The Assault on Tony's

by John O'Brien

  A lull ensued. This kind of contentious crap wasn’t the best part of drinking, but it had to be got through like all the rest.

  “I need a gun,” said Jill. “Maybe Langston’s if he’s done with it. If not, then one of Rudd’s or Osmond’s. Those guys have two. I need one.”

  She held her ground. Rudd thought it was cute but tried to stop thinking it when his addled brain reminded him that she probably wouldn’t appreciate the characterization. Cute.

  Miles looked ugly and tossed off, “Sorry, sweetie. I’ll be needing Langston’s gun. And his ammo.” This last while looking at Rudd, who did not notice.

  “I’m taking Langston’s ammo for my Glock,” said Rudd. “You use your forty-five conservatively till you’re out. Then we’ll decide what to do from there. It may not even come to that.” Cute: I need a gun.

  “All except for one clip,” said Langston.

  Rudd thought he was passed out, and the boom of his regal voice startled him. “Of course,” he said, “you’ll keep a clip in your Beretta, Langston.”

  “Yes,” pronounced Langston. “And I’ll give my Beretta to Jill.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me!” wailed Miles.

  But his voice betrayed defeat. Miles couldn’t possibly win this, not after what happened that morning. Rudd had taken the morning; there could be little question of that. Nobody spoke. Langston knew he wouldn’t be challenged by anyone but Rudd, and Rudd wouldn’t challenge him at all.

  “I get to keep my guns?” asked Osmond. “Both of them?”

  “They’re yours,” Rudd declared, playing something of the spin doctor here. “You do what you want with them; that’s the point. Langston does what he wants with his Beretta. He can give it to the busboy if he wants.”

  In the kitchen the busboy’s ears pricked up at the sound of this, but he wasn’t really listening anyway and he folded back to his wine. Langston unloaded his Beretta and field stripped it with quick facile fingers unhampered by his eyes. This man no longer required a gun anymore than he craved a target.

  “Come here, Jill,” he said. “I’ll get you comfortable with this thing and then we can squeeze off a round or two for practice.”

  “Now we’re doing target practice?” said Miles as he stared into his drink. “What’s next, mixology school?”

  The men all froze at the implication. There was a finite amount of liquor in this place just as surely as there were only so many bullets. A day might come when there would be no more liquor here and still be men.

  Jill stood. “Better two or three now than have me screw up later when it counts,” she said to everyone present, but mostly to herself and Miles. She crossed to Langston, sat down next to him.

  Rudd said, “That’s right, we only have so much booze. Where is it, Jill? Is it downstairs?”

  Already she was absorbed in the Beretta, which Langston had handed to her reassembled a moment before becoming himself absorbed in the new question at hand. “Yeah,” she said. She fingered the gun. It was an amazing thing, the stuff legends were made of. “I’ll show you later.” It was foreboding too, disgusting really, gross. It really is like a penis, she reflected, a hard ugly dick and now I’ve got to fuck it because I’ve come this far and I’m here and it’s the only way to keep face with these men.

  Exasperated, Rudd looked around for the busboy. The kitchen, as usual, he thought. Probably in there drinking the last of the J&B.

  “Where’s the liquor, Jill? Where’s the rest of it? Where’s all of it?” Langston demanded gently but no question: he wanted an answer now.

  She looked up from the gun, hurt. Somehow she’d expected a continuing alliance with this man. She should have known better-she did really. There were certain topics you didn’t fuck with them over. This one especially. Booze. This one with these men. No, I won’t show you, you fucker, she thought. But she had the gun; it was hers now. That was something. “Do I take you down or Rudd?”

  “We all go,” said Miles, standing.

  Jill shrugged, gripped the gun, and wondered about the holster, was it part of the bargain. “It’ll be crowded,” she warned. Didn’t matter: holster or no, she could and would carry it. It was hers now.

