The Ice Harvest (2 page)

3

“I
believe that boy hurt me.” Tiny specks of saliva flew from Culligan’s lips onto the passenger window as he spoke. He held his crooked left arm straight out to his side, letting it swing to and fro from the elbow like a pendulum, coming perilously close to Charlie’s right arm with each swing. “This arm hasn’t been right since forty-three.”

“War?”

“Aw, fuck no, I wasn’t in the war. Hockey. See, all the aircraft plants had teams; we used to play out at the ice rink Sundays. A lot of fellas stateside felt like they had something to prove, figured everybody took ’em for four-F or queer or yellow, so we ended up fighting more than playing. I don’t imagine there was ever anybody in the crowd came wanting to watch any hockey.”

“I remember. My dad took me to a couple games; I must have been about six or seven. Tail end of the war.”

“Well, sir, that’s what happened to my arm and my hip, and I got a trick knee too you could probably put down to a time this fat-ass welder body-checked me right into the side of the rink. I went after him with my stick, damn near put out his eye.” The old man smiled placidly, savoring the memory.

Snow had started to come down lightly and the county road was dark, the street lamps few and far between. There was no traffic heading north away from town, and Charlie knew the club would be empty. One last chance for him to listen to the dancers piss and moan about how slow it was, as though Christmas were something he’d dreamed up himself just to fuck them over.

Beside him Culligan recited a litany of all the drunken insults his body had endured over the years: concussions, dislocations, broken bones, a third-degree burn on his good arm. Nearly all of these were directly or indirectly self-inflicted; Rusti’s young admirer was far from the first drunk Culligan had goaded into felonious assault.

“You ever been married, Charlie?”

“What?”

“I said you ever been married?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Then you know what I’m talking about. Deadlier than the male. See this here . . .” Culligan pointed to a jagged, narrow strip of smooth pink skin that neatly bisected his left eyebrow and ran another inch up his forehead. “Another half-inch down I woulda lost the eye.”

“Your wife did that?”

“She sure as hell did. Gave her what for, too.”

“You hit her?”

Culligan was appalled. “I never hit a woman my whole damn life. Christ, what the hell you take me for?”

Charlie shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Fuck no, I walked out on her, left her with two school-age kids to support.”

“Didn’t know you had kids.”

“Sure. Her two, plus another girl, she’s about your age. None of ’em’ll have anything to do with me now. Their mothers poisoned ’em against me.”

“Sorry.”

“Hell, I don’t care. Some of us just wasn’t made to be dads.” He was silent for a moment. “Do you know if Cupcake’s dancing tonight?”

As they pulled into the parking lot Charlie noted, pointlessly now, that the neon sign needed repair again. The dancing girl’s white go-go boots were both dark, and so were the
T
and the
O
in “Tease-O-Rama.” There were three cars in the lot. “Looks like you’re gonna get a show all to yourself,” Charlie said. The snow was coming down a little harder now.

Inside, one of the dancers was shrieking at the bartender, who looked up at Charlie and Culligan’s arrival. The dancer paid them no mind.

“Fuck working Christmas for no money!” She had on a shiny gold G-string and nothing else. “I’m not gonna operate at a loss on a goddamn holiday! I could be at home enjoying Christmas Eve with my kids!”

“Your husband’s got your kids, Francie,” the bartender reminded her in a gentle, monotonous baritone. “They’re in Denver.”

“Fuck you for throwing that in my face, Dennis.” She sat down on a stool and started crying.

“Now, come on, Francie, it’s not so bad. See? Culligan’s here.” Francie looked up, wet-eyed, at Culligan and Charlie. Culligan was overjoyed at the sight of her. “Howdy, Francie. Like your new hairdo.” She had on the same wig she always wore, long black curls that fell halfway down her back. Charlie had known her for ten years and had no idea what her real hair looked like. As far as he knew she might have been completely bald under there.

She ignored Culligan and unloaded on Charlie. “You heard what I told Dennis. I’m not going on. Fuck paying you a twenty-five-dollar stage rental; I’ll be lucky to make ten tonight.”

Culligan was hurt. “You know I’m good for twenty, Francie.”

“That still puts me five bucks in the hole. Fuck paying Bill Gerard five bucks for the privilege of letting that randy old pervert stare up my twat all night.”

