Nathan in Spite of Himself

by Bernie Silver

  Nah, unlikely even for him. Several other possibilities came to mind, but I also dismissed them as improbable. The answer that should have occurred to me immediately emerged in the middle of the night while I lay in bed staring into nothingness. Doppler may have been a putz, but he wasn’t a blind putz. He too had noticed my declining performance, and, being a harsh taskmaster, planned to fire me. That was it. I could kiss my job goodbye.

  Having solved the riddle, I slept like a condemned man.

  #

  The next morning I exhumed the Falcon from under ten feet of snow and fought slick roads and poor visibility all the way to the Gazette. I arrived at Doppler’s office on time despite the road conditions and mental distractions such as thoughts of my impending job loss.

  Sitting across from each other, he in sartorial splendor, me in a cheap JC Penney suit, we exchanged perfunctory grievances regarding the weather before getting down to it. The ME placed his elbows on his desk and confirmed my conjecture: my work had deteriorated, and he wasn’t happy about it.

  What could I say? I went with, “Huh?”

  “I said your work has deteriorated and I’m not happy about it.”

  Since I couldn’t very well stall again, I played dumb. “My work … um … it has?”

  Doppler arched an eyebrow, his skepticism fitting him as well as his clothes, which today consisted of a gray suit, pale yellow tie and white shirt accessorized with cufflinks.

  “It has,” he said. “And I mean across the board. Writing, layout, content … the works. And you get scooped by the Press far too often.”

  I had nothing to say to all that. When the asshole was right, he was right.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with you,” he continued, “and frankly I don’t care. What I care about is your performance.” He steepled his fingers. “Normally I’d let you go, but to be honest the past few years have been hard on us in terms of turnover, so I’d rather not take that step just yet. I’m hoping with this warning you’ll straighten out. Do you think you can?”

  On the one hand, I wasn’t sure. On the other, I was positive I couldn’t afford to be discharged, dishonorably yet, from my first newspaper job.

  “Yes, I’ll do better,” I said.

  “Let’s hope so.” Doppler sat back and inspected his fingernails. Apparently satisfied they were up to snuff, he looked at me again. “You’ve got a month. After that, if your work hasn’t improved, you’re out the door. Understand?”

  I said I did, after which he began shuffling copy, which I inferred meant our conversation was over. So I got up.

  “By the way,” he said.

  I sat back down.

  Doppler stopped shuffling and, much to my discomfort, looked me straight in the eye. “I said I don’t know what’s going on with you, but that’s not entirely true because I think I can guess.” If possible, he looked me even straighter in the eye. “I believe you have a drinking problem.”

  So there it was, the ME had hopped on the bandwagon.

  “I’ve hesitated to bring it up,” he went on, “because I try not to get involved in staffers’ personal lives. Besides, my job is to assess performance, not determine the reason for a poor one. But in your case I’m making an exception since the cause is fairly obvious.”

  I could have inquired what made it so apparent, but my former editor at the Post had cited the likely tip-off.

  It’s mainly here (in the eyes). Most drunks don’t get a lot of sleep.

  Maybe I ought to wear sunglasses indoors as well as out, like a Hollywood actor. But that might degrade my work even further, especially the design part.

  Of course, my breath may have given me away too, especially after I’d tipped a few at lunchtime. I suppose I could use Tic Tacs or Wrigley’s Spearmint to avoid detection in the future, but I’d have to think about that some other time. Right now I just wanted to end this discussion, so I promised Doppler I’d examine my drinking habits, and reconfirmed my desire to improve.

  Then I got the hell out of there before he broke another female monopoly and pushed me to join AA.

  #

  Back in my own office I gazed out the window at the panoply of snow covering almost everything, but skipped the usual kvetching because my primary attention was elsewhere, namely on the blizzard of thoughts swirling through my mind.

  Jane Bartolo, Ellen Drury, Rachel Solomon and now Phil Doppler thought I drank too much. Four people had come to the same conclusion. Being a reasonable man on occasion, I had to ask myself: did I drink too much? I drank a lot, I knew that, but what if the others thought I drank too much because they drank too little?

