Andrew Klavan - True Crime

“I thought I heard a little tinkle, a little … Ah, maybe not. What was I about to say?”

“You were about to tell me that women were different from men.”

“Oh yeah. Women and men, man-completely different.”

“Really?” said Neil. “I’ve never heard that before.”

“True,” I said. “Completely.” And I waved my cigarette around vaguely to show how different they were. “A man, see, his dick stands up, his head buries itself in the ground. That’s all he cares about. In and out. Done. Finished. A woman, see, she thinks it’s all supposed to mean something.”

“Probably because they have children,” said Neil, stifling a yawn with his hand.

“It’s cause they have children,” I said, pointing the cigarette at him. “Makes em worry alla time. Makes em think everything’s gotta be a certain way. Right and wrong, good and bad. What difference it make? Does it make. We all die anyway. We should have fun. Tomorrow we may die.”

With a glance at the TV, Neil nodded. “You’re a profound guy, Ev. I’ve been tending bar most of my life and no one’s said that to me since nine-thirty.”

“So I fucked the boss’s daughter-no, his wife this time. No, wait, his daugh-yeah, his wife, yeah. So what does that mean? That mean I gotta lose my job? That mean my wife gotta throw me out?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Naaaaaah,” I said. “S’judgmental … ness.” I drained my glass and set it down hard to make the ice shake. “That time.”

“Yeah, I heard it.” He brought up a scoopful of ice from the bin beneath the bar. Dumped it in the glass as he upturned the scotch bottle. I held the cigarette to my lips and watched the operation through curling smoke.

“Judgmental,” I said again. “Everybody saying this one’s right, this one’s wrong. You killed somebody, you gotta get the needle. You fucked somebody, you gotta get the shaft. All bullshit. All bullshit, Neil-o. Makes everybody unhappy. Nothing’s good or bad but thinking makes it so. William Shakespeare. Billy Big-Boy said that himself.”

“He knew a thing or two, all right.”

“Judge not lest you be judged. That was Jesus Christ, for Christ’s sake, wasn’t it?”

“Old Mr. J. Haven’t seen him around here much lately.”

“See, that was the problem with my parents. My dopted parents,” I said. “Big lawyers. Big liberal muck-a-muck-a-mucks. A-mucks. Always knew the right thing, always knew who was the bad guy, who was the good guy. Always on the side of the angels. And how do they know? See what I’m saying? Wha’s right, wha’s wrong? How do they know? Who told them?”

“Uh, Plato?”

I whiffled like a horse.

“Just a guess,” said Neil. “We hadn’t done Plato.”

I took another toke of nicotine, but it had lost its talent to amuse. It seared my throat and I crushed the cigarette weakly in the glass ashtray, left it there bent and fuming. I bowed my head over my glass and studied the ice floating in the amber. I nodded at it somberly. I had reached that stage of inebriation when you start to have Ideas about Life; Life with a capital L, Ideas with a capital I. I had reached that stage when these Ideas seem to link together in a chain of perfect sense or, that is, when the links forged in the smithy of creation become clear to you through the veil of mortality and time. Or something. Anyway, as I sat there, with my neck limp and my chin bouncing lightly above the hollow of my throat, the Idea came to me clearly that Life is a pretty bum affair in which a guy hardly gets a break at all. Happen-stances that, through generations out of living memory, have combined themselves into a history all but unknown, coalesce at the moment of your conception into a clockwork of inevitability. What seem to you like decisions, opinions, revelations, growth are really only the ticking of the mechanism, relieved by the occasional accident or two-if they are accidents-and made sonorous and mournful by the ever-present suspicion that there is no breaking the machinery of fate. Well, it seemed to make sense at the moment anyway. It seemed mournful and profound. And when I imposed this Idea over the events of my existence-as one generally does impose one’s ideas-those events-as they generally do-were forced to fall into line with the Idea which, therefore, seemed to explain everything to perfection.

So I belched miserably. I raised the scotch glass to my hanging head and sucked in the liquor with a slurping noise. “Aaaaaah,” I said, as I let the glass drop back to the bar. “Wha they have ta dopt me for anyway? Who ast em? Where they get me, fer Crissake?” My eyes filled with tears and I asked myself-I asked the whole arena packed with the audience of my imagination-who there could be, anywhere, more pitiful than I? “Always try’n push their things-their notions on me. Tellin me wha was right, wha was wrong. Li’l, gentle instrushins.” I held up thumb and index finger to show how teensy-weensy my parents’ moral instructions were. “Li’l, li’l lectures bout every fucking little thing. Be nice, be fair, be good. Ah Christ it was unbearable shit. Practically see in their eyes which stupid book they’d been reading, which stupid article in which stupid magazine. Who asked them to dopt me in the first place anyway? Where was my real father? Hanh? Thas wha I wanna know. What am I doing here? Where’s my fucking father? Somebody tell me that, why don’t they.”

“Jesus Christ, Everett.” Neil Gordon sighed. “Go the fuck home, will you.”

I laughed oh so bitterly, lifting my heavy head. “Got no home, Neil-o,” I said. “Neil-o-rama. Got no fucking home.” With some difficulty, I reached into my shirt pocket and removed Barbara’s wedding ring. I rolled it between my fingers, holding it up in the dim barlight. “See? An now my son too. Got no father. My boy, my poor boy, my poor little baby, baby boy … What the hell’s he gonna do? Ruin his life. His fate, see, that’s what I’m talking. No fault o his jus …”

I sniffed pitiably. Neil’s mouth puckered as if he smelled something awful. I held the ring out to him.

“See dat?” I said. “Inside there? Thas her name. Our name. Barbara Everett. Sposed ta be … a fambly! Sposed to be … together. That’s the thing, that’s the heart of … everything. One name. Change yer name ta one. Together, A fambly.” The ring seemed to become too heavy for me to hold up like that and my hand dropped to the bar. As it did, as if I were some sort of mechanical toy with all the parts connected, my other hand rose, bringing the glass to my lips again. I gasped out of the sting of the whisky. I peered into the wavering depths of Neil’s flowered shirt. I did not think I could keep the tears from falling anymore. “I had that name carve into the gold …” I said in a strangled voice. “To be there for … to be there …”

And so I sat, my mouth twisted, gaping, my eyes, full of tears, blinking stupidly into the nauseating whirl of printed flowers. And once again, as I sat, there seemed to be a lifting of the mortal veil, or a drunken skewing of it anyway, to reveal-blurred, unstable, moving toward and away from me at once-the hidden chain of sense behind events. I opened my mouth even wider. My tongue wagged and bulged as I tried to form words to express my revelation.

“Duuuuuuh …” I said.

Neil shook his head, casting a wistful look at the TV again.

“Locket,” I finally managed to say.

“Hm?” said Neil, interested just barely if at all.

“Duuuuuuuh,” I said. “The locket. That locket.”

With which remark, I slid off my stool, catching myself by my elbows on the edge of the bar and hanging there a moment, my chin floating just above the wood, before I clawed and climbed my way back to an upright position. The fall jogged my mind, cleared it somewhat for some few seconds. I cast my gaze over the shelves of shiny bottles, over the red uniforms moving on the televised ballfield, back again to the cool brown eyes behind Neil’s spectacles, trying desperately to focus through the lenses of my own.