by John O'Brien
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, after appearing to consider it for a while (even though he really had). “I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves-I know I am. Maybe it isn’t the best time to be taking foolish risks.” He paused, fixed his face with fairness and took some scotch over a staccato bang beyond the door, like: Hear me? See? “Think about it: it’s been like what, seven days since the shit hit the fan? Remember those riots in L. A. a long time ago? That was like a weekend plus a day or two I think. And much smaller. What I’m saying is that we’re probably coming up on a major turn of events here. I know it seems to get worse every day, and I know we’re all going a little stir-crazy; but I’ve been thinking about this thing with the TV going out.” He paused while Fenton drained his drink and refilled both glasses, Rudd watching him in exaggerated detail and politeness. His dad used to watch him like this, official wine steward at fourteen. Go, boy, fetch! “What’s more likely: that a bunch of disorganized petty looters with pop guns overpowered the United States Army and took control of the airwaves—for no good reason, mind you; we haven’t exactly seen any subversive, revolutionary broadcasts (Rudd averted his gaze casually so as not to risk a how-would-we-know look) -or that the guys on top are three steps ahead of everyone and shut down the broadcasts as a blanket way to silence all those inflammatory local newscasts we were watching? I mean, what was the message going out there? Hey, it’s party central down at Stab-’n’-Grab Electronics! Hurry to avoid missing the best selection!” Fenton began to laugh drunkenly at this, and thus encouraged Rudd went on. “Hurry to avoid missing a shot at Whitey while he still got breath in his body!”
But Fenton sputtered out, and Rudd quickly followed. “Are you going stir-crazy?” Fenton asked with a tone so grave it belied the lightness Rudd had been hoping to keep attached to the term, like make it a nice way of saying cabin fever. Fenton waited, listened. This man wanted an answer.
A great thing about alcohol is that it cuts down on a lot of the transition time between moods. No sooner had Fenton pulled taut his face than Rudd was able to perceive the gravity of the question. Stir-craziness: can it be stopped in our lifetime?
“I’m not sure,” said Rudd. “I’ve spent many hours in this place over the years, and it’s never happened before.” He pondered, extrapolated those years, searched for what was different, where was the control group. Miles and Osmond? Hardly. “Of course I was drunk then,” he added. “And I could leave whenever I wanted.”
From across the room Carey could identify the sounds of yet another drunken conversation, though he hardly had to around here. It disgusted him that these men had nothing better to do in the face of history than sit around and drink themselves stupid. This place was really eating at him, making him stir-crazy, was the term. Carey wondered how real that was, that idea of stir-craziness. Certainly being confined to a fixed area would affect the mind. He rummaged for historical examples, but all he could come up with was Proust, and Proust did okay for himself. Men in prison, even that worked better than you’d think. Maybe it’s a weakness in me, he thought. Maybe I really don’t have what it takes any more than I have a gun. It’s a new world, the Year of the Fat Dumb Well-Armed Republican Drunk. Then it hit him: these guys were all drunk all the time. That’s why it didn’t faze them to be cooped up in here with no end in sight. Besides, they probably all loved the place and would be here anyway. Why else would they have been caught here to begin with? Of course there was Jill. She was pretty much sober as far as he could tell, except for a little something on her breath two nights ago when he first walked in. Something else though about her, she had something working, something in play. To Carey, having just met her but privy to some fairly involved conversations nonetheless, Jill was like those dark and troubled women who haunted poetry readings and pro-abortion rallies, high-mileage women with too much to say in search of a voice with which to say it. Carey had seen such women hurt themselves and once he even helped one do it, knowing he’d end up hating himself later but falling prey to the exigencies of her addictive craving. That wasn’t sex that time but it could’ve been and the distinctions get pretty fine when a pretty little thing mounts a greased slide to hell. Jill was either getting or looking for her fix-one look told him that-and he wanted no part of it. That left only the spooky busboy, who was, if not strictly sober, then at least not drunk, and so embroiled in his own agenda that he likely wouldn’t move from that kitchen even if the riots ended unless moving at that moment was part of his master plan all along. That kid might be crazy, crazy from hurt and racial treachery like the revolutionaries outside were, but he wasn’t stir-crazy. Besides, if anyone could walk out of here right now he could. No, Carey decided, I’m a special case. I’m the one who doesn’t belong here. I’m the one who’ll crack first. And he thought about thinking that and he wondered if perhaps it had already begun, that cracking, first.
Rudd and Fenton spent a quiet moment with their drinks, contemplating what wasn’t being reported on the vacuous television screen.
“Even turned off that thing annoys me. I should get that kid in the kitchen to take it back, tell him to squawk if something comes on. Why not? He’s gonna sit back there anyway, might as well give him a job. Anything to keep him from sending more smoke-signals.” Rudd chuckled, breathy and full of scotch, not a guy to sit next to.
Fenton follow-chuckled and added sarcastically, “We could send him out to see what’s up. He’d blend right in.”
Rudd, who was fully prepared to laugh, didn’t like that kid in the kitchen. “It has been sort of quiet tonight,” he said, predictably preceding a punctuational pop outside.
