The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death - Charlie Huston [27]
He held up his hands.
—As you wish.
I climbed out and pushed the door closed.
—That's the idea.
He pushed a button on his armrest and the passenger window slid down.
—Listen, there's no job tomorrow. You want to make some more cash, you can help clean the shop.
I shrugged.
—Sure. Sure. Sounds good.
—OK.
The window rolled back up and he drove off toward the 10 West.
I stood there for a minute and looked at the causeway to the pier and thought about walking out past the bars and the fried-food stands and the Ferris wheel all the way to the end so I could stand there and stare at the water. But instead I turned around and trotted across the street and walked into the late-afternoon darkness inside Chez Jay.
Dark, the only light coming in through the open upper half of the split front door and three portholes cut behind the bar. Fishing nets, life preservers and a ship's anchor on the walls, a tattered American flag hung in a single billow over the bar. I took a seat on the corner. The bartender looked down from the TV where he was watching a rerun of Charlie's Angels.
He came over.
—I was always a Kate Jackson man. You?
I glanced at the TV.
—Never watched it.
He stops in his tracks.
—Naw?
—Didn't have a TV growing up.
—No kidding. One of those.
—Yeah. One of those. No early childhood brain cancer to retard my emotional development.
—That's not funny.
—Not supposed to be.
He looked back up at the TV.
—Well I like the show.
—Yeah, I rest my case.
—Huh?
—Can I have a beer, please?
—What kind?
—Whatever.
He took a mug from behind the bar and drew a Heineken and set it in front of me.
—Four.
—I got that.
I looked at the old man tucked into the angle where the bar met the wall. Hunched over an open book, a stack of several more books at his elbow, thick plastic-rimmed glasses on the end of his swollen nose, a sweating glass of beer in front of him paired with a half-full shot glass.
He nudged a few dollars out of the pile of bills next to his drinks.
—That bother you, that no-TV thing?
I lifted my glass and took a sip.
—No. Not really. I read a lot.
The bartender took the money and went back down the bar.
—Well I like TV.
The old man gestured at his back.
—And here he is, tending bar.
I shrugged.
—It's a job.
The old man scraped his fingernails over his whiskers.
—It's a shitty job.
The bartender turned up the volume on the TV.
The old man dog-eared the corner of the page he was reading and closed the book.
—You still read a lot?
—Yeah.
He started going through the stack. He found what he was looking for and pulled it from the pile and offered it to me.
—Ever read this one?
I took the book and looked at the cover.
A Fan's Notes.
—Yeah, I read it.
He took the book back.
—That's a good book.
I took a sip of beer.
—It's good, I like it, but it's not that great.
He put the book on top of the stack.
—Did I say it was great? I said it was good. Try listening.
—Whatever.
He pulled at the collar of his red flannel shirt, the skin beneath beach-bum rough and brick red.
—A great book is a rare thing. What have you read lately that's great?
—Nothing.
—See what I mean.
He held up the book he was reading when I came in.
—Anna Karenina. A great book. Indisputably.
—Indisputably great trashy fiction.
He set the book down.
—Are you trying to upset me?
—No. I just think it's a great piece of popular melodrama, but not a great piece of art.
He turned on his stool, faced me.
—Who the hell? Where do you get off? This is one of the.
He backhanded the air.
—Why do I bother? You might as well have spent your childhood watching TV. Should have just wheeled one into your bedroom and plugged it into your eyes and let it brainwash you like the rest of society. You could be a bartender instead of a teacher. You could have a nice comfortable job pouring drinks and mopping vomit and watching TV. Wasted time. Wasted effort.
He picked up his shot glass and drained it.
—Wasted life.
I stared at the beer in my glass.
He knocked the base of the shot glass on the bar and the