Out on the Cutting Edge (22 page)

We walked downtown a few blocks and I asked Willa if she'd mind stopping at Paris Green. She looked at me, amused. "For a guy who doesn't drink," she said, "you sure do a lot of barhopping."

"Somebody I want to talk to."

We cut across to Ninth, walked down to Paris Green and took seats at the bar. My friend with the bird's-nest beard wasn't working, and the fellow on duty was no one I'd seen before. He was very young, with a lot of curly hair and a sort of vague and unfocused look about him. He didn't know how I could get hold of the other bartender. I went over and talked to the manager, describing the bartender I was looking for.

"That's Gary," he said. "He's not working tonight. Come around tomorrow, I think he's working tomorrow."

I asked if he had a number for him. He said he couldn't give that out. I asked if he'd call Gary for me and see if he'd be willing to take the call.

"I really don't have time for that," he said. "I'm trying to run a restaurant here."

If I still carried a badge he'd have given me the number with no argument. If I'd been Mickey Ballou I'd have come back with a couple of friends and let him watch while we threw all his chairs and tables out into the street. There was another way, I could give him five or ten dollars for his time, but somehow that went against the grain.

I said, "Make the phone call."

"I just told you--"

"I know what you told me. Either make the phone call for me or give me the fucking number."

I don't know what the hell I could have done if he'd refused, but something in my voice or face must have gotten through to him. He said,

"Just a moment," and disappeared into the back. I went and stood next to Willa, who was working on a brandy. She wanted to know if everything was all right. I told her everything was fine.

When the manager reappeared I walked over to meet him. "There's no answer," he said. "Here's the number, if you don't believe me you can try it yourself."

I took the slip of paper he handed me. I said, "Why shouldn't I believe you? Of course I believe you."

He looked at me, his eyes wary.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I was out of line there, and I apologize. It's been a rough couple of days."

He wavered, then went with the flow. "Hey, that's cool," he said.

"Don't worry about it."

"This city," I said, as if that explained everything, and he nodded, as if indeed it did.

He wound up buying us a drink. We had survived a tense moment together, and that seemed to carry more weight than the fact that we had created the tension ourselves. I didn't really want another Perrier, but Willa managed to find room for another brandy.

When we stepped outside, the fresh air sucker-punched her and almost knocked her down. She grabbed my arm, caught her balance. "I can feel that last brandy," she announced.

"No kidding."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

She drew away from me, her nostrils flaring, her face dark. "I'm quite all right," she said. "I can get home under my own power."

"Take it easy, Willa."

"Don't tell me to take it easy. Mr. Holier-than-thou. Mr.

Soberer-than-thou."

She stalked off down the street. I walked alongside her and didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Forget it."

"You're not mad?"

"No, of course not."

She didn't say much the rest of the way home. When we got into her apartment she swept up the faded flowers from the kitchen table and started dancing around the floor with them. She was humming something but I couldn't recognize the tune. After a few turns she stopped and began to cry. I took the flowers from her and put them on the table. I held her and she sobbed. When the tears stopped I let go of her and she stepped back. She began undressing, dropping her clothes on the floor as she removed them. She took off everything and walked straight back to the bedroom and got into the bed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

"Stay with me."

I stayed until I was sure she was sleeping soundly. Then I let myself out and went home.

I tried Gary's number in the morning. I let it ring and no one answered, neither man nor machine. I tried him again after breakfast with the same result. I took a long walk and tried the number a third time when I got back to the hotel. I put the television on, but all I could find were economists talking about the deficit and evangelists talking about the Day of Judgment. I turned them all off and the phone rang.

It was Willa. "I would have called you a little earlier," she said,

"but I wanted to make sure I was going to live."

"Rough morning?"

"God. Was I impossible last night?"

"You weren't so bad."

"You could say anything and I couldn't prove you wrong. I don't remember the end of the evening."

"Well, you were a little fuzzy there toward the end."

"I remember having a second brandy at Paris Green. I remember telling myself that I didn't have to drink it just because it was free. He bought us a round, didn't he?"

"He did indeed."

"Maybe he put arsenic in it. I almost wish he had. I don't remember anything after that. How did I get home?"

"We walked."

"Did I turn nasty?"

"Don't worry about it," I said. "You were drunk and you were in a blackout. You didn't throw up, turn violent, or say anything indiscreet."

"You're sure of that?"

"Positive."

"I hate not remembering. I hate losing control."

"I know."

There's a Sunday afternoon meeting in SoHo that I've always liked.

I hadn't been there in months. I usually would spend Saturdays with Jan.

We'd make the rounds of the galleries and go out for dinner, and I'd stay over, and in the morning she'd fix a big brunch. We'd walk around and look in shops and, when the time came, go to the meeting.

When we stopped seeing each other, I stopped going.

I took a subway downtown and walked in and out of a lot of shops on Spring Street and West Broadway. Most of the SoHo art galleries close on Sunday, but a few stay open, and there was one show I liked, realistic landscapes, all of them of Central Park. Most of them showed only grass and trees and benches, with no buildings looming in the background, but it was nonetheless clear that you were looking at a distinctly urban environment no matter how peaceful and green it appeared. Somehow the artist had managed to instill the city's hard-edged energy in the canvases, and I couldn't figure out how he'd done it.

I went to the meeting, and Jan was there. I managed to focus on the qualification, and then during the

break I went over and sat next to her.

"It's funny," she said. "I was thinking of you just this morning."

"I almost called you yesterday."

"Oh?"

"To see if you wanted to go out to Shea."

"That's really funny. I watched that game."

