Coronado - Dennis Lehane [17]
He says, “What guy?”
She shrugs, taking his eyebrow with her as she turns back to her vodka-n-whatever. “Some guy. He was in earlier. Wore a tie and everything. I asked him if he sold cars.”
“Did he?”
“He said no, but guys, you know? Lie about a fucking hangover they’re puking in the sink. This guy once, right? Calls me Doreen, okay? Doreen. Shit…”
She rattles her ice cubes. She takes a hit off her cigarette.
He waits for more but she juts her head forward and bulges her eyes to get the bartender’s attention.
He says, “So this guy who didn’t sell cars…”
She nods several times, quick, but she’s nodding at the bartender and she says, “’Nother, hon’, thanks.” She turns toward him, blowing smoke. “Your name’s Donnie, right?”
“Daniel.”
“Danny, I got to tell you, this guy? He said I should stay the fuck away from you.”
He doesn’t know how to respond to this. He’s never bothered this woman. Barely spoken to her. She’s a regular, he’s a regular. He’s bought her a drink or two. (Once, yeah, back in December when they were the only two in the place the entire night, he bought her four and danced with her once, the jukebox playing “You Got My Sugar but I Got You, Sweet” as the snow fell like cotton swabs outside the high green windows. Then the bartender said closing time and Daniel asked her if she was okay to drive and she laughed and the sound of it was like a bird screeching above the ocean and she slapped both hands on his chest and said, “Yeah, I’m fine, sweetie. You go on home.”)
He says, “Why?”
“Why what?” Lifting her drink to toast the bartender for bringing it.
“Why stay the fuck away?”
She shrugs. “I dunno. But he meant it.”
“But you never met him before.”
“So?”
“So why trust his opinion?”
She looks at him.
It’s his nose in her iris this time, the tip of it, bobbing.
“Tim,” she calls.
Tim is the bartender. He makes his way over, leans his elbow by her glass, eyebrows up. Tim likes no one. Tim has a single red tattoo on his right forearm. It’s covered in hair and faded. A flower with a broken stem and the word good-bye underneath it. Tim is the kind of guy Daniel doesn’t understand with awe.
Tim says, “What?”
Carrie says, “This guy’s bothering me.”
HE GOES TO one of his other bars. He tries to tell the bartender about Carrie, her crazy story, her getting him ejected, but the bartender’s got glasses to wipe.
It’s a younger crowd in here, noisier, but he finds a corner seat and watches the TVs. Basketball on one, bombs on the others. Roofs and streets of the ancient city lit up like a thousand tongues, licking the sky, afire. A yellow ticker running below it all that Daniel finds gorgeous and absurd. The world needs a yellow ticker, he is pretty sure. Just to keep score. Just to rid it of things of the nonticker variety. She was here…CNN…She’s not…FOX NEWS…Two kids…CSPAN…Die alone…MSNBC…
A guy he knows, gin-n-tonic-hates-his-job-curly-amber-hair sits beside him and sighs. “Time was you didn’t have to wait for a toilet in this place.”
Daniel says, “Saturdays.”
“Time was…,” the guy says.
On the TV, something blows up, breathless and huge.
“Time was…,” the guy says.
Guy’s got two feet of bar in front of him, he keeps missing it with his elbow. His hair is dark with sweat.
Daniel stares up at the TV, wondering if the guy will face-plant.
Another tongue goes afire. A man with a microphone and a beige safari jacket with a shitload of pockets blocks the flaming tongue. He looks somber. Respectful.
Daniel wonders where they sell those jackets.
Guy beside him snores.
Bartender leans in and says, “Two guys in here earlier?”
“Yeah?”
Bartender turns his chin, yawns into his fist. He reaches down for a bottle of peach schnapps. “Looking for you.”
“What?”
Bartender looks at him. “Wore ties and everything.”
DANIEL’S BOSS SAYS, “Now don’t cry.”
Daniel says, “I’m not crying.”
“Well, you are.”
“I’m sorry.”
His boss says, “I’m sorry. Jesus