“The police, Jenny,” he says into the speaker. I turn to her but she’s gone. “The police, Beth,” and the other woman goes for the phone on his desk. I run back and grab the other bag and run to his office with it. He tries locking the door but I get it open before he can lock it and push my way into the room when he tries pushing the door closed. The two men jump me from the side once I’m in. All three are now grappling with me, trying to force me down, woman’s on the phone, while I’m holding the garbage bag, trying to break free and throw it at Stovin and ruin his suit and fill his face with trash and knock off his glasses and step on them. But they got my arms tight and I’m going down so before they get me to the ground I rip open the bag from below and it spills out over our pants and shoes and bottoms of their jackets.
“You moron,” Stovin shouts jumping away and slapping at the garbage on his clothes, while the men still hold me and Beth’s on the phone.
“I got the police,” she says. “What should I tell them?”
“No, let the bum go if he wants. Tell them it was a mistake but that you might call right back. And you,” to me, “you leaving or do we really have to get them here and charge you with entering, battery, vandalism and the rest of those and sue you for my new suit and theirs and her dress?”
“I didn’t get anything on me,” she says.
“You were assaulted or almost. We too and that’s enough for a lawsuit.”
I’m being held down, one man pinning my arms, other sitting on my knees and holding down my feet. Around us is my garbage.
“Phone,” I say. “I want them here so I can make a fuss and tell them you’re a goddamn cheat and fraud.”
“Police around here are my friends and know I’m none of those things. But I don’t want to talk to you. I want to get rid of you and clean up this place. Sit on him till the police come. Beth, get them right over. I’ll get a couple of the boys to make sure he stays down.”
He leaves the room. The two men I saw sudsing the truck before come in and take the place of the two on top of me who get up and brush off their suits and shake their feet in the air. Flecks of whatever was on their shoes fly around. “I’ve got to change,” one of them says.
“I didn’t get it bad as you,” the other says. “Mustard. I bet it stains. And what the hell’s this red? — What is that,” he asks me, “wine?”
I shake my head. The one who wanted to change, leaves. Police come. I’m allowed up. Policeman says “No charges are being made against you so just go. Come here again uninvited and no matter what charges aren’t pressed, we’ll take you in.”
I brush myself off.
“Do that outside,” one with the mustard says.
I start for the door, policemen right behind me walking me out. I want to grab a lamp and throw it somewhere but don’t want to get clubbed.
“Will you thank Jennifer for me for being so nice?” I yell back.
“I’ll thank your mother,” one of the truckers says.
I leave, pass the cleaned garbage truck, start walking to my bar though it’s a long way and it’s cold and looks like snow. The police in their car follow me for a block and drive past and one waves and they make a right and when I get to the corner thinking I’ll wave back, they’re not there.
I tape a sign on my bar window saying “Tomorrow, big party, going away wake sort of, all day, blizzard or shine, so come one and all if you’ve been customers of mine anytime over the years or my father’s or grandpa’s and if you like bring your family and friends, good people welcome,” and go to the hotel and get drunk in my room and sing songs I knew as a boy and haven’t sung since when about young love and war and fall asleep and in my dream I’m in a room big as a mansion’s biggest room, a baron’s hall or whatever it’s called, not where the people eat but meet after dinner and maybe have brandy and dance, hundred-fifty feet long, forty feet wide, and it’s a bar with stools for a hundred drinkers and round oak tables in back for two hundred diners and great paintings and grand chandeliers all lit instead of my prints and fluorescent tubes and all my customers well dressed almost in tuxedo and evening gown clothes and the wood floors shiny like I could never get mine and wood walls as if just moistened with oil and no television set or butts and cocktail napkins on the floor or cough-making cigarette smoke and spit and everyone enjoying themselves and talkative though not raucous and throwing down dollars after dollars for their drinks and I’m behind the bar not so much pouring anymore as supervising a dozen bartenders to and I’m in a suit with a shirt and tie like Stovin’s and also a vest and my hands in my pants pocket and watch fob chain across my chest.
Next day I sleep late and get to the bar around noon. There’s about ten people waiting in front and one says “We thought you were joking about the party and would never show up. What do you mean by it, they tripled your rent so you’re through?”
“Through as I’ll ever be in this bar and probably also the business,” and I open up and say “Help me bring the cases of beer and soda up from downstairs and put them in the icebox and refrigerator. I’ll look after the liquor and try and make sandwiches, for as I forgot to say in my sign, you can have all you want of that too.”
So my party begins. Weather cooperates by being milder. Some women help me out bagging the garbage and making sandwiches and boiling eggs. In an hour the bar’s jammed. In two almost no more people can fit in and an hour later a policeman squeezes himself through to the bar I’m behind and says “This place is a firetrap if you let any more in. You’ll have to admit them one at a time when someone leaves.”
A man I never saw before but who says he used to come and pick his dad off the floor of my grandfather’s bar years ago volunteers to be the doorman so long as he’s constantly supplied with bitters and gin. I give him the bitters bottle and tumbler of ice with my best gin and promise he’ll get more whenever he calls for it and he sits on a stool by the door and starts letting people out and in.
I don’t hold back on the drinks but can’t do as most people want me to and that’s leave the bottles on the bar, as it’s against the city’s tavern law and I want the party to last till its natural end. When someone gets drunk or sick I tell a couple of men to put him in the back to rest or in a cab if he wants to go home or back to work and if he wants to tell his family he’s on his way or to pick him up here, to use my phone.
Another policeman comes in and says “You know you’re not permitted to serve alcohol to anyone intoxicated,” and I say “Have I ever broken the law to you before? So give me a break on my last day and forget it this once. Have a drink yourself and sandwich or whatever you like on the house — scrambled eggs,” and everybody around us joins in with me and says “Forget it, Nick,” or “Officer, this is a once-in-a-lifetime bar party so have some fun and don’t spoil it for everyone.” He says “I guess once in my life I can try it if no one calls the precinct to confess my sins,” and accepts a drink in a coffee mug and drinks it and another and two more policemen come in and one says “So this is where you are, Nick, we thought you were mugged,” and they take off their hats and coats till only their regular flannel shirts show and drink from coffee mugs and eat too.
Someone has a radio and plays loud music and I dance though I can’t dance with a young woman I never met and then with her little girl and next with the girl’s rag doll and a couple of couples dance on the tables and a large group dances on the sidewalk. One man dances on the bar till I ask him off and then say to him “What the hell, dance all you want on it, step on hands, kick the beer mugs off. This is the end of the place anyway and we’re all good sports here, so do what you want as long as your aim’s true so no one gets hurt and it’s in clean fun.”