Garbage (21 page)

I grab a bag and run up to his office. He backs back scared. Two men appear behind the glass and a woman. Woman covers her face as if the garbage is coming through the glass at her. I throw it, bag breaks and garbage spatters over the glass, something hard in the bag cracks it and things run down the glass too. Liquid, ketchup, hamburger someone only half ate, and floor's a mess.

“The police, Jenny,” he says into the speaker. I turn to her but she's gone. “The police, Beth,” and the other woman goes for the phone on his desk. I run back and grab the other bag and run to his office with it. He tries locking the door but I get it open before he can lock it and push my way into the room when he tries pushing the door closed. The two men jump me from the side once I'm in. All three are now grappling with me, trying to force me down, woman's on the phone, while I'm holding the garbage bag, trying to break free and throw it at Stovin and ruin his suit and fill his face with trash and knock off his glasses and step on them. But they got my arms tight and I'm going down so before they get me to the ground I rip open the bag from below and it spills out over our pants and shoes and bottoms of their jackets.

“You moron,” Stovin shouts jumping away and slapping at the garbage on his clothes, while the men still hold me and Beth's on the phone.

“I got the police,” she says. “What should I tell them?”

“No, let the bum go if he wants. Tell them it was a mistake but that you might call right back. And you,” to me, “you leaving or do we really have to get them here and charge you with entering, battery, vandalism and the rest of those and sue you for my new suit and theirs and her dress?”

“I didn't get anything on me,” she says.

“You were assaulted or almost. We too and that's enough for a lawsuit.”

I'm being held down, one man pinning my arms, other sitting on my knees and holding down my feet. Around us is my garbage.

“Phone,” I say. “I want them here so I can make a fuss and tell them you're a goddamn cheat and fraud.”

“Police around here are my friends and know I'm none of those things. But I don't want to talk to you. I want to get rid of you and clean up this place. Sit on him till the police come. Beth, get them right over. I'll get a couple of the boys to make sure he stays down.”

He leaves the room. The two men I saw sudsing the truck before come in and take the place of the two on top of me who get up and brush off their suits and shake their feet in the air. Flecks of whatever was on their shoes fly around. “I've got to change,” one of them says.

“I didn't get it bad as you,” the other says. “Mustard. I bet it stains. And what the hell's this red?—What is that,” he asks me, “wine?”

I shake my head. The one who wanted to change, leaves. Police come. I'm allowed up. Policeman says “No charges are being made against you so just go. Come here again uninvited and no matter what charges aren't pressed, we'll take you in.”

I brush myself off.

“Do that outside,” one with the mustard says.

I start for the door, policemen right behind me walking me out. I want to grab a lamp and throw it somewhere but don't want to get clubbed.

“Will you thank Jennifer for me for being so nice?” I yell back.

“I'll thank your mother,” one of the truckers says.

I leave, pass the cleaned garbage truck, start walking to my bar though it's a long way and it's cold and looks like snow. The police in their car follow me for a block and drive past and one waves and they make a right and when I get to the corner thinking I'll wave back, they're not there.

I tape a sign on my bar window saying “Tomorrow, big party, going away wake sort of, all day, blizzard or shine, so come one and all if you've been customers of mine anytime over the years or my father's or grandpa's and if you like bring your family and friends, good people welcome,” and go to the hotel and get drunk in my room and sing songs I knew as a boy and haven't sung since when about young love and war and fall asleep and in my dream I'm in a room big as a mansion's biggest room, a baron's hall or whatever it's called, not where the people eat but meet after dinner and maybe have brandy and dance, hundred-fifty feet long, forty feet wide, and it's a bar with stools for a hundred drinkers and round oak tables in back for two hundred diners and great paintings and grand chandeliers all lit instead of my prints and fluorescent tubes and all my customers well dressed almost in tuxedo and evening gown clothes and the wood floors shiny like I could never get mine and wood walls as if just moistened with oil and no television set or butts and cocktail napkins on the floor or cough-making cigarette smoke and spit and everyone enjoying themselves and talkative though not raucous and throwing down dollars after dollars for their drinks and I'm behind the bar not so much pouring anymore as supervising a dozen bartenders to and I'm in a suit with a shirt and tie like Stovin's and also a vest and my hands in my pants pocket and watch fob chain across my chest.

