The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [154]
Time to leave before somebody returned and found him here. He took the fire stairs, slipped out a side door, headed away from the campus toward downtown. The streets looked odd and purposeless as they basked in the afternoon sunlight. He’d never come this way in the daytime except while jogging.
Next to the Qdoba on the corner of Grant and Valenti stood a bank, recently closed for the day. Henry walked up the drive-through ATM lane, his sneakers slurping through the sticky deposits of oil left by idling cars. He punched in his PIN and withdrew the last eighty dollars from his account. He pocketed the bills and headed back up Valenti toward Bartleby’s.
Another place he’d never seen in the daylight. It was empty except for two middle-aged couples gathered around a table littered with half-eaten burgers, half-full beer mugs, broken mozzarella sticks with the cheese stretched out like taffy. The bar was being manned by Jamie Lopez, a football player Henry sort of knew. He leaned over an open textbook, a white bar rag slung around his neck. He was wearing a black Melville T-shirt, the concert-style one with the list of the dates of Melville’s travels on the back. Henry took a stool.
Lopez raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Hey Skrim.” He marked his place with a swizzle stick. “What are you doing here?”
Henry shrugged. “Chillin’.”
Lopez nodded approvingly, frisbeed a cardboard coaster to a spot by Henry’s elbow. “What can I do you for?”
Henry looked down the long row of taps. He’d drunk enough beer at baseball functions to know how bad it tasted. But everything else tasted worse.
“Tell you what,” said Lopez. “Let me mix you up something. It’s my first day behind the bar. Got to practice my craft.”
Henry studied Lopez’s face for a sign that he knew what had happened on Saturday. He found none. And yet Lopez had to know. Everybody knew. Half the school had been there, and the other half would have heard right away. Deep down Henry despised this pleasantry, this Hey Skrim, behind which Lopez was feeling sorry for him, or superior to him, or something. Why didn’t people just say what they were thinking? Then again Henry didn’t want to talk about it either, and Lopez’s acting job, if that’s what it was, could be considered a form of kindness. Or maybe Lopez really didn’t know. A pint glass appeared on the coaster, filled with ice and an inky liquid. Henry sipped at the fat blue straw.
“How’d I do?”
Henry coughed as he swallowed, covering his mouth so Lopez couldn’t see his expression. “Good.” He nodded. “Perfect.”
Lopez grinned proudly. “It’s my take on a Long Island Iced Tea. Kind of nudging it toward the more masculine end of the spectrum.”
Henry stared at the strongman competition on the huge TV behind the bar and listened to Lopez hold forth about bartending school. The shifting lights on the screen held his eye, Lopez’s voice droned softly in his ear, and his drink disappeared in thoughtless pulls at the straw. Lopez made another, set it on the coaster. It grew dark outside. Pool balls clacked together. The bar began to fill with people. Lopez dimmed the house lights until the place was sunk in a greenish nighttime glow, punctuated by the bright red and blue of electric beer signs.
“Hey Skrim,” he said. “Would you fire up the jukebox for me?” He slid a ten-dollar bill across the bar. “Maybe err on the mellow