  I’m kidding. Kind of.

  Let’s assume, for the sake of conversation, that I did tend to overindulge. What should I do about it? I could reduce my intake, as I did after that New Year’s Eve debacle. But then along came July 4th, and along might come something else to trip me up. Maybe I ought to stop drinking altogether. But the mere thought of that solution gave me a hangover. I enjoyed alcohol, or at least its effect, far too much to turn teetotaler.

  So again I was left with moderating my intake, with walking that line between drinking too much and not at all. Which again raised the question: how much was too much? Maybe the answer would come to me eventually, I hoped.

  But if it did, how could I keep from crossing the line?

  Willpower?

  Did I even have any?

  I must have something that allowed me to get on in life. After all, I had a respectable vocation and dependable vehicle and livable quarters. And I had, or had had, a beautiful woman. Surely I could reduce my boozing enough to retain my job and regain my ladylove. Well, maybe winning Jane back was a lost cause, especially if I kept avoiding AA, but I could hold on to my job. I could do that.

  Maybe.

  Chapter 73

  1967

  I sipped my liquefied sugar. This stuff ain’t bad, I told myself for maybe the ninetieth time in the past hour. Perhaps endless repetition of the lie would make it come true. And maybe the end justified hyperbole. My goal was to maintain the drinking regimen I’d followed for the past two weeks, one that nobly embraced both temperance and diversity. I’d start with a glass of Coke, switch to a bottle of beer and move on to a shot of whiskey, two shots at the most. This routine gave me the taste of booze while keeping me sober. So I was making another sacrifice, forgoing blissful oblivion for my job’s sake.

  I finished my Coke and hailed the bartender.

  “Bud?” he asked.

  Obviously he was on to my routine.

  I told him yes.

  “You got it.”

  The Crow’s Nest, down the block and across the street from Mario’s, was opposite the lounge in more ways than one. It boasted no fine food, no jukebox and no dancing girls. And of course no stunning bartendress. On the contrary, the person setting my beer down along with a revised tab was not only a bartend-er, but one burdened with a lazy eye and major overbite. He hurried off to another patron ensconced at the bar, a worn-out geezer wearing a drab overcoat and dour expression who, I’m guessing, had been to this pub, or perhaps another, a time or two before.

  I sipped my beer and swiveled around to face the joint’s sparse population. A pair of middle-aged women drinking daiquiris lolled at one of the tables, and a young couple in a nearby booth drank to each other only with their eyes. The couple’s obvious craving for one another boosted mine for Jane Bartolo, and I swallowed half my beer to wash away the yearning. Then I reminded myself to go slow.

  Slow slow slow.

  So I slowly put away the remainder of my Bud and stopped at that. No Johnny Walker for me tonight. No sirreee.

  Maybe next week I’ll call Jane again and tell her what a good boy I’ve been. Naturally she’ll ask if I’ve been to an AA meeting, and just as naturally I’ll say … what? I won’t be able to say no or she’ll hang up in my ear, and I won’t be able to say yes because, knowing her, she’ll sense I’m lying. Maybe I’ll pr
omise to attend a meeting. And who knows, maybe someday I will.

  Right.

  When pigs fly, hell freezes over and the cows come home at last.

  Chapter 74

  I signaled the bartender, a flat-faced guy with greasy hair glued to his scalp, to fetch me another double, straight up with a beer chaser. I wasn’t nearly drunk enough, so I could still hear her words.

  “Nate, I’ve met someone.”

  They kept ringing in my head despite my boozed-fueled attempts to forget them. I’d gotten smashed, yes, but hadn’t erased the memory yet.

  “Nate, I’ve met someone.”

  I’d first heard the words last night when I called Jane to tell her I missed her.

  For a change I got right to the point. “I miss you,” I said after she picked up.

  No response, so I embellished.

  “I miss you a lot.”

  Still nothing.

