6
The Snifter Club was nestled in the corner of an L-shaped strip mall, between a dry cleaner’s and a greeting card store. It was open from four in the afternoon until two in the morning 365 days a year. There were dim lights hidden from direct view along its red velvetflocked walls and behind the bar, but most of the feeble light came from small candles set in round red pebbled-glass holders on the tables. The menu was expensive and conservative: steak, lobster, pan-fried trout. Charlie had been a member since he was old enough to drink; during his marriage the Snifter had been his second home, particularly toward the end of it, by which time it had also become his primary source of sex. Half a dozen or so more or less attractive, more or less alcoholic women took him on afternoons in approximately biweekly rotation. It had been a good time until one of the women called him aside at the bar and announced to him in a grave and excited tone that her husband had hired a detective and purchased a revolver. Charlie assumed this was melodramatic bullshit, but it unnerved him enough to stop seeing her and to change his drinking patterns. He didn’t stop coming in altogether, but the divorce brought with it new habits and an urge to expand his social horizons, and for the last few years he’d been coming in once or twice a week at the most. Tonight there were a half dozen tables occupied, and only one waiter working the floor.
Pete had hit another talkative stage, although his tone was considerably lower now. “I figure it’s what, about nine-fifteen, they’re just getting done unwrapping presents, they’ll start eating about nine-thirty. I’ll show up around dessert and pick a fight.”
“Sounds delightful,” Charlie said. “I can’t imagine why Betsy cut you off.”
“You should come in, too. Man, it would fucking ruin Sarabeth’s Christmas. That alone oughta make it worth your while. Plus you’ll get to see her new husband. He doesn’t like you at all. And when’s the last time you saw your kids?”
“Not too long.” In fact it had been several months. As his departure date approached his usual negligence had evolved into full-fledged, deliberate avoidance, ostensibly to make it easier on the kids. He had no plans to see them before leaving town.
“We’ll sit here for a few minutes and you think about it. Maybe a little more sauce’ll get you into the Christmas spirit.”
“Maybe,” Charlie said. He felt bad about not seeing the kids, but he couldn’t imagine any way to face them. He suspected that once he was gone the kids wouldn’t care much anyway.
“Could I get another one of these, Kelly?”
“Me, too,” Pete said, draining his half-full highball glass. Kelly, a tall young woman with a black ponytail and eyes so close together they looked slightly crossed, smiled and took both glasses. “You gentlemen are drinking on Trina tonight.”
Charlie spun on his bar stool, squinting in the candlelight. Sitting at a table by herself was the very woman whose husband had supposedly hired the detective and bought the revolver. She raised her glass and nodded almost imperceptibly at Charlie, just a trace of a smile crossing her face. He got down from the stool and limped across the dining room to her table.
“Trina. Nice to see you.”
“Merry Christmas, Charlie. You’re gimpy tonight.”
“It’s my war wound. Chateau Thierry.”
“I didn’t realize you went to Korea,” she said without much interest. She was in her late forties, Charlie guessed, a good-looking woman who worked hard to keep herself that way, then spent lots of time in the sun and drinking heavily. Her ears, throat, and arms were weighed down with gold, silver, and turquoise, and a few strands of her hair, frosted blond and pulled back into a tight knot behind her head, had started to stray loose, drooping along the sides of her temples.
“Where’s that pretty little nurse you’re always with?”
“Respiratory therapist. I don’t see her anymore. Where are all your friends tonight?” He made no move to sit.
“They all crapped out on me, one by one. Everybody thinks they have to see their goddamn families at Christmas.”
“Not me.”
“Not me either. Alex and his ski-bunny whore took the kids to Vail. I said fine, that means I can get laid on Christmas. What are you up to tonight, Charlie? Who’s your interesting-looking friend?” Pete was moving toward the table with their fresh drinks.
“Sarabeth’s sister’s husband. Pete.”
“Hanging around with your ex’s family on Christmas. That’s kind of . . . poignant, Charlie.” She gave a dry little croak of a laugh. “Hi, Pete.”
