Men from Boys

by John Harvey

  Kildare’s wasn’t anything special. It was your standard fake pub, loaded with promotional posters and mobiles, courtesy of the local liquor distributors. The sign outside said ‘A Publick House’, like you could fool people into thinking Wheaton was London. I don’t know, maybe the home-town rednecks bought into it, ’cause the joint was usually full. More likely they didn’t care what you called it or what you dressed it up as. It was a place to get drunk. That was all anyone in these parts needed to know.

  So the three of us were sitting at a four-top in the center of the room. I was hammering a Bud and Scott had a Michelob, another way he had of wearing his ‘I went to college’ badge. Paddy was on his third stout, and there was a shot of Jameson’s set neat next to the mug. I didn’t know how he afforded to drink the top-shelf stuff. He made jack shit at the body shop and went through a gram of coke every few days. But he still lived with his mother over on Tenbrook and it didn’t look like he spent any money on clothes. I guess his paycheck went to getting his head up.

  ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’ was coming from the jukebox. Lou Gramm was crooning and I was thinking about my girl. I had met this fine young lady, Lynne, worked an aluminum siding booth up in Wheaton Plaza, who I thought might be the one. She had dark hair and a rack on her like that PR or Cuban chick, played on Miami Vice. I wanted to be with her but I was here. It was partly out of habit, and mostly because I knew Paddy would be holding. Also, Paddy had practically begged me to come. He didn’t like to drink alone.

  ‘You guys ready to do a bump?’ said Paddy.

  ‘Shit, yeah,’ I said. I mean, what did he think? Hell, it was why I was sitting there.

  ‘I gotta work tomorrow,’ said Scott.

  ‘What’s your point?’ said Paddy.

  ‘It’s a real job,’ said Scott. At the time, Scott was putting in hours at a downtown law firm and studying for what he called the ‘L-sats’.

  Paddy looked over at the booth where the Arab dude sat, smiled kind of mean, then moved his eyes back to Scott. ‘Like my job isn’t real?’

  ‘All I’m saying is, it’s not the kind of job where you can just fall out of bed, stumble into a garage with a headache, and start banging out dings.’

  ‘Oh, I get you. Big smart lawyer. What you makin’ down at that law firm, Scott?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s an internship.’

  ‘Better get in there refreshed in the morning, then. You wouldn’t want to lose a gig like that.’ Paddy turned his attention to me. ‘Meet me in the head in a few minutes, Counselor. Okay?’

  I had just dropped out of community college for the last time and had gotten this job at a local branch of a big television-and-stereo chain. The company called us ‘Sales Counselors’, like we were shrinks or something. Paddy thought it was a laugh.

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘Watch this,’ said Paddy, and he got out of his seat.

  Paddy navigated the space between the floor tables and headed for the booth where the guy was drinking with the blonde. He walked right up to their table and bumped his thigh against it, hard enough to rattle their mugs and spill some of their beer. The guy looked up, not angry, just surprised. Paddy pointed his finger at the guy’s face and said, ‘Pussy.’ Then Paddy made a beeline to the men’s room, which was down a serpentine hall. The doorman, one of three cousins who owned the place, was standing nearby. He saw the whole thing.

  ‘That was smooth,’ said Scott.

  The guy at the booth was staring at us, like, what’s up with your buddy? Funny, with his face square on us, he did look like that Achmed Z-med dude. The blonde was busy mopping up the spilt beer with some napkins. I thought of going over to apologise, or shrugging to let them know that we were innocent in whatever had just happened, but I didn’t, ’cause it would have been a betrayal of my friend. I just looked away.

  ‘The lucky leprechaun’s in rare form tonight,’ said Scott. ‘You guys drop me at my parents’ place after this, okay?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘You want to get busted for something, that’s up to you, but I got too much to lose.’

  ‘I said we would.’

  Scott’s eyeglasses reflected neon from a Bud Light sign up on the wall. His hair was curly and short, and he was soft-featured and overweight. He had rose petal lips, like a girl’s. Scott was one of those guys, you could tell what he was gonna look like when he got to be an old man, even when we were kids.

  I pushed my chair away from the table, got up and walked towards the head. The doorman was giving me the fisheye, his arms folded across his chest. I didn’t look at the Arab guy or the blonde.

