Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [43]
“If I don’t drink, they won’t know I been here, right?”
“Booze leaches through the walls in this place. It’s in the air.” I sipped my red beer. I ran my fingers over the glass. I ran my hand, wet from the glass, over my forehead and across my neck.
Alcohol-induced psychosis. That was the theory doctors offered for Rebar’s tripped-up month, like he drank more than anyone else. He sure didn’t drink more than the men who lined the counter, those old sea gulls on their posts. It didn’t mean anything—he was crazy. Drinking made him crazier.
I turned a clean amber ashtray over in my palm, felt the weight of it, sharp edges of beveled glass. That ashtray was solid. My plan was to quit taking things I didn’t need. I didn’t need anything. I’d already filled Rebar’s shack with salt and pepper shakers, coffee cups, sunglasses, doormats, hood ornaments, construction barricades. I had a plastic lawn Santa to watch me all year long, keeping tabs, naughty or nice.
The ashtray was a sure thing, hard and sharp. I slipped it in my purse. Rebar rolled a cigarette. I shifted one end of the tavern’s orange curtain to see the street and knocked a curled and faded Help Wanted sign from the window. There was no one outside except traffic, and hardly anyone in the tavern. Rebar’s eyes on me, his body so close, made the place crowded.
“You need to start eating,” I said. I threw a piece of popcorn his way.
“Did you miss me?”
“I’m glad you’re better.”
“Yeah?” A fleck of tobacco danced on his lip. When he reached for my fingers, I pulled my hand back. He held on. “You don’t give a rip.”
I pushed with my other hand against the rock of his forearm. His skin was a thin cover over muscle. “I want to drink my drink,” I said.
He pulled me closer, until my ribs leaned into the side of the table. My hand grew hot; a candle burned in a red glass globe on the table below. Rebar whispered, “When I was crucified by those cops, you were the voice in my ear. You were laughing, but you were at my side.” He let go of my arm and I fell back, tipped the rickety table enough to slosh red beer against the rim of my glass. Slosh wax against the inside of the candle’s little world. I lifted my glass and let beer drip.
Taki put the Help Wanted sign back in the window. He ran a rag over the table. “Don’t break anything, you hear?”
“Like my arm,” I said.
Taki said, “You okay?”
I nodded. My wrist felt the residue of Rebar’s strength. I tried to rub it out. His cigarette burned in the ashtray, a long ash off the end. I couldn’t stand that smell, and yet I lived in a cloud of smoke. I said, “If you’re going to smoke, smoke. Don’t burn ’em like incense.”
Rebar said, “So, when do I get my place back?”
I knew it’d come around to that. “Thought they set you up, a place to stay.”
“Only till I can prove I got my own.”
“You’ll have it back. Just give me time to pack, wouldya?”
“You could stay,” he said, and his eyes got soft in that way that made me want to head for the door.
I found lipstick and a compact in my purse. I painted my lips red. “With you? A happy home, all over again?”
He nodded, watched me.
“Not in the least likely.” I clipped the lid back on the lipstick. Dropped it in my purse and signaled Taki for another drink.
Then Tino came in the alley door and went up to the bar without looking our way. He held his jeans pocket down from the outside with one hand and pulled money out from inside the pocket with the other. He bought a six-pack of cans to go, in a bag, and one beer in a bottle to have opened. His hands didn’t shake when he counted out change. When his hands didn’t shake, that meant he’d been drinking already.
Tino worked as a narc for Lincoln High, catching truants, once in a while patting them down for weapons. On the side, he’d confiscate drugs from kids and sell them back to the janitors. Janitors sold the same score back to kids. Tino wasn’t getting rich, but kept his head out of water.
Rebar followed my look. His neck was stiff; he had to turn in his chair. Tendons came to the surface.