Bone in the Throat - Anthony Bourdain [52]
"The doctor screwed up," said Carol, lowering her voice to a whisper.
"Oh," said Harvey, brightening. "I'm cheering up already. What did he do?"
"He did an extraction yesterday. Old lady with an impacted wisdom tooth. He should have put in stitches. I told him so in a nice way. Just a suggestion. He gave me such a dirty look. So he packs her with gauze and sends her out the door. This morning, she comes in with a hematoma like you wouldn't believe. Today he puts in the stitches." Carol made a face. "I would have loved to say 'I told you so.
Harvey groaned. "Lazy. The man is lazy. That never would have happened, I was there. I never would have let that happen . . . " He got up off his bar stool. "Let's go home. I feel like a sack of shit. I gotta get outta these clothes. Office is right over the kitchen, right up the stairs. The cooking odor gets in everything. I smell like Charlie the Tuna in these clothes. I wanna change. First, I wanna shower, then, maybe take a Jacuzzi, maybe get a nice back rub, maybe?"
"Do I get a back rub too?"
"Me first," said Harvey.
Tommy and Stephanie emerged from downstairs and stood by the service bar. Tommy had a funny expression on his face. Stephanie was reapplying her lipstick, looking at herself in the mirror behind the bar.
"I don't even want to think about what they been up to down there. This place is like Sodom and fuckin Gomorrah lately," said Harvey. He took a last worried look over at the bartender. He was still huddled with the big-haired girls, a portfolio spread out on the bar in front of them. The girls were oohing and ahhing and giggling, whispering comments to each other over the bartender's head shots.
"Christ," said Harvey. "I hate actors."
Twenty-Four
HARVEY LAY on his blanket in the late August sun. The Long Beach train had just disgorged another load of passengers, and Harvey could see them swarming down from the boardwalk, weighted down with their coolers and their folding beach chairs and their newspapers. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes, turned off his Walkman, removed the earphones, and rolled over onto his back. Soon he was asleep.
When he woke up it was two-thirty He looked at his watch and sat upright. He had been asleep for over an hour and a half. People were beginning to leave the beach. He shooed a few seagulls away from his blanket and reached into his bag. He oiled his back with an expensive French sun-treatment and rolled over onto his stomach. There was a baggie filled with dried apricots and nuts on the corner of the blanket. Harvey reached for it, reconsidered, and rolled back onto his side. He patted his belly a few times, pinched the fat below his navel, and got to his feet. He gazed up at Seymour's Clam Bar on the boardwalk, patted his belly again, and headed for some fried clams.
He ate his clams with a tall draft beer on one of the benches at the end of the boardwalk. Tan, hard-bodied teenagers were playing volleyball on the beach. A large-breasted blonde with teased hair and a skull tattoo on her nearly naked butt stood talking and drinking out of a brown paper bag at the next bench. The three young men with her all wore the same thing: workboots, blue jeans, and no shirts. They were all heavily tattooed. Screaming eagles, coiled snakes, snarling panthers, skulls with top hats, and swastikas covered their chests and backs. An old man with an eye patch in a motorized wheelchair pulled up next to Harvey's bench and began throwing bread crumbs to the pigeons and seagulls. Soon there were birds everywhere. Disgusted, Harvey got up and walked back to his blanket.
He lay on his stomach for a while, but the shadows were getting longer; more people were gathering up their things and heading off to the train station. Harvey checked his watch. It was three-thirty. He applied apres soleil to his face, chest, and arms and began to pack up. He put a pair of white linen shorts on over his bathing suit and a red polo shirt over his head.