A
round four o’clock on Wednesday, Paul woke up in his study with the kind of headache that feels like internal bleeding. Pound, throb, pound. Each time his heart beat, he could feel it like a drum smashed open inside his temples. The DTs. Yes, here they were, the real thing. Not the kind where you wonder if you’re having them. You know you’re having them. Just about right: forty-eight hours since he’d had a drink. Just like clockwork, this perfect machine of his.
The house was dry as a bone, and he had not had so much as a shot since he’d polished off his emergencies-only stash of scotch two nights before. Tempting as dropping by the liquor store may have been, he’d decided he’d rather eat paint thinner than answer pointed questions from the locals about Susan.
There had been some changes in the Martin household over the last few days. On Friday Brutton had called to tell him that if he showed up on school grounds, he’d be physically removed by police escort. On Sunday Cathy told him she was leaving. “Write when you get work, dear,” he’d told her, because he really had thought she was kidding. What kind of person leaves a man when his luck is the worst it’s ever been? But then he woke from his nap on the couch, and found two Post-it notes taped together on the refrigerator that read:
Dear Paul,
Gone to April’s with James.
Take care,Cathy
PS—The AA hotline is open twenty-four hours (207) 774–3034
Tammy Wynette she was not. And how had Cathy explained this to his son as she took him away from the only home he’d ever known? What had she said to him? Best not to think about that now. Best to add that to the ever-growing list.
He spent the next few days drying out, which sounded like a lot more fun than it actually was. And now here he was, a soon-to-be-divorced alcoholic with a dead ex-mistress, standing in an empty kitchen on a rainy afternoon in Bedford, Maine. Who would have guessed? Certainly not him. This occasion called for a beer.
He opened the refrigerator. No, not the moldy blue cheese. Not the greasy clam chowder. Nothing in the crisper. Nope. He searched the cabinets. His head was really pounding. The thing he’d considered a headache a few hours ago, compared to this, was a too tight hat. He tossed things out. Oatmeal, bottles of condiments, canned chicken soup; they fell to the floor. Nothing there. And then he remembered: the cooking sherry.
There it was. Behind the Heinz 57. Usually by this time, he would have had a nip. A sip. Not to get drunk, just to stay neutral. But never cooking sherry. Never had he gone the way of Kitty Dukakis. This was an all-time low.
He turned the bottle over in his hand.
Tide you over,
a voice whispered in his ear.
You’ll feel so much better once you have a little nip.
“Christ,” he said out loud because he knew that hearing his voice would make him feel better. “Jesus Christ.” He looked at the bottle. Almost funny. Truly funny. Funny because you can see cherry red stains running down the white label of a dusty old bottle. Funny because you’re smart enough to know exactly the kind of failure you are but not tough enough to figure a way out. Pathetic funny.
He dropped the bottle to the floor. It didn’t shatter. It rolled. He gave it a kick. It just kept rolling and no matter how hard he kicked, he just couldn’t make it break.
I
t was wet out. Not just the rain, but the air. And dark. He could hear water rushing like a river on the ground. He absentmindedly rubbed the place on his arm where Susan had bitten him. It itched with healing and he could feel the hardness of scab underneath his bandages. After the incident with the impenetrable sherry, he’d had to get out of the house. He took the car. As he drove down the hill, more and more water filled the streets. The car swerved, hydroplaned. He pulled over a few blocks from his house and walked to town.
It was still daytime, probably around three o’clock, but it felt much later. The black clouds overhead were full and threatening. Lightning lit up the sky every few minutes and was closely followed by the crackle of thunder. Each time this happened, his path to town was illuminated for a few seconds, maybe less, by a yellow, electrical light that, were his hair dry, would have made it stand on end.
Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Utah. Those were the names of some of the license plates mounted on the wall behind the bar. He read all thirty-seven of them, trying to focus, as he wiped down his wet clothes with the brown paper towels he’d acquired from the sawdust-covered men’s room.
The television was tuned to the local news. The main story was the flooding in Bedford. There were interviews with people from the town, saying in that slow, man-of-the-people way they had of saying everything: These things happen. We’ll make out all right. There were also a few inside-the-house disaster sequences that showed flooded basements. Cameras panned in on cardboard boxes and stored furniture floating across water-corroded floors.