  The rest of them rose and Jill led the way to dry-storage, holding the gun with her hand wrapped completely around the barrel and trigger guard. When they reached the top of the stairs she merely gestured them down. They filed past her and she stepped over to the kitchen and looked in on the busboy. He was drinking from a coffee cup, she saw. He saw the gun in her hand but did not react. They exchanged a glance that was awkward at best, neither one of them having any idea what their relationship should be but suspecting that there was something that bound them separate from the men. But then there were other things, maybe stronger things, that bound Jill to the men and excluded the busboy, he thought. White things. Jill turned and walked back to the bar to wait for the men with their questions. That busboy, probably just another swinging dick at heart, she thought.

  In time and after much inspection the men returned to the bar, clustered about. Grumbling and bumping, perhaps pausing in their assertive shuffles, they eventually considered their seats and betook there their rumps.

  “So maybe thirty days, right?” opined Fenton.

  Some of the men snorted a laugh, but Fenton wasn’t sure who except that it wasn’t Rudd. He felt foolish and new at this, still: simple math …

  “If we’re careful,” said Rudd, feeling protective.

  “Bullshit,” declared Miles.

  “I’d say that’s pretty optimistic.” Langston.

  Osmond: “Bullshit!”

  Fenton was wounded. He didn’t care about any of this. He felt his hand tremble, but maybe not. It occurred to him how much he wanted a drink right at that moment, as in craving. Sympathy pains, he thought, looking at Rudd. Thirty days, bullshit.

  Rudd exhaled heavily the heat and worry of his lungs. He turned and watched Langston, blind man, smell the liquor through the bottles, wise enough to count and enough of a drunk to be afraid like they all were. Work expands to fill the time allotted it, something like that his dad said now and again. There would be a corollary that would apply here, he guessed. But he said,

  “This is how it will be: Everybody will share equal responsibility for our supply of liquor. Nothing comes out of the storage room without it being approved by, well, all of us, I guess, or a vote or my order or something. We can work that out; point is that nobody-absolutely nobody, not even meever removes a bottle from that room by himself, that is to say with only his own knowledge. Okay, wait, I’m getting off the track. I want the supply guarded twenty-four hours a day. I’m fairly certain it’s secure against outside penetration, but we all know how it might get in here. We’re all in the same boat as far as that goes, all except for Jill and the kid in there. I think they should stand guard duty just the same though. Everybody must take a turn at this most important post. Let’s face it: that liquor is why we came here and it’s why we’re staying here … well, the riot too. Everybody pulls a shift alone. If a man is made solely responsible for something at a given time I think it’s the best way to give him a stake in things, to keep him honest. I’m not accusing anybody or even suggesting that one of us might steal from the others. But the temptation might be great at times, physically necessary at times. We’ll always deal with that of course. As a group. Point is to seek the higher ground. I truly believe this. Each man spends time alone with the bottles, his responsibility. The higher moral ground.”

  Day5

  I ’m talking about those moments when it becomes clear that a certain new aspect—bad or good—of our life has been accepted by the world at large.” Rudd waxed philosophical over his brandy, his eyes full of arousal, thoughts of his life and what made him good. “I’m talking about the moment of cultural assimilation.”

  Jill, seated across from him in the booth, watched as he topped off their glasses. Though she’d hardly touched hers, she was trying to
keep a pace of sorts. She wanted to be interested in what he was saying, if for no other reason than to fill the oppressive void of watching them all passed out. “I think I know what you’re saying,” she said.

  He nodded, anxious to be in receipt of this, her volley. “Let me give you two examples,” he said, mellow yet almost out of breath.

  Langston dozed on the benches near the front, a fixture now. He dreamed of small girls, men’s daughters.

  Osmond, Fenton, and Miles were engaged in conversation at the bar. The latter two kept glancing at Jill and Rudd.

  Rudd wore that look on his face, like Bear with me, you’ll get it. “I needed a bandanna-I know, I know: it was for a party, I was going to a sixties party-so I went into one of those kids’ stores—skates and records, stuff like that—and they had them. The woman asked me what color I wanted, and she held out a red one. She looked at me, presumably waiting to see if I wanted red.” He paused to make sure this had all sunk in, that the significance of a red bandanna was not lost on Jill.

