As for the inevitable round of relations, she had gone out with some of the more presentable of them-Connolly, Big Jacks, once even with Sloan, who was a kind if somewhat simpleminded fellow with a narrow lamb’s face and who took her to a fancy gilded French restaurant in the city with his monthly check from his ancient folks in Rochester-but nobody had yet called Dora a slut because it was plain to see she was a decent gal without airs or too special a self-view and because the rest of them probably still held out hope she might ask for an escort home after last call.
Hector had warmed up to her more slowly than did the others, though it was nothing she said or did. His nature precluded any easy rapport and even after all these years at Smitty’s, the others knew to leave him alone for a while when he showed up at his usual midnight hour in the midst of their din and merriment. There always rose a hearty murmur for him when he came through the paint-chipped metal door, which he’d acknowledge with a nod, but then he would sit alone in the back booth with two double shots of Canadian whiskey that Smitty automatically poured for him. By the time he was at ease, they had maybe geared down a bit from their joking and quarrels and songs and were settling into the night’s long, slow coast to some nether realm. On the nights he didn’t want to be part of the company, Hector might still be wearing his janitor’s coveralls and stinking not a little of ammonia and sourness and other human fetors, and on these occasions they knew to keep their distance; he’d be quieter than usual and down his drinks without a word and Smitty would know to double him again before he had to ask. If it happened some unwitting newcomers made a comment about his work clothes, or if a certain crew from Edgewater called the boys out from the street, then all hell could break loose, Hector and maybe Big Jacks out back by the Dumpsters hammering away at the interlopers until somebody up in the surrounding apartments called the cops and the whole lot of them got hauled in. The local precinct sergeant knew Hector’s family from upstate New York and admired his fighting skills, and Hector would be let out first, a few hours later, once levied with the usual hundred-dollar fine for engaging the resources of the municipality, payable to the sergeant in cash.
Tonight there had been no expectation of fighting but instead a birthday party for Hector, which Smitty always threw for a small group of the regulars. None of them much liked marking such mile-stones-who needed reminding of the advancing years and, in their cases, the wayward trajectories, the diminished expectations?-but the beer flowed freely from the taps and Smitty poured plenty of shots on the house and more often than not everyone ended up shoulder to shoulder along the curved end of the bar, happily wrecking some sentimental song.
The evening, however, had started somewhat inauspiciously; early on, before Hector showed up, a stranger had come in asking after him. When Hector arrived, Smitty took him aside and pointed out the tall man in the dark suit sitting stiffly in the middle booth. The man wouldn’t say what he wanted. Hector immediately figured it was about the gambling debts of his employer and friend, Jung; last week Hector had put himself between Jung and some baby-faced thug-in-training and without thinking it through grabbed the kid’s throat when he threatened to maim Jung’s kids. There were some things one should never say. The kid turned purplish and from the smell half-shat his pants and had practically crawled out of Jung’s office in the mini-mall. Why the sports book would now dispatch an older accountant-looking fellow to accost him confused Hector, but he didn’t hesitate when the stranger suddenly approached him, catching this one by his tie and collar, if only to get a better fix on things. The man gasped something through his contorted cheeks and when Hector relaxed his grip he was able to cough out “June Singer.” At first it meant nothing, but then the man said, “She said to tell you, from the war. She wants to see you. June, from the war.”
June, from the war.
As if he could forget from where.
Hector didn’t really hear any of the rest, pushing away from the man as if he’d heard a dooming spell, and Big Jacks quickly stepped in and ushered the man out.
Hector asked for a drink and Smitty gave him a double and then another and anyone could see not to ask him any more about it. It was too still and Connolly asked aloud if there was going to be a party anytime soon and Hector said let’s go and there was a shout of assent. Smitty then lined up on the scarred walnut top of the bar fifty-five jiggers of Canadian whiskey, one for each of Hector’s years, and the whole gang and Dora and some underage rich kids come slumming from Alpine (whom they didn’t actually mind) finished them in a relay, Smitty and then Dora especially insisting Hector step to and fro to take every fifth shot, which he did, as always, without word or sigh or gasp. Just sipping cool tea. Though tonight he was moving faster, as though he were filling a bucket poked with holes. He was locally famous for the ease with which he performed such feats. He was in prime form tonight. He kept hearing the stranger’s words and he grew thirstier. And so he helped himself, as he’d done all his adult life, even as he couldn’t really get drunk the way others got drunk. Unlike his father or cousins or anyone else in the Brennan line, Hector was a great drinker, maybe a historic drinker, he could drink as if his body were not a vessel but a miraculous device of filtration, a man layered inside with charcoal and sand.
Dora was not similarly constituted, and after a few shots of the whiskey she resumed drinking the jug wine Smitty stocked just for her and didn’t seem unduly affected until later, when she said “Hey-ya” to Hector outside the john and leaned into his arms and blacked out for a good half-minute, her hair smelling to him of cigarette smoke and riverside nettles and the fish fry she’d surely had for dinner. There was no women’s toilet at Smitty’s and the one stall was where Dora and the few other women who wandered in had to go. He stood there, propping her up with his hands girding the soft flesh of her back, and to his comrades at the bar it must have looked as if he were fancying a dance. But it wasn’t solely Dora he was thinking of, or even the many satisfactions of female grace. It was certainly not June, whom he had never wanted to lay his hands upon. In truth it was another woman, whom he had not pictured in what seemed a lifetime, a woman June could tell of and probably would, a recounting that would only bring him misery.
But he was done with misery, yes? It was his birthday, and here was sweet Dora in his arms, a faint smile breaking though her boozy fade-out. When she came to she righted herself and said, “Thanks for catching me.”
“I was here.”
She brushed her temple with the back of her hand. “That’s never happened to me before.”
Hector nodded, even though he was sure the statement was almost certainly untrue.
He said, “It’s real late.”
“Even for you?”
“I’m okay.”
“You don’t say that like you believe it.”
He didn’t reply, instead just leaning her against the wall where the pay phone used to be, the dirty pocked surface scrawled over with expletives and fake phone numbers and the hasty, anatomically exaggerated drawings that gave no quarter to anyone’s sense of decency or beauty.