As an end piece, the anchor reported that the Clott Paper Mill had recently closed, and the future of the town was in question. A clip showed a small caravan of cars heading south on I–95. Strapped to their trunks were bike racks or extra boxes, and it looked like many were abandoning the place. Would people stay in Bedford, the anchor intoned, or with a population that had been dwindling over the last fifty years, would future maps mark the area as deserted woodland?
Paul muttered something about inbreds, morons, and looked back at the license plates. Only he, Montie, and some old-timers were in the bar right now. There was The Duke as in John Wayne, so named because he grew increasingly silent as he drank, and that guy, Cancer Dan, who had this growth on his nose like he’d been out in the sun all his life but had never heard of the word “cancer.” He was the greenskeeper at the Corpus Christi Country Club. Last was Sean, whose low-slung jeans revealed the hairy fissure of his ass. They were playing cards. Each had his own bottle of something, what they’d brought with them and didn’t want to have to pay extra for, and a beer, which they sipped, just in order to stay in the bar.
Paul’s worst fear was being liked by these assholes.
“You smell her?” Montie asked. “I can smell her on my skin. Like she’s inside me.”
Paul cocked his head. He wanted a drink right now. He wanted a drink really bad. No time for barroom philosophy emceed by a man with an intelligence quotient of sixty. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. What can I get you?” Montie asked.
Paul felt incredibly grateful. He paused, trying not to look desperate. No one likes an obvious drunk. “Coffee,” he said. He did not know why he said that. He tried to change his order, but saw the way Montie’s eyes widened in surprise, and his pride wouldn’t let him take it back. Yes, his first drink would be coffee. His second, a triple scotch.
Montie poured him some coffee and sat on a stool next to him. He wore his usual uniform; a white T-shirt full of holes underneath an apron with the map of the London Underground printed on it. His fingernails were bitten jagged and low. Still, there was dried blood and dirt underneath them, like he’d been digging his own grave. And gin. No matter how drunk Paul ever got, he could always smell that gin coming off Montie’s pores. The fact that the humidity inside the bar was high enough to make the wood under Paul’s hands slick and soft to the touch did not make that smell any better.
“Why do you collect all these license plates?” Paul asked.
Montie looked up as if seeing them for the first time. “Oh, them? They were here when I bought the bar.”
“When was that?”
“Eighty-eight.”
“Oh. I thought you collected them.”
Montie laughed. His stomach folded on itself so that Brixton and Central London were one. “Why the hell would I do that? Just a lot a crap.”
Eighteen minutes later Paul sipped his black coffee and winced. His stomach cramped and gurgled, but still, he sipped his coffee. This was the plan. This was what he would do. Because he didn’t want people thinking that after his family left him, after Susan died, that he went out and got drunk. Went straight for the bar. He didn’t want to think that himself. No, he would wait until six o’clock. Exactly twenty-three minutes from when he’d arrived. Functional alcoholics start at five. He would start at six. Five minutes left. Like counting down until the end of class.
At three minutes before zero hour, Montie made him a sandwich; two pieces of bread slopped together with mayonnaise and pickled egg. The bar was mostly empty; Cancer Dan, The Duke, and Sean now departed for whatever dry-rot shelters they called home. He pictured them hiding in their moldy dens, waiting for this maddening rain to end as the people of this town did every year, as they would do every year, forever. He pushed his sandwich away. “I’m not that sick,” he said.
At two minutes before zero hour, Danny entered the bar. It was the first time they’d seen each other since he’d driven home from the police station Thursday night. The sight of Danny gave Paul a flicker of déjà vu. What he remembered most was the toilet paper Susan had used as a napkin. The slathering of pizza sauce on her lips. Then it was gone. Same thing, he thought, like nothing happened, like a girl didn’t die. Same old shit. Less than a minute left. The second hand on Paul’s watch wavered as if it might go backward. He resolved to give up counting seconds. It was impossible to count that slowly.
Danny stood. Paul motioned for him to sit. He didn’t. Well, maybe not same old shit. Montie lingered behind the bar, watching them as usual. “Cathy was at my house,” Danny said.
