“Who’s he?” bellowed the old man at the end of the table.
“You remember Charlie,” Dottie yelled back.
“Not Charlie, him,” he said, pointing at Charlie.
“That’s Charlie, Bert. Spence and Melissa’s real father.”
The old man pointed at Sarabeth’s fuming husband. “I thought he was Charlie.”
“That’s Tony. Now be quiet.”
Spencer stood up so suddenly he knocked his chair backward and had to grip the edge of the table in order to keep from losing his own balance. “Tony’s my dad! I don’t even know this guy!” Charlie was genuinely surprised at how big the little bastard was getting. When had he seen him last? Surely it hadn’t been more than a couple of months. “You didn’t even send us presents this year.” Shit, Charlie thought, he’s right. How did I let that happen?
Melissa looked up at Charlie. “I don’t like Tony,” she chirped. She sounded insincere, but it felt good hearing her say it.
“I think maybe it’d be better if you left now. Perhaps you could give Peter another ride. I think Betsy and the children will be spending the night here.”
“I don’t need a ride home, you bitch,” Pete said, but he was beaten and he knew it.
“Good-bye, Charlie.” Dottie smiled at him and sat back down.
“Well, thanks for the wine.” He knocked the nearly full glass back and drained it.
Melissa tugged at his arm. “Guess what? I was in this play, A Christmas Carol, and it was about this guy Bob Cratchit.”
“So what,” Spencer yelled across the table. “You were only Tiny Tim’s sister, and you didn’t even have any lines.” Melissa stuck her tongue out at her brother. “And he didn’t even come watch!” Spencer flipped Charlie the bird and ran from the room, adding himself in passing with a solid, well-aimed belly shot to the list of family members who’d hit Pete for Christmas.
“He would’ve come if Mom let me send him an invitation!” Melissa yelled after him. Sarabeth’s husband followed Spencer’s departure with an approving, barely suppressed smirk, and Charlie was suddenly aware of his bulk. He had a lot of fat on him, but he also had big, solid, hammy hands, and Charlie had no doubt that the man could beat the living piss out of him anytime he chose to. Wondering how long it would take before Tony found himself skipping Thanksgiving and Christmas, Charlie gave Melissa a little hug and left the room.
Pete was subdued as they moved through the living room to the front door. The triumphal rout he’d expected hadn’t happened, and Charlie suspected that in the long run the silent treatment would prove an effective means of subduing Pete as long as he still chose, and was allowed, to be around.
As he pushed the front door open Melissa popped out of the dining room and raced to the door. “Will you come see me this week?”
“Sure I will, honey,” Charlie said, and she turned and ran back to the table.
They crunched through the snow across the lawn toward the car. Charlie turned and looked back and thought he caught Sarabeth standing in a second-story bedroom window looking down at him, but it might have been her sister. She pulled the curtains shut before he could be sure.
8
It was five minutes before Pete spoke a word.
“Dottie is a bitch.” He said it slowly, with wonder, like a sudden revelation. “Shit. We forgot to fill the flask.”
“You want to go home?” They were headed west, and Charlie wanted to get Pete home before he went back to the Sweet Cage with Renata’s surprise.
“I’m gonna save the rest of Trina’s coke for later, but I think we need to stop for one more drink. Just one more and then it’ll be time to lay down my head and dream of sugarplums and jolly old elves and all that shit.” He laid his head against the side window and closed his eyes. “I’m not sleeping. Shake me when we get someplace that’s open.”
A few minutes later Charlie pulled off the access road alongside the old state highway and into the parking lot of Terwilliger’s Social Club and Grille. Pete stirred, coughing, and looked around. “Where we at?”
“Terwilliger’s.” Terwilliger’s was located in the corner of the parking lot of a shopping mall.
“Fuck, I hate this place. Watery drinks and all those old patent medicine ads all over the walls.”
“It’s Christmas Eve. We’re not going to find much else that’s open in this part of town.”