  Someone with a functioning brain would have taken this silence for what it was, a warning shot across the bow. But I viewed it as a chance to flaunt my newly revised drinking habits.

  “I’ve cut way down, like you asked,” I said. “A couple drinks and that’s it for me. I’m practically a teetotaler.”

  “Great, wonderful, glad to hear it.”

  The words were right but the tone was all wrong. Listless, unenthused.

  Maybe she’d had a bad week. Maybe her mother had passed away or Tony had passed out or Mario had made a pass at her. Maybe a lot of things I couldn’t begin to imagine.

  So I pushed on.

  “The thing is, I was wondering if we could—”

  “Nate, I’ve met someone.”

  That shot flew over the bow, circled round and hit me amidships.

  “What?” was all I could say.

  “I’ve met someone. It’s serious.”

  Now my tongue stopped working.

  Regrettably hers kept flapping.

  “More and more, it seemed like it was over between us, you know? But I felt so bad, about you and me and all that happened, I started going to church. And that’s where I met this guy. We, um, we’ve been dating ever since.”

  For the second time since I’d known Jane I felt like puking.

  She’d met someone at church, where she’d gone because of me. Or us. Or whatever she said.

  “He’s a great person,” she went on. “Sensitive and intelligent. Kind of like you.”

  Terrific. Should I have felt flattered? In another conversation maybe I would have. In this one I felt flattened.

  Not satisfied with crashing into me, Jane backed over my body—“I hope you’re finally going to AA, Nate”—then drove over it again—“Well, are you?”

  I might have said I would if she still wanted me to, just as I might have said a lot of things out of sheer desperation, but I finally realized nothing I could say or do would revive this corpse. So I fell back on the truth.

  “No.

  “Nate, you need to go. Otherwise …”

  She went on for a while, but most of her words failed to register because “Nate, I’ve met someone” kept drowning them out.

  Silly expression, “I’ve met someone.” Of course she’d met someone. We all meet someone practically every day of our lives. But when a woman says she’s met someone, she doesn’t mean she’s met someone. She means she likes someone, she’s dating that someone and she plans to go to bed with that someone. If she hasn’t already.

  I knew Jane wouldn’t remain celibate for long, and I knew the chances of reviving our relationship were remote, but it’s one thing to know these things in your head and another to hear them confirmed out loud.

  Jane finally stopped talking and I mumbled something meaningless and we both hung up.

  That’s when images of her with another man began rolling across the screen. I tried blanking them out but failed, so I got to watch Jane and the other churchgoer kissing and embracing and undressing and getting into bed and …

  I’d spent the day at work viewing these scenes while screaming silently in pain, which I began to numb at the nearest bar after leaving the office at five o’clock. I kept moving eastward after that until I wound up here, at Ski-Town Bar and Grill in Hamtramck.

  And still the words kept echoing … echoing … echoing …

  “Nate, I’ve met someone.”

  Maybe food would help shut them out, or at least elevate my spirits, and even if it did neither it might mitigate my hangover (admittedly I’d seldom followed Sheldon’s advice on the subject). So in tribute to Sheldon Feinberger and in honor of all the Poles in Hamtramck, which included nearly everyone in Hamtramck, I waved Flat Face over and ordered the house specialty, a foot-long kielbasa on a sesame-seed roll.

  I was halfway through the sandwich when someone exuding Chanel No. 5 pulled up a stool to my left. Her lime-green eyes said hello as she brushed snow from her platinum-blonde hair. She made a show of removing her fur-collared coat, maybe because she had a lot to show, which I could see even through a booze-induced haze.

  For once I managed to ask, without any help or prompting, “Buy you a drink?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  She chose a Tom Collins, and I ordered one for each of us, in my case to be sociable. After three drinks and a couple of Luckys apiece, plus a spell of small talk (that’s how out of sorts I was) I said, “Tell me something.”

  By then I was forming my words imperfectly, so in return I got, “What?”

  I repeated myself, hopefully with greater precision.

  “No, no,” she said. “I meant what do you want me to tell you?”

