“Your brother says things are really going to pick up when the store starts delivering pizza,” Wayne said.
Dalt put a bottle of Bud on the bar in front of Wayne. He knew that Wayne didn’t drink out of a glass. Then Dalt stretched and looked out to sea.
“How are you this evening?” Boat called down the bar. “Nice to see everybody in the world isn’t swooning to Chopin.” He pronounced the name as if it were two words. Agnes looked at Boat, and then at Wayne, as if she intended to join the exchange. When she caught Dalt’s eye, she pointed to her empty glass instead.
“You gonna do all right with another one?” Dalt called to Agnes. “We don’t want you setting off on safari or nothing.”
“I’m doin’ all right,” Agnes said.
“What if you was to wake up at the top of Mount Everest?” Dalt said. He had not moved from where he stood after handing Wayne his beer.
“Bacardi and soda,” Agnes called, as if Dalt didn’t know what she had been drinking.
“Think she’d be a good pizza chef?” Dalt said. “Send her over to my brother, get her a job and make an honest woman out of her?”
“Your brother got a restaurant?” Agnes said.
“Now what are you doin’ showin’ interest in work?” Dalt said. “Didn’t you move down to Florida to retire? Don’t let me tempt you, Agnes. Ain’t you worried I’ll tempt you?”
“Not to work,” Agnes said, her top lip curling in an approximation of a smile.
If you bantered long enough, Agnes always made some sexual innuendo. Sometimes Dalt played straight man just to please her. This was one of those times. He poured a Bacardi and soda and added it to her tab. Then he walked out from behind the bar and put it on her table.
“I told him he should open a separate pizza place, but he never listens to me,” Dalt said, coming back to where Wayne sat and wiping the counter. “He’s antsy. That’s the trouble with him. He was born two minutes before me, and he’s never let me forget it. But I tell him: I like the easy life. With him, it’s hustle, hustle. I don’t understand his life philosophy. I do a little fly fishing, he loves to go out deep-sea. He’s got a different personality from me. If I had to deliver groceries for my brother, I’d sooner leave for Timbuktu.” Dalt popped open two more beers and put them in front of Wayne, who had five minutes to drink them and drive to the shopping plaza before he’d be late. “Last call for happy hour!” Dalt said, then surveyed the suddenly eager faces. Dalt liked regular guys, and Wayne was a regular guy; he didn’t come to the Azure looking for anybody’s opinion, or to discuss anything in particular. Some of the customers were as predictable as the hand ticking around the clock: You knew just the direction they’d move in, and exactly the pace at which they’d proceed. You got to know the ones who had blowfish bladders, and the ones who started sliding around the barstool before the ice had even melted in their first drink. Wayne was a good-looking guy who never flirted with the women. He probably had an okay home life, even though — or hell, because — he didn’t have any kids. He’d talk sports with you if that was what you wanted, and the week before he’d been a good enough citizen to jump-start another guy’s car — a guy he’d just met ten minutes before.
It would have surprised Dalt to know that Wayne also had his doubts about Dalt’s brother’s character — so much so that he felt whatever he made off with was his due. He wouldn’t touch money that wasn’t his, but groceries were another matter. It was all very small-scale: He’d help Lee gather the groceries and throw a few items into a box that weren’t on the phoned-in list, which he’d pocket before he delivered them. This meant that Wayne often ate smoked oysters for lunch, and exotic soups such as strawberry-melon. During the week, he fixed himself microwave chimichangas at the lawn-and-landscaping office and enjoyed bottles of pineapple-papaya juice.
As he hopped off the barstool, he and Dalt nodded. Wayne began to think up the excuse he would give to Dalt’s brother, feeling that being late to work was also justified because his employer was a man whose own brother couldn’t stand him. The car. He had never used that simple and expedient lie before. He would say that he’d stopped to change the tire.
In the car, he shook out half a stick of gum, unwrapped it, and began to chew, turning the radio dial to find a station that suited him.
Driving along, Wayne was rather pleased with himself for all the plans he had, all the decisions he had made at the Azure, and even for his good luck in living where palm trees always looked splendid in the light of a full moon. Briefly, he envied the person who cut in front of him on a Harley, but by the time he pulled into the shopping-center parking lot he was glad to be himself: a man who had just struggled to change a tire, and who had triumphed; a man lucky enough to have a wife who wanted more of his time; a man totally sober, so that every word he spoke was sure to be believed. A great Bob Marley song sped him on his way, socks shoved into his pocket, unlaced shoes on the floor behind his feet.
THIRTEEN
A week before Will’s arrival, Wayne paced through the house. It was Thursday night, one of the two times a week Corky worked late at Bathing Beauties, the new swim wear store that had opened last summer in Seabreeze Plaza. With her 20 percent employee’s discount, Corky had already bought a lace poncho as a birthday present for her sister in Albuquerque; it hung from one of the bedposts. She had sewn a label with her sister’s name embroidered in pink thread in the back of the neck. Some of Wayne’s shirts had labels with his name sewn in, too, although Corky had stopped putting them in when she began laundering his shirts the second time the dry cleaner raised his prices in a little more than a month.
It had been a hot day, and after planting thirty rhododendrons with only one helper at the entrance to a new housing development, Wayne had quit early and come home to stretch out and take Tylenol for his headache. When he was lying down he was fine, but he felt antsy and kept getting up to walk around the house. There was a lot of cleaning up to do before Will came — clearing things out of Corky’s sewing room so that the sofabed could be opened, finding a place for the plants on the glass window shelves so the curtains could be pulled, putting things in boxes, and getting rid of the newspapers and magazines. He didn’t feel like working any more that day, and he didn’t like being told what to do and when to have his son visit by his ex-wife. He was very glad Corky had gotten the phone call instead of him.
He sat on the bed and opened the night-table drawer for a pack of cigarettes. When Corky was around he smoked Vantage cigarettes. When she was gone he reached for the Camels, which he kept hidden beneath the clutter. His one contribution to housekeeping was sorting, folding, and putting away the wash. He had said when he married Corky that he would do the wash, but it seemed that he never found time, or that he washed the clothes wrong. By unspoken agreement the plan got revised to Corky washing and Wayne folding. Putting away the clothes meant that he had a hiding place for his Camels. As he closed the drawer, he saw the socks he would be wearing next Christmas — the ones he wore every year, imprinted with Santa in his sleigh, the nub of wool that was Rudolph’s nose glowing very red, in spite of many washings, against the navy-blue wool. Because she had had the flu, Corky’s sister had spared them a Christmas visit last year, but this year she would probably come, and her son, who had had two operations on his crossed eyes, and her beagle, who would wet the kitchen floor in his excitement any time anyone entered or left the house, and perhaps her estranged husband, who had a way of showing up around holiday time, temporarily sober until the moment when the rum for the punch was missing or he called from the police station after some skirmish in a bar. Wayne had once had to bail him out on Christmas Eve. Everyone had piled into the car at the last minute, deciding to be forgiving, and Wayne had driven off into the night with a car full of unhappy people who had resolved to smile in spite of their sorrow. He had even played Christmas music on the car radio. As if that hadn’t been bad enough, some other lunatic, in the throes of last-minute shopping, had run a stop sign and crimped his fender. Later, Wayne had said to Corky that they should have called the police and insisted that Jeremiah’s eyes had not been crossed until the moment of impact. He often joked about the boy’s affliction, which infuriated her. Then again, she was the one who had relatives who were like homing pigeons.