“Yeah,” Pete allowed. “I still hate it.” He opened his car door.
“It’s a pretty good place to get laid, actually.”
“I don’t think I’m gonna get lucky twice in the same night. Even if I was able.” Pete scowled and stepped out of the car into snow that came up to the middle of his shins. There were only three other cars in the parking lot. “You got a membership here?”
“I got a membership everywhere.”
The young woman behind the bar was stacking clean glasses. She didn’t stop when they came in. “I’m closing up. Sorry.”
“We just want one drink,” Charlie said.
“Each,” Pete added, in case she misunderstood and tried to serve them one to share between them.
“I’m closed,” she said. She wasn’t eager to debate the point with them. She was nice enough looking, Charlie thought, one of those Midwestern college-girl faces with just a little baby fat and straight auburn hair down to her shoulders. She seemed to him too young to be tending bar. In a corner a large young man was setting chairs on the tables. Around the perimeter of the restaurant the lights were out, leaving only the circular bar lit in the center of the room.
“How come the door isn’t locked? It’s eight minutes till eleven, by my watch,” Pete said. “I demand a drink.”
“I already closed my register.”
“Come on, Pete, let’s go.” Charlie took hold of Pete’s elbow. He shook it off.
“You know my brother here’s a mobster.”
“Come on, Pete,” Charlie said. “Sorry, honey.”
She looked over at the big kid stacking chairs. Then she softened. “Tell you what,” she said, “if you’ll drink it right up and leave, I’ll give you one on the house. I just don’t want to have to reopen my register.”
In the end she let them stay for two rounds. She and the large young man joined them for the second. They were both university students from out of town, neither of them able to go home for Christmas.
“So let me ask you something. What’s the deal with all the ads?” Pete bellowed.
“What ads?”
He made a sweeping gesture around the room. “All these old-time ads. And all the old junk on the walls. What the fuck is the point of the old bicycle up on the wall?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I never thought about it before.”
“Me neither,” the boy said. “Now that you mention it, it does seem kind of stupid.”
“I think I made an impression on those two, Charlie.” They were standing under the awning outside the front door as the young man locked the door behind them. “You know, if that kid doesn’t get laid tonight it’s because he didn’t try.”
“I don’t know. She had on one of those little Jesus fish necklaces.”
“Fuck the fish necklace. Did you see the way she was swigging that margarita? Those were strong, too. I think she’s about to initiate that young man back there into the Campus Crusade for Cunnilingus.” He took in a deep, frozen breath. “That about hit the fucking spot. You know when you have that one drink that takes you to the exact perfect stage of drunkenness? That was the one. I feel like God. Let’s hit it.”
He took one step off the icy sidewalk and into the parking lot and slipped. “Fuck! Charlie, I fell.”
“You hurt?”
“I’m too drunk to get hurt.” He struggled to get back on his feet, slipping and falling repeatedly as Charlie stood watching. He finally managed to get up on his hands and knees. The car was only seven or eight feet away.
“You gonna make it?”
“
Fuck yes, I’m gonna make it. Don’t tell anybody you saw me do this,” he said, and he crawled on all fours to the door. He pulled it open, leaned his head and shoulders in, and began spewing nine hours’ worth of booze and bar snacks onto the floor of the passenger side.
“For Christ’s sake, Pete, do it in the snow, not in the fucking Lincoln!”
Pete stopped for a moment, looked blearily up at Charlie, wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, and then resumed puking copiously into the wheel well.
“Ready to go home now?” Charlie asked as they pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the access road. Pete had apologetically scooped most of his mess out of the car and onto the snow of the parking lot.
“I know my limit, Charlie. Take me home.” His voice was raw. He looked dejectedly out the side window and then back at Charlie. “You got any cigarettes? A cigarette would make this just perfect.”
“I quit three years ago.” In fact he had two-thirds of a pack in the glove compartment, but he didn’t relish the thought of cigarette smoke mingling with the Lincoln’s already overpowering odor of vomit. He rolled his window down to dilute the smell.
