by Amor Towles
“That’ll be ten bucks,” said the bartender.
“Can I have it straight up?”
“We don’t have any martini glasses.”
“But what about the sign?”
“What sign?”
Sam considered explaining, but a large fellow in a baseball cap who was seated to his right turned to look him over.
“This is perfect,” Sam conceded as his phone began to vibrate again. “In fact, why don’t you set another one in motion?”
The Glass Half Full
Sam was drunk. He could tell he was drunk because he was losing track of things. He’d lost track of the time. He’d lost track of how many “martinis” he’d had and how many times his phone had buzzed on the bar. He also couldn’t remember when the ill-shaven man—whose name was Beezer—had moved to the stool on his left, or how they had come to be talking about Sam’s father.
“A copper mine!” exclaimed Beezer, slurring his words. “I’d love to own a copper mine.”
“Believe me,” said Sam, slurring them back, “a mine is the last thing you’d love to own.”
Beezer looked incredulous, so Sam began ticking off reasons.
“Mature industry . . . undifferentiated product . . . labor-intensive . . . economically sensitive . . .”
Sam paused with a thumb and three fingers in the air, certain there was a fifth reason.
Meanwhile, Beezer nodded with the expression of one who was keenly interested but only half following.
“If all you say is true,” he asked, “then why would your old man buy one?”
“It was his dream,” said Sam, putting the word “dream” in its place by adding a pair of air quotes. Sam took a drink, then looked at his neighbor. “You want to know how bad the mining business is?”
“Sure.”
“One afternoon, when I was a senior in high school, my old man withdrew all our savings from the bank, drove six hours to Vegas, put the bundle on black, and let it ride: six . . . times . . . in a row.”
“No shit,” said Beezer. “You hearing this, Nick?”
The bartender, who was drying a glass, said: “I’m hearing it.”
Sam leaned toward Beezer. “Do you know what the odds are of black coming up on a roulette wheel six times in a row?”
Beezer shook his head.
“One in seventy-six. And with that once-in-a-lifetime stroke of good fortune, my father staved off the inevitable for another fourteen months.”
Sam raised his martini.
“To Chapter Eleven,” he said, then emptied the glass.
“Well, it looks like everything worked out,” said Beezer, gesturing to Sam’s suit and then toward the parking lot, presumably in the direction of the car.
“If everything worked out,” said Sam, “it was no thanks to my dad. That car out there, this suit . . .”
Sam shook his head without finishing his sentence. Then he shifted to a different point.
“I am forty-five years old, and I’m about to have my very first kid. And do you know why that is? Because I waited. I waited until I had money in my pocket, a cushion in the bank, and a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side with no mortgage. That’s why!”
“You’re having a kid!” exclaimed Beezer, as if it were the only thing he had heard.
“We’re in the process . . . ,” said Sam with a wave of the hand. “That’s why I’m out here.”
The smile left Beezer’s face. “That’s why you’re out where?”
“In one mile, take Exit 46, then bear left,” mimicked Sam.
“You mean Vitek?”
“None other.”
Beezer turned away from Sam to look at Nick in a meaningful way. At least, in a drunken sort of meaningful way. Then he turned back to Sam. “That’s one of them fertility clinics, right?”
“Not ‘one of,’” corrected Sam. “It’s the fertility clinic.”
“So, how does it work in there? You pay the fare and then you get to pick if it’s a boy or a girl, blue-eyed or brown?”
Sam laughed. “Boy or blue, girl or brown, that stuff’s for amateurs. At Vitek, you get to pick your kid’s contours.”
“Contours?”
“What sort of temperament he’s gonna have. What sort of career. What sort of life.”
“Top-shelf,” said Nick.
Sam looked at the bartender. He wanted to ask what sort of crack that was supposed to be, but Beezer spoke first.
“It’s just like I told you, Nick.”
Sam looked back at Beezer. “Told him what?”
Beezer leaned closer to Sam. “You know when Vitek opened?”
“About a year ago . . . ?”
“That’s right. But do you know what was in their building for the ten years before that?”
“No.”
“Raytheon.”
After letting this sink in, Beezer elaborated: “The Raytheon Company of Waltham, Massachusetts. One of the largest defense contractors in the world. For ten years they’re in that building with people coming and going at all hours of day and night. Then, one morning last September, suddenly all the cars are gone, the building goes dark, and the sign comes down. Two weeks later, the parking lot’s full, the lights are back on, and the sign says Vitek, Incorporated.”
Beezer gave Sam the nod of mutual understanding.
Sam gave Beezer the shake of solitary confusion.
“Two weeks later!” said Beezer. “Doesn’t that seem a little surprising to you? That one corporation could empty out a building overnight and a totally new corporation could take its place in fourteen days? There’s only one way that happens. And that’s if there was never any change in occupancy at all. And Vitek, Incorporated, isn’t really Vitek, Incorporated. It’s a division of Raytheon.”
Beezer leaned a little closer.
“Which, when you think about it, sort of figures.”
“Sort of figures how?”
“Because genetics is the future of defense.”
Sam had already gotten the sense that Beezer was a little crazy, but a chill ran down his spine nonetheless.
