the Bar Studs)

by Levinson, Len

  “Just fine, sir. How’s it going with you?”

  “Not too bad, considering my wife hates me and one of my grandsons got arrested last night.”

  John raised his eyebrows as he filled a glass with ice and water and placed it beside the Jack Daniels. “Your grandson arrested, sir?”

  “That’s what I said. He was at a party in his fraternity house, somebody there had some illegal drugs in his possession, and somebody else called the police. Tommy spent last night in jail.”

  “That’s terrible!” John shook his head in short quick motions to express his dismay at Tommy’s misfortune.

  “It was only the beginning. Tommy refused to call a bail bondsman or even his father or me, and we’re both lawyers. He said he wanted to have the experience of spending a night in jail. When he got out this morning he told his mother he’d met some of the most wonderful people he’d ever met in his life.” Mr. Wilson cleared his throat. “He mentioned in particular a wife-beater, an elderly alcoholic on the verge of total physical breakdown, and a young Negro boy who’d just been caught robbing a gas station. We sent him to the best college we knew of, but he’s more impressed by a jail.” Mr. Wilson shook his head. “Young people today have all gone berserk, I think.”

  “I hope the arrest record doesn’t harm him professionally someday.” John was always flattered when gentlemen discussed their personal concerns with him.

  “It might be a problem if he wants to go to law school, but he says he doesn’t want to be a lawyer. He says that his night in jail opened his eyes, and that he wanted to become a probation officer.” Mr. Wilson looked like he’d just bitten into a lemon.

  “I’m sure you’ll be able to talk him out of that, sir,” John said with a confident smile.

  “Let’s hope so. We wouldn’t want him to be the first Wilson not to become a partner in the family law firm, would we?”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “John!”

  It was young Mr. Dunwoodie sitting at the center of the bar and holding hands with a frail young lady with short blonde hair.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Wilson,” John said.

  “Of course, John.”

  John’s posture was erect and soldier like as he marched to Mr. Dunwoodie and smiled graciously to him. “Yes, sir?”

  Mr. Dunwoodie wore a dark blue suit and looked like a banker, which he was. “Bring us a split of champagne, John. Piper Heidsick if you have it. Miss Winchester and I have just decided to get married.”

  John bowed slightly. “My congratulations to both of you.”

  “Thank you, John.”

  John set two Oak Room coasters before them, and placed the champagne glasses atop the coasters. Then he opened the cooler and reached inside for the Piper Heidsick. It gave him pleasure to think that he could tell people he served champagne to Mr. Dunwoodie and Miss Winchester on the night they decided to marry.

  Chapter Two

  Adrian walked down the stairs and opened the steel door that led to the kitchen. At the grill he saw old Honolulu Mike flipping a hamburger in the air.

  “How’re you doing, Mike?” Adrian asked.

  Mike looked up. “Real good, chief. Real good.”

  “How’s the hamburger holding up?”

  “We got enough for tonight, and tomorrow I’ll make chili.”

  As soon as Adrian entered the main room of his bar, customers waved, smiled, and greeted him warmly. They wore brown leather, blue denim, garments purchased at Army-Navy surplus stores, and occasionally an expensive blazer or suit. Adrian returned their greetings, mentioning names whenever possible. He knew that people who frequented bars were flattered when the bartender knew their names, and if the owner knew them that was an even greater source of status.

  At the service bar, three of his five waitresses were waiting for drink orders. When they saw Adrian they smiled and wiggled nervously.

  “How’s it going?” he asked them.

  “Busy as hell.”

  “Johnny Mash can’t handle it.”

  Adrian looked behind the bar and saw Johnny Mash perspiring and speeding about as he worked the service bar and the back half of the main bar. Adrian could see both areas were too much for him. At the front of the bar, the part-timer Allan Dawes had everything under control.

  “Excuse me,” Adrian said to the first waitress, Julie Bauman. She stepped out of the way and he bent his angular body and passed through the gate underneath the bar. He came up beside a frantic Johnny Mash. “I’ll work the service bar,” Adrian told him. “You take care of the customers.”

