“I'll try,” I said thoughtlessly. I'd pretty much forgotten about Sammy already. I walked back to the front door ahead of her, taking great pains to hide the shameless proboscis protruding under my jeans.
thirteen
The Halftime pub is all dark mahogany and weathered leather that practically glistens with testosterone in the dim glow of the alabaster light fixtures. The wood-paneled walls are covered with framed sports memorabilia, and the bar is a dark, hulking monolith that runs the full width of the room. The air is thick with the smell of things burned and burning yet: cigarettes, cigars, chickens being grilled, and steaks being broiled. Despite the strategic placement of ceiling fans, there is a hazy smokiness to the room, highlighted by the flickering blue-green light emanating from the numerous large-screen televisions mounted throughout the pub. The men who sit scattered in small groups are for the most part cast from the same mold, ex-Cougars coming together nightly to relive their glory days and revel in this fossilized fraternity that was once the defining core of their existence. Like veterans of a great war, they come together nightly to repeat exaggerated tales of triumphs on the battlefield.
It's hardly a desirable destination for a dying homosexual and a universally despised author, but into this miasma of swollen, aging masculinity we walk, despite my repeated suggestions to Wayne that we go elsewhere. I'm still trying to pick up the threads of my confidence, which have come unraveled since my run-in with Mouse and my quick, silent brush with Dugan. With every passing minute, those two incidents seem increasingly portentous, and I'm beginning to suspect what I should have realized from the start, that appearing in public in Bush Falls might be a colossal mistake. Wayne, however, is having none of it, and he strides into the pub with all the swagger his brittle, emaciated legs can muster. I haven't yet come to grasp the full extent of Wayne's fervent desire to stir things up while he still can, but watching him walk through the pub, tossing off excessively loud greetings at everyone he knows, feigning oblivion to their carefully averted gazes and barely concealed revulsion, I'm beginning to get it.
Despite the dim lighting, I am able to make out a handful of familiar faces as I peer around the room. There's Pete Rothson, who knew every word to “Stairway to Heaven” and never tired of explaining its various, contradictory interpretations. Alan Mcintyre, who taught me that free stuff could be gotten simply by calling the toll-free numbers on candy bar wrappers and inventing complaints. My shoulder is actually tapped in greeting by Steve Packer, who, legend had it, once actually fractured his wrist jerking off, and could always be depended on to know every acceptable synonym for vagina. “Joe Goffman,” he declares, pumping my hand enthusiastically and inquiring after the well-being of my testicles. “How they hanging?”
“Steve Packer,” I respond. (What's your middle name—Fudge? the old joke went.) “Nice to see you.”
Steve has apparently not gotten the memo that I'm to be shunned at every opportunity, an oversight Wayne corrects immediately. “What about me, Steve?” Wayne says. “Don't you want to know how mine are hanging?”
Steve does not. He fixes Wayne with a glare that says balls are a privilege Wayne has blatantly abused, and moves off to join his buddies in the back.
“Does it help?” I ask as we take our own table against the wall.
“What?” He catches my look. “Yeah,” he admits. “A little.”
“Okay. Then it's worth it.”
He flashes me a grateful smile as he slides into his chair. “I was pretty naïve when I came back to the Falls,” he says. “I don't know what I was expecting, but I was one of these guys, you know?” He indicates the breast pocket of his old basketball jacket, where his name is stitched in thin gold thread. “That's me, right? I'm still that guy.”
“Sure,” I say.
“Anyway, I was actually stupid enough to come here once or twice when I'd first gotten back, looking to shoot the shit with old buddies. . . .” Wayne's voice trails off and he sighs deeply. “Being gay is like taking a crash course in human nature,” he says. “Your first real glimpse at the dirty underbelly of routine social interaction. A lesser person,” he offers with a wry grin, “might well become one bitter fuck.”
“I can imagine.”
He leans back in his chair. “Anyway, long story short, they didn't exactly throw a welcome home party for me, and I pretty much went into hiding. Only recently did it occur to me that I'm a guy who doesn't have very much living left to do, and I'll be damned if I'm going to give up one second of it over these bastards. The virus might have me beat, but this sorry lot of fuckers?” He raises his voice, indicating the crowded pub with a vast wave. “Now, that would be tragic.”
