(2004) Citizen Vince

by Jess Walter

  Clay shakes his head. “I didn’t ask you to protect me. Give me his goddamned name. If you’re too scared to keep going, then at least get out of my way.”

  “Clay.”

  He fumbles around in his pocket and uses two hands to hold something beneath the table.

  Vince smiles.

  “Look under the table, Vince.”

  “Goddamn it, Clay.”

  Clay flashes it quickly—dull gray—and then puts it back under the table.

  “Are you gonna shoot me? Here? At Dicks? ’Cause there might be a place with even more witnesses. Although I can’t imagine it, offhand.”

  Clay looks around at a handful of people sitting at the tables or in their cars. “We’ll go for a drive,” he says.

  “Where are we gonna drive, Clay?”

  “I don’t know. The woods.”

  “What woods?”

  “I don’t know. There’s woods everywhere.”

  “Who holds the gun while you drive?”

  “I do.”

  “How can you do that? Sitting right next to me? The minute you look down at the road, I’ll just take it from you.”

  “I’ll make you drive.”

  “I’m not driving to the woods so you can shoot me.”

  Clay looks down at the table, trying to figure it out. “Goddamn it, Vince! If you won’t give me more money, at least give me this guy’s name!”

  “Listen to me, Clay. This guy will suck you dry, get you to steal all the cards you can, and then dump your body in the river. You understand?”

  “I mean it, Vince. This is your last warning.”

  Vince sits back. “It’s been a bad week, Clay.” He takes a french fry. “I haven’t slept more than a few hours in…I don’t know, five days? Every time I turn around someone’s threatening me. This is the first time someone has actually pointed a gun at me, but I gotta tell you—it’s the first time I haven’t been even a little bit scared.”

  Clay stares at him, his lips twitching, until finally he sets the gun on the table between them. “Damn it, Vince. It’s not fair.”

  “No.” Vince takes the air pistol by the barrel, opens a small hatch, and shakes a single BB into his open palm. “It’s not fair.”

  THERE IS A moment when all the work that can be done is done. Plays have all been made, strategies and mistakes. The various people are in position and there’s nothing more than the wait—no more running or politicking, compromising or pleading. It’s going to be what it’s going to be, and all that’s left is for the thing to play itself out. And at that moment, time is measured in sighs, regrets and ironies; these are the seconds, minutes and hours of the night before.

  Vince walks with his head up, staring at the tops of the buildings—a quick architectural survey to record it all—the profiles of converted brick tenements, the handful of decent office buildings, and his vote for the best structure in Spokane, the nineteen-story, terraced Deco mass of the Paulson Building. There are a few other decent ones, sure—the County Courthouse is impressive and the Davenport Hotel is nice, though the locals’ affection for a fading old hotel is a little bit over-the-top. Vince guesses there must be a hotel just like it in every city in America—every city with its own tiny Plaza. He steps into P.M. Jacoy, the corner newsstand, and buys a good cigar for later. Checks his watch: quarter to six. First thing to kill is time.

  Vince angles down Sprague Avenue and the best line of bars in the city. A person clings to the late sun of August and September, but when the fall turns, this early darkness is a nice surprise. Heels click on the cold, shimmering sidewalk. Vince walks past a couple of good candidates before turning into a hotel lounge with a small crowd and a color TV above the bar. He grabs a stool—amazing how the feet fall naturally against a bar railing—and catches the bartender’s attention. “Beam and Coke.”

  When the guy delivers, Vince makes his pitch: “You think we could watch the news?”

  The bartender looks from Vince to the TV, on a shelf above a rack of cashews and chips, jars of pickled eggs and sausage. “You kidding? It’s Monday night. I touch that TV and I’ll lose my arm.” On the TV, Cleveland’s quarterback Brian Sipe is warming up; Cosell is suggesting he has a chance to break the Browns’ career passing record tonight.

  “The election’s tomorrow,” Vince says. “Come on. Ten minutes of news. Then we can turn it back to the game. What do you say?”

  There are eight other men in the place, six of them saddled at the bar like Vince. One of them, a guy in a spackled sweatshirt and worn painter’s pants, leans forward and catches Vince’s eye. “We don’t come down here to watch the news. We could watch the news at home.”