  I made it through the hall, black paneled walls lit by a red bulb, and knocked on the locked men’s room door. Paddy opened up and I slid in. The room held a toilet, a stand-up urinal and a sink, all on the same wall. The toilet didn’t have a door on it or nothin’ like that, so if you had to take a shit you did it in front of strangers. There was a casement window by the toilet, always cranked open some to let out the smell. Everything was filthy in here. Paper towels overflowed the plastic trashcan by the sink and were crumpled like dirty white carnations on the tiled floor.

  ‘Here you go, Counselor,’ said Paddy. He held a small amber vial in one hand and a black screw-on top in the other. Inside the top a small spoon dangled by a chain. He dipped the spoon into the vial and produced a tiny mound of coke that he held to my nose.

  I could see that there wasn’t hardly any coke left in the vial. I knew if I did one jolt I’d be hungry for it the rest of the night. Even if we could find someplace to cop, I didn’t have the dough to buy any more, and I didn’t know if Paddy did, either.

  I was thinking of this as I pressed a forefinger to one nostril and snorted the mound into the other. A good cool ache came behind my eyes.

  Paddy produced another mound and I did it up the other nostril the same way. He scraped out what was left in the vial and did that himself. He found some more in there somehow and rubbed that on his gums while I ran water from the faucet, wet my fingers, tipped my head back and let some droplets go down my nose. Then I took a leak in the stand-up head.

  ‘Hurry up,’ said Paddy. ‘Everyone’s gonna think you’re in here suckin’ my dick.’

  ‘No they won’t. ‘Cause everyone knows you don’t have one.’

  ‘Axe your mama if I have one.’

  ‘Look, you gonna be a good boy out there?’

  ‘I was just fuckin’ with that guy.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I tucked myself back in and zipped up my fly. I was already speeding and there was a drip, tasted like medicine, back in my throat. I wished my girl was out there; I could break away with her if she was. But it wouldn’t be cool to split now, seeing as Paddy had just got me lit up. And by the time I got to her place, I’d be crashing. I’d hang with Paddy for a while, cop some more someplace, then knock on Lynne’s door later on.

  We walked out into the hall. ‘Every Time You Go Away’ was playing in the house. I felt tall and funny. Our waitress was going to the girl’s room and I reminded her to wash her hands. She edged by us in the narrow passageway without even giving us a smile.

  Good as I felt, I had forgotten about the doorman. My stomach flipped some as I saw him standing by our table. Our bill was on the table and Scott was kinda slumped in his seat. We went there and Paddy spread his hands, like, what’s going on?

  ‘Pay your tab and get out,’ said the doorman, pointing at the bill.

  ‘We’re not finished drinking,’ said Paddy.

  ‘You’re finished,’ said the doorman. ‘Pay your tab and get out.’

  ‘What, ’cause of that guy?’ said Paddy, jerking his head toward the Arab and the blonde. ‘He was bothering me. Sayin’ shit, and stuff. I wasn’t just gonna let it pass.’

  ‘I saw the whole thing,’ said the doorman. His face was ugly and it was stone. ‘Pay up and get out. You’re not welcome in here any more.’
/>   The doorman was short and wore one of those Woody Allen hats to cover his hair plugs. Basically, he was an insecure guy who liked to act tough. We all knew he couldn’t walk it, and he knew we knew, and it just made him more mean. He was not a physical problem, but the Harris Brothers, a couple of guys worked nights in the kitchen, were. They had been wrestlers at our old high school, and there was no love lost between them and Paddy.

  We dropped some money on the four-top. Scott stood and put some green in, too. A few of the drinkers at the tables and booths were checking us out with anticipation, waiting to see what we would do.

  I already knew we weren’t going to do a thing. Paddy’s face had gone pink and he was just standing there, sway-backed, staring at his shoes. He was a pale-skinned strawberry blond who could have been handsome if his features had been hooked up better. I couldn’t say what made him unattractive exactly, but there was something off about his looks. Scott called him an inbred Redford.

