Self-Esteem (20 page)

Darrin sat on a bench outside the ramshackle building reading the morning newspaper. When Cal brought his car to the curb, Darrin coolly looked up like he was waiting for his limousine. There was something about Darrin’s demeanor that triggered both admiration and fear in Cal. Darrin’s confident manner spoke of a well-adjusted person, someone free of complexes and insecurities. But occasionally Cal felt Darrin’s disposition was a cover for something else — not fear, but anger maybe. And it was brief moments like this that made Cal wonder if Darrin was so together after all.

Darrin got in the car without looking at his driver. He closed the door and nodded for Cal to drive on.

“Good morning,” Cal said.

“Morning.”

Cal looked ahead attentively. “So what’s the story?”

Darrin seemed almost sedated. “Just drive. I’ll tell you where to go.”

Cal slowly drove down the street, keeping his speed under thirty miles an hour. “You all right?”

Darrin looked at Cal. “Of course I’m all right. You all right?”

“Me? Yeah, I guess. I’m a little nervous about missing school. I’m worried that…”

“You’re worried your
mommy
is going to catch you skipping school, huh?”

Cal was baffled by his tone. “What’s up with you?”

Darrin started to laugh under his breath. “Just relax man. I’m just fucking with you. That’s all.”

Cal smiled nervously. He didn’t like being fucked with.

“Turn here,” Darrin said. “Boy, do I have a surprise for you.”

Cal felt a little scared. “I don’t know if I like this,” Cal said softly.

“Really.” Darrin looked at him directly. “Don’t you like surprises? I do.”

Cal thought about his dad. He wondered why he felt so negative about him.

“Life is a series of surprises for those who really live it.” Darrin’s words were almost heartfelt. “Parents try to tell their kids they can set their own course in life. Do this, do that, life will be good and safe and predictable. It’s all a lie, man. Your father has this racket to make money based on this…”

“Don’t talk about my father, okay?”

Darrin furrowed his brow. “It’s surprising to hear you say that, friend.”

Cal thought about how he should try being a little nicer to his dad
.
Then he wondered what he was doing with this stranger and what kind of trouble he was getting himself into.

Cal didn’t have to worry about getting into trouble with his dad. His dad was busy getting into his own trouble. Just half a mile from Jenny’s apartment, east of the garment district and just before the river, sat a seedy bar Crawford had known in his college days — Sharkey’s Saloon. The bar’s most noteworthy feature was that it complied with the alcohol laws of California exactly to the minute: open at 6am, closed at 2am. Most people might be surprised just how many drunks are ready for a drink at 6am, but they were never surprised at Sharkey’s.

The proprietor, a man named Sharkey O’Neil, was an old Army veteran who had served in the Korean War. One drunken evening years ago, Sharkey told Crawford he had lost his soul in the war, and that his alcohol intake was actually just medication to stop the pain of no longer being a complete man. Crawford had never heard of someone drinking to remedy the loss of a soul.

“You lost your
soul
in the war?” Crawford once asked him.

Anyone could see that Sharkey had lost his right arm and his left leg (from the knee down) in Korea,
but his soul?
Crawford could never tell if Sharkey was being serious or just eccentrically droll.

“Yep, parts of me are still over there,” Sharkey would say in his thick Brooklyn accent. “My soul’s somewhere around the thirty-eighth parallel.” He’d take a giant gulp of Irish whiskey and then guffaw wildly. “I ain’t going to hell. Lost my soul already. Damn. Hot damn. Soul’s in Korea,” he’d say slamming another shot. “Life’s just filled with irony, ain’t it?”

Crawford was never sure if Sharkey was punning or if he truly believed his spirit had died in the Far East. Either way, Crawford found Sharkey’s penchant for talking about losing his soul rather than his limbs refreshing.

But Crawford wasn’t really interested in seeing the bar again, or old Sharkey O’Neil for that matter. He just needed a place to sit down and have a drink.
Or two.
Or four.
As morning traffic was just starting to mill around the downtown area, drinking from a paper sack in the car was probably not a good idea.