  “I don’t think I could see you in a red bandanna,” said Jill. No help.

  “Well obviously,” Rudd continued, straightforward, best plan, “that’s why I said to her ‘Jeez, not red! I wear that and I’ll get shot.’ ‘Does that still happen?’ she said, laughing. And that was it. It was significant because it was such a casual joke. The idea of being shot for wearing the wrong color scarf had become nothing more than a joke. No more: oh yeah, isn’t that awful, or: oh, I know what you mean. It had fulfilled its destiny. It had to become a joke because there was simply no other way to deal with it, no other way to challenge its power.”

  Jill was nodding, she was close. “I’m with you,” she said. She was tipsy, thank God.

  “Right, right,” said Rudd. He choked down a gulp of brandy. “‘Nother example, this time a good one. Walking down the street on a sunny Sunday afternoon, just me out for a walk. Semi-residential neighborhood, a few liquor stores and banks, maybe a grocery store …” He paused, momentarily lost. Too much detail, he thought. But that’s the best way, right? Rudd sipped his brandy. “I’m walking, and this car pulled up-a BMW I think, one of those kids’ ones, 320 something. In fact it was full of kids, young women, I should say. The driver, about twenty-five, attractive blond, leaned over her friend and said to me, ‘Do you know if there’s a Plus machine nearby?’ Not an ATM, she didn’t ask for an ATM. She asked for a Plus machine! She asked a total stranger for a Plus machine, and the best part is: I knew exactly what she meant and where one was. I told her, and she thanked me and drove off. Beautiful, I thought. ATMs are now assimilated, so much so that we need to be more specific when discussing them–”

  He was interrupted by Miles, who brazenly wedged his way into their conversation, into the booth and next to Jill. “What are we talking about?” he wanted to know.

  Ignoring him, or at least resolved to attempt so, Rudd concluded directly to Jill, “Like the colored bandannas, the Plus machines are now a piece of history. We don’t have to ask about them anymore, it’s not a question. It’s a–”

  “What’s a plus machine?” asked Miles of Jill.

  She looked to Rudd. She had been nodding too vigorously and now she needed him to answer quick.

  “Do you mind, Miles?” challenged Rudd, turning on the man.

  She felt she had to jump in with something. “We were talking about how people communicate,” she said.

  “Thank you, Jill,” said Rudd, looking at Miles as if declared the victor by the ranking authority. He turned to Jill. “–fact,” he said. “Knowledge. It’s knowledge.”

  “Eggheads,” said Miles dismissively, before passing out on the table.

  Rudd assessed the situation. “You’re trapped,” he said.

  Later, standing alone in the restroom, she examined her naked body in the mirror as she bathed. She had rigged up something of a hand shower using some hose from the maintenance closet and taking advantage of the floor drain in the ladies’ room. It was clear, if unspoken, to Jill and all the men that this was her private domain, this room. No one but her entered ever. The men bathed in the kitchen, at the dishwashing sink, when they bathed at all, and of course they had the men’s room.

  She had been secretly washing her undergarments, twice now, letting them dry in here. She’d walked about, those two times, secretly not wearing underwear and fearing the connotation that such an act might hold for these men. A statement. Knowledge, Rudd would call it, a fact. She wondered if this no-underwear thing that men seemed to have would qualify as a cultural assimilation under his rules. On both occasions she ended up feeling, well, observed, before her bra and panties were dry; she had gone back to the ladies’ room, utilized the hot air from the electric hand dryer.

  What’s the big deal, she wondered, wiping her breasts with a wet paper towel. Plenty of paper towels these days, like a mini post-nuclear movie, all the stuff you want. Jill saw a movie once on cable, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. Harry Belafonte is left alone on planet earth with a white woman, no problem until a white guy shows up. One scene has this woman throwing dirty dishes out of her high-rise kitchen window rather than wash them. Someday when the pile gets too high I’ll have to move, the woman muses, or so Jill remembers it. It’s really the only scene she remembers from the movie, that one and the beginning where Harry is trapped in a mine and banging a rock and singing. Harry (Henry?) was only modestly black at best-probably the only way to sell the public on the potential romance with the white chick at the time-but that chick was pure as the driven snow. She could afford to throw a lot of dishes out that window before she’d even have to start looking, let alone moving.