  The three of us walked out, slow enough to salvage some dignity. But we kept moving and we didn’t give any more lip to the little doorman with the hair plugs. I locked eyes for a moment with the guy in the booth. He didn’t smile or anything, but he wasn’t gloating about us getting tossed, either. He handled it all right. It was us that came off looking like assholes.

  Out in the lot, walking towards Paddy’s T-Bird, Scott said, ‘Say goodbye to Kildare’s, boys. We’ll never drink in there again.’

  ‘No loss,’ said Paddy. ‘We’ll just drink at Garner’s.’

  ‘Aye, Garner’s,’ said Scott. ‘I don’t think so, lads. The Guinness is too cold.’

  ‘Big college smart-ass, now.’

  ‘How green was my valley,’ said Scott, with a lilt.

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Paddy.

  ‘Suck what?’ said Scott.

  They went on like that until we dropped Scott at his father’s house on Gabel. I didn’t get in on the conversation. I was too busy thinking of my next bump.

  Paddy left rubber on the street, hard to do with that heavy car, as we drove away from Scott’s. He said that he was tired of Scott, how he wasn’t the same since coming back from that fancy school, how he only tolerated him ’cause Scott and me went back to elementary, all that.

  ‘I ain’t goin’ drinking with him again,’ said Paddy.

  I didn’t comment, thinking that they would kiss and make up and we’d be up at Garner’s or someplace like it the next week. But it turned out Paddy was right.

  We picked up a six of domestic in Four Corners and cracked a couple of cans straight away. Both of us had a terrific thirst. Paddy drove down University Boulevard, then cut a left on to Piney Branch Road and took it to New Hampshire Avenue. We listened to a tape Paddy’d made, a balladeer named Christy Moore. He had a nice voice, with those whistles and pipes and shit like that in the background, but it sounded like something my father listened to, Vic Damone with an accent. I really thought Paddy had taken this Mick thing too far.

  I saw where he was going as he cut up New Hampshire. They had garden apartments up along there where I’d heard you could cop. It was just above Langley Park, not as dangerous as Langley with the El Salvies and those crazy-assed Jamaicans, but still kinda grim. All varieties of Spanish here and a lot of blacks. Not that I was scared of ’em or nothin’ like that.

  Paddy turned into the parking lot, found a spot, and cut the engine and the lights. We sat there killing the rest of our beers.

  ‘Who we gonna see?’ I said.

  ‘Some girl,’ said Paddy. ‘This guy I know at work hooked it up.’

  ‘You don’t know her?’

  ‘It’s just a girl. Don’t worry, nothing could happen. I called her before I met you guys and she said it was cool. She sounded all right.’ Paddy grinned. ‘I bet she’s fine, too.’

  The way he said fine, like ‘foyne’, I knew she was a black girl. Paddy had a thing for black chicks, though I don’t think he’d ever had any. Except for that one time, when that girl down at Benny’s Rebel Room jacked him off for forty-five bucks.

  ‘What’re we getting’?’ I said.

  ‘An eight-ball.’

  ‘Shit, Paddy, c’mon.’ I had, like, sixteen bucks in my wallet, and next to nothing in the bank.

  ‘I got you, man.’

  So he was dealing. Small time, but there it was. That’s how Paddy always had coke. It was the first time he’d let me know, even if it was in a back-door way. Because I was still high and feeling bold, it excited me some that he had let me in on his action. Also, I was a little bit scared.

  ‘This your regular connection?’

  ‘Nah, uh-uh, he’s out of town. This is a one-time deal.’

  I looked up at the apartments and the grounds. Some of the balconies were sagging and fast-food trash was strewn about the lot. ‘Maybe we oughta wait until your man gets back.’

  ‘You wanna get high, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yeah.’ I was at that stage, I was hungry for more.

  Paddy threw his head back to drain his can of beer. He lofted the can over his shoulder. It hit some dead soldiers on the floorboard and made a dull metallic sound. I killed mine and dropped the can between my feet.

  We got out of the car and walked across the lot. There were a couple of guys wearing mustaches, sitting in a black, late-model Ford parked nearby. Their heads were moving to music; the bass was up so loud I could hear it behind the closed windows of their car. I didn’t make eye contact with them or anything. I figured they were doing some blow. Hell, everyone was rocking it back then. They were a little old for it, but it wasn’t any business of mine.