  “Yeah!”

  Johnny Mash’s pupils were big and black. He sidestepped up the bar and Adrian turned and faced Julie Bauman.

  “What you got coming?” he asked her.

  “Two scotch and sodas, two Budweisers, and three bloody Marys.”

  Adrian picked up four glasses with his left hand and reached for the scotch bottle with his right. On the jukebox Mick Jagger was screaming about brown sugar.

  “Hiya, Adrian!”

  “Hiya, Marty.”

  “How’s it goin’, Adrian?”

  “Okay, Bill.”

  “Gee, you’re fast,” said Julie Bauman, watching him pour vodka over ice.

  “You’d be fast, too, if you’ve been doing this as long as I have.”

  “How long’s that?”

  “Long enough.”

  “I wouldn’t mind working behind a bar. If I knew how, would you let me?”

  “Nope.” He reached for the beer mugs and put them on the tray, then stepped back and opened the door to the cooler.

  “Why not?”

  “Because women only tend bar in clip joints, and this isn’t a clip joint.” He opened the beer bottles and placed them on her tray. “That all?”

  “Yep.” She lifted her tray and gazed alluringly into his eyes.

  Adrian looked over her at the redheaded waitress named Carol Moore. “What you got, baby?”

  “Six dark beers and one Old Grand Dad with a water back.”

  Adrian repeated her order and then went to work, his deft, large hands touching ice, glass, and water. He enjoyed working behind the bar once in a while; he liked to hear the clink of glass and gurgle of liquid, and he liked to be admired.

  “What’s happenin’, Adrian?”

  “Not much, Mike.”

  He finished Carol Moore’s order, then the black waitress, Cindy Johnson’s, and then Julie Bauman was back with her cute little ass.

  “Two martinis, two Black and Whites—one on the rocks and one with soda, one Old Overholt and ginger, and three Rheingolds!” She rested her elbows on the bar and watched Adrian work. “You’re not from New York, are you, Adrian?”

  “No.” He scooped ice into the cocktail shaker.

  “I didn’t think so—you don’t talk like a New Yorker. Where are you from?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  She smiled. “Why don’t you tell me some time?”

  He picked up the gin bottle with one hand and the vodka bottle with the other. Janis Joplin and the Full Tilt Boogie Band performed inside the jukebox. Adrian looked at Julie’s pert breasts,,

  “Maybe I will,” he said.

  Farther up the bar, Johnny Mash was coming off his cocaine high and felt as if his arms were turning into Jello. He’d have to get to the toilet and snort some more coke before he crashed.

  “God, you’re handsome,” said a soft female voice as he placed down a Pernod on the rocks.

  He looked up and saw a girl with short black hair, pointy nose, and freckles. She didn’t look like the typical down-and-out Village broad. He smiled the smile women told him was sexy. “I can be had,” he murmured as he took the five-dollar bill she held out to him. He carried it to the cash register, rang it up, and returned with the change.

  She wore a white blouse with a high collar and looked like she had money. “What would it take?” she asked.

  “For you I’d be a pushover.” S
he wasn’t that pretty, but what the hell. She’d be good for a fifty-dollar loan at least.

  Just then the inevitable Saturday Night Fight broke out. Two drinkers at Allan Dawes’ station started hollering at each other, one of them threw a punch, and the other counterpunched. Allan Dawes stared helplessly as they slugged it out. Customers grabbed their drinks and money and ran out of fist range. Girls screamed.

  “Hey, break it up!” Johnny Mash yelled, leaning over the bar.

  Adrian dove through the gate and pushed his way through the crowd that gathered around and shouted encouragement and advice to the two combatants. By the time Adrian reached them one had a bloody nose and the other a split lip. They were big men and they traded hard punches, but Adrian was taller and heavier than both.

  “Hey!” Adrian’s voice was loud and sharp as a gunshot, and when they paused to look at him he stepped between them and pushed them apart. “That’s enough!”

  “He hit me first,” said the one on the left, who wore a blond beard.