  The bartender is amused by the exchange. He stretches his hands out on his considerable gut and says to Vince, “Tell you what, friend. You find me one other guy in here wants to watch the news and I’ll turn the TV for ten minutes.”

  Vince looks down the bar. He’s met with six blank stares. “Come on, fellas. What do you say? What if the Iranians let the hostages go today?” The men at the bar turn back to the TV. Vince looks around the lounge. The only other people in the place are two suits hunched over a table, deep in a conversation about something. Vince hops off his bar stool, slides past the worn pool table, and hovers above their table.

  The suits are draped over two vaguely Irish-looking men, easy in their professional appearances, like second- or third-generation lawyers. One of them is big and bearish and just starting to gray at the edges, the other small and precise with black furrowed hair. They’re both in gray suits with the ties loosened, bent over a table half their size, eating steaks and drinking from highballs. One of the guys is familiar. Vince catches the tail end of their conversation, the smaller guy checking his watch—“We have to be upstairs in twenty minutes…”—before they turn together to take in Vince.

  “I’m sorry. But I need one more vote to turn the TV from the ball game to the news. What do you guys say? Ten minutes of news?”

  The smaller guy tries to wave him off. “We’re only gonna be here a few minutes.”

  But the big guy is curious. “Why do you want to watch the news?”

  “Well. The election’s tomorrow.”

  “You don’t say? Tomorrow?” Something about this is greatly amusing to the two men, and Vince feels a bit off balance, and then remembers where he’s seen the familiar guy. He’s a congressman. Starts with an F. But Vince can’t come up with the name. “I had no idea,” the guy says. He’s probably in his forties, aging like a farm kid or a boozy lawyer, managing to be at the same time boyish and jowly. His voice is authoritative and friendly, but the edges are soft, like he’s talking with a hunk of steak in his mouth. “It doesn’t look like they want to watch the news.” He gestures to the guys at the bar, their heads lined and tilted up at the TV like they’re feeding from a high trough.

  “It’d be good for ’em,” Vince says.

  “You think so?” asks the big congressman. He laughs. “Okay. You got a deal.” He stands, raises a draft beer, and covers his heart. “Esteemed colleagues, the representative from Table Six in the great state of Washington—”

  The other guy laughs.

  “—home of glorious wheat fields and aluminum plants, cool, clear rivers and snow-capped mountains, and the finest bar patrons in this great country, proudly casts his vote in favor of ten minutes of misery and heartache courtesy of the national news.”

  The guys at the bar raise their glasses in confused reverie as the bartender reaches up to turn the channel.

  “Thank you,” Vince says.

  The two guys at the table raise their drinks to Vince, who makes his way back to his stool. On TV, Jimmy Carter is somber, his brow creased. He does not look like a man running for reelection. Apparently he has cut short his campaigning and left Chicago to announce that the Iranians’ demands for release of the hostages are still unreasonable: I know that all Americans will want their return to be on a proper basis which is worthy of
the suffering and sacrifice which the hostages have endured. The news cuts to Carter and Mondale walking across the White House lawn, their arms around each other, as if supporting one another, then cuts to the Ayatollah waving to throngs of wild supporters and then to the Iranian parliament, ties and turbans and sunglasses, long beards and thick mustaches—as Dan Rather outlines the conditions for the hostages’ release: return of the late Shah’s billions of dollars, unfreezing of Iran’s assets…

  Then to Ronald Reagan, shaking hands and waving to a throng that rivals the Ayatollah’s for size and zeal: Obviously all of us want this tragic situation resolved. That’s my deepest hope, and I know it’s yours.

  The news jets back and forth between Iran and the United States: the family of one of the hostages, Iranian students dancing on a burning American flag, Edmund Muskie, Warren Christopher, an Iranian oil rig, a line at a gas pump, a line of unemployed—the rush of images crashing together into a flow that might be history or might just be noise, disconnected and selective like memory, and loosed of all context—children on cots in a homeless shelter, unsold cars on lots, missiles emerging from underground silos, and a commercial for spaghetti sauce that prompts the bartender to reach up and turn the TV back to the football game.

