Everybody Loves Somebody (30 page)

He rose from his chair and stretched his arms. His murky potential seemed to come into focus all at once. He’d always known
he was capable. Now he felt that he was more than capable. He understood what he had to do to be happy. Don’t underestimate
me, he wanted to tell someone, even at the risk of sounding like a conceited fool. But he was convinced that he had only to
spend his life loving Clarisse and the impression would alter. You’ll see. We’ll see. Raymond Johnson knew with the certainty
of observation that he was right. Loving Clarisse, he would be somebody—not a somebody scrambling to get ahead, but a somebody
with vision who could see into the future and know that he and Clarisse belonged together.

He felt a sudden urge to notice whatever he’d overlooked. To see for the first time the variation in the particleboard of
his walls, the black casing of his telephone, the shine of his fancy H & K, which his uncle had bought him for bull’s eye
shooting and he carried for protection. He was someone who deserved to be protected. He was meant to live a long, long time.

Here I come, world.

After slipping his feet into his oversize sneakers and his H & K into the inside pocket of his jacket, he headed down the
steps to the ground floor and out onto the porch behind Sal’s. His uncle Sal didn’t like it when he entered the store through
the back door, but Sal didn’t like a lot of things. Sal wouldn’t like to hear that Raymond had decided to move in with Clarisse
and become a great man. Sal, along with most everyone else, would need proof before he considered Raymond great.

Raymond used his key to let himself into the storage room. As he made his way along the narrow corridor between the stacks
of cans, he felt an urge to dance. He’d been lit on fire by a bad television movie and was hot with the good luck of being
Raymond who loved Clarisse. The future of the family they would make was directly ahead, clear as the towers of six-packs
around him. The future of Clarisse loving him and the good work he would do for her sake. Their happiness together. As he
stepped from the storage room into the stale fluorescence of the store, he imagined that it was forty years later, and he,
a great man, the happiest man in the world, was returning for a visit.

T
WO AND A HALF LONG YEARS
before Raymond Johnson was sentenced to twenty years to life for using his pocket pistol to put a bullet in the shoulder
of a cop—the cop who Raymond mistakenly thought was trying to kill his uncle—Abe sat on a stool in Jeremiah’s sipping the
foam off his beer. It was a dreary February afternoon, and the tavern was empty except for Abe, two bikers playing pool, and
the bartender, who was watching the TV above the bar.

What was worth saying aloud? Abe wondered as he slid his hands along the tapered glass. He’d already asked the bartender,
“How are you today, young fellow?” and the bartender had shrugged, clearly finding the question too dull to answer. Abe would
have liked to stir his interest. There were a lot of interesting subjects he would have proposed for discussion—barbecue sauces,
gardening, politics, his stamp collection, his nephews, John Wayne. But the bartender was more interested in the two women
on TV, a mother and her grown daughter, who were in love with the same man. Apparently the man, a high school principal, was
waiting off camera for a turn to tell his side of the story.

Another gray winter day in the gray city that had been his home for more than half a century, and Abe had nothing better to
look forward to than the evening’s bingo. The truth was, he’d been playing bingo regularly for twenty years and had never
won. Everyone agreed that victory for Abe was long overdue. It was terrible to think that time was running out and he might
never win.

At least he could still appreciate the simplest of impressions—the smoothness of the glass between his hands, for instance,
or the relief of a belch. He always belched politely, muting the sound with his closed fist, an effort he’d perfected at the
behest of Edna, his long-ago wife.

Long-ago lovers, you and me, he mused. Young rascals. Edna and Abe, Abe and Edna. Forget about the disappointments. We had
each other. Year after year. Remember when. Of course you remember when. You’re in heaven now. You remember everything, even
the eternity before you were born. Such is the expansive consciousness of angels.

Abe believed that at his age he had a right to believe whatever he pleased. He’d spent most of his life believing in nothing
more than possibility, but after he lost Edna he couldn’t help it—when he imagined his wife, he imagined her alive, floating
comfortably above in a heaven that couldn’t be less than heavenly.

