Tonight, of course, he had a vested interest in Sully taking up the story of the police chief keeling over into that grave, because if Sully wasn’t regaling everybody in the Horse with the police chief’s idiocy, he’d be reporting Rub’s humiliating afternoon in the tree. His only hope was to replace the story he didn’t want told with a better one. “There’s a buh-buh-booth over there,” he said, pointing to it.
“Hang on,” Sully told him, his voice lowered. “I think a barstool’s gonna open up here in a minute.”
Because on the other side of Jocko sat none other than Spinmatics Joe, who’d been Sully’s least favorite person in all of Bath until Roy Purdy made his triumphant return. Joe usually drank at Gert’s, where a beer and a bump was a buck cheaper and only stumbling distance from the Morrison Arms. What’s more, a man could freely express the most dim-witted opinions there without fear of ridicule. The Horse, not exactly highbrow itself, was generally tolerant of stupidity, but on any given night it was possible to cross an invisible line and find yourself an object of scorn and derision when you’d been counting on, if not approval, a little forbearance.
“Oh, Jesus Lord, Birdie,” Jocko said, having overheard what Sully whispered to Rub. “Here we go again.”
She shrugged. “I can’t run him, Sully, not until he actually does something.”
“You could eighty-six him on general principle.”
Jocko snorted at this. “If that rubric were indiscriminately applied, who would remain?”
“Only people who use words like ‘rubric,’ ” Sully conceded, “and drink pinot grigio.”
“If he misbehaves,” Birdie assured him, “it’ll be my pleasure.”
“He’s about to,” Sully assured her.
“Ah, fuck,” said Jocko under his breath.
“That you, Joe?” Sully said, leaning forward for a direct line of sight. Jocko leaned back obligingly.
“You know it is, Sully,” replied the man in question, nodding at him in the mirror that ran along the backbar. “You don’t gotta ask.”
“I thought it was you,” Sully went on, nodding genially. “I left my glasses at home and haven’t seen you for a while. I thought you might be your brother.”
“I don’t have no goddamn brother.”
“Well, your parents probably thought you were enough. So, how are things down at the Arms these days?”
“It’s a fuckin’ shithole,” Joe said. “Course I didn’t have no crazy old woman kick off and leave me millions so I could live someplace nice.”
Sully ignored him. “Well, at least none of those people you don’t like are living there, right?”
“Ah, shit,” Jocko grunted, knowing full well where this seemingly innocuous conversation was bound. He hadn’t been present the night Joe got his nickname, but everyone in town knew the story. Angered by something he’d seen on the TV hung above the bar, he’d launched into a diatribe about how the fuckin’ Spinmatics were taking over the whole fuckin’ country. How, he wanted to know, could a white man get ahead when all the jobs went to the fuckin’ Spinmatics. “They already took over Amsterdam,” he said, when somebody asked what manner of redneck bullshit he was spouting now. “Y’all better wake the fuck up. They’ll be over here next.” At some point somebody had guessed what he was going on about: Hispanics. The man was talking about Hispanics. So far as Sully knew, Joe had not returned to the Horse once since getting his nickname.
“I always forget,” Sully was saying. “Who are those folks you don’t like?”
“Niggers?”
“Joe,” Birdie warned.
“No, not them,” Sully said. “The other ones.”
“Fuck you, Sully,” Joe said.
From underneath Sully’s stool came a growl.
“Joe,” Birdie warned again.
“You know the ones I’m talking about,” Sully said, as if he weren’t really listening. To judge by his tone, anyone would’ve sworn the two men were on the friendliest of terms and that Sully was merely trying to jog his pal’s memory. “Help me out here. It’s on the tip of my tongue.”
There was considerable tittering up and down the bar now, and Joe stiffened at the sound. “You really are a cunt,” he said to Sully’s reflection in the mirror, sending most heads swiveling to look at Birdie. Now here was a word you never heard at the Horse, certainly not when she was tending bar. Rub got to his feet, walked in a tight circle and growled a little louder, his ears stiff.
“Rub,” Sully snapped.
“What,” said his friend, still standing patiently behind him.
As his pet lay down again, Sully said, “Oh, I remember,” as if he just that second had. “The Spinmatics.”
“And a cocksucker, too,” Joe added, draining off half his beer.
“Drink up,” Birdie told him. “You’re out of here.”
“It’s a shame you don’t like them better,” Sully said. “Otherwise, you could get together with three or four and cut some records. Joey and the Spinmatics.”
Joe apparently suffered from a limited range of invective, because instead of trying out any other names, he took a different tack, raising his glass high in the air, and slowly poured the beer onto the bar. Just as he’d feared, Jocko got the worst of the splatter.
“You still gotta pay for that,” Birdie said, once this performance was over.
“Nah, I got it,” Sully said, pushing one of the twenties at her.
“The whole tab?” She clearly disapproved of this largesse.
“Why not?” he told her. “Joe and I go way back, don’t we, Spin? No need for hard feelings.”
Joe, having slid off his stool, stood stock-still, deeply and visibly conflicted. Did they go way back, he and Sully? Was this asshole actually apologizing?
“Though the truth is,” Sully continued, “I do prefer his brother.”
At this Joe’s face became a thundercloud, and he balled his right hand into a fist. Rub was on his feet again, and from somewhere deep within his rib cage came a low, guttural rumble that made Joe take note of him for the first time. Though Rub wasn’t a large animal, he appeared fully committed. Joe was anything but, so he relaxed his fist.
“Rub,” Sully said.
“Wh-wh-which?” said his impatient friend.
“Sit!” Sully told him.
The dog did as instructed.
“That’s what I’ve been wanting to do,” said his namesake.
When the door closed behind Joe, Sully turned to face Rub and indicated the now-vacant stool. “Well? What’re you waiting for?”
Rub wasn’t sure. He had wanted a stool, except this one was next to Jocko, who wasn’t his friend, instead of Sully, who was. He’d go from standing alone to sitting alone. As with most of what he felt deeply, he couldn’t begin to express it, so he just pointed at the puddle on the bar. “It’s all wet.”
“True,” Sully said, “but Birdie’ll wipe it up.”
“How about if I move over one?” Jocko suggested, sliding down simultaneously.
This, of course, was exactly what Rub had been hoping for. Yet as he stood regarding it, all he could do was reflect bitterly, as he had occasion to do each and every day, on the terrible disappointment of getting what you thought you wanted, only to discover it wasn’t, that you’d been cheated out of something you couldn’t even name.