So I got to sign off now and go, and I love you and will see you soon and I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. But in case I don’t, here is your spare car keys and the door key.
Earl.
He took his key case out of his pocket and undipped the car keys and the door key and dropped them on top of the note. He put Michael Forrest’s business card on the note as well.
He went back out into the kitchen and found Penny’s big glass ashtray in the drip-dry rack and a pack of matches in the drawer beneath the counter. He put the ashtray down on the counter, but the stench of the turkey in the sink was strong and he noticed that its plastic wrapper had begun to expand away from the carcass. He took the ashtray back into the living-dining room and put it on the end of the table opposite the note. He struck a match and took the torn documents from his left pants pocket. He burned the Forrest registration first, allowing the ashes to drop on the glass. Then he burned the carbons of the true bills of sale. When he was finished he used the stapled end of the matchbook to pulverize the ashes, and then carried the ashtray into the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet. He wiped the ashtray clean with toilet paper and flushed that away as well. He urinated and flushed again. He took the ashtray back into the kitchen and replaced it in the rack. He stood over the sink and calculated whether the gases from the rotting turkey would burst the plastic bag before Penny returned Sunday night, and decided to take no chances. He took a paring knife from the counter drawer and slit the bag down the top center, releasing a wave of gas. He stepped back and wiped his eyes. He thought a moment and then opened the refrigerator door partway; he reached in and took the milk out, opening the sealed spout and pouring about a quarter of it into the sink, letting it seep down to the drain slowly under the turkey. He put the carton back in the refrigerator and left the door ajar.
He returned to the bedroom and took a last look around. He picked up the two nips of White Label and put them in his pocket. He went into the living-dining room and reset the thermostat from 62 degrees to its maximum of 90. He picked up his baggage, putting the duffel strap over his left shoulder and hooking the hanger bag with his left thumb and first two fingers over his back as well. He carried his raincoat over his right forearm. He turned the light off in the kitchen as he opened the door, and made sure the lock snapped home behind him when he closed it. He was halfway down the stairs when the door of the first-floor apartment opened and the woman who lived there came backward fast through it, slamming her buttocks against the radiator next to the front entryway. She was wearing a blue satin Fraternal Order of Eagles tanker jacket over her yellow pedal pushers. “Bastard,” she yelled. She put her hands back on the radiator to launch herself back toward the door. “God-damn,” she shouted, yanking her hands away, “oooh, god-damn, god-damn, goddamn.” She put her hands to her mouth and licked them. Her husband appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a white Celtics T-shirt. “Oh stop makin’ the fuckin’ noise and go out drinkin’, you dumb cunt,” he said. “What’s all the racket about now?”
She had bent over and was pressing her hands between her thighs. “I burned my fuckin’ hands on the fuckin’ radiator,” she said. “Is that all right with you, you shit? What’d you do? Turn up the heat again, so we can’t pay the bill? Asshole.”
“No,” he said, “I didn’t think of it. I’ll go and do it now.” He slammed the apartment door shut, leaving her bent over in the hallway. “My hands my hands my hands,” she said.
Earl made his way down the rest of the stairs. At the bottom he said, “Excuse me? Could I get by?”
She looked at him as though surprised. “What’re you doing here?” she said. “I didn’t see you standing there. What the hell do you want?”
“I want to get by,” he said.
She straightened up. “Oh, sure,” she said. “Never mind how I feel. Just as long as you get by.” He edged past her toward the exit. “Takin’ a trip, huh?” she said. “Or are you finally leavin’ that whore up there?”
He paused at the inside front door. “Mrs. Bonfiglia,” he said, “I got some business, all right? Business out of town. Is that all right with you?”
“What,” she said, “are they makin’ you travel now, collect the unemployment? You’re not here when DeLisle’s goon comes for the rent Tuesday, might’s well not bother comin’ back.”
“Good night, Mrs. Bonfiglia,” he said. He closed both doors behind him and went out into the chill. He walked eleven blocks southwest into Central Square in Cambridge and descended into the Red Line of the subway to Park Street. A large group of teenagers in Rindge Technical High School varsity letter jackets were noisy on the platform, exchanging semiplayful shoves of each other toward the pit where the third rail stood ten feet away. Earl went down to the far end of the platform and stood smelling urine and stale tobacco smoke until the blue-and-white train rumbled in. The first car was empty when its doors sighed open, and he was alone in it when they wheezed shut. He put the garment bag over the seat beside him and rested the duffel on top of it. At Park Street Under he climbed the stairs to the upper level and waited fifteen minutes while three two-car trolley hitches pulled in and took on passengers for Lake Street-Boston College; a single trolley promising Cleveland Circle arrived about eight thirty, and he got on, leaving it at Coolidge Corner.