Charlie sighed. The old speech, one last time. He’d made it a thousand times in six or seven years, probably a hundred of those to Francie alone. “Francie, you can’t just work the nights you want. You want to work the hot nights, you gotta work the cold. You miss a scheduled night without a goddamn good reason, you lose your spot. Understand?”

“I understand it’s Christmas Eve, there’s nobody
in
here, and I still gotta pay a twenty-five-dollar stage rental even though there’s nobody to fucking dance for!”

Culligan’s voice was thick with hurt and desire. “I’m here,” he choked.

“Go on, Francie, dance for old Culligan,” Dennis droned from behind the bar.

She turned back to him in a fury. “I already told you, even if he gives me twenty I’m still five in the hole!”

“I could make it twenty-five, sweetie,” Culligan whimpered.

“And I’m still dancing for free!”

Charlie held up his hand. “Tell you what, Francie. It’s Christmas Eve. If you’ll go on, your stage rental’s on the house.”

Francie was stunned into an unaccustomed momentary silence. Dennis raised an appraising eyebrow at Charlie, then turned back to his bar inventory. Culligan pressed forward and took Francie by the hand and led her toward one of the tiny stages. She looked back at Charlie, uncertain exactly how to interpret the gesture. “Thanks, Charlie,” she said.

“So what makes you such a friend to the working girl all of a sudden?” Dennis set a beer down on the bar in front of Charlie, then turned and flicked the PA system on.

“Merry Christmas, Dennis.” He picked up the beer and took a long pull at it. On the small stage, Francie had begun dancing for an enraptured Culligan to a syrupy pop song. “Who else is here?”

“Cupcake. She’s in the office. Told her I’d yell if anyone showed up.”

“She pay her stage rental yet?”

“Course she did.”

“Give it to me.”

Dennis looked skeptical, then turned to the cash register. “You clear this with Vic?”

“Don’t have to. I’ll cover it myself if I have to.”

Dennis handed him two tens and a five. “I don’t think that’s the point, Charles. I think it’s the precedent you’re setting.”

“It’s Christmas Eve, Dennis. God’s birthday.” He walked back toward the office with Cupcake’s refund. Francie had already dropped her G-string and she crouched awkwardly, concentrating hard, trying to take a five-dollar bill from Culligan’s palsied hand with her labia.

Cupcake sat in a shiny gold bikini at Charlie’s desk reading a paperback biography of Gandhi, swiveling the chair in listless semicircles to the time of the music outside. She barely looked up as Charlie walked in.

“I suppose the music means we got customers.”

“Just Culligan. Here.” Charlie handed her the money.

“What the fuck is this, my Christmas bonus?”

“It’s your stage rental. It’s on the house tonight.”

She looked skeptically down at the bills in her hand, then shrugged and put the money in her purse. “I can always use twenty-five bucks. Thanks.” She frowned. “I saw Desiray’s kids this morning.”

Charlie swallowed. “Where?”

“They’re staying over at her sister’s house. I brought them each a little present.”

“Kids okay?”

“How could they be? Jesus, Charlie. I don’t think the sister’s too worried about Desiray, either. Good riddance, far as she’s concerned.”

Charlie wasn’t eager to think about Desiray. “Well, she’ll turn up eventually.”

“Oh, yeah, sure she will. Just like Santa’s gonna be coming down the chimney tonight.”

Charlie coughed a little, trying to dislodge a speck of itchy phlegm from his throat. He was trying not to glance too obviously at the safe. “Why don’t you go to the bar and tell Dennis I said to comp you a beer.”

“Comp me?” she said carefully.

“Yeah. I’ll join you in a minute.”

She set her book down on the desk and stood. “This is real odd, Charlie.” She walked out and he heard her delighted squeal through the closed door. “
Cul
ligan!”

He moved to the safe, picked out the combination, and extracted a small brown envelope containing a single black-and-white 35-millimeter negative strip. He held the strip up to the light. The first three images were party pictures of no particular value or interest, but the fourth was a real gem: a city commissioner drunkenly sodomizing a very disinterested-looking Cupcake, her eyes locked directly onto the camera’s lens.

He felt a tiny swell of regret about handing the negative over to Renata, since the commissioner had been a law school classmate and Charlie had once considered him a friend. Bill Gerard would have used it one day anyway, he reasoned, and he pulled out his flask and took a long pull. He wondered if he should tell Vic about it, then decided there was no point. By the time he saw Vic it would be in Renata’s hands.