Carey quit his booth to refill his coffee mug. It felt good to stand up and walk; he hadn’t realized how long he’d been sitting. Rudd and Fenton were still blabbering except the former had suddenly become contemplative, which was so fucking typical for that kind of drunk. Carey thought, What the hell go over and have a chat while they’re still balancing on their stools. They didn’t look like murderers, but they didn’t look like people he wanted to be in the same room with either. Coming up on them, he said, “I see you’ve got the TV off again. How we gonna know what’s up.” Affecting play, he wanted bad to rankle Rudd.
Who did in fact think, Fuck him and his TV “We can no longer subject ourselves to the lies of the liberal media,” said Rudd. “So we were just now considering our alternatives for information gathering.” He sipped his scotch, turned, and spread his face into a big grin. “Your input will be most welcome.”
Obnoxious. Murderer. “Good timing then. I came over to tell you that I’m going outside for a walk,” Carey said, surprising himself more than the two men, who in their state first took the remark for a weak joke.
Rudd couldn’t resist, “A walk? Way I heard it you came inside on a run. That right, Fenton? Or did Carey just stop in to use the rest room?”
Fenton was a guy who tried to be pretty agreeable all around, but more and more he found himself being drawn into declarations, just as he was being drawn into alcohol addiction. These were times of acceleration. “Well he was already in when I got there, but I don’t think Jill would’ve opened that door for a light tap and a request for a cup of sugar.”
Rudd looked funny like maybe he didn’t get it.
Carey, disgusted at this schoolyard banter, smiled sarcastically to predicate his leave.
Fenton said to him, “You were pretty white, man.” Close enough and he was gratified to see Rudd laugh. Well, all’s well that ends well.
“Okay, fine,” said Carey, not taking much trouble now to hide his disdain. “Thanks for your help. I was scared. I’d seen some bad things and I wanted in. Now I think I might have made a mistake. No reflection on your hospitality, but I think it’s time somebody took a look outside. Frankly I don’t know how you all can stand it cooped up in here. It’s no wonder you’re all drunk!” Damn. Too far, he thought. I really do need to get out of here before one of them shoots me. I’m better than this, better th
an them.
“Jesus, Fenton, he’s serious,” said Rudd, evidently not at all offended by the drunk remark.
Fenton, who was actually somewhat flattered at being referred to as drunk, waxed philanthropic as he extrapolated Rudd’s cue into, “Why don’t you rethink this, Carey. C’mon, sit down and have a drink with us and we’ll talk it over. In fact we were just talking about this when you walked up. Rudd has an idea.” He gestured to the latter as he clumsily slid off his barstool and onto the one behind.
Carey, not at all dismayed at the prospect of backing down from the combat zone, made a show of reluctantly pulling the proffered stool out from the line of fire between the two men and into the apex of a triangle. “Thanks. I’ll stick with this,” he said, holding up his coffee mug.
Rudd and Fenton leaned into him, never realizing, the two of them, how Carey’s pronouncement had galvanized their inchoate plan to send the busboy outside as sort of an un(white)manned probe. For all they knew there could be a calvary of Guardsmen set up shop at the end of the street. But the real point was protecting the supply, and even though they were in no immediate danger of running out of liquor, that time might come. The more they knew about the outside world the better choices they could make in here. Of course the choice was pretty much singular: drink. Nonetheless, knowledge was power.
“What we were thinking,” began Rudd, trying to look disdainfully amused at the coffee thing yet feeling that nasty nip of envy he rarely acknowledged to himself and never to anyone else and pausing to drink more because this was one of those rare times, “is that somebody probably should go out there and take a look at what’s going on.” He cast around expansively: I’ve thought this through so don’t bother to second guess me. “Now you and I have both been out there–”
Carey managed to roll his eyes without moving them, a flutter and a knit. We’re in this thing together, Me and Rudd. He looked to Fenton but the problem there was the guy didn’t know how to be a drunk. Carey guessed he was new at it, but what the hell would he know. Maybe he himself would be sloshin’ down the suds in a week’s time. Good thing he wouldn’t be here to find out.
“–so I don’t have to tell you what it’s like.”
“It’s scary,” said Fenton. “Damn scary.”
Rudd nodded profoundly. “He knows. He took out his share.” He beamed, the proud father.
Jesus, thought Carey. Sitting around chatting with murderers. He kept forgetting.
I am my father, thought Rudd. That means nothing. This means nothing. “No place for a white man.” I Spy to Cosby. All those years and all that money, now does he loot or get looted, that guy?
“No. That would be in here, right?”
Fenton and Rudd looked at each other. A trick question? The temptation was to go ahead and let this bleeding heart do some real bleeding, but now the busboy idea was so fixed and the kid himself, rather the idea of him, his inscrutability, had become such an annoyance, such an insult to their sanctuary-the unappreciative prick-that neither of them, or at least Rudd, was about to let it go. Not now, not drunk or sober. Not drunk. Sort of a duty too, protecting this schmuck. Now there’s a word his father wouldn’t use!