“Hi, Trina. Wasn’t sure if you remembered me.” He sat down, hanging his free arm down over the back of the chair.
“Sure I do. Refresh my memory, though.”
“About two years ago at the Brass Candle. You were mad at your husband.”
This stirred something. Trina leaned forward to get a good look at Pete, trying to attach his face to a memory.
“He had his hand on some little slut’s ass? And I left with you while he wasn’t looking?”
“That’s it. Christ, he was mad. All our friends were there. Everybody from his firm, everybody we fucking knew. . . . That was you?”
“We were necking at the bar, as I recall.” Except for a mild slur, very slight next to Trina’s, Pete sounded almost completely sober now. “Had my hand all the way up your dress and into your panties. You were pushing into it hard. The whole goddamn bar was watching.”
“Except Alex,” she said. There was new color in her face and a slightly strangled quality to her voice. “I was pretty drunk.”
“We went over to the downtown Holiday Inn and you called and left a message for your husband on his brand-new answering machine while I was doing you from behind.”
She was genuinely flushed now. Charlie couldn’t tell if it was anger or arousal. “That was you?”
“That was me, all right.” Pete was beaming.
Trina motioned for Kelly to come over. “Kelly, Pete and I have something to discuss outside. Will you give Charlie whatever he wants on my tab till we get back?” She was already out of her chair and yanking Pete out of his by the hand. She pulled him to the front door, surprisingly steady on her high heels given how drunk she seemed. She looked good from behind, Charlie thought. Pete looked back and grinned. Charlie felt the urge again and headed back to the men’s room.
It was a few rungs up the hygiene ladder from the Tease-O-Rama men’s room, and instead of a rubber novelty machine, a framed girlie calendar from the 1940s hung over each of the three urinals. The soap in the dispensers was liquid, not grit, and the water was hot. He dried his hands as best he could under the warm air dispensed from the dryer vent and headed back to collect his drink.
“I think she’s sad.” Charlie sat at the bar, bored, listening to Kelly psychoanalyze Trina. “I mean, she’s a good-looking woman, she’s got money, why does she want to hang around a place like this all the time?”
“No place else to go,” Charlie offered.
“I just think she ought to join a club or something to keep her occupied.”
“This is a club right here, honey.”
“Don’t call me honey, Charlie. I mean a club like a garden club or a stamp club.”
“Yeah, I can see Trina getting heavily into stamp collecting; that’d be a real satisfying substitute for boozing and promiscuity.”
“I was just using that as an example!” Kelly was in her early twenties, and she had an unswerving faith in human potential. “If she’d just take some interest in something I think she’d get more out of life.”
The front door opened and Trina walked back in, Pete pressed close to her side. Her makeup was immaculate. Pete looked ready to drop into blissful sleep. They had been gone about fifteen minutes.
Pete sat next to Charlie and they both watched Trina saunter back to the ladies’ room. “I am definitely going to be coming back here.” The slur was back, stronger than before. “I didn’t think I was gonna be able to get it up at this stage. Christ, I’ve
been drunk since three this afternoon. Must be a Christmas miracle.”
Kelly looked at Pete with compassionate disapproval. Here was another soul to be reached. “I hope you will come back, Pete.”
He eyed her appraisingly. “I will. Definitely. Um, Charlie, I think I’m about to start hitting a big fade here. We should head for the in-laws’.”
“I’ll wait for you in the car while you say good-bye to Trina.”
Pete came out five minutes later and got into the Lincoln.
“I thought that was Andy Sandoval who left with her that night she called and left the message on Alex’s answering machine,” Charlie said as he pulled out of the space.
“Yeah, it was. But he told me he’d seen her four or five times since and she didn’t seem to remember it was him.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to forget.”
“Yeah, isn’t it? She just seemed so drunk and horny I thought I’d take a shot in the dark. This is the life, Charlie, going over to the in-laws’ for Christmas dinner with that good Trina smell all over old Dingus.”
“Maybe we should stop somewhere so you can wash your dick.”
“No. Not a chance.” He grabbed his shirt and held it to his face, taking in a long, loud breath through his nose. “Stinky cologne, too. You gotta come in with me, Charlie. This’ll be a holiday memory you’ll treasure forever.”
