Evan Hunter - Candyland

He almost decides to go straight to bed, the hell with this. It's raining outside, it's already a quarter past twelve, and he has to leave the hotel at six-thirty in the morning, the hell with this. But he goes to the door instead, and out into the hallway, and into the elevator, and down to the lobby and out into the night.

The building is on Third Avenue and Seventy-fourth Street, a four story, red-brick tenement squatting between a Korean grocery and a bar called The Shamrock, how original. As he steps into the bar, he feels as if he is in some sort of trance… well, not a trance, certainly, no one has hypnotized him. But he knows he's performed this same action before, in cities stranger to him than New York is, and he recognizes that he is now following the same compulsive… well, not compulsive, he can go back to the hotel room anytime he wishes, there's nothing compulsive about what he's doing now. You start thinking compulsive, you automatically think obsessive, and then you've got someone who's being led around the universe by his dick.

He admits that he enjoys women, perhaps enjoys them a bit too much for his own good, but to say that first stopping for a drink is part of a customary delaying tactic… well, that would be jinxing it somehow. He wants a drink because he's excited. He doesn't want to walk into a whore house advertising his need. One look at the bulge in his trousers and all at once a girl with a sixth-grade education will think she's superior to a Yale graduate. He doesn't want a chorus of whores stroking crossed fingers and chanting "Shame, shame, everybody knows your name."

The drink is a way of cooling his ardor somewhat, and not any part of a ritual he's developed over the years, although he recognizes it as something he does habitually before going to any of these places he picks from a magazine or the Yellow Pages. This isn't some kind of voodoo ceremony here; it's just something he does as a matter of course. In fact, when he thinks about it, it seems to him that whiskey is somehow part of it all, at least when he's doing what he's doing tonight. He has identified his quarry in the pages of New York magazine, has made initial contact over the phone, has tracked the beast to its lair, so to speak, here on the Upper East Side, and is now ready to pounce upon it — but not before he has a soothing little drink in an amiable little pub here on Third Avenue.

The bar is, in fact, rather cozy, with a great deal of mahogany and brass, and black leather booths with green-shaded lamps hanging over wooden tables. He checks it out for women, because he always does this, even when he's not looking for anything. Two girls are sitting drinking alone in one of the booths, heads almost touching over the table as they exchange secrets about men, that's all girls talk about when they're alone together. Otherwise, there isn't a woman in the place, nor does he need one. He's already made arrangements, they're expecting him next door at any moment — but they'll have to wait. He hangs his raincoat on a peg just inside the entrance door, takes a stool at the bar where he can watch the coat, and asks the bartender for a Beefeater martini on the rocks, couple of olives, please. The bartender mixes his drink, and brings it over, and then says, "Hell of a thing about Kennedy, ain't it?"

"Terrible," Ben agrees, and wonders why he didn't cry when he heard the news earlier tonight. He realizes he didn't cry when Robert Kennedy got killed, either, and he wonders now if he cried when the President got killed. Well, there was so much confusion that day, his eighth birthday and all. But did he cry? He can't remember crying.

The bartender is in his early fifties, Ben guesses, a reddish-blond Irishman wearing a green vest open over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up over muscular forearms. One of the men sitting at the bar is wearing a brown suit, brown shoes, a button-down shirt with a striped brown-and-gold tie. He looks as if he came here directly from work and has been sitting here since. A bottle of Amstel beer sits on the bartop in front of him. The other man at the bar is in his mid-sixties, Ben guesses, wearing a blue cotton cardigan with a shawl collar, a bluish-green plaid shirt, blue cotton trousers, and white sneakers. He has a white mustache and green eyes, and he looks as if he just came off a sailboat. He is drinking something brownish in a glass brimming with ice cubes. He takes a sip of his drink, and scoops up a handful of peanuts.

The man in the brown suit pours beer from the Amstel bottle and says, "It's the curse of the Kennedys. First the President, then his brother, and now the son. It's a curse, is what it is."

"I remember just where I was when the President got killed," the bartender says.

"So do I," the man with the mustache says.

"Everyone does," the man in the brown suit says.

"I was fifteen years old," the bartender says. "I used to work delivering groceries. I remember I knocked on the door to this apartment, and an old lady opens the door and tells me she just heard on the radio that JFK had got shot. I'll never forget that minute as long as I live. We both started crying like babies."

Ben tries to remember if he cried. All he can remember is that it was his eighth birthday.

"I was just coming in off the road," the man with the mustache says. "I used to sell books for a living, my territory was the New England states. I walked in the front door and my wife was in tears. I thought something had happened to one of the kids. I burst out crying when she told me it was Kennedy. I don't know if it was relief or what. Later, I felt guilty, I don't know why."

"It was my eighth birthday," Ben says, and almost adds I felt guilty, too — and wonders why.

"My wife and I were in California," the man in the brown suit says. "We'd gone out for my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. My sisters were there, too, the whole family had come from all over the country to celebrate. My parents almost called it off. They should have. Nobody wanted to dance, believe me."

“I'll never forget what Moynihan said," the bartender says. "Senator Moynihan? This woman was telling him they'd never laugh again. And he said, 'Oh, we'll laugh again, Mary. It's just that we'll never be young again.'"

"He was right," the man with the mustache says. "We lost our innocence that day."

Ben nods silently.

But he can't remember crying.

Sipping at the martini, he begins anticipating what ties just ahead, savoring the gin and vermouth, savoring as well the secret he harbors here among these hearty men drinking and smoking on a rainy night. Keeping the secret is almost as exciting as the anticipation of the illicit adventure that awaits him just next door. He asks for his tab at last, leaves a good tip on the bartop, bids the other men goodnight, and puts on his raincoat. It is twelve-forty-two on his watch.

If only you knew where I'm going, he thinks, and smiles secretly, and steps out into the rain again.

He looks up and down the street before he steps into the shallow doorway. A row of bells beckons, but only one has a nameplate under it, the letter B in outline, filled in with a red marker. B for Beautiful, he thinks, and rings the buzzer. He knows there is a surveillance camera over the door, he sported it before he stepped close to the rack of bells. He knows he is being observed now. Perhaps by the same girl who answered the phone. He waits. He rings again. He feels exposed here, huddled in the doorway, his back to the street, the rain failing behind him. He rings yet a third time.

"Yes?"

A girl's voice, but not the same one who was on the phone.

"It's Michael," he says.

"Do you have an appointment, Michael?"

"I called a few minutes ago."

Longer ago than that, actually.