Next day I sleep late and get to the bar around noon. There's about ten people waiting in front and one says “We thought you were joking about the party and would never show up. What do you mean by it, they tripled your rent so you're through?”

“Through as I'll ever be in this bar and probably also the business,” and I open up and say “Help me bring the cases of beer and soda up from downstairs and put them in the icebox and refrigerator. I'll look after the liquor and try and make sandwiches, for as I forgot to say in my sign, you can have all you want of that too.”

So my party begins. Weather cooperates by being milder. Some women help me out bagging the garbage and making sandwiches and boiling eggs. In an hour the bar's jammed. In two almost no more people can fit in and an hour later a policeman squeezes himself through to the bar I'm behind and says “This place is a firetrap if you let any more in. You'll have to admit them one at a time when someone leaves.”

A man I never saw before but who says he used to come and pick his dad off the floor of my grandfather's bar years ago volunteers to be the doorman so long as he's constantly supplied with bitters and gin. I give him the bitters bottle and tumbler of ice with my best gin and promise he'll get more whenever he calls for it and he sits on a stool by the door and starts letting people out and in.

I don't hold back on the drinks but can't do as most people want me to and that's leave the bottles on the bar, as it's against the city's tavern law and I want the party to last till its natural end. When someone gets drunk or sick I tell a couple of men to put him in the back to rest or in a cab if he wants to go home or back to work and if he wants to tell his family he's on his way or to pick him up here, to use my phone.

Another policeman comes in and says “You know you're not permitted to serve alcohol to anyone intoxicated,” and I say “Have I ever broken the law to you before? So give me a break on my last day and forget it this once. Have a drink yourself and sandwich or whatever you like on the house—scrambled eggs,” and everybody around us joins in with me and says “Forget it, Nick,” or “Officer, this is a once-in-a-lifetime bar party so have some fun and don't spoil it for everyone.” He says “I guess once in my life I can try it if no one calls the precinct to confess my sins,” and accepts a drink in a coffee mug and drinks it and another and two more policemen come in and one says “So this is where you are, Nick, we thought you were mugged,” and they take off their hats and coats till only their regular flannel shirts show and drink from coffee mugs and eat too.

Someone has a radio and plays loud music and I dance though I can't dance with a young woman I never met and then with her little girl and next with the girl's rag doll and a couple of couples dance on the tables and a large group dances on the sidewalk. One man dances on the bar till I ask him off and then say to him “What the hell, dance all you want on it, step on hands, kick the beer mugs off. This is the end of the place anyway and we're all good sports here, so do what you want as long as your aim's true so no one gets hurt and it's in clean fun.”

Three people fall to the floor drunk almost at once and are carried to the back and some men and a woman sleeping it off in back get awake and start drinking and singing up front again. By ten o'clock I run out of food to make sandwiches with and next run out of ice and eggs and keg beer and later out of liquor and ale and lots of people thank me and leave because there's almost no wine or bottled or canned beer left. Then there's nothing left and people pool their money and go out and bring back a case of liquor and ice and later someone borrows another drinker's car and drives back with cases of beer and ale. Then it's nearly three and getting close to closing time and I'm tired though for the last few hours haven't made anyone drinks but just walked around joking and reminiscing and I say “Goodnight everybody, it's been great. Best night of my life or almost and I love you one and all but you have to go.” I get slapped on the back a lot and hugged and kissed which never happened here before and my hands shook till they hurt and cheeks pinched and several people push ones and fives and a ten in my shirts and pants pockets and say something like “I don't care if all this was supposed to be free, go take a holiday or get laid someplace or give it to charity on me.”