  And that’s it. There is what you believe and there is what you want and these things are fine. But they’re just ideas, in the end. History, like any single life, is made up of actions. At some point, the thinking and believing and deciding fall away and all that’s left is the doing. The bartender steps away from the TV and smiles at Vince. “Sorry,” he says. “But your time’s up.”

  Spokane, Washington

  1980 / November 4 / Tuesday / 12:03 A.M.

  VIII

  Chapter VIII

  Vince stands in the street-lit shadows outside Sam’s Pit, his hands deep in his pockets. It’s early yet, but he can see Sam moving inside. Vince takes the piece of gum he was chewing and tosses it in a field. Rolls his neck from side to side. Cold. In front of him, the Pit glows like a country hearth. He supposes he’s as ready as he’s going to be.

  Walks up the steps. The door sticks and then gives way to the warm foyer and a smiling Eddie, who is holding a rack of battered chicken.

  “Hey, Sam.”

  “Goddamn it, Vince Camden! Where you been?”

  “Traveling a little.”

  “People been asking on you. The police even come by the other night.”

  “Yeah. I talked to them. We got it sorted out.”

  “I says, ‘Who you askin’ on? Vince Camden? Hell, turn back ’round and go on outta here, ’cause Vince Camden is the most law-abiding character ever come through that door.’” Eddie winks. “That smart-ass cop, know what he says to me? ‘Sorry, Sam, but that ain’t sayin’ a great deal.’” Eddie throws his head back and laughs. “Son of a bitch had a point, too.” He looks down at the tray of chickens. “You’re early for cards.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Vince says. He follows Eddie into the dining room, and sits at the counter while the chicken is seized by the grease-filled frying pans. No one is in the dark dining room behind him and the only light is in the kitchen, making it seem like Eddie is cooking on a stage.

  “That new fella Ray been askin’ on you, too,” Eddie says. He pours Vince a whiskey neat from a bottle under the table.

  “Does he come in a lot?” Vince puts a five on the table. In a single motion Eddie swipes the five and leaves three bucks.

  “Ray? Last couple nights he been comin’ in regular, right around two o’clock, hittin’ up the whores and whatnot. Ain’t much of a cardplayer but he does pretty good with the females, I guess.”

  Wait for the guy to come to you. Easy enough.

  “So where’d you go?” Eddie asks.

  “Home for a few days.”

  Eddie looks up from his chicken. “No kiddin’. Where’s that?”

  “New York.”

  “That’s what I heard. So you got people back there?”

  “No.” Vince is almost surprised to hear himself admit this. He doesn’t have people there. His people are here now. When does a place cease to be home?

  “Me neither,” Eddie says. “I got a kid over to Seattle won’t talk to me, and a sister in Indiana got kids, but I don’t look in on them. Beyond that…my people are long gone.”

  Vince swirls the booze in his glass, takes in the smell of the chicken and the warmth of the stove. “You ever count?”

  Eddie looks up. “Count?”

  “Yeah. How many dead people you know. I did that the other day.”

  “No shit. How high you get?”

  “I was at sixty-three when I stopped counting.”

  Eddie stares at him as if waiting for a translation, then waves him off with a breaded thigh. “Hell, I lose sixty-three a year. I go right past the front page, sports, funnies, go straight to the obituaries. Make sure I ain’t in there.” He talks while he uses tongs to turn splattering drumsticks and thighs in black pans on all four burners. “No, I don’t need to count, Vince. When your time is up…you know.” He looks up and meets Vince’s eyes. “You’re a young man, yet. Probably get invited to a wedding for every funeral you go to. Me, I can’t remember the last wedding I went to. But I get a note for a funeral ever-goddamn month.” Eddie carries a pan to the sink. “I’m so tired of funerals I’ll probably skip my own.”

  Vince opens his mouth to say something clever, but superstition or simple fear kicks in and he thinks better of it, raises his glass, toasts the old man’s back, and drains his whiskey.

