the car much, really.
I stopped in Barney’s Cocktail Lounge for a beer, thinking about how you used to go into the place through the corner deli. The cocktail lounge had been a blind pig, a bar that seemed to be closed down and boarded up but was actually wide open, like Chicago. Somehow I missed sitting by the boarded-up windows. It had felt safe, secure, snug, somehow. I rarely took one of the window booths, these days. Tonight I sat along the wall.
After the beer, I had some rum. Just enough to settle my stomach. The warmth moved through my belly in a soothing wave. I felt better. I had a little more rum. Not too much. Sally was going to stop by this evening, after her show. She said she wanted to see how the other half lived, and I guessed it was time she found out, Murphy bed and all. But the least I could do was greet her soberly.
I sat there, sipping the rum, and felt so goddamn depressed I could cry. I got out of there before I did.
I walked up the stairs to my floor and down the hall and worked the key in the lock and stepped in and a fist sunk in my stomach and bounced off my spine. I fell on my knees and puked. Heard the door shut behind me.
“Did you get any on you?” a hushed voice said.
He meant me puking.
“Yeah, shit.” An arm wiped itself off on my back; I was still doubled over, retching, but nothing was coming out, now. A mulligan stew of steak, potatoes, radishes, peas and onions shimmered before me. It smelled foul and a little like rum.
A hand grabbed the small of one my arms and dragged me away from the pool of puke. So they wouldn’t get any more on them.
I looked up. The office was dark, just some neon glow coming in and making orange pulsing shadows on the craggy indistinct face under the fedora before me. The other guy was behind me, hooking his arms through mine, pulling me back, though I remained on my knees. The craggy-faced guy with neon on his face had something in his hand, something like a piece of tube only limp. It drooped, like a big phallus.
He raised his arm, quickly, and the thing in his hand swished. Then it swished again as he curved it across my chest.
A rubber hose.
“Fuck!” I said.
The arms behind my arms pulled back. “Take it like a man,” a voice said. Kind of a whiny, upper-register voice. “Take your goddamn medicine.”
The guy in front of me hit me about the body with the rubber pipe, my chest, my stomach, my arms, my shoulders. Not my face.
Then the guy behind me pulled me up, stood me up on shaky legs, and the neon-faced guy worked over my legs.
I took it like a man. Like any man would. I cried my fucking eyes out.
All I could hear was their breathing and the swish of the hose and my own whimpering. This went on forever— for three minutes at least—and then I heard something else.
A voice.
Barney’s.
“Nate,” he said, “are you in there?”
“Barney!” I yelled.
I looked over and he was peeking in the door and night vision and what little light there was allowed him to finally make out what was going on and he moved across the room and pulled the guy off my back and I could hear him belt the guy back there while I found the strength to smack the guy with the rubber hose in the mush with a fist on the end of an arm that had gone numb from pain anyway. He swung the hose and I took the blow on my forearm, but moved the hose and his arm out of the way while I butted him in the face with my head.
The sound of him landing on his ass was music. There was still an orange neon glow on his face, but bright red mingled there as well. I must’ve broke his fucking nose. I went to kick him in the balls and he grabbed my foot and threw me into my desk. The desk slid, banged up against the wall by the windows and the phone and desk lamp tumbled off and landed noisily and, holding his bleeding nose, the guy headed unsurely for the door. His panicked friend had Barney in a clinch, using his size to squeeze Barney and keep from getting hit anymore.
The bleeding guy was to the doorway, when he turned and said, “Toss him!” to his friend, and his friend threw Barney over at me and we were in a pile together. Barney’s guy slipped in my puke on the way out and took a fall on his face, then picked himself up and was gone. I would’ve laughed, if I hadn’t had the sense of humor beat out of me.
Barney got up slowly and shook himself—he’d taken a hard knock against the desk—and started to go after them, but by that time the sound of their feet slapping down the corridor had disappeared. He went to the window and looked down.
“Damn!” he said. “Someone’s out front with a car for ’em! There they go…damn!”
Shaking his head, he walked over and switched on the light by the door. I was still sprawled against the desk like a rag doll. Barney looked a little mussed up, still wearing his suit and bow tie, though the bow tie was sideways, now. I probably looked like shit.
He bent over me, touched the side of my face gently. “You look like shit.”
I tried to smile. Couldn’t.
“I was worried about you, Nate. Thought I’d better check in and see how you were doing. I guess I found out.”
I said something. Not a word. A sound.
“Nate, I’m going to put the Murphy bed down and get you stretched out on it so you can take it easy.”