A light, cold rain had begun. He removed the duffel strap from his shoulder and set the bag on the asphalt sidewalk. He draped the garment bag over it and put his raincoat on. He picked up his bags and crossed the eastbound side of Beacon Street, turning to walk west, the rain at his back. Just beyond the intersection of Beacon and Chiswick there was a three-story brick building set back from the sidewalk behind a low privet hedge and a carefully raked lawn, distinguished from abutting buildings, also three-story brick, by a small blue sign with white letters, illuminated from within. The larger block letters at the top read “HOTEL BEACONVIEW.” Below that in script was “The Tattersall,” and below that “Lounge and Dining.” There was an oval metal sign suspended by chains from the bottom of the lighted sign; it reported the recommendation of the place by AAA. Earl turned left onto the walk and then left again close to the building, where another lighted sign directed Tattersall’s patrons down a short flight of stairs to a red door.
The coatroom was closed. Earl went through the foyer with his bags and descended two more steps into the bar. In the southwest corner a woman with puffy ringlets of carmine hair was playing a medley of songs from Showboat and Carousel. The ceiling was low, allowing men of normal height perhaps four inches of clearance but requiring Earl to stoop slightly to avoid feeling his hair brush against the stippled plaster. Two men sat at the small round table in the semicircular booth nearest the piano. Six similar booths lined the western wall. There was another to Earl’s right, tucked in against the partition dividing the entry from the bar. Three of the booths were occupied by men who drank alone. To Earl’s left there were two dozen freestanding small tables, with iron-back chairs and candles guttering in glass chimneys. The bar had room for twelve on stools. Behind the bar there was a large print of Robert the Bruce in armor, holding his helmet under his left hand and effortlessly reining his rearing black stallion with his mailed fist against a backdrop of moors and a threatening sky. Three men sat at the bar, each of them drinking alone. Two of them had luggage on the floor next to their stools. The bartender had his back to the room and seemed to be reading something.
Earl went to the fifth booth from the piano and deposited his luggage on the floor, stowing it as neatly as he could while at the same time leaving it visible. He eased himself into the booth and used his hands to mop his damp hair.
After a while a slim young man with long, wavy blond hair entered the bar from a door at the southerly end. He wore a white button-down shirt, a tartan kilt, a large white-fur sporran belted at his waist, white stockings that came to his knees, with a sheathed bone-handled dirk stuck into the top of the left one, and black shoes with dull silver buckles. He carr
ied a small tray; on it was a bowl of something that steamed. He stopped at the service end of the bar and picked up a pint flagon of beer, his gaze roving the room and noting Earl’s arrival as he glided from the bar to the third booth and served the man seated there. Earl heard him ask if there would be anything else; he could not hear the man’s answer, but gathered it had been negative. The waiter immediately backed away from that booth and came to Earl’s.
“Good evening, sir,” he said in a somewhat breathy voice. “May I get you something to drink?”
“Yes,” Earl said. “I was thinking of John Courage. It’s been a long time since I had it, and a friend of mine told me you sometimes had it and this was a good place to get it.”
The waiter twinkled his eyes and made a very small nod. “Yes,” he said, “well, we often do. But we have no imports tonight. Just the domestics, I’m sorry. Still, all in all though, your friend was right. Our domestics are all very good. I take it you’re not from around here?”
“Well,” Earl said, “actually I get around so much I hardly know myself anymore where I’m from. My friend who told me about this place, well, he’s someone that I met in Kansas.”
“Kansas,” the waiter said, “my. We don’t get that many from Kansas. You must travel a lot. That must be a very, well, lonely life. Always moving around.”
“It is,” Earl said. “I have to fly out tonight in fact.”
“Oh, my,” the waiter said, “but not that soon, I hope.”
“No, no,” Earl said, “not at all. The late plane, out to the Coast. I’m sure I have time for a drink. A good couple hours or so. And if the drinks make me feel like it, I can always leave in the morning.”
“Well, good,” the waiter said, producing a white cotton towel from the back of his kilt and wiping Earl’s table down quickly. “I’m sure we’ll find something that’ll satisfy you by then. Is there anything else you might like to drink?”
“I think so,” Earl said. “A Smirnoff blue label. A double. On ice. Rimmed with a small twist of lemon. Oh, and an extra glass of ice, and water back. Okay?”
The waiter smiled and glided away. “Back in a jiffy,” he said. He went to the service bar and stood tapping his left toe until the bartender looked up and walked down to him. The waiter talked to the bartender while the bartender fetched the 100-proof Smirnoff and prepared the drink in an on-the-rocks glass. The waiter filled one tumbler with ice and another with plain water. When they had finished, the bartender looked over toward Earl’s table, nodded to the waiter and started back along the bar. He paused between the first and second men seated at it, placed his hands on the rail, and said something to them. Each of them ostentatiously delayed before sipping some of his drink and then feigning some muscular discomfort or idle curiosity that required him to move on his stool and chanced to bring his eyes into contact with Earl’s. Both of them languidly returned to their drinks, as did the third bar drinker after the bartender had spoken to him.
The waiter returned with Earl’s order. He set the glasses down and said, “Just let me know now, sir, right away, if I can do anything else. Our rest rooms are right over there. Right behind the piano there, second door in the back.” Earl thanked him. The lady at the piano played Hoagy Carmichael tunes. The two men who shared the first booth got up to dance. When the waiter went into the kitchen and the bartender had returned to his reading, Earl poured half the vodka into the glass of ice and refilled his drink from the water glass.