Crawford thought he would have trouble finding the place; after all, it had been years. And the last time he’d been there he wasn’t exactly in the frame of mind to memorize directions for a trip back two decades later. Crawford started to think it was possible (hell, probable) the place was no longer open. The police couldn’t be happy with such a dive. And the way Sharkey drank, it would have taken a miracle and a liver transplant for him to still be alive. Crawford was ready to give up when he looked up and saw the place directly in front of him, its neon sign hanging at a 45-degree angle from the base where it once sat.

“Oh yeah,” he thought. “That’s what it looks like.”

Crawford pulled across the street to park and immediately noticed a man lying face down just in front of the ramshackle front door. He thought it was a man. Crawford got out of his car, and as he walked closer, he could see the person was lying with his (or her) forehead resting on a rubber doormat that graced the entrance. He (or she) had short, dark hair and eye-catching red spots on the back of his (or her) neck. His (or her) clothing was of a western style, popular with both rural men and inner-city lesbians. Crawford crouched down to look at the spots on the neck. They looked like bee stings or something. Perhaps they were liver spots from excessive drinking. Didn’t matter. Nothing he could do. So he stepped over him (or her) and thought about nice it was the bar was open.

Crawford walked in hoping to find the old bird that left his soul in Korea, but no such luck. A brawny man who looked more like a bodyguard than a bartender — too dumb to pour a drink but smart enough to bash someone’s head in — sat behind the bar watching TV. There were just two customers in the place, old men, both wearing suits with large lapels (probably from the forties) sitting at a table sharing a pitcher of beer. It was perfect.

I guess when you get older you got to take it easy in the morning.

Crawford bellied up to the bar, getting an unusual look from the barkeep.

“What can I get you?”

“A shot and a beer,” Crawford said. “For starters.”

“What kind of shot?” the man said with a deliberately unpleasant sneer.

“Irish whiskey.”

The man lazily reached for the bottle.

“So where’s Sharkey this morning?”

“Sharkey?”

“You know, Sharkey O’Neil. Like the name of the place.”

“Oh. There ain’t no Sharkey, man. The guy that bought the place just didn’t change the name.” The man poured Crawford his shot.

“So you don’t know what happened to him? Sharkey, I mean.”

The man pulled out a pilsner glass, looking annoyed. “No, man. Don’t know what happened to Sharkey. Sorry.” He gave a sarcastic smile while he filled the glass.

Maybe the old guy was dead, Crawford thought. Then he wondered if Sharkey ever met up with his soul again.

The bartender put the beer in front of Crawford. “Three bucks.”

Crawford pulled out a fifty from his wallet and put it on the bar. “Keep ‘em coming,” he said.

As the bartender took the bill, Crawford noticed something hanging on the wall behind him. It was Sharkey’s prosthetic arm, dangling by its strap from a nail. Crawford lifted the shot in a silent toast and downed the warm whiskey in one big swig. “Sharkey,” he said under his breath. “I hope you got your soul back.”

The bartender settled into his TV show again, a local morning talk show that he watched with limp eyes.

His indifference bothered Crawford for some reason, perhaps because Sharkey was always so attentive. That was how he remembered him.

“You know,” Crawford started, “I haven’t been in a bar this comfortable in a long time.”

The man nodded apathetically.

“Places like this just seem really warm and inviting.”

The bartender wasn’t going to be coaxed into a conversation. “Would you like to watch TV?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Crawford said sipping his beer. “Just not any kids shows.”

The bartender put the remote control in front of him. “Of course. Anything you want.” The bartender picked up a crate of empty beer bottles and walked away to the back.

Crawford started flipping channels.

There was a cable news program with a helicopter shot of a suburban school. The caption under the image read, “School Shooting.”

Crawford flipped the channel and took a sip of beer.

There was a trash-TV talk show with a young black girl, probably in her mid-teens, wearing a glossy, hot pink outfit. It clung tightly to her large breasts and thighs. She danced in a strange side-to-side wobble as the audience taunted her with boos and hisses. Crawford thought she looked like a prostitute who didn’t know how pitiful she was.

“Y’all just jealous ‘cause I know what I want,” she says, standing and turning around, shaking her plump bottom. “I can get what I want ‘cause I loves myself. Y’all don’t know…”

It’s even more pathetic
that people start their day watching this shit
. He flipped the channel.

