Losers Live Longer

“Oh, well, there you go, that’s creative. I thought so. What do you write?”

“A little of everything.”

“Really? What are you working on now?”

“Oh, I…don’t like to talk about it while I’m still writing it. It dissipates the energy you should put into the work when you talk too much about it beforehand.”

The old man nodded his head judiciously.

It sounded good to me, too. Hell, maybe I would try being a writer. Nahh. I was broke enough as it was.

The old man bought me another drink. While he was paying for it, his back to me as he counted out his money, a couple of guys passed by and one of them pointed his way. The guy said to his friend, “Hey Rick, isn’t that your Mr. Gower guy?”

Rick saw me looking at him and told his friend to shut up.

The name rang a bell. The bar’s cash register opened.

“Down the hatch,” the old man said, handing me my drink. We clinked our glasses.

I took a sip. It was stronger than the last one, not a 7&7, more like a 14&3.

Mr. Gower. The name echoed in my mind. Mr. Gower.

I took another sip.

Don’t hit me, Mr. Gower, that’s my bad ear.

I had it. That’s why it sounded so familiar. Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ve always been good at Trivial Pursuit. It was the name of the shopkeeper George Bailey worked for as a kid, and later he appears as a disgraced wino in a bar.

I took another swallow of my too-strong drink.

Because Mr. Gower was an ex-pharmacist who Jimmy Stewart hadn’t been around to stop from mixing up a prescription with poison.

I stopped the rim of my glass against my lips and it tapped a tooth. I felt funny. And not the good kind of funny.

I was also remembering where I’d seen this old man twice before on separate occasions. The first time that morning, almost running into him in the lobby of the Bowery Plaza on my way out. The second time on Tigger’s computer monitor, “I was in the background in a photo taken by Craig Wales before he died.”

I turned to the old man and asked, “Whadyousay?”

“I said nothing.”

“Fuck.”

His face seemed to balloon out of proportion and fritter. His ears looked much too big, like tiny fetuses on either side of his head. I didn’t like looking at him, but I couldn’t stop. It was fascinating, like communing with a sentient lava lamp.

“Diden you jes…” I lost my train of thought, it had derailed and flung passengers and luggage all over the tracks.

I looked around for the conductor and instead saw the blond kid FL!P by my side.

“You don’t look so hot, dude.”

“Nigh…Thor…neither do I.”

The old man said, “We should help him get some air. Take his other arm.”

I said in Brooklynese, “Out you pixies go. Through the door or out da winda.” Shit, now what movie was that from?

They escorted me outside, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I couldn’t figure out why I was still hearing Patsy Cline singing. If I was hearing it at all. It could’ve just been inside my head like everything else.

I tried to put my feet up and rest, but I was still standing.

Somebody or somebodies huddled me into the backseat of a car.

“Wear…?”

I forgot what I’d been about to say.

Couldn’t have been very important then.

Nothing was very important then.

It gave me a chance to close my eyes and forget.

Sweet forget, how I’ve missed you.

Chapter Eighteen: HIDE NOR HAIR

I came to in a strange room. It reminded me of what it was like to be a baby again, you fall asleep one place and hours later wake up somewhere else entirely.

I sensed I wasn’t alone. I cranked open my eyes. When you live alone, you’re used to waking up alone, so waking up now with two people staring down at me was disturbing.

I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. I was strapped down to some makeshift operating table. Also disturbing.

Why had I immediately made that snap judgment of ‘operating table’? Because of a chemical smell in the air? Or the greenish glow from a fluorescent ceiling fixture? Or was it the fact that the old man, Mr. Gower, had a pair of latex gloves on and was opening up the package of a brand new syringe?

The blond kid, FL!P, was fidgeting on a metal stool, playing with a set of scales on the marble countertop.

Mr. Gower said to him, “I’ll need your help with this part.” He fitted a new needle onto the tip of the syringe.

FL!P hopped off the stool.

I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up.” I was trying to gather my wits, but it was like reconstructing a blown- apart dandelion. “What’s on the menu?”

Mr. Gower said, “Lie still, we are going to ask you some questions.”

“Ask away. Don’t delay another second. But whatever you’re doing there, stop! You don’t need that, whatever it is. I’m more than willing to tell you whatever you want to know.”

Gower ignored me, spoke to the blond kid.

“Roll up his sleeve.”

I started to struggle. It was only a makeshift set-up, how sturdy could it be?

Pretty damn sturdy. I only got about a centimeter of give out of the straps.

“Hold up!” I said. “Listen, kid, this isn’t good, don’t do this.”

“Just tell us where Michael Cassidy is,” he said.

“Done!” I said.

“You know where she is?”

“Of course.” And this time I wasn’t lying, because suddenly I did know. Knew all along, I guess, just never put it together. Amazing how the threat of death can galvanize one’s mind. Something that had been bothering me earlier finally came into sharp focus. The stuff emptied from my pockets after Michael Cassidy hit me on the head in Owl’s hotel room. Now I knew exactly what’d been missing: the room’s magnetic card key.

“Where is she, then?”

“I’ll take you to her,” I said. “Right now. Just get me out of this thing. There’s no need for—”

“His sleeve,” Mr. Gower blandly repeated himself.

“But,” FL!P began, “I…I think he’s telling the truth.”

Mr. Gower remained perfectly still, holding the hypodermic needle shoulder-high, thumb on the plunger, while at the other end a milky dribble hung suspended. He smiled benignly.