'You pay the city,' said Cliff, 'and the city contracts it out.'
'Ah,' said Joey. Cliff didn't want to sound bored, and Joey didn't want to sound disappointed. But if garbage money went right to the town, hell, that was like socialism. How could you slam if the cheeks got mailed straight to city hall, if there were no private carters to squeeze? It killed initiative. 'And there's no one who's, like, independent?'
The bartender caught himself yawning and pretended instead to be swallowing a sneeze. 'I think the problem is using the dump. We've got this huge land-fill here. People call it Mount Trashmore…'
Across the U-shaped bar, a white-haired gent was gesturing for a cocktail, and Cliff took the opportunity to escape.
In a moment he returned, and his manner toward Joey had become just slightly deferential. 'Bert would like to buy you a drink,' he said, nodding toward the old man. 'And if you have a minute, he'd like to talk with you.'
Now, the Eclipse Saloon was a serious drinking establishment, the edge of whose bar was heavily padded with vinyl-covered foam rubber so customers could rest their elbows or their heads for long periods of time. Joey suddenly felt his arms sinking helplessly deeper into the upholstery, and he realized that his strength was being sapped by an idiotic gratitude that had put a lump in his throat. For weeks he'd been pushing, pushing, pushing. He'd thrust himself on people, taken the lead in every encounter. Everybody had either shied away or been ready to fight. This-O.K., it was a tiny thing, a free drink, but except for the occasional cup of herb tea, it was absolutely the first time in Florida that anyone had done anything for him.
He nodded a thank-you and the old gent waved him over.
He had white hair that in recent years had taken on a tinge of bronzy yellow, yellow like the color of nicotine. He was lean and tall, but with the stretched-out droop of someone who used to be taller. His eyes were black, deep-set, and just a little too close together around a bent and monumental nose.
'Hello, Joey,' he said. 'Siddown.'
The recognition should have made him very edgy, but Joey was so hard up for company that he barely let himself be bothered. 'How you know my name?'
'This is a small town, Joey. Guy shows up, drives around in an El D with a New York tag, starts asking about bolita, starts talking to truckers, it gets noticed, people talk. And me, I'm a guy people talk to. No particular reason. Except I'm around, I'm available, I listen.'
There was something strange about Bert's voice, something that Joey could not immediately place. Then he realized what it was. Bert sounded normal to him. 'You from New York?'
'Yeah. Brooklyn. President Street.'
'Whaddya know. Me, I'm from-'
'Astoria,' Bert put in. 'Right around Crescent Street.'
Joey gave an uneasy little laugh. 'You tryin' to make me, like, paranoid?'
'Joey,' said the old man. He leaned back on his stool to give his young companion a chance to see him whole. 'You really don't remember me? I guess I've really fucking aged.'
Joey scanned the old man's long and loose-skinned face, and meanwhile Bert went on. 'And if ya don't mind my saying so as an old family friend'-he pointed to the earpiece of Joey's sunglasses looped over his shirt pocket-'carrying your glasses that way, it makes you look like a pimp.'
'Yeah?'
'Yeah,' said Bert. 'And speaking of which, if you're gonna pimp, try females. You might do better.'
'You know about that.' It wasn't a question, and Joey no longer sounded surprised.
'Small town, Joey. Very small town. But hey, that goes for every town. New York's the same. Joey, your father's a friend a mine, a business friend. And I knew your mother. A lovely woman. Plus which, I knew you, Joey, when you were a little kid. Four, five years old. Too little to remember, I guess. I useta see you inna park. You had the curliest hair of any kid there. You don't remember?'
The old man's lips were full and always moving, as if his teeth didn't set too comfortably in his gums. His ears were close to his head but big and soft, with fleshy lobes. His shirt was immaculate, with a pattern of white diamonds embossed on a white background, the starched wings of the collar as straight and even as the tail fins of a plane. 'Bert,' said Joey. 'Bert.' He screwed his face into deep-memory mode; then it unwound into a tentative smile. 'Bert the Shirt?'
