David Halliday - The Hole

The stain on the cement stared back at me. I wanted to go home and get a pail of hot water and wash it off. Several ants were grazing on it. I looked around. Everything was the same as it had been a few days earlier. The telephone booth. The newspaper boxes. The Six Points Plaza across the street. The plaza was empty. Business was bad. Several of the stores were abandoned. The stain was the only sign that something terrible had happened.

“You all right, mister?”

I turned around. A young boy looked up at me. He was about ten years old, with a lock of red hair falling over his eyes. He looked like Johnny at that age. The resemblance startled me. He was bundling newspapers into his carrier’s bag.

“You come to pick up your newspapers?”

He nodded.

“I used to have a paper route,” I said. “ The Telegram. Pink newspaper.

Ironic for a conservative newspaper.”

“What are you talking about, mister?” the kid asked.

“An old man died here yesterday.” I pointed to the stain on the sidewalk.

The boy looked down at the stain. “Is that all that’s left of him?”

“He made that stain when he died. His bowels emptied.”

“He shit his pants!” the boy gasped. “That’s gross! Was he shot?” I shook my head. The boy looked disappointed.

“Did you see him die?” the boy asked.

“I heard him die,” I responded. “My back was turned.” The boy thought about that for a moment.

“What did it sound like?”

“A whistle. Like a balloon deflating.”

“Our cat gave birth to some dead kittens. They were stiff. Was he stiff?”

I sat down on the curb of the street.

“What are you crying for, mister?…It wasn’t you that died.”

Mary Hendrix smiled as she warmed the glass of white wine in the palm of her hand. With the other hand, her long spider fingers traced the glass’s edge. Her painted blue eyes rose. Frank Sinatra crooned one of his standards, “The Lady is a Tramp,” from speakers hidden in the ceiling of the bar. She raised her glass to her lips and took a sip. A smudge of lipstick lay on the glass like a stain. Why does Sinatra make me feel like I belong in bars?

“The first drink of the day,” she said with a smile. An old joke. The bartender looked up. Long threadlike hairs fell over his eyes. He hadn’t been listening. My God, he is ugly. Mary glanced around the small narrow room. She could have sworn there had been another customer in the place. Perhaps they’d gone downstairs to the washroom. Strange how people keep disappearing. It was one of the signs of alcoholism, she’d read somewhere. Thinking people around you were disappearing. Short-term memory loss. That’s what Hank had said, and wouldn’t he know.

“That’s quite an accomplishment,” Jack said with a laugh, the gaps in his teeth stained with cigarette smoke.

Mary nodded toward the bartender, accepting his accolades. He had been listening after all. Mary liked Jack. Everyone liked Jack. He never seemed to rub anyone the wrong way. But then, wasn’t that what made a good bartender? And Jack never made advances toward Mary. It was a relief to be able to talk to a man and not feel he wanted to sleep with her.

And it was comforting that he wasn’t attractive. You don’t want to sleep with your bartender. You can always find a lover. A good bartender is hard to find. Mary laughed to herself. Wasn’t that another sign? The bartender looked at her, waiting to hear what she found amusing.

“Well, it’s almost three o’clock, Jack.” I wonder if it’s started to rain?

“That’s better than yesterday. Two thirty. Everything in baby steps, Jack.

Got to wean myself off this stuff one drink at a time. Inside two weeks 3

I’ll be stone sober. Doesn’t do no good to go cold turkey. Just increases the appetite. That’s the trouble with all these diets people go on. Crash diets followed by binges. I lost twenty pounds, Jack. And how did I do it? Baby steps. And I’ve kept that weight off.” Mary slid off the stool and modeled for Jack. Jack smiled appreciat-ively. Mary laughed and climbed back on her stool. Still got my looks.

“They say it’s going to rain,” Jack said with a smile, cleaning a glass.

Jack was always polishing glasses.

“First the waistline. Then the drinking. Cigarettes will be next. One battle at a time.” Mary smiled, taking another sip of wine. Did he say I still had my looks?

“Slow at the office today?” Jack asked.

“Mr. Brennan don’t mind if I leave a little early on Friday. I mean, I’m in there six days a week. We got this new girl to look after the phones.

She spends a lot of time talking to her boyfriend, but I don’t say nothing.

The more incompetent she is, the more I’ll be appreciated.” Jack shook his head. “You’ve got all the angles covered, Mary.”

“You better believe it.” Mary nodded and laughed heartily, a smoker’s laugh with a cough added periodically for parenthesis.

“Brennan likes me.” Mary took out a cigarette. Jack grabbed a lighter from beneath the bar and lit her up. Mary liked that. She looked at Jack from beneath the first smoke of her cigarette. She wondered for a moment about Jack and shook her head. You can always find a man, but a good bartender is a real diamond.

“A lot of men like you, Mary.” Jack placed the polished glass daintily on a shelf. He took his rag and polished the bar.

“I know what men like.” She smiled, tapping her cigarette on the edge of an ashtray. The cigarette dangled like an acrobat in Mary’s fingers.

“And it isn’t a long list.”

“You still got your looks,” Jack said with a smile, shaking his head.

“You seen my kid in here lately?” she asked. Mary was always keeping tabs on Terry. He wasn’t going to be like his father. You can put that in the bank.

“You know I don’t serve minors,” Jack replied.

“I’ll let that one pass,” Mary looked around the bar, swinging slowly around on her stool. Deep in the corner, one of Jack’s regulars nursed a beer as he watched a tennis match on the television. How had she missed him? Did he just come in or had he been there all along? What about the one that had gone downstairs? Maybe he had left. The front door of the bar opened and a flood of light poured into the darkened tavern. Mary 4 shielded her eyes. Every time someone entered the bar it was like having your picture taken with a flash camera. Mary smiled.

“Who’s that?” Mary asked.

The Hole

Jack set the scotch down in front of the officer who laid his hat on the bar.

“Tough day?” Mary smiled from several stools away. She’d seen the cop before. He was a regular, though the two of them had not exchanged more than pleasantries. Jack had told her he was a cop, but even without a uniform Mary could tell. There was the cut of his hair, and the shoes he wore, and the cheap suit, and the way he always scanned the place when he took a seat at the bar. Tall and lean. I fancy that type. There was a nobil-ity about the officer’s face.

The detective smiled politely and downed his scotch. Jack took a bottle of Red Cap out of the cooler under the bar and snapped it open, pouring half its content into a glass and setting the glass and bottle in front of the police officer.

“I thought I was having a near death experience when you opened the door and all that afternoon light poured in.” Mary laughed and added as explanation, “Walking toward the light.” Near death experience.

The officer nodded with a smile, then took a long sip of the beer. He never looks at me. It’s like I don’t exist. Would it be such an effort to glance my way? Other cops look. I’m not a bad-looking woman. And they’d laugh at Jack’s stories. He never laughs.