Closing time, p.2
Closing Time, page 2
“I’ve got to do something. End it maybe, just get her the hell out of my life. When I really don’t want her out of my life. At least part of me doesn’t. I feel like, you know, damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Know what I mean?”
“You ever consider the problem might be hers to solve? Not your own?”
“Huh?”
“That maybe it’s simply something she’s going through. That maybe she should be in therapy too. It’s possible.”
He laughed. “She’ll never be in therapy, believe me.”
“Why’s that?”
“She just won’t.”
He heard that familiar brick wall tone of voice of his.
Knew it was prudent to back away. Leave it be for now, he thought. Try another tack.
“You have any dreams for me today, John?”
Sullivan was a firm believer in dreams as metaphors for problems left untended-to, each with its own symbolic language. Anything from a reminder to pay that overdue gas bill to resolving the guilt over a loved one’s death. That by penetrating the meaning of these metaphors the truth of what was foremost in the mind clarified, its emotional resonance understood for what it was. A dream was a nudge in the ribs reminding you what still needed doing.
Brewer smiled. “You and your dreams. Yeah, as a matter of fact I do. Night before last. I wrote it down, like you said.”
He took a folded yellow post-a-note out of his pocket. “I’m just a kid, nine or ten maybe. I’m with a younger boy, probably six or seven I guess and we’re out in my yard and I have an axe. So I start hacking away with this axe at a tree stump on the lawn while this other kid stands back watching, and the stump becomes my dog Tiger’s head.”
He looked up. “I really had this dog Tiger, this brown-and-white mutt, when I was about that age. Weird, huh?”
“Do you hit the dog with the axe?”
“Once. Like he turns from stump into dog mid-stroke. Like by then I’m committed to the downswing, you know? And this single drop of blood trickles down off his head and off his eye.”
“That’s all? One drop?”
“Yeah, like a tear. But the thing is, he bears it. He doesn’t die or anything or run away howling like a normal dog would. He just sits there looking at me. The axe is still in his head. And then I wake up.”
Sullivan wished now he’d gotten round to asking him about dreams earlier. They were nearly out of time. They’d need to go into it further next session. But he’d ask the three basic questions, anyway. He had the time for that.
“What was your day like, day before yesterday?”
He shrugged. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I was building the cabinet for the Sebald woman most of the day, took a break for lunch over at Duras’ Deli, went back to work, knocked off about four-thirty, five.”
“Was it going well?”
“It’s a standard model. I could build it with my eyes closed by now.”
“How are you at chopping wood?”
“Same thing.”
“How did you feel in the dream? Do you recall?”
“Well, at first I guess I was having fun. Kind of showing off for this other kid, know what I mean? Then with Tiger…I’m not sure. Scared? Shocked?”
“Anything else? Like guilt for instance?”
“No. Not that I can remember.”
“Okay. What does Tiger represent for you?”
“A dog. A dog I had as a kid.”
“And what does a dog represent?
“I dunno. You trust a dog. He looks up to you. He goes where you go.”
“Unconditional love?”
“That too I guess. Yeah.”
“Sound like anybody you know? Or thought you knew?”
He grinned. “Jesus. Yeah. Sounds a little like Jennie, doesn’t it.”
He let that sink in for a moment.
“And I hit her in the head with an axe.”
“That’s right.”
He had time for one last line of questioning.
“What did you say Tiger did when you hit him?”
“Nothing. He didn’t do anything. Just looked at me.”
“Did you get any kind of feeling from him? Read anything in his expression, maybe?
“Nothing. Just a dog thing, you know? Those big sad eyes looking at you. Still sort of expectant I guess is the word. Like what’s next? Like whatever you do, it’s okay by me.”
He’s looking for forgiveness, Sullivan thought.
The dog will forgive him anything.
Jennie will forgive him anything.
Only not anymore.
They’d get deeper into this next time.
He stood up from behind the desk.
“I don’t normally give advice, John. You’re aware of that. But this once I’m going to break my rule and ask you not to do anything over the coming week you might regret later. I’m not talking about inaction. You go ahead and do what you have to do. Only think about it very hard beforehand. Okay?”
“Okay.”
And after the man left, Sullivan wondered why he’d said that. It wasn’t like him. A patient learned by his mistakes as much as by anything else. But despite his disclaimer about going ahead and doing what you have to do, he’d essentially told Brewer to hang in there for a week and wondered why.
He thought it possibly had to do with the single part of the dream they hadn’t touched upon yet—the watchful boy in the background. Somehow the boy disquieted him.
His next patient was due in five minutes. He’d think it over this evening. Maybe talk to the wife.
Ella was a good listener.
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Never mind that everything Sullivan had said made sense to him—that even the dream made sense to him now to a degree—it all came back to that. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. He could be screwing himself as easily by holding onto her as by dumping Jennie once and for all. He couldn’t get a handle on it either way.
Think very hard, Sullivan said. Well, he could do that.
He walked up the steps to the sturdy wooden porch he’d added on for them in happier days and used his key in the lock. He could remember a time when nobody on this quiet little street even bothered to lock their doors, when everyone felt safe.
