The Times Are Never So Bad (3 page)

So I wanted to want a girl, but I didn't, not even when these two pretty ones came in almost every night I worked and sat at the bar and talked to me when I had the time, and gave me signs with their eyes and the way they joked with me and laughed at each other. I could have had either one, and I don't know how the other one would have taken it. Sometimes I thought about taking both of them back to my place, which is maybe what they had in mind anyway, but that wouldn't be the same as having a girl I wanted to want, and I couldn't get interested enough to go through the trouble. Once, before Polly, I went to a wedding where everyone got drunk on champagne. I noticed then something I hadn't noticed before: girls get horny at weddings. I ended up with two friends of the bride; I had known them before, but not much. They were dressed up and looking very good, and when the party broke up we went to a bar, a crowded bar with a lot of light, one of those places where the management figures it draws a crowd with all kinds in it, so one way to keep down fights and especially guys pulling knives is have the place lit up like a library. I sat between them at the bar and rubbed their thighs, and after we drank some more I had a hand up each of them; it was late spring and their legs were moist, squeezing my hands; then they opened a little, enough; I don't remember if they did this at the same time or one was first. Then I got my hands in their pants. The bar was crowded and people were standing behind us, drinking in groups and pairs, buying drinks over the girls' shoulders, and I was stroking clitoris. When I told Alex this he said, How did you drink and smoke? I said I don't know. But I do know that I kept talking and pretending to each girl that I was only touching her. I got the drinking done too. Maybe they came at the bar, but pretty soon I couldn't take it anymore, and I got them out of there. But in the car I suddenly knew how drunk and tired I was; I was afraid I couldn't make it with both of them, so I took the plump one to her apartment and we told her good night like a couple of innocent people going home drunk from a wedding. Then I brought the other one to my place, and we had a good night, but every time I thought of the bar I was sorry I took the plump one home. Probably the girl with me was sorry too, because in the morning I took a shower and when I got out, the bed was made and she was gone. She left a nice note, but it was strange anyway, and made the whole night feel like a bad mistake, and I thought since it didn't really matter who I got in bed with, it should have been the one that was plump. She was good-looking and I'm sure was not lonesome or hard up for a man, but still for the rest of the day and that night I felt sorry when I remembered her leaving the car and walking up the walk to her apartment building, because you know how women are, and she was bound to feel then that her friend was slender and she wasn't and that was the only reason she was going home alone drunk, with juicy underpants. She was right, and that's why I felt so bad. Next day I decided to stop thinking about her. I do that a lot: you do some things you wish you hadn't, and thinking about them afterward doesn't do any good for anybody, and finally you just feel like your heart has the flu. None of this is why I didn't take the two girls this summer back to my place.

What is hard to explain is why, when I knew Polly wasn't going to press charges, I stayed here instead of giving my boss some almost true story. I thought of some he would believe, or at least accept because he likes me and I do good work, something just a few feet short of saying Hey, lookit, I was running from a rape charge. But I didn't go back, except one night to my apartment for my fishing gear and guns and clothes and groceries. Nothing else in there belonged to me.

When I came up here that night I did it, I went to my place first and loaded the jeep with my weights and bench and power stands. So when I knew nobody was after me, all I did was work out, lifting on three days and running and swimming in the lake on the others. That was first thing in the morning, which was noon for everybody else. Every day was sunny, and in the afternoons I sat on a deck chair on the wharf, with a cooler of beer. Near sundown I rowed out in the boat and fished for bass and pickerel. If I caught one big enough for dinner, I stopped fishing and let the boat drift till dark, then rowed back and ate my fish. So all day and most of the night I was thinking, and most of that was about why I wasn't going back. All I finally knew was something had changed. I had liked my life till that night in June, except for what Polly was doing to it, but you've got to be able to separate those things, and I still believe I did, or at least tried to hard enough so that sometimes I did, often enough to know my life wasn't a bad one and I was luckier than most. Then I went to her house that night and I felt her throat under the Kabar, then her belly under it. I don't just mean I could feel the blade touching her, the way you can cut cheese with your eyes closed; it wasn't like that, the blade moving through air, then stopping because something—her throat, her belly—was in the way. No: I felt her skin touching the steel, like the blade was a finger of mine.

