It was getting dark. Out in the harbor, where bay met and kissed ocean, a lonely foghorn sounded once, then again. Nearer, a buoy slapped itself, the mild lash of a rope on hollow metal. The air thickened, became moist, and already the few fall stars twinkled desperately, trying to shine through the heavy night coming.
They rose, and moved on. As Bill pushed his chair back he saw Snooky regarding him inscrutably through the small front window; the old bar owner nodded once in salute, and Bill waved back. There was more drink in him than he thought. He stood and found the world turning for him momentarily; then it steadied and Paul and Jimmy were there beside him. There was a heaviness in the pocket of his coat and he felt down to find the smooth glass of an unopened pint of bourbon. He left it there, tightening the collar of his coat around his neck.
They turned south, passing Port Boulevard once again, where the bright lights of the shops and stores were beginning to turn to the dimmer ones of closing time. Bill felt oddly warm and peaceful. He remembered a time when he had stolen a newspaper from one of the stands next to Woolworth's, because his old man liked the Tribune so much and wasn't buying it because the factory had had a layoff and they were keeping every nickel until they found out how permanent it would be. He'd walked two blocks, fast, with the paper tucked so tight under his arm it hurt, and then when he finally slowed down he looked down to see that he had taken The New York Times by mistake. He'd sneaked the paper back to the newsstand, not so much out of guilt as that if he had brought the Times home his old man would know he'd stolen it and whip him till his pants bled.
They passed the Boulevard, leaving the lights behind. Again the buoy slapped itself, and suddenly Bill crossed the boardwalk, facing the Bay; he put his arms on the railing and looked down the steep embankment before turning to his two friends. They saw he had a newly opened bottle of bourbon in his hand.
"Had enough?" Jimmy asked.
Bill answered, "Never, I want to toast you two guys now." He held the bottle out straight over the railing. His head swam but his arm was steady as the rocks below. "To the two biggest bastards I know."
He offered Paul the bottle, and, after Paul swallowed, he was astonished to see Jimmy take it also, a discreet sip passing into his mouth. "Mother of God," Bill said, his eyes growing wide, clutching at his chest. "The world is surely ending when Jimmy Hoffman takes a drink." Jimmy shrugged sourly and handed the bottle back.
"Do you know," Bill said, pausing to lighten the bottle himself, "what I thought of the other day? I thought of the time the three of us went looking for that old man in the chair. Remember? There was that story we heard, I can't remember any of it, but there was something about an old man who sat in a chair all the time."
He looked at his friends; Paul was staring out at the water, Jimmy moving a hand along the railing, lips puckered, the taste of alcohol still in his mouth.
"Come on," Bill continued, "don't you remember? It was one of the biggest things we ever did. We found the guy in the chair. We must have been in third, no, fourth grade. Mrs. Johnson was our teacher. She still at the school, Paul? You ever see her?"
"She's Vice Principal," Paul said flatly.
"You see? I remember it was fourth grade because we had Mrs. Johnson for our teacher and because that was the year we all fooled Benny Lakeland into asking his old man for a box of rubbers for Christmas. You remember that? The poor dumb bastard didn't know what a box of rubbers was."
Jimmy was smiling, and suddenly Paul broke into a laugh. "I remember that."
"Don't you remember the other thing? The guy in the chair?"
"Do you?" Jimmy asked, oddly.
"Sure I do!" He stopped, racking his memory. "Somebody told us all about this guy who did nothing but sit in a chair in a little room somewhere in Greystone Bay, and the three of us went looking for him, and we found him."
"And?"
"And nothing! That's all there is. What's the big deal? The point was, we found the guy and nobody else did." He pulled the bottle up to his mouth and kept it there a long time. "Jeez, you guys are bastards all right."
"I remember," Paul said, almost in a whisper.
"There, you see!" Bill's eyes brightened.
Paul took the bottle from him and they all looked out over the Bay. There wasn't much to see now, but they had never needed eyes here anyway. The ears and the nose did all the work, with the salt in the air and the good dampness that was always there, especially in the summer, and the squawk of gulls and the tiny splash they made when they dived to snare a shiner from just below the surface of the water. The foghorn wept again, out somewhere in the loneliness, and now, close by, they heard that tiny splashing sound and then the triumphant sound as a gull reared blackly up away from them, its prize in its mouth.
"This is a beautiful place," Bill said quietly.
The others nodded, and then Paul used the bottle before Bill took it back.
The night closed in on them, and they walked on. South, still, along the boardwalk that creaked in places like the steps in a haunted house. "You remember the time we went to that haunted house near South Hill?" Bill began, but then he said, "Forget it." He was awash in alcohol, and the red and white neon lights stabbed at his eyes painfully, making him shield them. Everything was too bright, surrounded by too much darkness. He heard Paul and Jimmy walking beside him, but had to reach out his hands to clutch their coats to make sure they were really there. He wanted to throw up, but instead, took the bottle to his mouth again, as a baby might take a nipple.
"Where are we?" he said, not sure if the words had made it to his lips, but he nodded when Jimmy answered, "Harbor Road still, down near the end."
"Ah," he said, once more wanting to throw up and then suddenly, from far away, he heard a vomiting sound but was surprised to find that it wasn't himself but Jimmy who was bent double.
"Never could hold your liquor," Bill said, slurring out a laugh. "One drink in his whole friggin' life and he barfs up. Here, have another." He held the bottle under Jimmy's nose but Jimmy pushed it gently away, rising up slowly.
"Where are we now?" Bill asked, and then he stared at the front of the building they stood before.
"This is it. Goddammit, this is it!" There was drunken victory in his voice. He turned to his two companions, who only stared at the front glass window, a small square cutout with a neon-scripted Bud sign that was not lit.
"This is where the guy in the chair was!"
Suddenly he heaved over, throwing the acidy contents of his stomach onto the small stoop in front of the bar. He stood, cleaning his mouth with his sleeve, and then found that the hand within the sleeve still held a bottle with a half-inch of bourbon in it. His stomach protested loudly, but he took it down anyway, closing his eyes momentarily before focusing them again on the building before him. He dropped the empty bottle and it spun once on the sidewalk before settling, label down, next to the stoop.
The liquor, all-encompassing as it was, had now deposited him in a place that was crystal-clear. He saw the door, the brass handle on the door-
"We're going in."
His leg lifted, and he was up on the stoop. Without looking, he knew that Paul and Jimmy were with him. He could feel their bodies beside him, their wordless rapport.
"You don't remember anything?" Paul asked; his voice was low and Bill couldn't locate Paul's face to go with the voice.