  I scratched my head, Stan Laurel-like. “I was getting to that.”

  “Well, for God’s sake get to it.” She smiled, softening her impatience.

  Meanwhile, I couldn’t remember what I was getting to.

  “Never mind,” I said.

  She shrugged, and a lovely shrug it was.

  Having established a rapport of sorts, we drank and smoked in silence until Flat Face announced last call. I was about to order two for the road when she said, “C’mon, let’s get outta here. Okay?”

  I couldn’t think of a reason not to, so I said “Okay,” then added, “To hell with Jane Bartolo.”

  She gave me another shrug, even lovelier than the last one.

  The bartender rang me up and I removed some bills from my wallet and let him make sense of them. He gave me a look and change while I gave him a tip but no look because my vision was impaired.

  My new friend and I made our way to the parking lot, accompanied by falling snow.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked.

  I pointed in the general direction of the Falcon and she steered us toward it. I couldn’t be sure, given my condition, but I sensed her glancing over her shoulder from time to time.

  I understood. A woman couldn’t be too cautious these days.

  After arriving at our destination she stood by the passenger door while I tried several times to open it. I finally succeeded, but instead of getting in she stepped aside and a second figure appeared, a tall, husky guy from what I could tell. He slammed the door shut and threw me against it, then hurriedly rifled my pockets and tugged at my wrists and fingers.

  Mission completed, he said, “Let’s split.”

  I suspected he wasn’t addressing me so I remained in place.

  Well, not quite. With nothing to prop me up I slumped to the wet asphalt. Then I leaned back against the car, closed my eyes and dreamed of a platinum-blonde witch shoving a stick up my ass.

  A broomstick, of course.

  #

  I awoke with a Gestapo officer shining a searchlight in my face and asking, “Vhere are zeh uzzer Jews?”

  Or maybe it was a police officer with a flashlight asking me if I was okay.

  I bet on the cop and nodded.

  “You sure?”

  Nod.

  “Can you get up?”

  Nod.

  “Let’s see you do it th
en, son. You can’t stay here all night.”

  I couldn’t see why not, but decided against lipping off to a burly fellow with a revolver on one hip and a nightstick on the other.

  I got up.

  Or at least tried to, but rising from a sitting position following a night of drinking proved harder than I expected. After several botched attempts I settled for grinning like an idiot.

  In return the cop hauled me to my feet, leaned me against the Falcon and let go. Sadly, I collapsed like an empty sack.

  He yanked me upright and propped me against the car again.

  “Stay,” he commanded.

  This time I obeyed, perhaps hoping for a bone.

  Instead I got a snarl. “Let’s see some ID.”

  Piece of Bundt cake.

  I reached for my wallet but came up empty-handed. Then I pawed my shirt, pants and pea-coat pockets with the same result.

  I felt for my Timex.

  Gone.

  And for my one piece of jewelry, an ornate ring I’d bought at a pawnshop while under the influence.

  Also gone.

  How symmetrical. I’d purchased the ring while inebriated and lost it in the same condition.

  While admiring the symmetry of it all, I became sick to my stomach and emptied its contents on a pair of shiny black shoes. Since they were pointed toward me they obviously weren’t mine.

  “You fucking shit” were the last words I heard before passing out.

  #

  This time I awoke in a cage. True, three of the walls were solid, but the forth consisted of vertical bars, qualifying it for cage status in my mind. Outside the enclosure was a hallway, in the dim lights of which I made out a dozen cagemates lying on the floor with their eyes closed, or sitting against one of the walls staring into space, or performing a variation on those themes. I sat on the concrete floor, legs splayed, back against the wall, head screaming for mercy.

  “You look like shit.”

  The appraisal came from my right, more specifically from three hundred pounds of lard sitting there in a wrinkled suit and off-center tie. He leaned in close, his breath reeking of Limburger cheese or something just as odious. Unable to maintain this position for more than a few seconds, he keeled over and promptly went to sleep, snoring like a damaged muffler.