Down here, human effort would continue to be riven by bitter disputes. Isn’t there always someone ready to take what someone
else has? The bartender, for instance, was ready to take Abe’s five dollars. Each of the bikers was planning to claim the
pack of cigarettes they’d bet on this game of pool. One man’s loss was necessarily the other’s gain in this world of never-ending
competition, where only the fittest are expected to survive.

Gray daylight hung like cardboard against the glass of the front door. Inside, the strongest illumination came from the television,
which lit the bottles stacked behind the bar with a faint white glow. Stale smells of beer and cigarettes thickened the air,
along with the sharp pine fragrance of Lysol. The bartender wore a plaid fleece vest over a T shirt. The coaster beneath Abe’s
glass advertised Budweiser. The mirror hanging on the door to the kitchen had been painted over with red, white, and blue
stripes.

Nothing makes complete sense, Abe thought, and yet in theory everything has a logical explanation. Reason assumes a cause
for every consequence, birth marking the beginning of the end, the child becoming the widower who is left behind to do the
work of remembering.

At least an old man can reward himself with a tepid beer after enduring a long morning alone in his apartment. He can hope
that tonight he’ll win at bingo. He can think about his wife in heaven.

Hearing a sharp yapping, he looked around for the dog. But it turned out that the dog was a terrier yapping gratefully for
his gourmet food on the television. Abe considered how easily he’d been fooled. The trick of false reality. Where does the
truth begin? he wanted to ask. He found himself imagining that the interior of Jeremiah’s was a stage set and the play was
his own life story. The problem was, he hadn’t read the script. He could only fumble along, trying to guess the best next
line. Actually, he had a knack for improvisation. He remembered how Edna used to watch his antics with her hand clapped over
her mouth to keep herself from laughing too loudly. Just the thought of his wife holding back her laughter brightened the
gloom. But when he heard the ringing of a telephone on the TV, he was reminded of his loneliness. And when he noticed that
the clock on the wall in front of him had no hands, he decided it was time to leave.

“I owe you” Abe began but stopped short when the bartender held up his open palm in a gesture suggesting refusal. Or was he
simply expressing his contempt?

“Excuse me,” said Abe, perplexed.

“Merry Christmas,” offered the bartender in a defeated voice.

“It’s February,” Abe pointed out. “Anyway, I don’t celebrate Christmas.”

“Then happy birthday.”

“Is this a joke?”

“The thing is, I’ve been thinking.”

“You were watching the TV.”

“I was watching the TV and thinking. And I thought to myself, If I stay in this dump another day I’ll die. But I don’t wanna
die. I wanna quit. So I’m gonna quit.”

“What are you saying?” Abe asked.

“It’s on the house is what I’m saying. Hey, you idiots,” the bartender called to the bikers, “I’m telling you it’s on the
house.”

One of the bikers thrust his cue into the center of the dartboard hanging on the wall and broke the stick in half. “Hallelujah!”
he shouted as the bartender reached for the tap to a keg.

This certainly wasn’t how old Abe had expected to end the day—celebrating at a party with a man who had decided to quit his
job. And what a party it turned out to be! It was a party thrown in honor of spontaneity and renewal and courage, a party
as uncontainable as a riot, with the guests multiplying when the waitress arrived for the dinner shift along with two college
friends, two girls who’d just finished taking a chemistry exam and were ready to unwind, and then the Chi-Wah Tigers men’s
softball team and various others off the street who’d heard that the house grog at Jeremiah’s was free for the night and came
to drink and trade stories about bad dates, flat tires, local bands, body piercing, novelty drugs, probations, rock climbing,
and miraculous escapes. It was a deafening, joyous party, and Abraham Groslik sat contentedly on a bar stool in the center
of the crowd, understanding almost nothing that was said to him yet having the time of his life.

T
HE DAY BEFORE
Abe’s Lucite cane was found in the lilac grove by the tennis courts, more than four years after the party at Jeremiah’s,
the bartender, whose name was Sam, returned to Rochester and walked right into the bar and ordered a beer. He guessed that
the owner still had better things to do than hang around to manage his business. Unfortunately, his guess was wrong. The owner
had lost two employees to better jobs the week before, and now he had to wait tables himself. After a few minutes the owner
spotted his former bartender in the crowd, and he marched up and demanded the restitution that had been ordered by a judge
at the conclusion of a small-claims hearing three years earlier. But Sam had left for Florida without paying the owner a penny.
From Florida he’d moved to Chicago with his new girlfriend. In Chicago the girl had left him for another girl, and after a
few months of travel out west he’d sold his car and come home.