“Here’s how it is:” came Rudd; then he checked his nascent anger. He reminded himself of all he’d learned about himself during the days since the riot began. “Unless things have calmed tremendously you can’t survive out there for five minutes. Nor can I nor Fenton, and we have guns–”
Carey thought, then decided to say, “Has it occurred to you that that might be the problem?” What the hell, it seemed real coming in, so why not make it real going out. He deserves that much. As real as it can be with a drunk at least.
“–and it’s because of those guns that we’re having this conversation. Without them this place doesn’t exist.” But as he said it Rudd knew the only ammo they’d fired was when they went out to get more ammo. That was a detail, not germane to this conversation. Privileged information, and he didn’t even have to look at Fenton to detect a confirming nod.
“Fair enough,” allowed Carey, who really only had experience against this argument when it was in the more abstract arena of imperialism and dictatorships. But here, with this small thing, as far as he knew he’d be dead without Tony’s. And Tony’s door wouldn’t have swung open without those guns. Whether that meant there’d have been no one to open it or that those who did open it wouldn’t have been armed, he couldn’t say, much less defend or prove. Life in America. Fair enough. As long as you’re on the right side of the liquor store counter.
“You’re here now,” Rudd told him. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. Of course. Till it’s over, whatever. If you want to leave I can’t stop you, but then you won’t be here. What I’m saying is when you’re here I’m in charge. If you want to be here, good. But I say who goes and who stays and when the door opens.” As long as you’re living under my roof you’ll abide by my rules. Very original, Dad. “I hope you’ll stay. I know we can all get through this alive.”
Speech sounded vaguely familiar to Carey, said, “Yeah I see, and I appreciate. …” He eyed the bottle of scotch. Not really, he thought. “You had an idea?” Just fuck me now. Just stick your gun barrel up my ass and get it over with.
Rudd said, “Had a chance to meet our faithful busboy yet?”
“Don’t feel bad if you haven’t. He pretty much keeps to himself,” said Fenton, grinning.
So what’s the point here? thought Carey. I’m supposed to stick around and be minority liaison? Fuck it. He said, “You need me to be Tony’s social worker? The microcosmic equivalent of that convenient layer between you and the Great Unwashed? Will you underpay me if I promise to placate this internal potential rioter with passed-along welfare payments to keep him in the jug wine and giblets?”
Rudd laughed; Fenton too. “Well at least we all know whom we’re dealing with,” said the former.
“He’s got his finger on the pulse,” agreed Fenton.
Carey merely smiled back, a tad off balance now that these offhand yet derogatory remarks had been taken so well.
Sensing this, Rudd said, “It don’t worry me, brother Carey. I’ve got nothing against the busboy except maybe that he wants what I’ve got and he thinks that constitutes earning … or at least deserving.”
“You don’t know that. Has he ever told you that?”
“He tells me by not speaking, by not moving from his chosen hideaway back there, by stealing every loose dollar bill he can get his fingers on.”
“Oh I see. You’ve of course invited him out here to spend the evening with you, drinking at the bar?”
“No. But I didn’t invite anybody else either.”
“It’s not the same and you know it.”
“My point exactly.”
Carey knew better than to let this shit get to him. “Back to your idea?” he suggested after a pause.
“Everybody’s here for a reason, right?”
Carey, getting it: “You need some tables bussed? I’ll do it.”
Later, as Rudd and Fenton briefed the busboy in the kitchen, Carey sat alone in a booth, appalled at his impotence here, the more so because it was such a familiar feeling yet no less frustrating. And, perhaps in this case, criminal. But he wasn’t God, and that kid had to say no if he felt no. Carey couldn’t tell him how he felt and he didn’t have to tell him how he was permitted to feel. You wanted to. But you knew: it only made things worse. Even if Carey charged out the door they’d just write him off-they’d probably be right-and send the kid anyway. Going with the kid would only make them both targets and eliminate any advantage that really did exist in Rudd’s skewed logic. This was it. Like everything else, swallow it whole and move on.
Jill watched him brood and knew by some commiserable instinct that he shouldn’t be approached. Her eyes stayed open enough around here to also know what Rudd and Fenton were doing in the kitchen, and frankly she couldn’t have cared less.
“More
important than that,” continued Rudd, momentarily preempting Fenton’s (who didn’t notice much less mind) portion of the impromptu briefing of the busboy apropos of his reconnaissance mission, “is that you get a sense of what’s out there. What I mean is, say things are still bad, no troops or cops–” He took a beat to sip his scotch. It hadn’t occurred to him until this moment that this kid was as likely to get shot by the good guys as by the bad guys. But the kid wasn’t flinching or even reacting so what the hell, probably always ran that risk, Rudd reflected. Just a dash of that, a glimpse of your nose waving from the surface of your drink, a looking glass to go not so much through as in. “–say we have to stay here for a while. Try to see what’s out there in the way of supplies. Of course I don’t expect there to be much, but maybe that liquor store down the street is still standing; might be a storage room nobody’s found-right up your alley,” he quipped to no reaction. “I mean you’d know your way around a place like that. Like a job skill.” Rudd wasn’t penetrating this kid at all, and he looked to Fenton, smiled and nodded in search of an aping confirmation.