4

C
harlie felt queasy as he stepped out of the office, his sinuses blocked and his eyes itchy. He pushed through the door into the men’s room, stationed himself before the lone urinal, opened his fly, and let flow a copious stream of urine. He and Vic had once looked at putting in extra urinals and a second stall, but they had decided it was too expensive, coming as it would from funds they could otherwise skim. Besides, Dennis pointed out, another stall would have increased certain customers’ natural inclinations to lock themselves in and masturbate, by reducing the peer pressure from other customers who actually needed to urinate or defecate.

This is the last piss I’ll take here, Charlie thought, looking at the condom dispenser mounted above the porcelain. A cartoon woman with a salacious grin and a psychedelic dress offered latex novelties for fifty cents, ribbed for her pleasure and sold for prevention of disease only. He shook himself off and washed his hands.

A very small, bug-eyed, fortyish character in a robin’s-egg blue leisure suit and Prince Valiant haircut had joined Culligan at Francie’s altar. Cupcake was seated at the bar reading her Gandhi book as Dennis leaned his elbow on the back bar, flipping through a tattered bondage magazine he’d found the day before in the stall in the men’s room. He dangled it from his fingertips as though handling a possibly rabid bat, careful not to brush his fingers against any unidentified smudges. Charlie hopped onto the stool next to Cupcake’s and gestured at her book. “So, what’s the word on old Mohandas K.?”

Cupcake didn’t look up. “Dead.”

Dennis set a beer down in front of him and gestured at Cupcake’s half-empty bottle. “I put hers on your tab.”

Now she looked up, aggravated. “I already told you, he said it’s a comp!”

“I heard you. Charlie . . .”

“Yeah, it’s a comp. I can comp the dancers a lousy High Life once in a goddamn blue moon if I feel like it.” Charlie scanned the room, starting to feel hot and prickly. He needed to get out into the cold air, sober up a little before he headed back to the Sweet Cage.

“All right, Charlie. You’re the boss. I wouldn’t want Vic to find out about this, though.”

“He won’t unless you tell him.”

“How come Vic’s not here tonight, anyway?” Cupcake said.

“Gave himself Christmas Eve off.” Charlie was aware of a slight slowing of his voice, a running together of words, a sure sign it was time to go outside and try to catch his second wind.

“What the fuck does he need Christmas Eve off for? He lives alone. Doesn’t speak to Bonnie anymore, doesn’t see the kids ever, doesn’t have any friends I know of, except the two of you.”

“I think he flew to Cincinnati to see his mom,” Charlie improvised. He pronounced it Sins Naddy. It was time to go.

“No, he didn’t, I saw him this afternoon,” Dennis said. “Stopped in and dropped off some paperwork.”

The front door opened and the college boys from the Sweet Cage walked in, minus the belligerent Ronny. They stopped cold at the sight of Culligan, who was staring openmouthed up at Francie’s rotating mons veneris. Cupcake rose and moved toward the boys. Charlie felt unbearably hot now.

“Shouldn’t you turn down the heat a little, Dennis?”

“Sure. I bet the nude members of our staff would greatly appreciate that.”

“I see your point,” Charlie said, then stood, swigging down his beer. “I better get going.”

He moved for the door, past Culligan. Someone would give the old man a ride home at the end of the night.

He stood there for a moment in the open door. An eight-foot-high wall of concrete blocks stood between it and the parking lot, blocking the view from outside, and the arctic wind whipped around it and under Charlie’s open overcoat, peppering his face with tiny sharp snowflakes.

“Shut the fucking door, Charlie; I’m
naked
up here,” Cupcake yelled, and turning slowly he saw that she was indeed already naked and onstage, the three college boys seated obediently around the table.

“Go on, boys, give ol’ Cupcake a tip; she puts on a hell of a show,” he heard as the door shut behind him. Charlie was certain Culligan didn’t recognize them.

I need to get some food in me, Charlie thought as the Lincoln glided south back into town, the snow coming down heavy and slick. Half the bastards in this town don’t know how to drive on snow. He stepped gently on the brake, tapping it, feeling the car lift each time his foot came up, and he closed his eyes as the Lincoln went into a spin, a full 360 degrees, ending up pointed directly south again when the wheels regained their grip on the road as if by divine providence, with not another driver in sight. He regained control and a chorus of dogs started barking “Jingle Bells” over the AM. He felt good.