They would call it rape and assault with a deadly weapon, but those words don't apply to me and Polly. I was taking back my wife for a while; and taking back, for a while anyway, some of what she took from me. That is what it felt like: I went to her place torn and came out mended. Then she was torn, so I was back in her life for a while. All night I was happy and I kept getting hard, driving north and up here at Alex's, just remembering. All I could come up with in the days and nights after that, thinking about why I didn't go back to my apartment and working the bar, was that time in my life seemed flat and stale now, like an old glass of beer.

But I have to leave again, go back there for a while. Everything this summer is breaking down to for a while, which it seems is as long as I can keep peaceful. Now after my workout I get in the hot shower feeling strong and fresh, and rub the bar of soap over my biceps and pecs, they're hard and still pumped up; then I start to lose what the workout was really for, because nobody works out for just the body, I don't care what they may say, and it could be that those who don't lift or run or swim or something don't need to because they've got most of the time what the rest of us go for on the bench or road or in the pool, though I'm not talking about the ones who just drink and do drugs. Then again, I've known a lot of women who didn't need booze or drugs or a workout, while I've never known a man who didn't need one or the other, if not both. It would be interesting to meet one someday. So I flex into the spray, make the muscles feel closer to the hot water, but I've lost it: that feeling you get after a workout, that yesterday is gone and last night too, that today is right here in the shower, inside your body; there is nothing out there past the curtain that can bring you down, and you can take all the time you want to turn the water hotter and circle and flex and stretch under it, because the time is yours like the water is; when you're pumped like that you can't even think about death, at least not your own; or about any of the other petty crap you have to deal with just to have a good day; you end up with two or three minutes of cold water, and by the time you're drying off, the pump is easing down into a relaxed state that almost feels like muscle fatigue but it isn't: it's what you lifted all that iron for, and it'll take you like a stream does a trout, cool and easy the rest of the day.

I've lost that now: in the shower I see Polly walking around town smiling at people, talking to them on this warm dry August day. I don't let myself think anymore about her under or on top of or whatever and however with Vinnie DeLuca. I went through that place already, and I'm not going back there again. I can forget the past. Mom still grieves for Kingsley, but I don't. Instead of remembering him the way he was all those years, I think of him now, like he's forever twenty years old out there in the pines around the lake, out there on the water, and in it; Alex and I took all his stuff out of here and gave it to his wife and Mom. What I can't forget is right now. I can't forget that Polly's walking around happy, breathing today into her body. And not thinking about me. Or, if she does, she's still happy, she's still got her day, and she's draining mine like the water running out of the tub. So lately after my workout I stand in the shower and change the pictures; then I take a sandwich and the beer cooler out to the wharf and look at the pictures some more; I do this into the night, and I've stopped fishing or whatever I was doing in the boat. Instead of looking at pictures of Polly happy, I've been looking at Polly scared shitless, Polly fucked up, Polly paying. It's rime to do some more terrorizing.

So today when the sun is going down I phone Alex. The lake is in a good-sized woods, and the trees are old and tall; the sun is behind them long before the sky loses its light and color, and turns the lake black. The house faces west and, from that shore, shadows are coming out onto the water. But the rest of it is blue, and so is the sky above the trees. I drink a beer at the phone and look out the screen window at the lake.

‘Is she still living with Steve?' I say to Alex. A month ago he came out here for a few beers and told me he heard she'd moved out of her folks' house, into Steve Buckland's place.

‘Far as I know,' Alex says.

‘So when's he heading north?'

Steve is the biggest man I know, and he has never worked out; he's also the strongest man I know, and it's lucky for a lot of people he is also the most laid back and cheerful man I know, even when he's managed to put away enough booze to get drunk, which is a lot for a man his size. I've never seen him in a fight, and if he ever was in one, I know I would've heard about it, because guys would talk about that for a long time; but I've seen him break up a few when he's tending bar down to Timmy's, and I've seen him come out from the bar at closing time when a lot of the guys are cocked and don't want to leave, and he herds them right out the door like sheep. He has a huge belly that doesn't fool anybody into throwing a punch at him, and he moves fast. Also, we're not good friends, I only know him from the bar, but I like him, he's a good man, and I do not want to fuck over his life with my problem; besides, the word is that Polly is just staying with him till he goes north, but they're not fucking, then she'll sublet his place (he lives on a lake too; Alex is right about New England) while he stays in a cabin he and some guys have in New Hampshire, and after hunting season he'll ski, and he won't come back till late spring. Alex says he's leaving after Labor Day weekend. I have nothing against Steve, but Vinnie DeLuca is another matter. So I ask Alex about that gentleman's schedule.