“Aw, Charlie, close the window; it’s cold,” Pete said. His eyes were shut and his arms folded across his chest.
“You’ll live,” Charlie said, and lowered Pete’s window a crack to get a cross-draft.
Despite the cold wind blowing across his face, Pete was in a deep sleep when they got to his house, and it took Charlie ten minutes to rouse him sufficiently to get out of the car under his own power. If the length of Pete’s body hadn’t been slick with puke, Charlie would have picked him up and dragged him to the door himself.
Pete sat with his legs out of the car, taking deep breaths, getting slowly ready to make his move for the front door. “Come on in, lemme show you the house, it’s nice, Betsy’s done all kindsa shit to it since you were here last. Even renovated the goddamn attic this year. I musta killed about a hundred, hundred and fifty bats up there.”
“You had bats?”
“Just about every house in the town, if you know where to look. This town’s the bat capital of the midwestern United States.”
As soon as he managed to open the door Pete shambled over to the living room couch and fell onto it, smearing its cushions with sour, half-dried vomit.
“You want me to help you to bed?” Charlie asked, but Pete was out for the night. He wandered around the room, examining the pictures on the walls, Betsy’s pricey knickknacks, the expensive furniture. He wondered how much the couch Pete was ruining cost. In the corner was a Christmas tree, trimmed with tiny, quaint Victorian-looking ornaments and—Charlie had to look twice to be sure he was seeing it right—tiny candles instead of electric lights. It occurred to him that, contrary to his old fantasies and despite that sweet face, life with Betsy would actually have been more terrifying than life with Sarabeth.
In the garage was a brand-new black Mercedes-Benz. Either someone had picked up Betsy and the kids tonight or she and Pete had three cars, and one of them was a new Mercedes. Charlie bent down and looked in the passenger window. The keys were in the ignition. He went back into the kitchen and wrote a note:
Pete,
My car smells like bile so I’m borrowing yours. Do me a favor and DON’T clean the Lincoln out before you return it to its rightful owner. Leave it parked outside Carswell Refrigerated Storage downtown day after Christmas with the motor running and the heater on full blast.
Charlie
He had to push the front seat of the Mercedes back about a foot before he could sit properly, and the wheel was set too low. That and the lipstick-stained Kleenexes in the ashtray led him to conclude that the car was Betsy’s. It was as comfortable as the Lincoln, more so even, despite being only about two-thirds as long. He gunned the engine. It sounded good. He hit the power on the radio and was amazed at its volume and clarity, even on AM.
“Fuck the Lincoln,” Charlie muttered as the garage door came up and he coasted slowly down the driveway, then felt guilty and unfaithful as soon as he saw it sitting there on the street. He put the Mercedes into park and made his way through the drifts over to the Lincoln. He opened the door and took one last look inside. The only item of even minimal value in sight was the new road atlas, which had ended up in the path of Pete’s vomiting jag. He took the keys out of his coat pocket and stuck them in the ignition, and then he remembered what he was forgetting. He popped the glove compartment open, took out the envelope with the negative, and slipped it into the inside pocket of his overcoat. He felt like weeping as he walked back to the Mercedes. Now it belonged to the ages.
9
He pulled into the parking lot of the Sweet Cage for the third time that evening and swung into an empty space next to a battered black Trans Am. There were eight cars in the lot now, topped with varying levels of snowmass.
He glanced into the Trans Am as he moved past it. Thick clouds of gray smoke chugged from the percolating exhaust pipe, the windows were fogged over on the interior, and the whole thing was bobbing up and down and side to side. Christ, he thought, first Trina and Pete, now this. How could anyone screw in a car when it’s this cold?
Inside, Amy Sue was onstage and down to her skimpy blue panties. Fifteen or so spectators, several of them dressed as predicted for church, stared up at her wriggling, skinny torso. Sidney was behind the bar with his overcoat on, speaking to Renata in tones too low for Charlie to pick up. It didn’t look like it was going well for Sidney.