I smile and say, “Bravo.”
“I'm not relating this to you in order to receive your accolades,” he says haughtily, “well deserved though they may be. I'm just trying to explain to you that we are far and away the least popular people here, and if you're waiting to be served, it's going to be one hell of a long night.”
“Gotcha.” I stand up with a grin. “What are you drinking?”
“It doesn't matter,” Wayne says. “It'll be going down too fast to taste.”
An hour later I have a pretty good buzz going. Wayne, who takes miserly, birdlike sips at his shot glass, seems to be in good spirits too, and I surmise that at his current body weight, it doesn't take very much to get him plastered. As the time drags on and I listen to Wayne tell highly embellished tales of his travails in Hollywood, my prickly sense of exposure begins to wane, and I start to relax. Wayne wields his outsider status like a weapon, a neat trick that simultaneously empowers and insulates him, and I drunkenly vow to internalize this strategy for the duration of my stay in the Falls. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realize that being in knocking distance of heaven's door gives Wayne a certain reckless courage that I don't possess, but I am nevertheless resolved to have a go at it.
“This place,” Wayne says, “is right out of Springsteen.” He nods his head and sings a line. “Just sitting back trying to recapture a little of the glory . . .”
I finish it for him. “Time slips away, leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of glory days.”
Wayne smiles. “Like Sammy always said, there's a Springsteen song for every occasion.”
“I remember.”
“People are staring at us,” Wayne observes with a grin.
I kill another shot of vodka. “Fuck 'em,” I say, or actually the booze does.
“Fuck 'em,” Wayne repeats, lifting his glass in a toast and taking another baby sip from it.
Drinking always leads me to form dramatic resolutions in the area of personality modification, behavioral adjustments that seem obvious and easy without the weighty hindrance of sobriety. At this moment, I resolve to stay enveloped in a protective leather pocket of cool, ironic detachment, like Wayne, ready to unflinchingly handle whatever demons from my past lie in wait for me. I am absolutely confident that I can pull it off. Which makes it all the more surprising when I'm suddenly snatched by a pair of powerful hands and yanked violently out of my chair. As I stumble, I catch a punch in the ear that spins me around and knocks me onto my ass. I look up to find an older, bloated version of Sean Tallon standing over me, his face contorted with crimson rage, his fists clenched in front of him. “Hey, Sean,” I say, getting uncertainly to my feet. “How've you been?” I'm working under the assumption that it will be too incongruous for him to hit me, once engaged in conversation. Obviously, I don't know shit about fighting, because it's the conversation that is incongruous. He hits me again, this time with a roundhouse punch that sails through my girlishly awkward, flailing block and glances painfully off the outside of my eye socket, simultaneously disproving my ill-conceived theory and sending me flying back into my table.
“Hey, dickhead,” Sean says, advancing on me. “I've been waiting for you to show your sorry little ass around here again.”
The delivery of dead-on one-liners is rare in t
he nonscripted world. Usually, they occur to you only afterward, at which point, of course, they're completely worthless. Consequently, I always feel an almost religious compunction to seize those opportunities where the serendipitous confluence of circumstance and wit occur, regardless of the outcome, which will almost always be bad. So I say, “You always did have a thing for little asses,” and Sean kicks me in the stomach. As I fall back onto my table, I am rewarded for my verbal acuity by Wayne's snorting, appreciative guffaw and somewhat comforted by the knowledge that Sean was already beating me up before I impugned his sexuality.
By now we are the main attraction, my second public flogging in one day. Sean theatrically hoists a chair above his head, and with horror I see that he fully intends to bring it crashing down on me as I lie splayed out on the table. I wonder crazily if it will fly apart on contact, the way furniture always seems to do in the movies. My body involuntarily contracts into a fetal position, my eyes clamped shut, absolutely pathetic. There is a loud splintering sound, which I presume to be my bones yielding to the chair, but after a moment I realize that there is no pain and I open my eyes. Sean is doubled over on the floor, his arms folded into his belly, the chair lying broken on the floor a few feet from him. Standing between him and my sorry little ass, with his hand pointed commandingly at Sean, is my brother, Brad. “That's enough, Sean,” he says in a low voice. “This isn't the time.”