Less than half a mile inside the city limits he spotted the dull orange and brown of a Hardee’s sign. He swung into the deserted parking lot, got out of the Lincoln, and gave the front door a hard yank. It didn’t budge and he had to desperately grab for the handle with both hands to keep from losing his balance on the icy concrete. There was a professionally printed sign inside the door:

TO OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS
WE WILL BE CLOSING AT FIVE P.M.
ON CHRISTMAS EVE AND CLOSED ALL DAY
CHRISTMAS DAY SO THAT OUR EMPLOYEES
MAY SPEND THE HOLIDAY WITH THEIR FAMILIES.

“What you got your goddamn sign lit up for, then?” Charlie shouted, kicking at the door. The interior of the restaurant was fully illuminated. He felt like throwing a brick through the plate glass. He turned on his heel and on his first step away from the door felt his left foot sliding along the slick concrete step, then his right, and then his tailbone made solid contact with the frozen sidewalk. He sat there for a moment in disbelief, his ass numb with cold and shock, his head feeling like a ten-pound brick of solid snot, fighting involuntary tears of humiliation and rage. A little green Japanese sedan pulled into the lot and stopped ten feet away from Charlie. A black kid, about fifteen, rolled his window down.

“Hey, you okay?” he said.

Charlie swallowed. “I’m fine. Just slipped and fell.”

“Come on, let’s go,” said the driver. “He’s fine.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, goddamnit.” He maneuvered his feet back behind him, trying to figure out the best way to get back up.

“Merry Christmas,” the kid said, rolling his window back up. The car chugged back onto the street and disappeared into the blowing snow.

He was limping when he made it back to the car. Where was he going to find food at this hour on Christmas Eve? Even the supermarkets were closed.

Sailing down the deserted main artery downtown, listening to the police reporter embellish his Westside tavern disturbance story, Charlie saw lights on in the window of the Brass Candle. He pulled across the empty oncoming lane and slid ten feet to a stop facing the wrong direction precisely before the picture window in front. Through the pine boughs framing it he saw a waitress bringing food to a table full of revelers within. He considered momentarily whether or not to try to turn the Lincoln around or even put it into the parking lot, but in a few minutes the car would be completely blanketed in snow and who’d know which direction it was facing? It seemed like a complicated maneuver, and he had to get food inside him immediately. The parking lot looked full, anyway.

He stepped into the dim yellowish light of the oak-paneled entryway, its walls draped with pine roping and thick red velvet ribbons trimmed with bells and golden cherubs stamped out of foil, the “Hallelujah Chorus” playing over the laughter and shouting coming from the dining room and bar. It felt so much more like New Year’s Eve than Christmas Eve that Charlie had the fleeting sensation that he’d blacked out and spent an extra and possibly fatal week in town.

“Hi, Charlie, Merry Christmas,” the hostess said. She was a plump, pretty woman with short black hair whose name, Charlie thought, started with
C
or
K
, Christine or Kathleen or Cassandra. “Just going to sit at the bar?”

He almost said yes out of habit, then remembered his mission. “Kitchen still open?”

“Sure. You want a menu?” She handed him one. “Table by the front window just opened up.”

“Great.” Charlie went into the small front dining room. As promised, there was an empty table by the window. A tall, pale yellow taper burned in the center of a small arrangement of fir and mistletoe at the edge of the table. He sat and looked around him and, seeing no one he knew at the other tables, stared out the window, ignoring his menu. Everything was orange in the light of the street lamps, even the blowing snow. Things used to look bluish green under the old streetlights, before they brought in these new mercury vapor things. Or were the old ones mercury vapor and these something else? The revival theater across the street was showing
Miracle on 34th Street
. A few customers stood in line in the lobby, waiting to buy tickets. Now and then a car passed, slowly. One came fishtailing wildly down the street, and Charlie watched helplessly as it neared the Lincoln, its ass end swishing wildly right, then left, then right again. But it missed and continued on its way westward, past the Lincoln and on toward some other poor bastard’s pride and joy. He wondered why he was still worrying about the car. After tomorrow it would be Deacon’s. Merry Christmas, you little fuck.