  “He said somethin’ he shun’ta about my old lady,” replied the other, who had a dark mustache and short hair.

  Adrian held them apart. “If you want to fight—get the fuck outside! I don’t care if you kill each other, but don’t do it here!”

  Slowly Adrian lowered his hands, and the man with the beard threw a punch around Adrian at the other one. Adrian blocked the punch, took a step forward, and drove a hard jab into the bearded man’s solar plexus. The man expelled air and hunched over, his eyes goggling. Adrian spun him around and gave him the bum’s rush toward the door, beside which Johnny Mash was standing. Johnny Mash opened the door at the crucial instant and the man went flying outside, where he frightened a couple walking by.

  “Don’t come back!” Adrian shouted at him. “You’re eighty-sixed!”

  The man crashed against the fender of a parked car and fell to his knees on the sidewalk. As Adrian turned and walked the length of the bar to the gate in back, he was congratulated by several customers. He smiled slightly and nodded his head at them.

  Johnny Mash followed him. “Can you watch my station while I go to the shithouse?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Johnny Mash walked to the rear of the large dark room, where orange lamps hung over booths, and entered the men’s room. A guy was pissing in the urinal, but the toilet stall was empty, so Johnny Mash walked into the small smelly enclosure and closed the door behind him. On the wall above the toilet paper someone had scrawled in ballpoint pen: Where are the art tarts of yesteryear?

  Standing before the commode, he took out his black leather wallet and removed from one of its compartments a new five-dollar bill folded into a packet an inch square. He unfolded it carefully, uncovering a small quantity of cocaine. Unbuttoning his shirt, he yanked out a thin gold chain and a gold crucifix whose bottom was hollowed into a tiny spoon. He dipped the spoon into the white crystalline powder, held it under his right nostril, and sniffed hard. His breath sounded like a hurricane, his nose stung, and his head sprang off his shoulders. Feeling faint, he leaned against the white stone wall for a few seconds, and then the high-voltage cocaine energy came thundering through his body. The stall became ablaze with bright sunlight and his fingers tingled. He filled the spoon again, held it under his left nostril, sucked in air, and this time his nose and throat went numb. Letting the crucifix drop against his hairy chest, he stood and stared at the gigantic fiery sun before him. After a minute, when he could see his surroundings again, he buttoned his shirt and refolded the five-dollar bill, returning it to his wallet. It sounded as if a dynamo were spinning between his ears. He took a leak and returned to the bar.

  “Feel better now?” Adrian asked when Johnny Mash came through the gate.

  “Yeah!” His eyes glittered in the orange lights above the bar. “How’s everythin’ goin’?”

  “It’s slowing down.”

  Johnny Mash looked up and down the bar. “Yeah, I can see. I can handle it myself now, if you wanna go upstairs.”

  “I think I’ll hang around awhile,” Adrian said, looking over the tables at Julie Bauman.

  “Shit—if I owned this joint I’d be upstairs all the time with some broad.”

  “You couldn’t stand one all the time.”

  “Then most of the time.”

  “Not even most of the time.”

  Johnny Mash shrugged. “You win.” He walked away and tried to focus on the glasses in front of the drinkers at his station. Adrian had the glasses filled and the bar wiped down.

  “I thought maybe you’d gone home,” said the girl in the white blouse.

  Johnny Mash winked. “I’m goin’ home with you.”

  She looked surprised. “You are?”

  “Ain’t that what you want?”

  She thought for a few seconds and then smiled. “Yes.”

  “That’s what I figgered.” He leaned his thighs against the ice chest in front of him and crossed his arms. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Dorothy Simmons.”

  “I’m Johnny Mash,” he said with a smile.

  She smiled back. “Hi.”

  “Hi. What’s your story?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whataya do with yourself?”

  “I’m a painter.”

  “Pictures?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ever sell any?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then how do you live?”

  “I get alimony.”

  “Looks like your ex-old man takes care of you real good.”

  “He doesn’t want to, but he does. The judge makes him.”