“Can I talk to you for a minute, Renata?” Charlie said.
“Just a minute,” she said. “I’m dealing with a problem.” She turned her attention back to Sidney, whose voice in desperation had risen half an octave above its normal timbre.
“Renata, if it was anything but my kids I’d say fuck it, but I gotta go get ’em. My ex’ll have my ass back in court if she hears about any of this.”
“I just don’t understand why you don’t tell the old bitch to go take a flying fuck at the moon.”
“I did,” Sidney said. “She’s still dead-set on the Garden of the Gods.”
“Lousy fucking grandma, if you ask me.”
“Yeah.”
“All right, go. But this counts as your next three nights off.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Renata.” Sidney moved around the bar. “See you, Charlie.”
“Goddamn, I don’t want to tend bar tonight, Charlie. Why do people have kids, anyway? Fucks up everybody’s schedule, not just your own. You have a kid, don’t you?”
“Two.”
“But you don’t let them run your life, do you?”
“Not really. Did Sidney tell you I had something for you?”
“No, he was too busy sniveling about his kids and how he needed to get off early. What is it? A Christmas present?”
“Can we go back into the office?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Sure.” She yelled back into the office. “Anita! Come here and watch the bar for a minute.”
A tall, pretty young black woman in a bright green bikini came out, frowning suspiciously at Renata. She smiled when she saw Charlie. “Hi, Counselor, long time no see.” Anita’s voice was so deep that until the first time he saw her nude onstage he’d suspected that she might have once been a man. “It’s my break,” she said. “Is this gonna take long?”
“Maybe. Quit bitching, all you have to do is pull beers. Come on, Charlie, let’s see what’s keeping you out all night on Christmas Eve. You want a beer?”
“You’re limping, Charlie,” Renata said.
“Army-Navy game in sixty-two. Tore up my knee.”
“Sure you did. Sit.”
The office was tiny, but Renata made a point of moving her chair around and beside the desk instead of behind it. She motioned for Charlie to sit and did so herself, making an elaborate, casual show of crossing her long and muscular legs slowly at the knee, then rhythmically circling her dangling right foot. Beneath her hose she wore a very fine gold ankl
et, just below the swelling of her delicate right ankle and above the lip of her black pump, and Charlie became intensely conscious of his need to swallow, certain she could hear each dry gulp. “I heard a funny story about you tonight, Charlie.”
“What was that?” He fought the urge to stare at her legs.
“Heard you were waiving stage rentals. Comping dancers’ drinks. Not like you at all.”
He swallowed again. “Who told you that?”
“Doesn’t matter. What’ve you got for me?”
He reached into his overcoat and withdrew the envelope. “Merry Christmas,” he said, handing it to her.
She tore open the envelope, took in a sharp breath, and stared back at Charlie. Her jaw had gone slack, her lips just slightly parted. I finally got a rise out of you, he thought, and then she caught herself, clenching her teeth and narrowing her eyes. She held the negative by one sprocketed edge up to a floor lamp. “Christ, there he is. You don’t have a print of this, do you?”
“No, but I’ve seen one and it’s clear as hell. See his left hand, where he’s gripping her wrist? You can see his wedding band, plain as day. You can just about read the fine print on the jar of Vaseline.”
“God, right up Cupcake’s ass.” She squinted. “What’d this cost Bill?”
“Photographer got two-fifty. Cupcake was supposed to get that, but she raised holy hell when she found out he wanted to go in the back way and Bill ended up having to give her four even.”
Renata snorted. “Come on. Like she’s never taken a load up the ass before.”
“Said she’d never done it except for love.”
“Huh. Well, maybe it’s true. Takes all kinds.” She took the shade off the lamp and continued to appraise the negative, squinting against the naked bulb. “I guess my next question is what do you want in return?”
The Ice Harvest Page 5