“They don’t call it birth control for nothing,” said Beezer. Then, after taking a drink of his beer, he added, “I’ve got it all written down.”
“What you’ve got,” said Nick, “is too much time on your hands.”
Beezer ignored Nick’s comment and squinted at Sam. “Let me ask you something: To do this fertility stuff, did they hand you a dirty magazine and send you into a little room and ask you for a sample?”
“Something like that,” said Sam.
“But they called it a sample, right?”
“I think so.”
Beezer nodded with the smile of the known-it-all-along. “That choice of words is no coincidence. They call it a sample because they want you to think it’s some little representative part of something else. But what you’re giving them isn’t some little representative part of something else. It’s the thing. In fact, it’s the whole kit and caboodle.”
“Sam had already gotten the sense that Beezer was a little crazy, but a chill ran down his spine nonetheless.”
Sam looked at Beezer, impressed by the majesty of his mania. Then he turned to Nick. “How about another round for me and my neighbor here?”
Nick looked at Sam. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
“Just one more?” asked Sam, trying to smile in the manner of Daniel One.
Or maybe it was in the manner of Daniel Three.
Either way, he smiled.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Nick. “I’ll bring you a glass of water. Drink that first, then we can talk about another round.”
“Whatever you say, barkeep.”
As Nick went to get the glass of water, Sam’s phone began to vibrate on the bar.
“Hey, buddy,” said Beezer, “it’s your phone again. That’s gotta be the tenth time it’s buzzed. Maybe you’d better answer it.”
Sam looked around.<
br />
“Do you hear something buzzing?” Then, picking the phone up off the bar, he dangled it over his glass of water and let it drop. “Because I don’t hear any—”
But before Sam could finish, the big fellow on his right put a hand on his shoulder, turned him around, and punched out his lights.
Loose Change
Flat on his back, Sam opened his eyes to find a bright light staring down from overhead.
Oh my God, he thought. I’m on an operating table!
But then the ill-shaven visage of Beezer leaned into view.
“Hey, Nick. He’s back!”
Now the bartender leaned into view.
“Hallelujah,” he said.
Sam began to move, but Nick put a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you just stay put for a minute, friend. You took a tumble and hit your head.”
Despite Nick’s suggestion, Sam swung his legs to his right and sat up on the bar. As he tried to put the pieces together, he noticed that the jukebox wasn’t playing, that there was blood on his shirt, and that most of the barstools were empty—including the one where the big guy in the baseball cap had been sitting.
“That man hit me!” said Sam, pointing an accusatory finger at the empty stool.
“Who?” said Nick. “Tony?”
“The big guy who was sitting right there. I put my phone in my water and just like that, he spun me around and hit me.”
“What you put your phone in was Tony’s vodka and soda. So . . .” Nick gave the shrug of universal absolution.
With Beezer’s help, Sam climbed down from the bar. In the mirror behind Nick, he saw that the area around his left eye had begun to swell.
“That’s gonna be quite a shiner,” acknowledged Nick.
“I’ve never had a shiner.”
“Well, there you go,” said Beezer with a grin. “They don’t call it The Glass Half Full for nothing!”
When Sam sat back on his old stool, Nick put a plastic bag filled with ice on the bar and a martini beside it.
“Here,” said Nick. “This one’s on the house.”
“I never drank my water.”
“You’ve sobered up just the same.”
As Sam put the bag against the side of his face, he watched Nick going about his business.
“You don’t like me, do you?”
“I don’t know you.”
“Science says we can form lasting impressions of people in as short as two minutes,” said Sam.
“Is that so?”
“That’s true,” said Beezer. “I read it in a magazine.”
“Listen, Nick . . . Can I call you Nick?”
“You can call me whatever you want.”
“I know we don’t know each other. And I’m sorry if I’ve rubbed you the wrong way. But I’d still like to know why.”
Nick gave Sam another look, as if he was sizing him up with a little more care. Then, after nodding twice, mostly to himself, he put both hands on the bar.
“My wife and I have been married for thirty-four years,” he began. “We grew up in the next town over and got pregnant when we were twenty-one. At the time, I had a job as a long-haul trucker, a union job making ten bucks an hour, and Betty was working at the hospital. We saved a little money and bought a little place with a little backyard figuring that maybe, God willing, we’d have a second kid. But the second kid? It turned out to be triplets. Identical twin boys and a girl. I didn’t even know that shit could happen. With four kids under the age of three, I had to give up the long-haul trucking and Betty gave up the nursing. But we made it work. I got a local job in construction and painted houses on the weekends. The kids grew up eating mac and cheese and going to public school, the three boys sleeping in one room and Sally in another. But along the way, my wife and I realized that Sally—the runt of the litter—was the smart one. Smarter than any of her brothers. Smarter than either of us. So we decided to send her to private school. We squeezed the lemon a little harder. And sure enough, by senior year she’s placing at the top of her class and speaking three different languages. She gets into motherfucking Yale. Sure, we get some financial aid, but it’s middle-class financial aid, which is to say, not enough. So we have to sit the boys down and explain that we’re all going to make some sacrifices. The twins are going to have to look at state schools or maybe work for a couple of years before college. Which is what they do, more or less, with no complaints. Then in the middle of her junior year, our little Sally comes home for Christmas and she can’t get out of bed. She stays in her room half the day with the shades drawn, saying she doesn’t want to go outside. She certainly doesn’t want to go back to Yale. So we get her a therapist—another squeeze of the lemon. Two months go by and Sally’s therapist says that what Sally needs is for everyone to sit down together. Not just me and Betty, you understand, but all six of us. Ed’s gotta get a special leave from his unit at Camp Pendleton, Jimmy takes the bus home from SUNY Oswego, and Billy comes up from Fort Lauderdale, where he’s waiting tables during the day and going to culinary school at night. But they all come back. And we crowd together into this therapist’s little office. And it’s awkward. Nobody’s saying anything. Ten minutes go by, maybe fifteen. But then suddenly, one of them says something and the four of them start talking. They talk about their childhoods. They say what they think about us and what they think about each other. They say what they think about themselves. And you know something? That was the most interesting day of my life.”