Sean slowly gets to his feet, rubbing the area just over his left rib cage and looking at Brad in disbelief. “You fucking hit me, Goff?”
“Just lay off, Sean,” Brad says. “I mean it.”
From behind the bar, Louis, the diminutive, weasel-faced bartender, calls out anxiously, “You guys want to take this outside?” He is instantly assailed with a boisterous barrage of shut-the-fuck-ups from the assembled crowd, who are not about to be robbed of an evening's entertainment.
“You're defending that piece of shit?” Sean says. “After everything he said about all of us?”
“I'm not defending what he did,” Brad says simply. “But I'm not going to stand here and let you pound him.”
Something in my belly catches and chokes at Brad's words, and I slowly roll off the table and onto my wobbly feet. Sean is now standing toe-to-toe with Brad. “Get the fuck out of the way, Goff,” he says menacingly, wiping some spit from his mouth. “And let him fight his own battle.”
“It's not going to happen,” Brad says quietly. I am almost bowled over by the rush of gratitude and admiration that pours through me as my older brother stands his ground on my behalf. A lump forms in my throat, although that might be a result of the beating I've just taken. The air between Brad and Sean seems to visibly thicken and swirl as they face off, each one waiting for the other to end the stalemate. With a sinking feeling, I understand that there is no way for this to end peacefully. Egos and manhood have been stirred into the mix, in public no less. Blood is now mandatory. My battered face begins throbbing hotly.
“It's okay, Brad. I can handle this,” I say, not because I can but because I'm an idiot who always feels the need to say something.
There is a chorus of approval from the crowd, anonymous calls for Brad to let his brother fight his own battles, et cetera, which I hope to god he won't heed. Brad flashes me a withering, skeptical look that borders on contemptuous, the same look I would have gotten from him years ago if I'd challenged him to a one-on-one. Normally that look would enrage me to the point of doing something recklessly stupid, but now I find it positively reassuring. Brad isn't going to let me get myself killed tonight.
“You'd better move it, Goff,” Sean says, his voice husky with rage. “I have no problem with you, but if you don't step down, I'm going to put you down.”
“Let's get on with it, then,” Brad says.
Sean steps forward and Brad's hands come up in a defensive position, his brow fiercely furrowed with a grim sense of purpose, but before anything can happen, a booming voice shatters the pulsating silence, freezing both fighters in their spots. “What the hell is going on here?”
The onlookers part, and through them, in an unhurried, almost regal gait, strides Coach Dugan. The coach is a tall, imposing man with a high forehead and dark, glowering eyes. The hair beneath his ever-present Cougars cap has gone from gray to titanium white in the years since I last saw him, and his face is considerably more creased than I remember. Portions of his architecture now creak and sag under the weight of time, but he still exudes a powerful sense of grace as he makes his way through the respectful crowd, a general going through the motions of mingling with his troops.
“Tallon!” Dugan yells in a throaty voice. “Goffman! What the hell are you two doing?”
“It's not about him,” Sean says, still frozen in his pugilistic posture. He points past Brad at me. “It's the brother.”
The coach turns to look at me, his eyes burning twin holes in my skull. “He is no reason for two of my boys to come to blows,” he says, not taking his eyes off me. “Now, the both of you, put your hands down and step back from each other.” They look at him and back at each other, frowning with uncertainty. “Do it now!” Dugan growls. Brad and Sean drop their hands and take a few reluctant steps back from each other. All the while, Dugan's eyes remain fixed on me, his expression a combination of scorn and amusement. “Art Goffman's in a coma over at Mercy Hospital tonight, and I think it would be a hell of a nice gesture, a token of our collective respect for our friend and teammate, if maybe we didn't beat the shit out of his jackass son.” He turns to the bar, where Louis stands, looking comically relieved. “That being said, Louis, I turn to you, as the owner of this establishment, to help keep the peace. There's a man here who, by his very presence, offends your regular clientele, and I think it would be in everybody's best interest if they didn't have to drink with him. We wouldn't want an unfortunate incident.”