Sam still believed that he hadn’t done anything wrong. “Since when is generosity wrong?” he asked the owner. “Since when is
generosity at someone else’s expense right?” the owner retorted. They continued to argue, though they kept their voices low
to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Finally Sam gave up and pulled two crisp fifty-dollar bills from his wallet—a fraction
of the prescribed sum but enough to mollify the owner, who demonstrated forgiveness by offering his popular former bartender
his job back.

Sam accepted and promptly took his place behind the counter, sharing the busy night’s work with a girl named Clarisse, who
had been working at Jeremiah’s for nearly two years, ever since she’d moved into her boyfriend’s apartment above Sal’s Mini-Mart.
It took an hour of casual conversation snatched when drink orders drew them together before Sam learned from Clarisse that
her boyfriend, Raymond Johnson, was in jail. Sam couldn’t believe it. He’d met Raymond Johnson years ago at the Laundromat
next to Chen’s Noodle House, and though they never became good friends, they’d shared a couple of pitchers. Raymond Johnson
was in jail? Yes, Raymond Johnson was in jail for shooting a cop. And Clarisse had moved into Raymond Johnson’s apartment
in order to devote herself to keeping the memory of their love alive.

Though Clarisse was attached to a man who might never be released from prison, she had a fresh-as-the-morning kind of beauty,
with brown curls that still looked damp, her skin scrubbed and shining, her perfume a mix of soapy lavender and cinnamon.
Sam just wanted to be near her. They were kept busy through the night, which happened to be a Fish-Fry Friday, but whenever
he could he’d shimmy in her direction and lean toward her to whisper in her ear. Did she live alone? he asked. Did she have
family in town? Had she ever seen the Amerks play?

Yes
was her reply to all his questions. But she looked overfilled with mixed emotions, and Sam thought that if he pushed hard
enough she would burst with all the things she’d been wanting to say.

The crowd at Jeremiah’s was as raucous as ever, and many of the customers, regulars for years, recognized Sam and remembered
his going-away party. They wanted him to throw another going-away party, but he assured them that he wasn’t going anywhere.
Why not a welcome-home party, then?

Sam was in too ambitious a mood to throw a party. He wanted to drum up tips for Clarisse, and with his swift service encouraged
everyone at the bar to drink more than they’d planned. As the night wore on, the crowd grew fuzzier, louder, more harmlessly
belligerent while Clarisse seemed to sharpen in focus. At one point Sam slipped behind her and eased his hand into the back
pocket of her jeans. For a few delicious seconds she pretended not to notice. And though he couldn’t see her face, he was
sure that when she gently tugged at his wrist to lift his hand up, she was smiling.

He was confident that at the end of the night they would leave together. And yet when the time came, he didn’t know where
to go with her. He couldn’t take her home to his mother’s house, and he guessed that she didn’t want to take him home to Raymond
Johnson’s apartment. Neither of them had a car. He couldn’t think of anything else to do but say good-bye to her on the sidewalk
as the door to Jeremiah’s closed behind them. She said good-bye in return, but as she spoke her hand reached out and hung
in the emptiness between them for an uncertain moment, until Sam extended his hand and folded his fingers around hers. He’d
already reminded her that they’d see each other back at work on Tuesday night. They were going to shake hands like business
colleagues and go their separate ways. But now that he held a part of her, he couldn’t let her go.

Hand in hand, they set out walking. Since the reservoir was the destination for much aimless wandering, they headed there.
It was a cool spring night, with a half-moon slipping in and out between clouds. Against the backdrop of darkness the faded
lilac blossoms looked like straw caps hanging on the racks of bushes. It was too early in the year for the locusts to be buzzing,
and the city streets were deserted. The only sound was the occasional whir of a truck traveling on the highway that skirted
the opposite end of the park.