“You sure are animated for someone who was about to hit the fade a second ago.”
“Oh, yeah,” Pete said, “look what she gave me while you were out here.” He produced a tiny square of aluminum foil. “We did a couple lines in the ladies’ room and she gave me this as a little Christmas present. You want to do a line?”
“Not while I’m at the wheel, no.”
“All right. We’ll wait and offer some to Dottie. She could probably use a little lift.”
Charlie turned to the right out of the parking lot heading south, in the direction of his former in-laws’ house. If I leave town without seeing the kids one last time I’ll probably regret it, he thought. I’ll make it quick.
7
“How long’s it been since you laid eyes on the old hellkite?” Pete asked.
“Two years ago exactly. Christmas Eve. I was out at the mall buying all my presents at once and I spotted her carrying a bunch of bags. She pretended not to see me, so I went up and said hi, offered to help with her bags.”
“She must’ve hated you for that.”
“She gave me that smile, you know, like this.” Charlie gritted his teeth, drawing the skin taut on his face and extending the tendons in his throat. “And she said, ‘Thank you very much, Charlie, I’ll manage.’ ”
Pete took a long drink from Charlie’s flask. “This’s almost empty. We can fill it up at the in-laws’. Get some of the good stuff in here.”
They were headed down an old residential street lined with solid old houses and tall, naked shade trees. Most of the houses had strings of big, conical multicolored bulbs running along their eaves and in the trees. Charlie slowed when he saw a house with tiny points of white light draped around its frame. As he pulled over toward the curb he overshot his mark and hit it with a solid jolt, lurching upward and halfway onto someone’s snowy lawn.
“Fuck! Spilled. Sorry.” Pete halfheartedly wiped at his lap with the sleeve of his sport jacket. “Wasn’t much left anyway.”
“Couldn’t see where the damn curb was,” Charlie said, a little embarrassed. “All this fucking snow.”
“You want to get down off the curb or just leave it like this? It’s Christmas Eve; nobody’s gonna fuck with it.”
“Let’s leave it like this. I don’t plan to be here long anyway.”
Pete was already scraping out white lines on the cover of a brand-new Rand McNally road atlas. “You going to join me before we go in?”
He almost said no, but he was feeling a little drunk and he didn’t want to slur in front of Melissa and Spencer. “Sure.”
He regretted it at the very first snort. After the initial burn in his nose the feel of the syrupy, bitter saliva running down the back of his throat nearly made him gag, but his grogginess was already beginning to dissipate as he climbed out of the Lincoln.
They walked around the east side of the house toward the back because Pete wanted to sneak a look into the dining room before they went inside. Charlie looked around the familiar backyard, feeling like a ghost in the feeble orange and purple light. It was so quiet he thought he could hear the snowflakes hitting the tops of the drifts. They turned the corner onto the west side of the house, where a faint yellow light shone through the dining room window.
“This is gonna be great,” Pete whispered, loudly enough to be heard fifteen feet away where Charlie stood watching him. Pete was on tiptoe, looking in at the last of the Christmas dinner. “They’re on dessert. Nobody’s talking. The kids are all pouting.”
“I should leave.”
“Too late. You’re in. You can’t let me go in there and tell your kids you were here and wouldn’t see ’em. Come on.” He dropped down and motioned for Charlie to follow him to the front of the house.
They climbed the porch steps and Pete opened the unlocked front door. Charlie stopped to scrape most of the snow off his shoes on the mat as Pete walked in, swaggering toward the dining room, clomping his wet boots across the solid oak floor, detouring for a brief hop to track snow and mud on a pristine, cream-colored couch. “Merry fucking Christmas!” he called out.
Charlie followed cautiously, several yards behind Pete, ready to bolt at the first sign of violence. Pete burst ahead of him into the dining room and held the door open. Charlie stood back, peering in around him from behind. The dark green wallpaper drained most of the light out of the room. Dottie sat silently at one end of the long table opposite her husband, and scattered around the table were five sleepy, cranky grandchildren, two women in early middle age, and a single, pudgy son-in-law, the only moving element in the tableau as his fork moved frantically back and forth from his pie plate to his mouth. The table was covered with half-empty platters: turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, green beans. Of the three pies in the center of the table, only one had been cut into, and no one but Sarabeth’s husband had taken any.