“What,” Louis says nervously. “You want I should kick him out?”
The coach holds up his hands in a placating gesture. “It's your place, Louis, not mine. You run your business at your own discretion, and no man has any right to tell you how to do that.”
Louis looks at Dugan for a minute and then turns to me. “I think you'd better go,” he says quickly. “It'd be best for all concerned, you know.” Dugan nods at him, beaming like a proud grandfather.
“Fuck you, Louis,” Wayne says disgustedly. “Grow some balls, would you?”
“Why, so you can lick them?” someone in the crowd shouts, and the place erupts into malicious laughter.
“Who said that?” Dugan roars, and the crowd falls instantly silent again. “Who the hell said that?”
Brad turns to me and says, “Time to go.”
I nod, and we head for the door, with Wayne trailing behind, cursing and spitting at everyone he passes.
“You had to go out and get wrecked, didn't you?” Brad practically shouts at me when we get outside. “You had to go and stir things up.”
“Hey, he attacked me,” I say weakly.
“He would have finished you off too,” Brad says angrily, and then snorts incredulously. “You don't get it, do you? You can't go running around the Falls like you never wrote that goddamn book. You pissed off too many people.”
“So nobody likes me,” I say with a defensive shrug. “That isn't exactly breaking news. I don't see what you're so angry about.”
Brad turns on me, seething. “I live here, you asshole. This”—he gestures around at the buildings—“is my home. I realize it's just literary fodder for you, but I have to face these people every day.”
“No one asked you to butt in,” I say. “If I want to go out and get my ass kicked, it's not your problem.”
He looks hard at me, his face a twisted mask of complex emotions that will never be articulated. At least, I hope they won't be, because I don't know if I could stand hearing what Brad really thinks of me right now. At this moment I become aware of two things: that my older brother really doesn't like me very much and th
at I want him to. Brad exhales slowly, audibly, shutting his eyes and shaking his head from side to side. “I'm going home,” he says tiredly. He turns and walks away, and I watch him go, disliking myself intensely and thinking that maybe an asshole does realize he's an asshole at some point after all. There just might not be anything to do about it.
I turn to Wayne, who's leaning against the window of the bar, looking terribly skinny and ragged. “You ready to go home?” I say.
“Nah. It's just getting good,” he says with a grin, then steps into the street and vomits onto the curb.
fourteen
Sobriety is best approached slowly, like a scuba diver emerging from watery depths, stopping to decompress every so often. Having the shit kicked out of you denies you that luxury, slamming you into the brick wall of sobriety all at once, which hurts like hell, placing into excruciatingly sharp focus your newly acquired bruises and lacerations. On the plus side, I feel perfectly capable of driving Wayne and myself home, which I do with exaggerated care, already picturing the gleeful, rat-faced smile on Mouse's face as he books me for driving under the influence, his mind already sprinting forward to how he'll tell the story in mock heroic tones over beers the next night.
There is a tightness in my throat, a warm blockage at the junction of my esophagus and chest, and I realize that I'm holding back tears. I wonder if I'm still in shock from the raw violence of Sean's unexpected attack or if there's something deeper going on.
In the passenger seat, Wayne lies back, a tired, satisfied grin plastered across his gaunt face. “That was fun, wasn't it?”
“I'm so glad that my public beating made for good entertainment.”
“No blood, no foul,” Wayne says.
“Excuse me—have you seen my face?” I pull the rearview mirror down and examine myself. I have a gash on my left temple where Sean's punch cut me, and the skin around it is swollen and turning purple. Somewhere in the melee, my nose started to bleed, and my upper lip is now caked with dried blood and feels as if it's been cemented to my nostrils. There is another bruise still forming on the back of my right jaw, an inch or so below the ear, and a disturbing clicking sound every time I open and shut my mouth.
The Book of Joe Page 10