In the afternoon Beth brings you an old set of negatives; it looks like something that has been in the files for years. The red dots of the opaquing are childish, splattered at random, sometimes overlapping the halftone. You show it to Tom, laughing. “Look at this!”
He leans closer. “Keep your trap shut. That’s her work — Lisa did those.” You glance at Lisa. She is not looking at you and her expression tells you nothing, but you know she has heard.
Angelo emerges again with his mop wig held by Norman. Flinging out his arms to Lisa and Beth, he sings,
Lisa’s face is pale. Angelo bows, kisses his fingers and retreats, followed by Norman. From the back room their voices can be heard in close harmony:
We two queens of Orient are…
Paul turns the radio on; it comes to life in the middle of Joy to the World, with chimes. You’re thinking that you haven’t bought a card to send to your parents at home; better do that tomorrow. Something nonsectarian and cheery, with a note, “Thanks for the check.”
At four o’clock Beth distributes the pay envelopes. Yours, opened, disgorges two tens, a five, three singles, a quarter, a dime, and a buffalo nickel. Tom counts his money, then leans over to you. “Let’s whoop it up tonight,” he growls. “My wife is supposed to meet me at Leary’s. We’ll get something to eat, then do the bars. Are you game?”
This is the first time anyone in the shop has invited you anywhere. “Where’s Leafy’s?”
“Stick with me, I’ll take you. It’s a crummy place, but the roast beef is good.”
At the end of the day, when people are standing up getting their coats, Rachel still sits at her table with three unopened envelopes. You hear her mutter, “Why did I take this rotten job?”
“You’ll get the hang of it,” you tell her. She does not reply. You think, maybe she’s lonesome and would like to be invited to dinner; too late now.
You walk with Tom northward up the dark street toward a pink sky-glow. Tom is shorter than you; his pork-pie hat is pulled down over his eyes and his hands are in his pockets. Snow crystals around the two of you in the air are so fine that they are visible only in the street lights, but you can feel them melting on your lips. The sensation makes you feel closer to Tom, although neither of you speaks.
You pass a dry cleaner’s, closed, then a corner drugstore, open, but its lights go out as you pass. Then the bars on Canal Street. Leary’s is a dark, narrow beer-smelling place with a row of tables in the back. A jukebox is racketing out “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” The withered gray woman at one of the tables turns out to be Tom’s wife, Myra. She looks ten years older than Tom; the only color in her face is the pink tip of her nose. “Glad to meet you,” she says almost inaudibly. Her fingers are narrow and chilly.
Tom looks happy to be here, comfortable with the beer fumes and the noise. He says, “Tonight is on us, Matt, so the sky’s the limit. We got a little Christmas present from a lawyer, can you beat that? Not enough to buy a bond, too much to throw in the gutter, so we’re going to spend it on drink.”
Tom orders roast beef dinners for himself and Myra. You order corned beef and cabbage, a glass of milk, and a slice of chocolate cream pie. The corned beef is greasy; you eat potatoes and bread to soak it up. Tom is drinking a rye highball with his meal, and Myra has a cocktail with a cherry in it.
You are beginning to wonder what you’ve let yourself in for. You have never been able to afford whisky and have no head for it, but you have never been able to swill beer either. Can you buy an empty jug to pour it into? “I’m saving this for later”?
The next bar has a dance floor and is thumping with a polka. Your beer comes in a stein; it is flat and almost too cold to drink. Tom says in your ear, “Are you having fun? Had any good lays lately?”
All these places seem to be full of the same yellow light. The fourth bar has a piano player doing fancy runs at the end of every phrase, and there is a cover charge. Myra leans thoughtfully over her drink; she has not spoken since she said “Glad to meet you.” Tom beckons you closer. “Know something, we used to have a kid. I ever tell you that? Put’m in a military school. In Virginia. It cost an arm and a leg every year to send’m there. Not counting the extras.” He taps you on the arm with two stiff fingers. “You know what that kid did? He shot himself. Put a bullet in’s rifle and pulled the trigger with his toe. How you like that?”
“Oh, Jesus, Tom.”
“Never mind. Drink up. You still drinking that damn beer? Have a shot of whisky, God damn it. Put hair on your chest.” You order the shot. It is warming after the beer, and makes you feel remote from all disgrace and discomfort.
Tom pays the checks with a sprawl of dollar bills taken from his pocket. Between bars you walk in a close threesome, stumbling and swaying, with Myra in the middle. Her sharp shoulder strikes your ribs in the same place every time. She seems to be singing quietly, but you can’t make out the words or the tune.
Later, you sit in a row on the cane seat. Tom’s and Myra’s heads rock with the swaying of the car. The train emerges from underground, and you cross a bridge across an unknown river. Beyond in the blackness, isolated lights wink like the cottage candles of the damned. You have no idea where you are.
Down the stairs, swaying together on an empty sidewalk, then up another stairway smelling of damp. Tom unlocks the door into a railroad apartment: the first room is the kitchen. He turns on the light over the stove. “Take coat off,” he says. “Just a sec.” Myra has gone through into the next room and is sitting on a dark couch.
You stand in the doorway, not knowing how to get past Tom. Tom gets eggs from the refrigerator, breaks them into a bowl. He puts an iron skillet on the stove.
After a while you realize that he has not moved for a long time. He is standing in front of the stove, swaying a little, head bowed and jaw hanging, as if he has forgotten what eggs are and what a stove is. Myra watches him sphinx-eyed from the other room.
You back away, try to close the door, but the knob slips through your fingers and you can still see into the yellow glow of the kitchen. To your right, a door opens on another yellow kitchen and another motionless Tom. Another just like it opens on your left. You turn and see a fourth room spring to light behind you. Four kitchens, four Toms. Then, one at a time and in the same order, they go out. And you’re alone in the dark.
4. The willows
This is your life, Matt Kolb, and I’m still the murdered twin who follows you around, although in the ripeness of your age you live in France, five thousand miles from Oregon and the basement where my little bones are buried. The lawn and garden are dead like me, the cherry trees have been cut down and the house trashed by renters, but nobody has dug me up yet.
You’re an old party now, and your well-trimmed white beard, you believe, is esthetically pleasing because it balances the bald dome of your skull. In general, the French consider beards unhygienic, but yours reminds them of Colonel Sanders and Wild Bill Hickock. They think of you as a monument, an avant-garde Old West author, and they hang around you at cocktail parties to hear what outrageous or ignorant thing you may come out with next.