  Johnny Mash chuckled. He was supposed to pay alimony, too, but the judge hadn’t been able to find him. “How’d you like to paint my picture sometime?”

  “I’d love to. You look like you’ve got a nice body.”

  “I have, but once an artist down in Soho painted a picture of me and made me look like a lasagna.”

  “You’ve got a beautiful smile.”

  Johnny Mash looked back at the mirror and smiled at himself, then turned back to Dorothy. “Yeah, it is pretty nice, ain’t it?”

  “Hey, Johnny Mash!”

  “Yeah!” Johnny Mash looked to his left and saw a fat guy with a beard. “How ya doin’?” He couldn’t remember the guy’s name.

  “Pretty good. Gimme a glass of beer before I fuckin’ collapse.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was crossin’ Bleecker Street just now and some lunatic cabdriver almost ran me over.”

  “Watch them cabdrivers, baby. They don’t give a shit about nobody.” Johnny Mash tilted a glass under the beer spigot and pulled the chromium handle. The foamy beer swirled into the glass.

  Adrian stood at the service bar drinking a daiquiri he had just made for himself. It was two-thirty and the crowd was thinning out. Pretty soon he’d tell the bartenders and waitresses to give the last call. He finished the daiquiri and smiled as he watched Johnny Mash romancing a plain girl sitting by herself at the bar. Farther up the bar Allan Dawes was trying to make time with a flashy blonde, but Adrian knew Allan wouldn’t get far. Allan was a nice guy, and the girls who came to Adrian’s usually didn’t like nice guys.

  “It was a pretty good night, huh?” asked Julie Bauman, setting down her tray on the service bar.

  “It wasn’t bad. How much you make?”

  “About fifty dollars so far.”

  “That’s not bad. What’s a little girl like you going to do with all that big money?”

  A naughty smile appeared on her face. “Maybe I’ll buy something for you. You like women who buy things for you, right?”

  “Do you want me to like you?”

  She caressed his eyes with hers. “Yes.”

  “Then stop trying to be so fucking cute.” He turned away and poured himself two fingers of dark-brown Jamaican rum.

  “You mean you want me to stop beating around the bush?”

  “
That’s what I mean.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Why don’t you take me upstairs sometime?”

  “If I do I’ll screw the pants off you.”

  She winked. “I should hope so.”

  Adrian raised his chin and looked down at her. She was a pretty little bitch, couldn’t be more than twenty-one or twenty-two. He was supposed to see Sandra after work, but he’d just call and say he was too tired.

  “Hang around until I close up tonight, but don’t think you’re going to be somebody special around here afterwards.”

  She closed her eyes and whispered in mock-melodrama, “I just want to ball you, Daddy, that’s all.”

  Adrian let the Jamaican rum run over his tongue. He couldn’t understand why some guys had trouble getting laid.

  * * *

  Through the hazy night Johnny Mash and Dorothy Simmons walked up Seventh Avenue. He snapped the fingers of his right hand every time his right foot hit the ground, and his mind still felt energetic from the cocaine. He wore his brown leather safari jacket unbuttoned, although it was nearly winter, and his bell-bottomed jeans flopped around cowboy boots. Automobile headlights like fiery balls shot past on Seventh Avenue.

  “Do you like to be a bartender?” Dorothy asked, trying to make conversation. She wore a fur jacket and baggy black pants.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Have you been a bartender for long?”

  “Six years. Ever since I got out of the joint.” His eyes flipped to other pedestrians, darkened storefronts, and posters on telephone poles. He felt restless and crazy.

  “What joint?”

  “Jail. A joint is a jail, in case you don’t know, which I guess you don’t. That’s where I met Adrian.”

  “The Adrian who runs that place?”

  “What other Adrian would I be talkin’ about?”

  “Why were you in jail?”

  “I tried to hold up a bar in Bushwick, but there was an off-duty cop there and he nailed me. I had a gun and he had a gun, and he backed me down, the motherfucker. I thought about shootin’ him, but the New York cops go bullshit whenever one of their own gets knocked off and I knew they’d get me sooner or later.”

  “Were you in jail long?”