When happy hour is over and prices double it is time to go and Monty taps Madge's shoulder and without moving her neck she stands and turns and walks out the door. Madge embarrasses Monty and he apologizes each time they visit. "She's just a shy girl is all," he explains. "Time's been hard on her." Then he settles the bill, and here is the most curious thing about Monty: He is a good tipper. If he saved the tips from a single happy hour he could buy himself a nice secondhand coat. A week's worth would get him a new pair of eyeglasses. But he enjoys the pageantry of public drinking and appreciates your remembering his name and interests, and when he reaches for his wallet you want to refuse his money but can see how much the gesture means to him and so you only thank him and stuff the cash in the tip jar.
You are alone in the bar with Monty and Madge when a man walks in and sits on the stool nearest the television. He is of medium height, brown-haired, muscular and tanned, the archetypal Southern Californian in shorts and a frayed T-shirt advertising a marlin-fishing tournament in Baja. There is a baseball game on and you peg him for a sports fan when you see how intently he watches the screen, but then he is interested in the commercials too, and when you walk over to take his order he jumps at the sound of your voice. He turns his washed-out blue eyes to you and you see he is simple or crazy or drunk or on drugs. He looks to Monty and Madge (Monty waves, Madge makes a wet, farting noise with her mouth) and back at you. The game has resumed and he points to the screen.
"How much do these baseball players make?" he asks.
It seems an innocent-enough question on its surface but the fact that he is unaware each player is paid a different salary worries you as it reveals the man's separation from reality. Anyway you do not believe he is interested in the actual answer and so you say, "Plenty more than you or me," and he grins crookedly. He flattens several crumpled bills on the bar and asks what he can get for six dollars and you pour him a vodka tonic that he drains in a gulp. He does not tip but pulls more bills from his pocket and likewise flattens these and asks what he can get for ten dollars. You make him a double vodka tonic and again he does not tip. He drains the glass and asks what he can get for twenty dollars and you are becoming frustrated and tell him for that much he could buy the whole bar a round, but the man is confused and then offended by your joke, and his eyes flash and he stares at your chest and says, "Why would I buy you all drinks when I don't even know you? When I don't even know your names? Why in the fuck would I give you a goddamn thing?" His fists are clenched and he has stood and kicked aside his stool and it looks as if he wants to jump over the bar when Monty calls out from across the room: "Just give him a drink on my tab. Give him whatever he wants."
At these words the man gradually uncoils. He loosens his fists and rights his stool and moves to sit beside Monty. He orders another double vodka tonic, smiling now as though nothing has happened, and he thanks you when you bring the drink over. His name, he says, is Joe, and he shakes Monty's hand and extends a hand to Madge, who makes a kissing sound but otherwise does not acknowledge him. (Joe does not appear to think this strange.) The three of them become fast friends and throughout the night you hear Joe asking Monty questions:
"How do you make a baby sleep if it doesn't want to sleep?"
"How much do electric razors cost?"
"What is death rock?"
"How does rice grow? Do you know what I mean? How does it grow?"
Monty answers as well as he can, all the while buying drinks for the group. Joe moves in closer and when Monty calls him a curious boy, Joe says that he is very curious indeed, and he rests a hand on Monty's, and five minutes later they stand and leave the bar together. Things are strange and just got stranger and Madge remains behind, her arm working to drain her glass and then the partially full glasses of Monty and Joe, and you say to her, "Looks like it's just you and me, Madgey." Her drinks are empty and you bring her another on the house. Sucking on a Lucky Strike, she fills her cheeks with smoke and exhales in your face. She raises the drink to her lips.
Monty now pays for Joe's movies and drinks in addition to Madge's and his own, and his tips disappear, and he does not speak to you anymore about his favorite special effects and will no longer look you in the eye. He is in love with Joe and grasps his hand beneath the bar and becomes jealous if Joe should look at or speak with any women. Joe does not love Monty and you suspect he is not much interested in men but only playing a part until something more agreeable comes along. Sometimes he leaves with these bar women and Monty's heart breaks; he swears his revenge on the whores of the world and drinks well past happy hour, gleefully spending the money that would be Joe's, saying to Madge that it's just the two of them now, like before, but the next day or the day after Joe will be back, grinning and crazy in his eyes, with Monty at his side, swooning at Joe's dimples and Roman profile. Madge for her part is unaffected by the drama, though she now sits one stool away from her drinking partners and seems for unknown reasons to have warmed to you and once even smiled in your direction when you were doing a funny dance for Simon.
Toward the end of each month when his welfare money and medications have run out Joe begins acting erratically and will usually by the twenty-ninth or thirtieth have thrown a fit and been ejected from the bar. These episodes sometimes happen quickly, in the time it takes to smash a pint glass on the floor, and you will look up to find Joe screaming at the television or the ceiling or into a void, a dark space in the room. Other times his mood will deteriorate in slow stages throughout the night: He will enter the bar with his frenzied eyes and sit with his drink, enthusiastic about his good fortune and friends, when some imperceptible injustice captures his attention and poisons the very soil of his earth, and his conversation drops off and he will begin brooding, then mumbling, then cursing and shouting, and then he will be tossed onto the sidewalk where he will wail and punch holes in the sky. You come to recognize Joe's warning signs and give him room to offend or be offended by someone other than yourself — a lone customer or one of the other bar employees or, as is usually the case, Monty, who afterward is left behind to apologize and pick up glass shards and pay for any damages. Although it is part of your job description to suppress any violence until security arrives, you do not intervene in Joe's tantrums because you have become truly afraid of his eyes and you believe it is only a matter of time before he kills someone, and you do not want to die at the bar, at the hands of a man in flip-flops and a Señor Frog's poncho.
Monty can no longer support both the drinking and cinema habits of this unfortunate crew, and they forgo the movies to spend afternoons and early evenings at the bar. The omission of entertainment in their lives takes its toll on their self-esteem, and Monty and Joe no longer speak to each other except to order drinks or comment on certain television happenings, and so begins their comprehensive degeneration: Monty's every move and gesture is motivated by money and love worries. His hygiene, already dubious, falls further into decline so that people grimace at his approach and gather their things as he sits down beside them. Unaware, Monty jabs his thumbs into his temples, suggesting unchecked and tacit pain. When Joe sits beside him, Monty wants to moan — the unobtainable prize, Joe is now openly on the lookout for another meal ticket. He has become commonly cruel, and will order top-shelf vodkas for the sport of watching Monty's wretched, shivering reaction. Monty holds his wallet like a sick bird and you see in his eyes he will be driven crazy by hopeless love if he cannot slow the process down somehow.