There was a black female judge in one of those court-TV shows. A gaunt man with a light complexion and a heavy Midwestern accent was shaking his head. “Thing is, your Honor, I tried to do everything to please her.”

Then an unattractive woman, apparently the man’s wife, spoke up loudly. “You didn’t do squat!” she shrieks. Then quietly addressing the judge, “He didn’t do a damn thing for me, your Honor, except make me feel like dirt. My self-esteem was gone the day he walked his skinny butt through the door.”

“Then why did you stay with him?” the judge asks.

Crawford flipped the channel.

Ah, yes — the lovely Jan Hershey, so big her talk show had syndicated reruns on cable.

Who would watch reruns of this crap?

“I think the main thing here is that parents need to talk to their children. We always need to keep communication open to help improve their self-”

Crawford turned off the TV, mocking her. “We need to talk to our children.”

Crawford took another big gulp off his beer. He looked over his left shoulder and saw the bartender staring at him.

“Need another?”

“What I tell you?” Crawford grunted.

Cal had started to get nervous right about the time Darrin told him to get off the freeway just south of downtown. He had never been to this part of town and so knew little about it, but its reputation was notorious. Gangs. Drugs. Violence. Actually, it was more industrial than he thought, with railroad tracks across every intersection and several towering smokestacks bellowing out smoke from God-knows-what.

“This is a gang neighborhood?” Cal asked.

“No, man. The residential neighborhoods are east of here. That’s where all the crime is. This is all manufacturing. You can’t even get shot down here.” Darrin took a deep breath and smiled. “You smell that?”

“What?”

Darrin cracked his window. “You smell that?”

Cal didn’t have to breathe in heavily. “It smells like shit.”

Darrin laughed. “That’s exactly right. Waste disposal. Big industry around here. If you ever bring a girl down here be sure and tell her you didn’t fart.”

“Why would I bring a girl down here?”

“Waste disposal,” Darrin said coolly. Darrin raised his eyebrows slightly then laughed. “You need to relax, man.”

“What are we really doing down here?”

“Just keep driving,” he said, his eyes straight ahead. “We’re almost there.”

Cal sensed that Darrin was filled with anticipation, incapable of sitting still as they drove.

“I want to surprise you,” Darrin said.

Darrin instructed Cal to turn down a narrow road with a series of abandoned buildings on it. Most of them were brick, probably built fifty or sixty years ago.

Darrin smiled with satisfaction. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” Then he recognized their destination. “Right here,” he said pointing.

“Here?”

“Yep.”

Cal pulled into the parking lot slowly, trying to avoid the rubbish that was strewn all over it. It was mostly broken glass and rusty nails from an assortment of wood pieces that came from no telling what. Cal turned off the engine. The building was like the others on the block except for a strange, faded sign that graced one wall.

“My mom’s going to find out I skipped school, Darrin. I think I should leave.”

“No she’s not. Chill, dude.”

“This is it?”

“This is it.”

Cal was so frightened he couldn’t move. “I don’t know, Darrin.”

Darrin was genuinely irritated. “You don’t know? For a thousand dollars apiece? All we got to do is drive across town. It’ll be a breeze. Watch.” Darrin opened the car door.

“I thought you said…”

“I said what?” Darrin said, with genuine anger.

“No wait, man.”

“Quit being such a fucking pussy,” he said.

Cal was shocked by Darrin’s anger. “You want me to chill?”

“Stay here then,” Darrin said getting out of the car.

Cal was more afraid of staying in the car. He got out and locked the doors with his remote, wondering if his car would still be there when they came back. He walked quickly after Darrin, sidestepping the debris on the ground, with a mixture of apprehension and exhilaration. “Wait,” he called. “Darrin, wait.”

Darrin turned around and smiled.

“Sure, man. No problem.”

With a short kick, Darrin broke open the rusted metal door that served as the building’s only entrance.

“You’ve been here before?” Cal said.

Darrin didn’t say anything. He just walked inside, motioning for Cal to follow. “Come on.”

Light shone down from small horizontal windows, which lined the top of the twelve-foot brick walls. The place was filthy, a thick soot lining every inch of the place. There were chunks of wood and metal on the floor. One wall was showered with giant burn marks. There was a pile of old sewing machines in a corner.