‘He's a bouncer at Old Colony. I think they call him a doorman.'

‘I'll bounce his ass.'

‘He might be carrying something, you know. With that job.'

‘Shit. You think anybody'd let that asshole carry a gun?'

‘Sure they would, but I was thinking blackjack. Want me to come along?'

‘No, I'm all set.'

‘If you change your mind, I'll be here.'

I know he will. He always has been, and I'm lucky to have a brother who's a friend too; I'm so lucky, I even had two of them; or unlucky because now I only have the one, depending on how I feel about things at the time I'm thinking of my brothers. I bring a beer out and sit on the wharf and watch the trees on the east side of the lake go from green to black as the sun sets beyond the tall woods. Then the sky is dark and I get another beer and listen to the lake sloshing against the bank, like someone is walking on it out there in the middle, his steps pushing the water around, and I think about Kingsley in the war. At first I don't want to, then I give in to it, and I picture him crawling in the jungle. He bought it from a mine; they didn't tell us if he was in a rice paddy or open field or jungle, but I always think of him in jungle because he loved to hunt in the woods and was so quiet in there. After a while I swallow and tighten my chest and let out some air. Polly said I was afraid to cry because it wasn't macho. That's not true. I sure the fuck cried when Mom and the old man told me and Alex about Kingsley, there in the kitchen, and I would've cried no matter who was there to watch. I fight crying because it empties you so you can't do anything about what's making you cry. So I stop thinking about Kingsley, that big good-looking wonderful son of a bitch with that look he had on his face when he was hunting, like he could see through the trees, as he stepped on a mine or tripped a wire. By the time I stop thinking about him, I know what else I'll do tonight, after I deal with Mr. DeLuca a.k.a. the doorman of Old Colony.

It is a rowdy bar at the north end of town, with a band and a lot of girls, and it draws people from out of town instead of just regulars, so it gets rough in there. I sit in my jeep in the parking lot fifteen minutes before closing. The band is gone, but the parking lot is still full. At one o'clock they start coming out, loud in bunches and couples. Some leave right away, but a lot of them stand around, some drinking what they sneaked out of the bar. The place takes about twenty minutes to empty; I know that's done when I see Vinnie come into the doorway, following the last people to leave. He stands there smoking a cigarette. He's short and wide like I am, and he is wearing a leisure suit with his shirt collar out over the lapels. He's got a chain around his neck. The cruiser turns into the parking lot, as I figured it would; the cops drive very slowly through the crowd, stopping here and there for a word; they pass in front of me and go to the end of the lot and hang a slow U and come back; people are in their cars now and driving off. I feel like slouching down but will not do this for a cop, even to get DeLuca. The truth is I'm probably the only one in the parking lot planning a felony. They pass me, looking at the cars leaving and the people still getting into cars, then they follow everybody out of the lot and up the road. Vinnie will either come right out or stay inside and drink while the waitresses and one bartender clean the place and the other bartender counts the money and puts it in the safe. It's amazing how many places there are to rob at night, when you think about it; if that's what you like. I hate a fucking thief. Polly used to shoplift in high school, and when she told me about it, years later, telling it like it was something cute she and her pals did, I didn't think it was funny, though I was supposed to. There are five cars spread around the lot. I don't know what he's driving, so I just sit watching the door, but he stays inside, the fucker getting his free drinks and sitting on a barstool watching the sweeping and table-wiping and the dirty ashtrays stacking up on the bar and the bartender washing them. Maybe he's making it with one of the waitresses, which I hope he isn't. I do not want to kick his ass with a woman there. If he comes out with a bartender or even both of them, it's a problem I can handle: either they'll jump me or try to get between us, or run for the phone; but I'll get him. With a woman, you never know. Some of them like to watch. But she might start screaming or crying or get a tire iron and knock the back of my head out my nose.