  We went up a stairwell, one of those open-air jobs with cinderblock walls. Paddy stopped on the second-floor landing. It was dark when it should have been lit. Then I saw the busted-out light bulb hung in a cage. I wondered if the girl dealing the blow had deliberately broken the light, made it so you couldn’t see her apartment too good from the parking lot. Paddy knocked on the door, waited, then knocked again.

  In a little while, a girl’s voice came forward, muffled over some music that was playing inside the apartment. Paddy put his face close to the door and said his name, and also the name of his co-worker at the body shop. The door opened and Paddy stepped inside. I followed him. The girl stepped back against the wall to let us pass.

  The girl was black, on the short side, with all the woman parts in place, including her black girl’s onion. She wore Jordache jeans and a jean shirt unbuttoned kinda low. I could see one of her tits hanging in a loose white bra. She caught me checking her out as I squeezed by. She didn’t seem to care. It was hard to read anything in her hard, unfriendly face and dark, almond-shaped eyes. I didn’t say ‘hey’ to her or smile or anything like it. She took a deep cokehead’s drag off the cigarette she was holding and closed the door.

  Paddy put out his hand. ‘C’mon,’ said the girl, ignoring his gesture. We followed her down a short hall.

  The music got louder as we walked. It was rap music, some black guy shouting over hard chords of electric guitar. We entered a living-room/dining-room arrangement, two small rooms, really, separated by nothing, where all the curtains were drawn tight. The place stunk of cigarettes. Cigarette smoke hung in the room.

  A light-skinned black dude sat on the couch, dragging on a smoke, Jonesing for the nicotine like the girl. On the table before the couch was a mirror holding a largish mound of coke heaped beside a single-edged blade. An ashtray sat beside the mirror and was filled with butts. The dude raised his head as we came into the room and sized us up the way guys do. The way he looked at us, you could tell he wasn’t too impressed.

  Another black guy, darker-skinned with ripped arms, sat at the dining-room table. He wore a sleeveless black T-shirt to show off his guns. He was rapping along to the guy shouting from the stereo. There was a large amount of cocaine on the table, along with a scale, a big mirror, some blades, plastic Baggies of various sizes, and snowseals. The snowseals were real, the pharmaceutic
al kind, not just paper ripped from magazines and folded to size.

  The coke was a mountain. I mean, it was Tony Montana big. I’d never seen so much shit before in my life.

  A stainless-steel pistol, a short-nosed revolver, sat on the table. The guy touched the grip, turning it just an inch so that the barrel pointed our way. He looked at us, and his eyes were laughing and bright. As the voice came from the stereo, he kept his gaze on us and shouted along: ‘It’s like that, and that’s the way it is.’

  It’s real clear, even today, what I was thinking: You just got your life started and this is how you die. All you want to do is get your head up, nothing more than that. You walk into the wrong apartment, there’s guns, and you fucking die.

  ‘You got it?’ said Paddy to the girl. I had to hand it to him. He was acting pretty cool. Knowing Paddy, he was trying to keep himself together to impress her. For a guy who got no play, Paddy was an optimist. He always thought he had a chance.

  The girl went and turned down the stereo to almost nothing. The guy at the table kept rapping to the song.

  ‘An eight, right?’ said the girl to Paddy.

  ‘That’s right, baby.’

  I was thinking, Nah, don’t go there, Paddy. Don’t put on that bullshit black-talk of yours, not here. But she didn’t even blink. She went down another hall and into a kitchen that was visible through a cut-out in the dining-room wall. I watched her ratfuck through the freezer section of the refrigerator.

  The guy at the table stopped rapping and said, ‘Y’all want a taste?’

  Paddy smiled friendly and put up his hands. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. I’d never seen him turn down a blast of coke.

  ‘Ain’t like I’m asking you to drink out the same bottle as me.’

  Paddy chuckled unconvincingly. ‘It’s not that. I just don’t want any right now.’

  ‘Well, I’m a little surprised, ’cause you look like a pro. Don’t you always check out what you’re buyin’?’ The guy glanced at the dude sitting on the couch, then back at us. ‘C’mon over here and give it a road test.’