He walked through the living room past the empty kitchen to his right and down the short narrow corridor to their bedroom and opened the door and there she lay.
He could almost hear her breathing—that was how peaceful she looked. How she could look so peaceful and be so bloated by now that it was impossible even to see the length of baling wire around her neck was a mystery to him.
He spoke to her. Tender endearments like in the old days.
She didn’t answer. He hadn’t expected her to.
She didn’t listen.
He felt the rage rise again and fall.
He took a moment to admire the craftsmanship of the knotty pine box he had made for her which exactly fit the length of the bed from headboard to baseboard and thought suddenly for a moment of the boy—the younger boy watching in his dream. He realized that he had never seen or could not remember the face of the boy. He doubted it mattered.
Dump her? Or leave her be? he thought.
It was possible he could wait until his next session with Sullivan but he didn’t know. He wasn’t sure.
She was really beginning to stink.
~*~
Somewhere around the time I was writing She Wakes and The Girl Next Door I was in therapy for a couple of years. Eventually I worked out what was troubling me. But I was very aware that you keep some secrets even from your therapist.
Consider Tony Soprano.
The dream about the dog Tiger occurred to me one night many years later. I decided it was perfect for my little hide-and-go-seek therapy session.
—JK
Station Two
Shortly before the incident in the restaurant Santorini this was how things stood.
“Talk to me, Hal,” Jan Resnick was saying. “Why won’t you please just talk to me?”
Hal Reese sat looking out the window into the bright New York City night and pedestrians passing, headlights passing, delivery boys on old beat-up bikes pedaling against traffic, his body at an angle only slightly facing her. His legs were crossed and his left foot tapped impatiently into space. The left foot wanted to go somewhere. The right was rooted to the floor. There was food on the table, lemon chicken for him and stuffed grape leaves for her. Roasted bird and fallen leaves.
As yet they hadn’t touched it.
He drank his scotch. By now her coffee would be tepid. She hadn’t touched that either. Jan watched his head turn to track a pretty brunette in a white tee-shirt, tights and headphones. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have minded his watching the brunette. Now suddenly everything he did seemed to frighten her.
“Three years, Hal.”
“In December. It’s only August.”
“I put you through school for godsakes.”
“You made the cash, sure. I put myself through school.”
Even through the fear and sadness it galled her.
“All our expenses. The rent. Everything. On my feet all day, just like this poor kid you just snapped at over the goddamn fish.”
“I told you. You’ll get half the back rent and half the bills. I’ve already figured it. You want the amount? The fish was overdone.”
He sounded bored to death with the whole thing.
Bored with her.
Just like that.
The announcement had come out of the blue right there in the restaurant not half an hour ago. They’d ordered and then he told her. He’d be packing over the weekend. He’d be leaving Sunday morning. He was sorry.
He didn’t sound sorry.
They’d fucked just the night before. Jesus!
He was leaving her for another woman, of course. Hal would always have to have a woman. Somebody to take care of him, mother him, flatter him, fuck him. He couldn’t stand to be alone. Jan even knew who she was. Liddy Krest, trader for another firm, she couldn’t remember which. They’d met a few times at parties. Jan had found her cold and somewhat abrasive but forgave that right away. It would not be an easy thing to be a woman on the floor of the Stock Exchange. It was pretty much a man’s world and the competition brutal.
Her eyes blurred over. She’d started to cry again. She reached across the table. Touched the back of his hand.
“Hal, look at me. Look at me.”
She wanted him to see the pain, to gaze into the pain.
To see what he was doing.
He wouldn’t.
“Hal. Please. Don’t do this.”
The restaurant was busy. She wondered if anyone heard the desperation in her voice. Heard and found her pitiful. She was begging. She wondered if passers-by could see it on her face through the plate-glass windows that boxed their corner table. Had she known this was coming she might at least have picked a place less exposed to strangers.
Hal might have picked one for her.
He hadn’t. He didn’t care.
How could that be?
She’d thought he’d always care.
They’d talked marriage. Children.
He stared out the window at all the passing faces.
Jan Reznick allowed herself the tears.
Diane Farrell wasn’t having the best of nights behind the bar.
Though she’d sure as hell had a whole lot worse.
A few years back she’d worked for this mob-connected joint down in Little Italy. Walked into the office one night to get change for the register and found the owner in his swivel chair behind the desk getting a blowjob from a waitress. Her boss made change from the cashbox. The waitress never missed a beat.
The same night some asshole puked into his beer.
It was that kind of place.
Then another night they’re packed, roaring, and she’s on with this girl Susan, absolutely useless as a bartender but pretty enough to draw the wiseguys like hounds on a rabbit and Diane’s down at the end of the bar mixing drinks for the tables when suddenly Susan starts screaming. She turns and sees eight of the boys as her boss calls them—gold chains, open shirts and hairy chests, Atlantic City blondes on their arms, the whole bit—out of their chairs and beating hell out of this little Mexican delivery boy, just a kid. Chairs are flying. Tables falling. Women screaming.
