Caught Stealing - Charlie Huston [7]
Tasks are good when you’re trying to give up something. They keep you occupied and make your life seem useful. I stuff my dirty clothes in a sack. I grab a handful of quarters from my change jar, but on the way to the door, I stop. Bud has a little blanket in his carry box and I decide to wash that too. Russ should be back in a day or two and it would be nice if Bud has a clean blanket. This is the way I think. It’s my mom’s fault. I grab the blanket and pull and it snags on something in the box. I tug harder and hear the blanket rip a little. I put the laundry sack down, get on my hands and knees, and reach into the box to unsnag the blanket.
Paul’s Bar closes at 4:00 A.M. On a Thursday it’s usually all regulars by 2:00 A.M. So when I’m working, that’s when I start my serious drinking. Last Thursday there were about ten regulars hanging out in the place and I was starting to get my head on when the big guys came in. They plop down at the far end of the bar and I wander over. These guys are genuinely big; even sitting on the stools, they loom a little. But big means nothing, I’m more curious about the way they’re dressed. Both guys are wearing Nike tracksuits: one in black, one in white. They are sporting several gold chains each, which go well with the gold-rimmed Armani sunglasses they both have propped up on their shaved heads. These guys are not our usual crowd. I take them for Poles or Ukrainians left over from the old neighborhood before the East Village went Latino and then arty and now yuppie. They order an Amstel Light and a cosmopolitan. Each. They have Russianic accents. And this is still far from the weirdest pair we’ve ever had in the place, so I fix the drinks and take the cash and they say thank you.
As I walk back down the bar to get my own drink and resume my game of movie trivia on the MegaTouch, I hear cursing behind me. I turn and the guy in the white tracksuit is holding his cosmo like the glass is full of vomit.
—This is shit.
He turns the glass upside down and spills it on the bar. The guy in black tastes his and promptly spits it back up, also on the bar.
—This is also shit. I cannot drink this.
To prove his point, he takes another sip and spits it on the bar, then he stands and walks to the trash and drops the drink, glass and all, into the can.
I don’t like to fight. I have fought very little in my life, but what I have noticed is that even when you win, you get hurt. I work out four days a week and take boxing and self-defense on the weekends. I have steel-toed boots and a Buck knife. I have an ax handle behind the bar. None of this will help, because I don’t want to fight and these guys clearly do. I smile. I walk down the bar to the two tracksuits, a smile plastered on my semidrunk face, radiating joy and love. I am Martin Luther King. I am Gandhi. I will ask these gentlemen if they would prefer another drink or their money back. I will carefully wipe their spit off the bar and all will be at peace, because I don’t want to fight. They sit at the end of the bar, Amstels untouched, the one upturned cosmo glass before them and, as I approach, they both slip their sunglasses over their eyes like they’ve been blinded by my smile. And that is when I notice the small, girlish and simply beautiful hands they both have. I am not afraid. These men are lovers, not fighters. These men are concert pianists with graceful digits made for music, not pugilism.
I reach the end of the bar and open my smiling mouth to offer them a round on the house as compensation for their disappointment. They grab me, drag me over the bar, and beat the crap out of me. Then they leave.
I’ve been beat up before and had it hurt a lot worse. I don’t even look that bad. But I do close the bar early and spend the next several hours drinking and holding an ice pack to my ribs while Tim, a couple other regulars and I tell fight stories: the high and low moments of beating and getting beat. We have chalked up the tracksuits as psychos and, hey, what more