“She does that.”
“She shouldn’t have gone out with this rain. I don’t know how she did it, but she got across the bridge. Probably in Saratoga Springs by now.”
Paul ordered his drink. Montie nodded and got it for him, then stood over the two of them, waiting no doubt for their jeers to devolve into violence. Paul sipped his drink. Slow sip. Then a big gulp. He drained the glass and felt that familiar, welcome, wonderful burn. A few drops rolled down his chin and he lifted them up with his finger and tasted them.
Danny curled his lip in disgust, and Paul turned to him. “What am I supposed to say?”
“You know what really pisses me off—”
Paul knew just from the look on Danny’s face what he was about to say. There are things you know, without being told. Things you already feel. “—No, and I don’t care,” he said, cutting Danny off. Then he ordered another drink. Montie gave it to him. He took a sip. It was the cheap stuff that tasted like Tide detergent though Paul had asked for a neat Johnnie Walker Black.
“Everybody does these things for you,” Danny said.
“What exactly do they do?”
Danny gave Paul a knowing look. “Well, nobody’s comin’ around asking you about fleeing the scene of an accident, are they?”
“You’re kidding.” Once, a week ago, he could have pushed Danny around. Once, a long time ago, he would never have been in this situation to begin with. He would have had better things to do than loiter in this bar with a stomach full of worry and a gaggle of half-wits by his side. The worry that persisted whether he drank nothing or a quart of whiskey. He looked down and noticed that he was fingering the place Susan had bitten. Through the bandages, there was blood. He must have been picking at it for a long time without even knowing it. “She won’t go away. I don’t think it’s my fault, but she won’t go away,” he said.
“She’s worried about you.”
Paul picked up the trail of the conversation. “Is that what she told you?”
“Yeah, and a few other things.” Danny again looked like he was about to continue, to go on and on about the few other things.
Great, Danny, wait till my life is so shitty I can’t even stand and then attack. Great, Danny, I know just the kind of guy you are.
“So ring her bell and have a ‘Crucify Paul Martin’ party. You leave James out of it, though.” He had meant this last part to come out soft, threatening, rational. Instead it was nasal and loud, like a cartoon version of himself.
“You know what pisses me off, Paul? You know what really pisses me off?”
“What, Danny, what really pisses you off? Tell me,” Paul yelled. He lost his balance, grabbed the bar, and pulled himself back onto the stool.
Danny sighed.
“Well, fuck you, too, Danny,” Paul said, but it sounded like, “WAFUYOOTOO,” some distant, aboriginal language.
Danny stood for a while longer, in what Paul considered a kind of gloating. Paul managed to stand. He took a swing, right hand up under Danny’s chin. Sucker punch. Danny reeled backward, seemed almost to gain his footing, but then his knees buckled and he hit the floor. Montie came out from around the bar and knelt next to him. “Get out of my bar,” Montie said, while Danny croaked indecipherable sounds from his bruised windpipe.
P
aul left before his clothes had a chance to dry. He stood outside the bar for a while, waiting for Danny to appear, maybe finish this thing they had started. But Danny did not come. Hiding, probably, and telling Montie that because he and Paul were friends, he did not want to have to go outside and arrest him.
He felt like a human sponge. His wet clothes chafed at every place they touched his body. And the shaking, still the shaking not in the least diminished by four ounces of eighty proof. Could a man die from withdrawal?
He decided to walk, he did not know where, passing houses and the trailer park, until he stood in front of her house. He went around to the side entrance. Inside, he saw the place where she had fallen six nights before. There was no yellow police line, no marker. Just a stain, a little more brown than the rest of the wood, at the foot of the stairs. He tried to think of something to leave for her. Reached into his pockets and found his wallet. It held eight dollars, an American Express card, a library card, his driver’s license with the photo taken seven years ago (back when he’d carried a few extra pounds and his smile had been a little more easy, a little less self-mocking), and a People’s Heritage bank card. He took off the iodine- and blood-stained gauze from his arm and dropped it on the floor, hoping that if she was watching from somewhere above, below, wherever, she would accept this gesture in the manner in which it was intended.