Nick picked up Sam’s empty glass.
“So, yeah. When all is said and done, I suppose your father’s more my kind of guy.”
Sam understood that this last remark was meant to be a slap in the face, and that’s what it felt like. He stood up from the stool, nearly knocking it over. He took two brand-new hundred-dollar bills from his wallet and made a show of tossing them on the bar. Then he walked out of The Glass Half Full and into the pouring rain.
As he jogged across the lot toward his car, Sam was already regretting throwing the money on the bar. Nick was bound to take it as proof of all his worst suspicions about guys in custom suits and fancy cars. But Sam hadn’t thrown the money on the bar to show off his wealth. He had thrown it to show that he was the sort of man who didn’t need to drive six hours to Las Vegas and beat improbable odds just so he could keep a folly of his own invention on life support.
Sam climbed into his car and yanked the door, which eased to a close as the rain poured in on the upholstery. When he pushed the ignition, Sam happened to glance at the clock and saw that he was already two hours late.
“Shit.”
Taking his phone from his pocket, Sam pressed the side button but to no effect. It took him a moment to realize that the phone wasn’t responding because he had submerged it in Tony’s vodka and soda.
“Shit,” he said again.
After shaking his head at this fiasco of his own making, Sam went to wipe the rain off his face, triggering a sharp pain in his cheek. Turning on the overhead light, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw that his shiner was coming along nicely. He could add that to the list of things he was going to have to explain when he got home. But even as he was having this thought, in the corner of the mirror he noticed the proud rectangular figure of the phone booth standing at the side of the road.
His spirits raised by the sight, Sam patted his pants and jacket pockets to see if he had any change—but of course he didn’t. Who the hell had change anymore? He looked down into the tray beside the driver seat, but the car was too new to have accumulated the normal automotive detritus.
Stymied, Sam looked through the windshield.
He certainly wasn’t going back into The Glass Half Full.
But there were still a few other vehicles in the parking lot . . .
After a moment, Sam got out of his car and slunk toward a nearby pickup that looked even older than the bar. For no good reason, it was locked. Sam moved on to a Chrysler sedan that needed a new paint job. The door handle
gave promisingly. Glancing back at the bar, Sam quickly opened the door, slipped into the driver’s seat, and closed the door again so that the overhead light wouldn’t be on for more than a second. As it was dark, Sam reached into his jacket so that he could use the flashlight on his phone. This time, he remembered it was dead before he got it out of his pocket.
In the tray beside the driver’s seat, there were two empty coffee cups. Setting them on the passenger’s seat, Sam reached into the cup holders and felt two dimes stuck to the bottom. They were so stuck, he had to use his fingernails to pry them free. Sam had no idea what a phone call to the city would cost, but it was certainly more than twenty cents. Cognizant that at any moment the owner of the car might emerge from the bar, Sam rifled through the glove compartment to no avail. Then, suddenly, he had a flash from childhood—a vision of raiding his father’s car for loose change in the hopes of going to the movies. Turning ninety degrees, Sam shoved his fingers into the crease between the back and the bottom of the driver’s seat. In a matter of seconds, he felt the unmistakable shape of two quarters. With his muscle memory taking over, Sam pinched the quarters between the tips of two fingers and eased them carefully from the crevice in which they were lodged.
The necessary change in hand, Sam opened the door of the sedan with every intention of getting quickly out. But just as he was sliding from behind the wheel, he noticed the two photographs taped to the dash. Both were of three boys and a girl. In the first picture, which was faded with age, the kids were around eight or nine and standing in front of a quaint little house. On their shoulders, they had oversize backpacks like it was the first day of school. In the second picture, they were standing in the same spot in the same arrangement, but now in their early twenties. It occurred to Sam that this picture was probably taken around the time that Sally had begun to struggle. As Nick had said, she was the runt of the litter, standing half a foot shorter than her brothers. With a deep sense of shame, Sam realized that he had never bothered to ask Nick how his daughter had fared.
Climbing out of the bartender’s car, Sam gave one last look over his shoulder, then ran to the booth at the edge of the lot. When he opened the door, he was startled to have the light go on but then relieved.