Somebody calls the cops. And the cops arrive so quickly you had to figure they were just waiting for something to happen in this joint. One of the boys ducks behind the bar, hands her a pistol, says hi I’m Tommy or whatever and tells her that if she’s asked, she’s to say he’s worked here for months, just another bartender. She’s shaking so bad she can barely get the pistol hidden down into the ice. The cops question her and she says she saw absolutely nothing, she was busy, she missed the whole thing but they don’t believe her, they take her ID and threaten her with arrest for withholding evidence until finally she’s so damn scared she’s sobbing. At which point the cops back off, take a few more names and leave.
Tommy or whatever his name is pulls his gun out of the ice and kisses her. Shoves his tongue down her throat. His breath is worse than Godzilla’s.
Thanks, babe.
About a gallon of Absolut later she finally gets rid of the taste of him.
She’d had worse nights, oh yeah. But this one was bad enough.
First of all nobody in the whole damn place was tipping. You’d think it was the day after Christmas or something, when nobody’s got a spare cent to their name. This, just two nights after she’s moved into a new apartment, with a month’s rent up front, a month’s rent security and a month’s rent to the agent. Not to mention Con Ed, Manhattan Cable, Bell Atlantic and the movers. Then around seven-thirty some business-type has four tequila sunrises and while she’s down at the espresso machine he waltzes out the door. So she’s twenty dollars out-of-pocket on this joker.
She’s practically working for free here.
Then there was just the mood of the place. On any given night it’s usually the manager who creates the mood among the employees and that was definitely the way it was here tonight. Theodoro had walked in a few minutes late at about quarter after five with what appeared to be a hard-on for whoever he laid eyes on. Busboys, waiters, everybody. With Theo it happened sometimes. Nothing was right. The linen wasn’t folded correctly. Place settings were crooked. There were spots on a tablecloth. Tonight Lindsey had forgotten to fill a bowl of sugar packets on a table at section three. You’d think she’d stood up on it and started dancing on the thing.
And all Phil did was to talk to her across the bar for a couple of minutes about the Yankee game. Theo had reamed him a whole new asshole for that one.
“Get your section down! Stop hanging around! Stop the bullshitting! You get paid to do a job, do it!”
God!
A couple of minutes. Where’s the harm?
Even one of the cooks got a piece of him about an hour ago. Usually the cooks were exempt from that. You didn’t want them to screw up the food sort of accidentally-on-purpose. But that didn’t stop him tonight.
Theo was on the rag bigtime.
She felt bad for all of them and especially for Phil. Like it was partly her fault for encouraging him. It was true Phil seemed to have a thing for her and wanted to talk at every opportunity. He was a shameless flirt but he was harmless and it was still early for godsakes. They hadn’t been busy at all at the time. Plus Phil’s section that night was section two. Only eight doubles, sixteen place settings total and only one table then in use. A pair of old ladies sipping martinis. He wasn’t the greatest waiter in the world but he wasn’t the worst either. He could handle a couple of old ladies.
But Theo’s barking at him had unnerved him.
Around eight-thirty word got to her through Lindsey—who everybody knew was dating the guy—that Phil had spilled oil on a customer. A woman’s pink leather jacket no less. Which meant he’d have to pick up the tab for her dry cleaning. A pink leather jacket? Who in the hell wears pink leather anyway?
Around nine he dropped a plateful of moussaka.
Luckily there was nobody under it.
Everybody heard it shatter.
You could see that Theo was livid. But by then the restaurant was busy. He wouldn’t have time to get on Phil’s case for a while.
He had to smile nice for the customers.
But Phil wasn’t going to be doing any more flirting with her tonight, that was for sure. It was too bad, really. Phil was from Tennessee and his accent was sweet. She thought he was cute in a soft, boyish way. And Diane wasn’t any kid anymore. She didn’t mind him flirting with her at all. As for Lindsey, she didn’t seem to care one way or the other. She guessed they weren’t that serious.
She poured a draft of Amstel Lite for one of the suspendered-and-power-tied yuppies toward the front of the bar who would probably not tip her either and thought how it would be nice to go home to her boyfriend Steve and have an Absolut and lie down with him and make love on their brand-new mattress and maybe unpack a box or two or maybe not.
Instead the night droned on.
It was hard to look at the woman facing him over John’s shoulder and just as hard not to. It made him think of what he must have looked like that final night with Greg. He guessed that gay or straight, heartbreak was heartbreak.
It was written all over her.
He watched her reach across the table and had to look away.
“There were a whole bunch of us back then,” John was saying, “most of us living within about ten blocks of each other up here. James and I’d been lovers back in high school, we went back that far. But then there was his new lover and my new lover and his old lover and all these people we’d met. A lot of them theatre people because of James—actors, costume-makers, directors. Louis played trumpet for some Broadway shows. Alan was an off-off-Broadway playwright. But there were also a lot like me in the healthcare business. Speech therapy, P.T. And we used to complain about how awful conditions were in these various facilities we were working in.”
“I know,” Danny said. “Before my mom died, for a while there I was shopping around for a place for her. With the osteoporosis she couldn’t live alone and we didn’t think we could afford a full-time nurse at the time. Everything I looked at was so fucking depressing.”