  THE CARDPLAYERS TRICKLE in one at a time and each time the door opens Vince tenses, but instead of Ray he gets smiles and handshakes, pats on the back. “What, you need more of our money?” Jacks practically hugs him and the whiskeys go down easy, and before Vince knows it he’s back at his usual spot at his usual table, watching the cards, which blend like liquid between his fingers, and he’s amazed at the way the cards always come together, amazed how they never crash edges and break the shuffle. He can do this a hundred times and never fuck it up; a hundred times and each time they’ll mix as cleanly as two pitchers of water being poured together. And, at that moment, how can you fear a blunt object like Ray Sticks, so earthbound and simple, when you are capable of such magic, when you’re capable of flight? He slings the cards around the table and they glide across the smooth surface and stop right where he dreamed and would it be so hard for this night to never end, for this card game to go on forever?

  Jacks gathers in his cards. “The night my wife finally leaves me, we stay up all night trying to fix things. ‘Come on, baby,’ I say. And I ask her, ‘What’s the problem?’ She says, ‘You’re not smart enough or sensitive enough and all you care about is food and football and you don’t listen or make enough money and you’re mean to my family.’ Christ-Take-Me-Home, the woman got a list goes on four hours. And then she leaves. Packs some clothes and walks right out the door.”

  Vince looks at his cards.

  “That night, I sleep alone for the first time in twelve years,” Jacks says. “And I sleep like shit, too, keep looking over to her side, the pillow tucked under the bedspread, the way she’s made it for twelve years, only now it might just stay that way forever. Finally I wake up for good at four in the morning, in them sweats make you stick to the covers, only you’re cold, not hot. You ever get those?”

  Jacks tosses in two dollars to open.

  “Now, I never remember my dreams. Never. But this night, for some reason…four in the morning, my dream comes back to me clear as I’m sittin’ here. Clear as if it really happened. In this dream, I’m at a football game, best seats I’ve ever had. It’s the Raiders and the Dolphins. And the Raiders are killing ’em. Shula’s in fuckin’ tears.”

  Vince takes a bite of chicken—hot and perfect and greasy—drinks his whiskey, and calls the bet.

  “Now, I love football. But I’ve never had a dream about it. Next morning, I pick up the paper and the TV game is the goddamn
Raiders playing the goddamn Dolphins, just like my dream. Now, maybe I knew they were playing and it was in my—what do you call it?—subconscious, but I swear to God I had no idea those two teams were playing. So I’m thinkin’ it’s a sign, right?”

  Jacks takes a pull from the champagne magnum he keeps between his tree-trunk thighs. “So an hour before kickoff, I call around, find out that the Raiders are six-point underdogs and I think this all must be happening for some reason, so I take Oakland and the points like it’s Muhammad Ali fighting Barry Fuckin’ Manilow. Two Gs. Credit. All the money I don’t got in the world.”

  The guys whistle and, one by one, bet or fold without looking away from Jacks.

  “Soon as I do it, I feel like an asshole. All day I got this terrible feeling, like I made a big mistake. Christ, I got no job and I’m gonna bet two grand on a lousy dream?

  “Terrible game. The Raiders can’t move the ball for shit. With a minute left, Dolphins are up thirteen–zip and my six points are as worthless as dimes in a casino.”

  The guys smile, lean forward.

  “So I’m sittin’ there, gonna lose two grand that I don’t have, and suddenly my life makes sense to me: Peggy leaving, the bankruptcy, this string of bad decisions, a whole life of fuckups, really, and as soon as I admit that to myself, it’s like a fuckin’ miracle: Stabler hangs one up and fuckin’ Freddie Belitnikof of all people gets behind the safety and hauls it in, and bang, forty seconds to go and goddamn Oakland pulls to thirteen–six. All they gotta do is hit the extra point and I push the bet. A tie. I don’t win…but at least I don’t lose either. And that’s the hell of it. I mean: I want to win, sure. Who doesn’t? But come on. In the end, what more can a guy like me ask for…than to not lose?”

  Smiles and nods around the table.

  “So they line up the point after, and for the first time in years, I start praying, right? The kind of praying that’s more like making a deal, the kind you do when your wife finds the other woman’s bra or the jury’s considering the evidence?”