The old man give a quick and furtive glance around the virtually empty bar. ' Piano, piano, Joey. That's not a name I'm known by anymore. It's just Bert d'Ambrosia, retiree.'
'Bert,' Joey repeated, like the name tasted good in his mouth. 'Sure I remember. My mother liked you. Said you were a gentleman. And you always had hard candies in your pocket.' Then Joey's face darkened and by primitive reflex he recoiled. 'But hey, I thought you were dead.'
'I was,' said the old man casually, pulling the cherry out of his whiskey sour and nuzzling the fruit off its stem. Taking his time, he licked the froth from his lips and smiled.
Old people took a grim delight in talking about their ailments and operations, about their arteries hardening and their brains softening, their ankles swelling and their field of vision shrinking. In Florida these small epics of collapse and decay had become both an art form and a competitive sport, and Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia had polished his delivery to the point where he was seldom beaten in the ghoulish contests. He had the best material, after all. Arthritis, phlebitis, prostate trouble, even cancer-these things couldn't hold a candle to a guy who'd actually died.
'Yeah, Joey, I was fucking dead. Scientifically, electronically dead. Morto, capeesh? Yeah. This was about eight years ago.
'You remember what the papers called the I-Beam Trial? Big-ass fucking trial. RICO. Construction racketeering, shit like that? They pulled in everybody. All the families. Some guys they booked, some guys they just subpoenaed. Big publicity splash. Well, a few guys didn't wanna go to court, remember? They faked angina, fainting spells, whatever.
'Me,' Bert went on, 'I went. I wasn't indicted. They were just yankin' my chain. I figured fuck 'em, they wanna put me on the stand, I can take the heat. Big mistake, Joey. I get to court, there's a million reporters on the steps, the prosecutors are in their best suits, cameras are in my face. I start not feeling good. I get clammy, my arms start to tingle. I get this tightness in my chest, and all I can think of is that it's like a fucking meatball rolling toward my heart. I'm thinking, Shirt, you asshole, all those big-ass steaks, all that booze, all those cigarettes, all that tension-now you're gonna die right here on the six o'clock news.
'I can hardly talk. I whisper to my lawyer, 'Hey, Bruce, I think I'm havin' a heart attack.' He laughs. He thinks I'm fuckin' around. 'Hey, that wasn't the plan,' he says. 'You wanted to appear.' Then he notices I'm turning blue.
'So now I'm on a stretcher, they're carrying me back down the courthouse steps. My eyes are closed, and I can still see flashbulbs going off. And it dawns on me, the one good thing about dying. I went to court to play the big man, show everybody I wasn't afraid. Now I couldn't give a fuck what anybody thought. They wanna think I'm a common criminal, they wanna think I'm a coward, fuck does it matter? You live, you die. I should care what these assholes thinka me?
'By the time they get me to the ambulance, I'm pretty out of it. I hear the siren, but it seems like really far away. I know I'm movin', but it's like bein' on a boat more than drivin' downa street. They stick this oxygen mask over my face, and the oxygen has like a blue smell, an electric smell. It makes me think of when I was a little kid and went to Rockaway and there was a big-ass summer thunderstorm. The air smelled like that after lotsa lightning. I thinka that, my mother onna beach with me, and I start to cry.
'They told me after, I was unconscious by the time we got to St. Vincent's. They put me on a whaddyacallit, a monitor, were rolling me through the hall, and that was that.'
'That was what?' Joey asked, his elbows deep in the padded bar, his drink getting watery in front of him.
'It,' said Bert. 'That was it. I died.'
'Unbefuckinglievable,' said Joey.
'Yup. They told me after, I was dead for like forty seconds. They jump-started me with this cattle prod kinda thing. I twitched like a goddamn spastic, then I started breathing again.
'So anyway, I stood inna hospital three weeks. They hadda check for brain damage, shit like that. When ya
