Sam looked at Beezer, impressed by the majesty of his mania. Then he turned to Nick. “How about another round for me and my neighbor here?”
Nick looked at Sam. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
“Just one more?” asked Sam, trying to smile in the manner of Daniel One.
Or maybe it was in the manner of Daniel Three.
Either way, he smiled.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Nick. “I’ll bring you a glass of water. Drink that first, then we can talk about another round.”
“Whatever you say, barkeep.”
As Nick went to get the glass of water, Sam’s phone began to vibrate on the bar.
“Hey, buddy,” said Beezer, “it’s your phone again. That’s gotta be the tenth time it’s buzzed. Maybe you’d better answer it.”
Sam looked around.
“Do you hear something buzzing?” Then, picking the phone up off the bar, he dangled it over his glass of water and let it drop. “Because I don’t hear any—”
But before Sam could finish, the big fellow on his right put a hand on his shoulder, turned him around, and punched out his lights.
Flat on his back, Sam opened his eyes to find a bright light staring down from overhead.
Oh my God, he thought. I’m on an operating table!
But then the ill-shaven visage of Beezer leaned into view.
“Hey, Nick. He’s back!”
Now the bartender leaned into view.
“Hallelujah,” he said.
Sam began to move, but Nick put a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you just stay put for a minute, friend. You took a tumble and hit your head.”
Despite Nick’s suggestion, Sam swung his legs to his right and sat up on the bar. As he tried to put the pieces together, he noticed that the jukebox wasn’t playing, that there was blood on his shirt, and that most of the barstools were empty—including the one where the big guy in the baseball cap had been sitting.
“That man hit me!” said Sam, pointing an accusatory finger at the empty stool.
“Who?” said Nick. “Tony?”
“The big guy who was sitting right there. I put my phone in my water and just like that, he spun me around and hit me.”
“What you put your phone in was Tony’s vodka and soda. So…” Nick gave the shrug of universal absolution.
With Beezer’s help, Sam climbed down from the bar. In the mirror behind Nick, he saw that the area around his left eye had begun to swell.
“That’s gonna be quite a shiner,” acknowledged Nick.
“I’ve never had a shiner.”
“Well, there you go,” said Beezer with a grin. “They don’t call it The Glass Half Full for nothing!”
When Sam sat back on his old stool, Nick put a plastic bag filled with ice on the bar and a martini beside it.
“Here,” said Nick. “This one’s on the house.”
“I never drank my water.”
“You’ve sobered up just the same.”
As Sam put the bag against the side of his face, he watched Nick going about his business.
“You don’t like me, do you?”
“I don’t know you.”
“Science says we can form lasting impressions of people in as short as two minutes,” said Sam.
“Is that so?”
“That’s true,” said Beezer. “I read it in a magazine.”
“Listen, Nick… Can I call you Nick?”
“You can call me whatever you want.”
“I know we don’t know each other. And I’m sorry if I’ve rubbed you the wrong way. But I’d still like to know why.”
Nick gave Sam another look, as if he was sizing him up with a little more care. Then, after nodding twice, mostly to himself, he put both hands on the bar.
“My wife and I have been married for thirty-four years,” he began. “We grew up in the next town over and got pregnant when we were twenty-one. At the time, I had a job as a long-haul trucker, a union job making ten bucks an hour, and Betty was working at the hospital. We saved a little money and bought a little place with a little backyard figuring that maybe, God willing, we’d have a second kid. But the second kid? It turned out to be triplets. Identical twin boys and a girl. I didn’t even know that shit could happen. With four kids under the age of three, I had to give up the long-haul trucking and Betty gave up the nursing. But we made it work. I got a local job in construction and painted houses on the weekends. The kids grew up eating mac and cheese and going to public school, the three boys sleeping in one room and Sally in another. But along the way, my wife and I realized that Sally—the runt of the litter—was the smart one. Smarter than any of her brothers. Smarter than either of us. So we decided to send her to private school. We squeezed the lemon a little harder. And sure enough, by senior year she’s placing at the top of her class and speaking three different languages. She gets into motherfucking Yale. Sure, we get some financial aid, but it’s middle-class financial aid, which is to say, not enough. So we have to sit the boys down and explain that we’re all going to make some sacrifices. The twins are going to have to look at state schools or maybe work for a couple of years before college. Which is what they do, more or less, with no complaints. Then in the middle of her junior year, our little Sally comes home for Christmas and she can’t get out of bed. She stays in her room half the day with the shades drawn, saying she doesn’t want to go outside. She certainly doesn’t want to go back to Yale. So we get her a therapist—another squeeze of the lemon. Two months go by and Sally’s therapist says that what Sally needs is for everyone to sit down together. Not just me and Betty, you understand, but all six of us. Ed’s gotta get a special leave from his unit at Camp Pendleton, Jimmy takes the bus home from SUNY Oswego, and Billy comes up from Fort Lauderdale, where he’s waiting tables during the day and going to culinary school at night. But they all come back. And we crowd together into this therapist’s little office. And it’s awkward. Nobody’s saying anything. Ten minutes go by, maybe fifteen. But then suddenly, one of them says something and the four of them start talking. They talk about their childhoods. They say what they think about us and what they think about each other. They say what they think about themselves. And you know something? That was the most interesting day of my life.”
Nick picked up Sam’s empty glass.
“So, yeah. When all is said and done, I suppose your father’s more my kind of guy.”
Sam understood that this last remark was meant to be a slap in the face, and that’s what it felt like. He stood up from the stool, nearly knocking it over. He took two brand-new hundred-dollar bills from his wallet and made a show of tossing them on the bar. Then he walked out of The Glass Half Full and into the pouring rain.
As he jogged across the lot toward his car, Sam was already regretting throwing the money on the bar. Nick was bound to take it as proof of all his worst suspicions about guys in custom suits and fancy cars. But Sam hadn’t thrown the money on the bar to show off his wealth. He had thrown it to show that he was the sort of man who didn’t need to drive six hours to Las Vegas and beat improbable odds just so he could keep a folly of his own invention on life support.
Sam climbed into his car and yanked the door, which eased to a close as the rain poured in on the upholstery. When he pushed the ignition, Sam happened to glance at the clock and saw that he was already two hours late.
“Shit.”
Taking his phone from his pocket, Sam pressed the side button but to no effect. It took him a moment to realize that the phone wasn’t responding because he had submerged it in Tony’s vodka and soda.