By 9:30 five more men had come in. Two, one in his late fifties and the other in his late twenties, arrived together and took one of the freestanding tables in front of the bar. The solitary drinker farthest from the service bar accepted their invitation to pull up a chair and join them; the third arrival replaced him at the bar. The fourth walked slowly to and from the men’s room, looking over Earl and the other men seated alone in the booths. On his return he detoured from the bar and joined the man in the booth next to Earl’s. Earl heard soft conversation but was unable to understand what was said. The fifth man came in drenched, removing his sodden raincoat as the inner door swung shut behind him. He was in his early forties, average height, somewhat overweight, wearing a blue glen plaid suit. He had dark hair and long, bushy sideburns, and he wore a dress shirt with blue, yellow, green, and red stripes against a tan background, set off by a wide white silk tie patterned with heraldic devices. He drapped the coat over the table in the vacant booth to Earl’s left against the partition and fluffed his wet hair with his hands. “Wow,” he said. “Coming down in sheets out there.” Earl smiled. “Christ,” the man said, “no rain all day, I’m in the car, or else I’m in appointments—not a bit of rain. I finish up, plenty of time, I think I’ll have a drink. Okay so there’s no place to park for maybe half a mile. It’s only a light drizzle coming down by then. A hundred yards from the car and what happens? Boom, the skies unload.”
“Yeah,” Earl said, “but look at it this way. You can wait it out here. Stuff that heavy doesn’t last long. Me, I got, first I got to find myself a cab. Then I got to ride the airport and take a plane in all this crap.”
“You’re going out tonight?” the man said. “Me too.”
“Yup,” Earl said, “the Coast.”
The man nodded. “Lemme get myself a drink,” he said. “Mind if I come back and join you?” Earl said he did not. The man went to the bar and had a conversation with the bartender. The bartender talked while preparing the drink. The waiter came out of the kitchen again, and the bartender beckoned him over. The waiter glided up to the man and they walked awhile. The man turned back to the bartender and said something; the bartender took the Smirnoff blue and poured a double shot over ice, rimming the glass with a twist of lemon. The man took both drinks and returned to Earl’s table. “Saul knew what you were drinking,” he said, setting two rocks glasses on the table. The one in his right hand was dark liquor, straight up. “Didn’t know if you’re ready, but you’re anything like I am and you got to face an airplane on a dark and stormy night, well, I’m always ready, pal. For another drink, I mean.” He raised his glass. “Cheers,” he said. Earl raised his first drink to his mouth, saluting the toast.
The man eased into the booth on Earl’s left. “So,” he said, “my name’s Ed. I’m in sales. Office systems. Communications, you know? What’s yours?”
“Don,” Earl said, offering his hand. They shook. He grinned. “I guess, you want the truth, sales’s what I’m in, too, but they don’t call it that. They call it something else.”
“Like what?” Ed said. He sipped his drink, but he sipped greedily, so that the level in the glass diminished almost as rapidly as it would have under showier drinking.
“I sell a college,” Earl said. “Well, I sell a piece of a college. The athletic department. The basketball team.”
“You sell tickets?” Ed said, looking puzzled.
Earl smiled. “In the end, yeah,” he said. “That’s the whole point of it. And I guess if they told me I hadda, I’d probably have to do that, too. I mean: stand behind the counter and sell the actual tickets for the game. But what I do, I’m doing now, ’s a combination of two things. See, I used to play for the team myself. And I had, well, I figured the most I had was an outside shot, the pros, and what hell, I was young, and all idealistic, and JFK was up there getting everybody steamed up, so when I graduated, well, I made the noble choice. Didn’t even wait to see if I’d get drafted. Went right in the Peace Corps, the domestic version of it, and naturally when I came out, well, if I’d ever had a chance to play some ball for money, well, it was long gone by.”
“Was that that VISTA thing there?” Ed said. He finished his drink.
“VISTA?” Earl said.
“Yeah,” Ed said, “that Volunteers in Service to America thing there. Had a cousin was in that. Spent about two years or so down in Arizona someplace, teaching the Indians how to grow stuff off of rocks. I don’t know. Never made any sense to me. Kid from Metuchen, New Jersey, and they send her out
the desert to teach Indians to farm?” He shook his head. “Course a lot of things the government does, makes no sense to me.” He finished his drink. “Anyway, was that it, VISTA? What’d they have you doing?”
“Oh,” Earl said, sipping his diluted vodka, “various things. I set up this skins ’n’ shirts basketball league for three little towns about thirty miles between them. What I was actually doing was spending maybe five, six hours a day, driving around from one the next. Coaching them, back in the car, and on to the next town. And I helped with some other stuff, too. Teaching junior high, mostly. And yeah, it was VISTA. I misunderstood you. I thought you said ‘Vassar’ or something. Not many people ever heard of it.”
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