He bought a sandwich and a can of V8 juice at a nearby deli. He walked a mile downtown, stopping along the way to salvage that morning’s Times from a trash can, and a block below Fourteenth Street he came to Jackson Square, a little pocket park with benches and ornamental plantings. There was a fountain, turned off on account of the drought.
Fountains don’t use water, they recirculate the same water over and over, and the loss from evaporation doesn’t amount to much. But they look as though they use water, so the law requires that they be turned off during water shortages.
He found this fascinating.
He ate his sandwich, drank his V-8, and read his newspaper. When he’d finished he put the paper and the sandwich wrapper in a mesh trash can and set the empty juice can on top of it, where it could be easily retrieved by one of the men and women who made a living redeeming cans and bottles.
Then he left the park and walked south and east on West Fourth Street.
It was on an afternoon like this one, a lazy overcast afternoon in the middle of the week, that Eddie Ragan had first realized material success was not likely to come his way.
He’d been behind the stick at the Kettle, with a pair of beer drinkers at one end and a regular, Max the Poet, drinking the house red at the other. The TV was on with the sound off, and the radio was tuned to an oldies station, and Eddie was polishing a glass and thinking how this was the time he liked best, when the place was empty and peaceful and quiet.
And that’s exactly why you’ll never amount to anything, a little voice told him. Because nobody makes any money working a shift like this. When you’re jumping around playing catch-up with fifty thirsty maniacs, that’s when the tips roll in. And that’s when an ambitious bartender rises to the occasion, and loves every minute of it.
There were bartenders who wanted to make a lot of money so they could spend a lot of money — on cars, on travel, on the good life. They wanted a Rolex on their wrist and a babe on their arm, wanted to fly out to Vegas and leave their money on the craps table or stay home and put it up their nose. And there were others who wanted to make a lot of money and use it to get their own joint up and rolling, so they could put in even longer hours and make even more money — or bust out and start over, if that’s how it played out.
And there were guys who were just doing this for a little while, waiting for a chance to quit their day job (or night job, or whenever the hell their shift was) and make it as an actor or a painter or a writer. And yes, he’d been one of those wannabes himself for a stretch, taking acting classes and getting headshots taken and making the rounds, even picking up small parts in a couple of showcases. But he was no actor, not really, and by the time he’d gotten a third of the way through a screenplay (about a bartender who got laid all the time, which was art improving on life, wasn’t it?) he realized he wasn’t a writer, either. One thing about paint, he didn’t have to try it to know he’d be no good at it. He’d helped a girlfriend paint an apartment once, and that was plenty.
Nope, he was a lifer in the bartending trade. He knew that, and as of that particular weekday afternoon — he figured it was something like two years ago, though he hadn’t marked the date on his calendar — he’d known he wasn’t going to be a great success at it, either. The thought, which he’d instantly recognized as wholly true, had depressed him at first, and that evening he drank a little more than he usually did, and the next morning he felt a little crummier than usual, and took three aspirins instead of two, plus an Excedrin to keep them company.
By the time the hangover was gone, so was the depression. The fact of the matter was that he’d never really wanted to get anyplace. He just thought he ought to want to, like everybody else. But he didn’t. His life was fine just the way it was. He never had to work too hard, he never worried much, and he got by. There were things he’d never have or do or be, but that was true for everybody. You could be the richest, most successful man on the planet and there’d always be one woman who wouldn’t love you back, one mountain you couldn’t climb, one thing you wanted to buy that nobody would sell to you.
He had a good life. Especially on lazy afternoons like this one, when he didn’t have much to do, and the perfect place to do it in.
The Mets were playing a day game in Chicago, and the set was on with the sound off, so you could watch Mo Vaughn take the big swing without some announcer telling you what you were seeing. On the radio, the Beach Boys were proclaiming the natural superiority of California girls. Max the Poet sat with his usual glass of red, reading a Modern Library collection of Chekhov’s stories, and an older dude with a tweed cap was at the corner by the window with a bottle of Tuborg, and two semiregulars, wannabe actors or writers, he couldn’t remember which, were drinking glasses of draft Guinness and talking about the woman whose household goods they’d just moved from her ex-boyfriend’s place in NoHo to a studio apartment in the Flatiron district. She was nice, they agreed, pretty face and a great rack, and the tall one said he got the feeling she liked him.
The other one shook his head. “That was flirting in lieu of a tip,” he said.
“She tipped us.”
“She tipped us five apiece, which is the next thing to stiffing us altogether. In fact it’s worse, because when they stiff you maybe they didn’t know any better, or maybe they forgot.”
“You know Paul? Big Paul, got the droopy eyelid?”
“Only sometimes.”
“What, like you only know him on months that got an r in them?”
“The lid only droops sometimes, asshole. And I know what you’re gonna say, because I seen him do it. He never gives ’em a chance to forget, or not know better, because he tells ’em in front that a tip’s expected.”
“ ‘Just so you know, sir, we work for tips.’ Takes brass balls, but only the first time. Only I have to say I’ve seen it backfire.”
“I guess you got to know when to do it. He works it right, they’re scared of him, they overtip. The only thing is it feels like extortion, and for chump change at that.”
“Well, chump change is what we just got, all right, but maybe it’s all she could afford. I still say she liked me.”
“You gonna make a move?”
“I might. Give her a chance to settle in first.”
“Give her a chance to forget all about the studly moving man.”
“You think? How long is too long, that’s the question.”
Jesus, Eddie thought, he could listen to this shit all day.
He turned to see how the guy in the cap was doing with his Tuborg. The bottle was still there, the glass still filled to the brim, but the guy was gone. He’d come in what, half an hour ago? Sat there with his tweed cap halfway down his forehead and his plaid shirt buttoned up to his neck and his shoulders hunched forward, never spoke a word. There’d been a Tuborg coaster on the bar, and the guy had picked it up and tapped it with his forefinger. Eddie’d said, “Tuborg? Only got bottles,” and the fellow nodded, and put a twenty on the bar. Eddie hadn’t said anything when he brought the beer or when he came back with the guy’s change, and whenever he’d glanced over there the guy was in the same position, and so were the glass and the bottle.
And now he was gone. Unless he was in the john, which was possible. He turned to the TV to see how the Mets were doing, and somehow the score had gotten to be seven to four, with the Mets on the short end of it. They’d been up four-three last time he’d noticed.