The Wrath of Angels

‘No, I host a radio show.’

‘Yeah?’ She perked up. ‘What station?’

He told her. It didn’t register.

‘You play music?’

‘No, it’s talk radio.’

‘Oh, I don’t listen to that shit. Hector does.’

‘Who’s Hector?’

‘The bartender.’

Instinctively, Tate looked over his shoulder to where Hector was updating the food specials on the chalkboard. Even in the midst of his labors, Hector found time to wink at Tate again. Tate shuddered.

‘Does he know who I am?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the waitress. ‘Who are you?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Let’s get back to the question. The guy who was sitting here: cash or credit?’

‘I get you,’ said the waitress. ‘If he paid credit, you could ask to see the slip. Then you’d know his name, right?’

‘Right. You should be a detective.’

‘No, I don’t like cops, especially not the kind that come in here. You sure you’re not a cop?’

‘I look like a cop?’

‘No. You don’t look like anything.’

Tate tried to gauge if he’d just been insulted, but gave up.

‘Cash,’ he said deliberately and, he hoped, for the final time, ‘or credit?’

The waitress wrinkled her nose, tapped her pen against her chin, and did the worst impression Tate had ever seen of somebody pretending not to remember. He wanted to shove her pencil through her cheek. Instead he took ten bucks from his pocket and watched it disappear into the waitress’s apron.

‘Cash,’ she said.

‘Ten bucks for that? You could have just told me.’

‘You gambled. You lost.’

‘Thanks for nothing.’

‘You’re welcome,’ said the waitress. She picked up her tray, with the brandy snifter and the stranger’s copy of the Post on top of it. As she tried to pass him, he took her arm.

‘Hey!’ she said.

‘Just one more question,’ said Tate. ‘Hector, the bartender?’

‘What about him?’

‘He’s gay, right?’

The waitress shook her head.

‘Hector’s not gay,’ she said.

‘You serious?’ said Tate. He was shocked.

‘Sure,’ said the waitress. ‘Hector’s really gay.’

As he and Becky prepared to leave, Tate kept thinking about the kid, Penny Moss. Becky couldn’t be serious, could she? After all, she was talking about knowledge of a crime yet to be committed, about the abduction and murder of a girl, but to what end: to foment unrest, or to boost his ratings? Both?

‘You’re part of something much larger than yourself, Davis,’ Becky told him. She was paying their tab, the fag bartender chuckling to himself as he ran Becky’s credit card, the waitress leaning against the bar, whispering to Hector while he worked, a feral smile on her blunt, graceless face. They’d given up on trying to get her to come over to the table to take Becky’s card. Tate was sure that she was telling the bartender about his earlier conversation with her. He hoped that Hector wouldn’t think Tate was queer for him. He had enough problems.

The waitress giggled at something Hector said to her, and covered her mouth to reply as she saw Tate watching her. You’re trash, Tate thought. You were bred for this work, and you won’t be smiling when you see the tip. Not that he ever intended to set foot in this place again, with its stinking customers and its weird vibe, as though the bar were a portal to another realm, one in which men performed unsavory acts on one another and women degraded themselves by association with them.

Tate hated New York. He hated the smugness of the place, the apparent self-assuredness of even the poorest of its citizens, the minimum wage flunkies who should have kept their eyes low and their heads down but instead seemed to have been infected by the city’s absurd confidence in its own rightness. He’d asked Becky to look into the possibility of broadcasting the show from somewhere – anywhere – else. Well, maybe not just anywhere. Jesus, he might end up in Boston, or San Francisco. Becky told him that it wasn’t possible, that they had an agreement with the studio in New York, that if he moved then she would have to move too and she didn’t want to leave the city. Tate had responded by pointing out that he was the talent, and maybe his wishes should take priority over the matter of her own convenience. Becky had given him a curious look after he said it, equal parts pity and something close to hatred.

‘Maybe you could talk to Darina about it,’ she said. ‘You remember Darina, don’t you?’

Tate remembered. It was why he took pills to help him sleep.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I remember her.’

He knew then that he would remain exactly where Becky, and Darina, and the Backers wanted him to be, and they wanted him here in the city, where they could keep an eye on him. He’d made a deal with them, but he hadn’t been bright enough to examine the small print on the terms. Then again, what would have been the point? Had he turned them down, his career would have been over. They’d have seen to that, he was sure of it. He would never have progressed, and he would still be poor and unknown. Now he had money, and a degree of influence. The drop in ratings was a temporary glitch. It would be arrested. They’d make sure of it. They’d invested so much in him that they couldn’t just cut him loose.

Could they?

‘You okay?’ asked Becky, as they walked to the door. ‘You look ill.’

Like the bitch even cared.

‘I don’t like this shithole,’ said Tate.

‘It’s just a bar. You’re losing touch with your roots. That’s part of the problem we’re having.’

‘No,’ said Tate, as sure as he’d ever been about anything. ‘I’m talking about this city. These aren’t my people. They despise me.’

Somebody at the bar called an order from the stool nearest the entrance – ‘Hey, Hector, I’m dying of thirst over here!’ – and the bartender ambled toward him, keeping pace with Becky and Tate. Tate felt Hector staring at him. He tried to face him down, and Hector blew him a kiss.

‘One for all your listeners,’ said Hector. ‘You come back, I got something special for you too.’

Tate didn’t wait around to hear what it might be, although the way Hector grabbed his crotch and shook it left him with a limited number of possibilities. As they reached the door, his eye happened upon the newspaper rack. All of the papers were already tattered and stained from use, but the stranger’s copy of the Post stood out as it was cleaner than the rest, and appeared unread. Something had been written across the top of the front page with a black felt-tip. It read:

Hello, Davis

Tate grabbed the paper and showed it to the bartender.

‘Did you write this?’ he asked. He was shouting, but he didn’t care.

‘What?’ Hector appeared genuinely puzzled.

‘I asked you if you wrote these words on the newspaper.’

Hector looked at the paper. He considered it for a time.

‘No,’ he said. ‘If that had been my message, it would have read “Hello, Davis, you homophobic asshole.” And I’d have added a smiley face.’

Tate tossed the paper on the bar. He felt very, very tired.

‘I don’t hate gays,’ he said softly.

‘You don’t?’ said Hector.

‘No,’ said Tate.

He turned to leave.