“Hey, who died?” Pete yelled.
There was no response. Charlie shrank further behind Pete, considering a last-minute retreat. No one seemed to have noticed him yet. He caught a glimpse of Melissa, seated next to Dottie at the far end of the overladen dinner table. Was she six now? No, seven.
“It’s the silent treatment, Charlie.”
The mention of his name didn’t evoke any response from the adults at the table, but Melissa leaped up onto the seat of her absurdly oversize chair, vaulted herself out of it, and raced squealing around the long, solid table and past her uncle Pete to slam full force into Charlie. He picked the little girl up and held her tight for a second, then set her down. She pressed herself into his pant leg, crying and holding on for dear life. Now the other adults were staring at him, puzzled and angry.
“Hi, Spence,” he said to the little boy seated next to Sarabeth’s husband, trying not to play favorites. “Merry Christmas.”
The boy stared him down without a word. Pete and Betsy’s kids looked at Charlie, not quite sure who he was.
“Sorry to show up unannounced. Just gave Pete here a ride, thought I’d stop in and wish you happy holidays.”
Again no one spoke. Charlie’s ex-father-in-law was twisted around in his chair, staring openmouthed at Charlie as though trying desperately to place him. Sarabeth’s husband, mouth full of mincemeat, looked as though he might stand up and bludgeon Charlie with one of Dottie’s silver candlesticks, and Sarabeth herself looked away. Betsy shot alternating disgusted looks at Charlie and Pete, as though she couldn’t decide which was the lower form of life. Finally Dottie broke the silence.
“We’ve already eaten dinner, Charlie. Could I offer you a glass of wine?” She smiled more
or less convincingly as she said it, possibly at Charlie’s obvious surprise at her unaccustomed civility.
“Don’t mind if I do, Dottie, thanks.” He walked toward her end of the table, passing Sarabeth without looking directly at her.
Dottie got up and poured him a glass of red wine and handed it to him. “You’re limping, Charlie. Did you hurt yourself?”
“Just a little tennis hip,” he said.
“I never heard of that,” Dottie said.
He turned toward Sarabeth, who wouldn’t return his gaze. She wore bangs now, and her dark brown hair fell below her shoulders for the first time since he’d known her. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes moist. He had almost forgotten how pretty he’d always found that sad look of hers. She pushed her chair away from the table, and he was surprised to see as she stood that she was pregnant. He felt an odd twinge of nostalgia at the sight of her belly, a small but sharp pain he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of. He reminded himself that he hated her.
“Sorry,” she said, pushing past Pete. Betsy looked over at Charlie, something close to a snarl on her curled lip. Charlie had always liked her, had in fact had a crush on her at one of the low points of his marriage, and even this attention from her still gave him a tiny spark of pleasure. She started to say something, then stopped herself, got up, and followed Sarabeth out of the room, stopping long enough at the door to give Pete a hard shove in the chest. “You shitheel!” she hissed quietly. Pete grinned, but he was a long way from the fun and fireworks he’d anticipated and promised.
“How is your work coming along, Charlie?” Dottie asked.
“Me and Tom Hagen here made a guy an offer he couldn’t refuse, that’s how come we’re so fucking late.” Apart from a small, involuntary wince, Dottie made no sign that she heard him.
“Work’s fine,” Charlie said. Dottie had first turned on him in the course of a seemingly innocuous disagreement over whether or not Spencer was old enough for a bicycle. A shouting match had followed regarding Charlie’s decision to give up his only mildly successful law practice and go to work full-time for Bill Gerard and Vic Cavanaugh. After that day he had warily avoided her company, even on major family occasions, right up until the divorce. In the interim the phenomenon of the mostly absent son-in-law seemed to have become a Henneston family tradition.
The Ice Harvest Page 4