One of the last ones leaving says “Why not make it an after-hours club for one night?” and I say “What's to lose and I'm getting back my third wind.” I lock the door and pull down the shades and party goes on with what drinks we've left and old customers I haven't seen for weeks and were probably at other bars and maybe till now told by Stovin's or someone to stay away knock on my window and door and are let in. Other bartenders and owners also come by after their places close with more liquor and mixers and beer, even the ones who wouldn't help me against Stovin or said they'd never see or speak to me again till my trouble was over with him. I don't say anything to them about it. Past's past, I might need one of them for a job in the future if I stick in the same trade or later return to it, and they're really nice people with their own I suppose reasonable self-interests and almost none with my kind of bar background and fatherly business and why spoil the night with harsh words, so I just continue to gab, drink, laugh and dance.

Around five a policeman raps on the window and says “You'll have to close, Shaney. Neighbors have complained of the noise all morning. I stalled them because I heard some of our own boys were having a feast in here, but these people say they have to get a couple-hours sleep before they go to work.”

I announce to the bar “It's definitely goodnight now, folks. Anyone wants to take the mugs or even the stools home as a memento or whatever you see except my coat, hat and boots, please do. I don't want anything here left.”

A few take stools and mugs and ashtrays and someone lifts the cash register and says “Okay?” and I nod and he leaves with it calling it an antique. Couple of the better tables go and some of the cheap prints and working equipment and all the bar tools are pocketed by the bartenders and owners. Then everyone's gone and I look in back, see that someone fell asleep on the toilet seat and zipper him up and walk him to the street and give a cabby more than enough money to drive him home. Then it's absolutely quiet inside, nothing left to drink except a bottle of scotch I hid, and I start drinking it mixed with some fizzled out soda water and begin smashing up the place.

“Here's to you, Mr. Stovin and junior boy if you've been a bad boy too, a good belt to your jaws,” and I toss an empty beer bottle at the bar mirror and both break. With a bat I smash the mirror to bits, few slivers of it getting in my hand and wrist but nothing great and hurl all the stools around till they split apart and turn over the tables and kick the legs loose and slash the chairs against the bar counter till I've nothing left but chair backs in my hands and rip the prints off the walls and tear the frames from the glass and break both of those too and pop the light globes and bulbs with a broom but keep one on in the rear and front and smash every glass, pitcher, mug, jar, dish and plate in the place, heaving whole stacks and shelves of them to the floor and slinging them against walls and across the room. I tip over the refrigerator and with a carving fork puncture its condenser tubes, pull the grill loose but put on back in working order because the gas starts to leak and I don't want the bar to explode, pull down the liquor cabinets that have been up for fifty years and with a table leg punch their smoked and etched glass in and drink while I'm doing all this and when the whole bar's wrecked or just about and I'm sweating faucets and exhausted I go outside with a few empty bottles and throw them through the window and door. I want to set fire to the inside but there are four floors upstairs, three just manufacturing lofts with no people in them this hour but top's a live-in serious artist and her cats.

But that's enough destruction and I leave the lights on and door open when I walk out. Some people are in front watching and a couple in a car have doubleparked outside the bar to watch too. Ones on the sidewalk step aside when I walk by though I say “Excuse me … Pardon,” to every other one of them because I don't want to seem dangerous or so insane where they'd be scared of me.

Second I step off the curb they run into the bar including the woman from the doubleparked car to I suppose look for things to drink and take and maybe break more. Phone's ringing from the booth across the street when I'm walking past, I bet for me but for what? I watch it ring, then quickly turn around to try and catch someone from one of the doorways or windows near my bar spying on me, then run to the middle of the street to look at the windows and doorways in the buildings behind the phonebooth. They're all closed and dark on both sides of the street and nobody's in the doorways. I run to the ringing booth, lift the receiver and say “Hello, hello?” but no one answers though the phone isn't dead. “Come on, someone's there,” when I hear with the receiver still at my ear a police siren from somewhere not far off. Gets nearer and I hang up and a police car tears down the street and stops in front of the bar. Double-parked car drives off with its trunk open and no passenger. People run out of the bar emptyhanded and some with a number of things. Two men carry out the entire cooking grill, woman with a five-gallon jar of mustard I didn't know was still there, man with a single dinner plate and several table legs but that's all he has.