  Jill was utterly confused. She’d been here before, a few times. Her first weeks in college was one time, first weeks as a woman another. Maybe before that even. Maybe after. Call it more than a few times.

  If she slept with only one of the men that would be too much of a statement. If she slept with all of them it might be worse. She was a woman and she wasn’t allowed any slack; if she had sex with one of these men the act would be indelible, just as if one of them had sex with another of them. She didn’t know, wasn’t sure. Maybe the world was different; the outside world certainly was. Still, best play it safe and fuck somebody. At least one. Nothing’s that different, she thought. And there was the wash rag and she did sort of an impromptu breast examination, which was sort of funny. But okay too.

  Rudd was on duty down in dry-storage. He had just returned after a short trip upstairs to mix himself a new drink in the presence of the others. That was part of the agreement, or at least the spirit, of guarding dry-storage: you never touched the liquor. If you wanted a drink you went up to the bar and got one. Rudd sipped carefully. He was an honorable man, and holding to the letter of the law was more important than the thought of somebody-Miles, almost certainlyslipping down a gulp of this or that while down here alone. It frightened Rudd, this integrity. It frightened him because it threatened to be the first thing in his life that could conceivably take precedence over alcohol. He really wouldn’t pilfer a sip of scotch merely to equal the suspected consumption of a lesser man.

  He swirled the ice in his rocks glass. He would kill another man to protect his supply. Had in fact, perhaps. That made him smile. The ice in his glass made him smile too, bathed in scotch as it was. Rudd could look into this glass (something Langston could no longer do, it occurred) and see his own distorted reflection, all bumped and fucked up by ice and booze. So many years and so many drinks, most of them alone like this one, and never had he had such a clear picture of himself, distorted though it was. Things were getting better. Gunfire and explosions punctuated the night, getting worse all the time. Things would never be all right again, but they were better.

  He would sleep with her. He knew that now, sitting amidst his-the-bottles. And for the silliest of reasons, the most truly unbelievable of reasons: he would sleep with herrather she would sleep with him-because she liked him. Maybe even sh
e liked him a lot. It didn’t matter. Any way you cut it she liked him and felt safe with him and wanted to fuck him. And it wouldn’t be all that long now either. It would be soon. He thought about that other waitress in that other dry-storage so many years ago. That Gail; he remembered her when he first walked into this place two days ago, remembered fleetingly, one might say. Now the important thing to consider was that that event, that Gail some twenty-plus years ago, that was a loss. That was a boy with his dad’s withered dick talking, and damn softly at that. This girl, this Jill, this will be a win, a victory, and not in any puerile locker-room schoolboy way. No, Jill will give him power over not only the other men but himself as well. For the first time in his life Rudd will win. Fuck you again, Dad.

  He turned up his glass to empty it of scotch and one of the ice cubes hit him in the nose. That made him laugh because he remembers being at cocktail parties and using that tiny event as a barometer to limit his drinking, an early warning sign of sorts. That was a different life, gone forever. Nothing from that life would ever matter again. That Gail might be dead, killed in the riots. An ice cube hits your nose now and it’s time for more scotch. But slow down just the same. There’s work to be done. Rudd got an erection and thought about jerking off and decided not to for the same reason that he decided not to refill his drink just yet. Thing about women, he thought, they have pussies. Then he laughed.

  Jill stepped from the ladies’ room after a lengthy session with the mirror that left her feeling tousled and worn down. They made you do this, act this way. The fuckers really did make woman in their own image, or from their rib, whatever.

  The men in the bar looked up as one when she turned the corner into the room. They didn’t know this of course, but she saw it, saw it like they were so many marionettes, their heads bobbing up from a pull on their strings. Bob bob, bounce, back to the drinks, maybe a smile or stupid grin, a leer. No two marionettes are created equal. They’re like snowflakes, she knew.