“Sure. It’s nuthin’. Dis guy got his ass beat to shit. Tha’s all there is. You ready?” he asked, pointing to the empty glass.
“Sure.” My heart thrilled at the expense.
I tried again.
“D’you know him?” I asked.
“The guy?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. He come in here all the time. Ornery bastard. But never gave me no trouble.”
“A regular.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I never knew his name. Mechanic. Always come in cleaned up, but you can tell by the index finger here, see? Mechanics can never get this part along the side completely clean. From holdin’ wrenches. Gets in the cracks. You can scrub the shit out of it with Boraxo, but when you’re workin’ every day, the grease just gets in there.”
“So I guess you didn’t see anything.”
He straightened his back and looked at me, still holding his hand so he could show me how to identify car mechanics.
“No. I didn’t see anything. Nobody saw nuthin’. What’s with this? You know him?”
“No. No, I’m just curious.”
“Well, enough about all that, okay?” he said, and moved on down the bar, adjusting mixers, dropping dirty glasses into the washer, putting fresh fruit slices in the bin.
I was too young to know where to go from there. So I let it drop and spent the next hour looking into the mouth of the beer glass. I didn’t know how to think anymore. I couldn’t make myself leave, but I wanted to leap off the stool and run the whole way back to Boston. I wanted to find Abby and drag her out of her class and take off all her clothes and lie in bed with her. I wanted to slink back to my dad’s old apartment and curl up on the sofa with the TV on. I wanted and I didn’t.
The runaway contrapositions must have found their way into my right hand, because when I put the glass up to my lips it shook so hard the beer splattered down the front of my shirt.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, sorry. Tired is all.”
He tossed me his soggy bar rag.
“Here.”
I thought I’d leave quietly after that. He was down at the other end of the bar working the tap. I put down twice as much money as I needed to, waved to him and got off the stool. When I reached down to pick up my bag, he called to me.
“Hey, kid.”
“Yeah.”
“You live around here?”
“No. Just seein’ a buddy.”
I held up the bag as proof. He nodded the way people do when they’re unconvinced.
“Hey, don’t push it. You don’t want to know.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
I started to leave.
“Kid.”
“Yeah.”
“There’s nuthin’ nobody can do.”
“I know that.”
He topped off the glass and set it up in front of a scraggly old woman who probably wasn’t all that old. I started to go again and he called me back again.
“Kid. Com’ere.”
I walked back and he met me at the end of the bar where it curved into the wall. He leaned over the bartop and lowered his voice, exaggerating his side-of-the-mouth style of speaking.
“It’s not like it sounds. Don’t listen to what people tell you. It’s always different, what’s really going on. You just don’t know that yet. Only now you do. So get the fuck outta here.”
The bright daylight outside the bar made me squint. My eyes adjusted by the time I reached the subway back to Grand Central. As I sat on the platform with my gym bag on my lap, a vast emptiness filled my mind. Knowing by not knowing. My first lesson in the Tao of murdered fathers.
The Senior Center was in a building located behind a Catholic church founded by Polish potato farmers. The roof was Spanish tile. The windows were very tall double-hungs open at the top for ventilation. There were a few shiny old cars in the parking lot and white-haired people going in and out the door. The mood was reflective. It was almost lunchtime.
The lobby had a reception desk like a hospital or a nursing home. A woman who was probably in her nineties was at the helm. Her hair was polar white and her weathered skin the color of fresh dough. Her wet blue eyes had seen it all, but not much of it had stuck.
“Yes?” Her head bobbed when she talked.
“Just looking around.”
“Oh, you’re too young,” she said.
“Thank you. I’m looking for a friend.”
“Lots of friends here,” she said in the unanswerable way some old people have.
“It’s a specific friend. Paul Hodges. Mind if I go in and see if he’s here?”
She waved her hand at the air and looked down, then abruptly looked back up again as if her head was being operated by remote control.
“Oh, I don’t know anybody’s names. Go on in there and see if he’s here.”
I had a thought and tried it out on her.
“Do you have a list of people who normally come in here?”
She looked at me and moved her mouth around, chewing on the idea.
“I don’t know.”
I got the feeling she didn’t know how to think about the question.
“Do people have to sign up to come here, or do they just come in when they feel like it?”
“Oh, whenever. I don’t think there’s a list,” she looked around the empty desk area in front of her, searching for explanations. “Do you think we should?”
“No, I’m just wondering who comes here. Just curious.”
She tried to understand me, but the necessary circuitry had been disconnected. She looked upset.
“I’m sorry to bother you. I’m just curious. This looks like a nice place.”
She lit up, relieved to be back on familiar ground.
“Oh yes, it’s very nice. Would you like lunch? Here’s our activity schedule for October.” She dug a slim blue pamphlet out of a drawer. She slapped it down on the countertop and patted it like the head of a grandchild.
“Lots to do. Lots to do.”
I folded it once and stuck it in my back pocket.
“Thanks.”
She nodded and looked back down at her desktop full of nothing. I went inside. It was a big open room with circular tables set up around the periphery. Women who looked as old as the people at the tables were moving around with trays of food. I spotted Hodges at a table by himself with a steaming plate of hot turkey sandwich. His back was to the wall and his eyes fixed on his meal.
“You’re right. It looks good.”
He frowned.
“They won’t serve you. You gotta have a Senior Card.”
“That’s okay, Mr. Hodges. Already ate.”