"You were out there?"

"On television. You really almost called?"

"I did call."

"When? I was home all day."

"I let it ring twice and hung up."

"I remember the call. I wondered who that was. As a matter of fact--"

"You wondered if it was me?"

"Uh-huh. The thought crossed my mind." She had her hands in her lap and she was looking at them. "I don't think I'd have gone."

"To the game?"

She nodded. "But it's hard to say, isn't it? How I might have reacted. What you'd have said, what I'd have said."

"Do you want to have coffee after the meeting?"

She looked at me, then looked away. "Oh, I don't know, Matthew,"

she said. "I don't know."

I started to say something, but the chairperson was rapping on the table with a glass ashtray to indicate that it was time to resume the meeting. I went back to where I'd been sitting. Toward the end I started raising my hand, and when I got called on I said, "My name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic. Over the past couple of weeks I've been spending a lot of time around people who are drinking. Some of it's professional and some is social, and it's not always easy to tell which is which. I spent an hour or two in a ginmill the other night having one of those rambling conversations, and it was just like old times except I was drinking Coke."

I went on for another minute or two, saying what came to mind.

Then someone else got called on and talked about how her building was going co-op and she didn't see how she could afford to buy her apartment.

After the prayer, after the chairs were folded and stacked, I asked Jan if she felt like coffee. "Some of us go to the place around the corner," she said. "Do you want to come along?"

"I thought just the two of us."

"I don't know if that's a good idea."

I told her I'd walk her to where she was going and we could talk on the way. Once we were outside and had fallen into step together, I couldn't think what it was I had wanted to say, and so we walked a little ways in silence.

I've missed you, I said a couple of times in my mind. Finally I said it aloud.

"Have you? Sometimes I miss you. Sometimes I think of the two of us and I feel sad."

"Yes."

"Have you been getting out?"

"I couldn't get interested. Until the past week or so."

"And?"

"I fell into something. Without looking for it, which I guess is the way it happens."

"She's not in the program."

"Not hardly."

"Does that mean she ought to be?"

"I don't know who ought to be anymore. It doesn't matter, the whole thing's not going anywhere."

After a moment she said, "I think I'd be afraid to spend a lot of time with someone who was drinking."

"That's probably a healthy fear."

"Do you know about Tom?" We went back and forth for a moment, with her trying to describe a long-term member of downtown AA and me unable to place him. "Anyway," she said, "he was sober for twenty-two years, kept up on his meetings, sponsored a lot of people, everything. And he was in Paris for three weeks over the summer, and he was walking down the street, and he fell into a conversation with this pretty French girl, and she said, 'Would you like to have a glass of wine?' "

"And he said?"

"And he said, 'Why not?' "

"Just like that."

"Just like that, after twenty-two years and God knows how many thousands of meetings. 'Why not?' "

"Did he make it back?"

"He can't seem to. He's sober for two days, three days, and then he goes out and drinks. He looks terrible. His drunks don't last long because he can't stay out, he winds up in a hospital after a couple of days. But he can't stay sober, and when he shows up at a meeting I can't bear to look at him. I think he's probably going to die."

"The cutting edge," I said.

"How's that?"

"Just something somebody said."

We turned the corner, reached the coffee shop where she was to meet her friends. She said, "Don't you want to join us for a cup of coffee?" I said I didn't think so, and she didn't try to talk me into it.

I said, "I wish--"

"I know," she said. She reached out a hand and held mine for a moment. "Eventually," she said, "I think we'll probably be able to feel easier with each other. Now's too soon."

"Evidently."

"It's too sad," she said. "It hurts too much."

She turned from me, headed for the coffee shop. I stood there until she was through the door. Then I started walking, not paying much attention to where I was going. Not much caring.

Once I'd walked out from under my mood I found a pay phone and tried Gary's number. No one answered. I caught a subway uptown and walked over to Paris Green and found him behind the bar. The bar was empty but there were several tables of people who'd come for a late brunch. I watched as he made up a tray of Bloody Marys, then filled a pair of tulip-shaped glasses half with orange juice and half with champagne.

"The mimosa," he said to me. "Reverse synergy, the whole less than the sum of its parts. Drink orange juice or drink champagne, I say, but not the two at once out of the same glass." He proffered a rag and made a show of wiping the bar in front of me. "And what may I get you?"

"Is there coffee?"

He called to a waiter, ordered a cup of coffee for the bar. Leaning toward me, he said, "Bryce said you were looking for me."

"Last night. And I called you at home a couple of times since then."

"Ah," he said. "Never made it home last night, I'm afraid. Thank God there are still ladies left in the world who find a poor barkeep a creature of romance and intrigue." He grinned richly behind his beard.

"If you'd reached me, what would you have said?"

I told him what I had in mind. He listened, nodded. "Sure," he said.

"I could do that. Thing is, I'm on until eight tonight. It's slow enough right now but there's nobody around who could cover for me. Unless--"

"Unless what?"

"How accomplished a bartender are you?"

"No," I said. "I'll come by for you around eight."

I went back to my hotel and tried to watch the end of a football game but I couldn't sit still. I got out of there and walked around. At some point I realized I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and I made myself stop for a slice of pizza. I put a lot of the crushed red pepper on it, hoping it would stir me up a little.

A few minutes before eight I went back to Paris Green and drank a Coke while Gary evened out his cash and checks and turned it all over to his relief. We walked out together and he asked me the name of the place again. I told him, and he said he'd never noticed it. "But I'm not on Tenth Avenue much," he said. "Grogan's Open House? It sounds like your basic Irish saloon."