe he hit the numbers, or maybe he’d been cleaning cat windows at the Houston Street intersection for three days.

  Jake walked over and stood in front of the bum. “That’s gonna be seventy-five cents. You got the money?”

  “Sure, I got the money. Whataya think?”

  “I think you’re a fuckin’ bum and you ain’t got the money. Lemme see.”

  Jake narrowed his eyes as the man reached into the pocket of his ragged blue topcoat and came up with three one-dollar bills.

  “I wouldn’t shit you, buddy,” the bum said with a lopsided grin. His teeth were brown stumps. “I got the money.”

  “Seein’ is believin’, and I ain’t your fuckin’ buddy.”

  Jake smacked down a shot glass in front of the bum and filled it with the cheapest rotgut whiskey he could buy legally. Then he filled a mug with the cheapest available beer and pushed that toward the bum.

  “Seventy-five cents,” Jake said.

  The bum lay one of the crumpled dollar bills on the bar. Jake picked it up and took it to the cash register, rang it up, and returned with the quarter change.

  “How’s bizness?” the bum asked, covering the quarter with a greasy hand.

  “You got fuckin’ eyes.”

  Jake hated bums, but he and his brother Larry owned the Reno and bums were their living. Jake worked nights and Larry worked days, seven of them every week. They wanted to open a bar in Florida but between the landlord and the bank loan, they could never get the money together for the move South.

  Suddenly there was a crash at the rear of the tavern. Jake jerked his head to the right and saw one of the tables laying on its side on the floor, and two bums facing each other waving their fists in the air. One was a tall black, and the other a big white. Jake reached under the ice chest for his crowbar, pulled it out, and walked quickly down the length of the bar. He stooped under the gate and charged the two bums.

  “Okay, you two,” he bellowed, “get the fuck out! Let’s go—OUT!” He brandished the crowbar and made a menacing face.

  “Hey, man,” the black replied drunkenly, “you better put that fuckin’ thing away or else somebody’s gonna shove it up your ass!” He had teeth missing in front and a wild, hungry look in his eyes.

  The white bum backstepped. “I didn’t do nothin’,” he whined. “He ast me ta lend him a buck, an’ when I tole him I didn’t have it, he hit me.”

  Jake looked at the black. “I thought I told you to get the fuck movin’!”

  “I’m gonna shove that crowbar up your white ass!”

  Jake held the crowbar like a baseball bat. “Come on, try.”

  The black snarled, bent over, and picked up a beer bottle lying on the floor. With a backhanded downward motion he smashed it on a nearby table, terrifying the two men sleeping there, and came up with the jagged brown edge. “I’m gonna chop you up, motherfucker!”

  “Come on.” Jake tightened his fingers around the crowbar.

  Jake and the black circled each other, Jake grim-faced and the black grinning maniacally. The black feinted with the bottle, and Jake poised his crowbar like Babe Ruth about to hit a home run. The black feinted again, dancing lightly on his ruined shoes, and Jake followed him with his tiny eyes. Then the black lunged forward, streaking the broken bottle toward Jake’s face. Jake stepped back and swung hard at the black’s frizzy head. Splat:—the crowbar connected with skull, and the black tottered, his eyes rolling up into his head. Jake expelled air and swung again at the black’s head, there was a sickening crunch, and the black’s legs gave out. Blood oozed out of his ear as he hit the floor.

  “Anybody else feel like fuckin’ around?” Jake asked, holding the crowbar in the air, the black out cold or dead at his feet.

  Nobody said anything; they were all scared shitless of him and he knew it.

  Louie the cook watched fr
om the kitchen door.

  “Take him out back,” Jake ordered Louie.

  Louie stepped forward, grabbed the black by the collar, and dragged him out the back door. Jake returned to the bar and put his crowbar underneath the ice chest. Standing straight, he felt neither satisfaction nor remorse for what he had done. Fighting was bad for business, so he had to handle troublemakers quickly. That’s all there was to it.

  “Gimme some more muscatel!”

  Jake took down the bottle and poured the cheap hooch into the old bum’s glass.

  “You can’t get well without mus-ca-tel,” the bum said. “Did I ever tell you I useta be a doctor?”

  “Yeah, you told me a hundred times. You’re the nut from Nutley, right?”

  “I was a general practishioner.” The bum’s trembling claw closed around the glass. “Graduated from the Rutgers Medical School. My wife ran off with a patient who had a duodenal ulcer.”

  “Sure she did.” Jake took the quarter and nickel to the cash register and rang them up.

  * * *

  John Houlihan was proud to be a bartender in the famed Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel. He had been a bartender in the Plaza for twenty years and had been proud all that time. Many distinguished and wealthy drinkers knew him by name, and he knew their alcoholic preferences by heart. In a way he felt himself one of them, although he lived in an old apartment building near Ford-ham Road in the Bronx and never had more than a thousand dollars in the bank at any time in his life.

  “Another Jack Daniels, John,” said the lanky white-haired gentleman sitting at the end of the bar.

  “Certainly, Mr. Wilson.”

  John lifted Mr. Wilson’s old-fashioned glass and dropped it into the suds underneath the bar. Then he took his aluminum scoop, filled it with ice cubes, and dropped four cubes into a clean glass. Holding the glass in one hand, he wiped the bar clean before Mr. Wilson, set down a fresh coaster, and placed the glass atop it. When all was perfect he poured the Jack Daniels into the glass.

  “How’s it going, John?” Mr. Wilson asked, drunkenly fuzzing over the consonants. He had a long thin face and long thin nose.