George Higgins - The rat on fire

The bartender returned with Malatesta’s order. He resumed reading. He ate an olive.

“Jesus Christ,” Malatesta said. “What the fuck is she doing in that ladies’ room? She look sick or something when she went in?”

“She did, I didn’t notice it,” the bartender said. “You know something?” He turned the magazine around so that Malatesta could read it. “That Cheryl Tiegs there, she is one fine-lookin’ broad. I had a crack at her, I might forget about the olives.”

“Yeah,” Malatesta said. “How long’s she been in there?”

“Marion?” the bartender said. “Dunno. Haven’t been timing her. Went in just before you came, I guess. Ten, fifteen minutes.”

“She look happy when she was out here?” Malatesta said.

“Happy as she ever does,” the bartender said. He ate an olive and sipped Coca-Cola. “Hell of a lot happier’n she did last Thursday, anyway.”

“She was pissed at me because I stood her up Wednesday,” Malatesta said.

“That’ll do it,” the bartender said. “My second wife was like that. Jesus, what a temper she had when something got fucked up.”

“That’s what happened to me, Wednesday,” Malatesta said. “I got tied up. Told her on Tuesday that I’d see her here on Wednesday, I don’t show up on Wednesday and when I do show up on Thursday she’s like a barrel of tigers.”

“Maybe she was gettin’ her period,” the bartender said. “That always makes them jumpy.”

“Yeah,” Malatesta said.

“You got to be philosophical about it,” the bartender said. “Ten percent of the time, all women’re nuts. You want to know something? I am now separated from my third wife. Threw me out. She wants one of those things that, what do they call them, the things that watch the television for you and then when you get home you can see what was on when you were out. And I say to her, “That’s ridiculous. When’re you out? You’re home every night. Program comes on, watch it. Free.’ See, she went back to work this year, she decided they were probably going to foreclose onna house if she didn’t. Which was true. And it is her house. And she is all over me like a new suit. Shows she wants to watch’re the soap operas, and they’re on while she’s up the K-Mart sellin’ dingbats to dingbats or something. And I say to her, I say, ‘Hey, you want to keep the house, keep the house. It’s your house. Your first husband bought it. My name ain’t on it. I kick in my share. I do the best I can. Forget it. I’ll live inna apartment. You can stay home all day and watch the soaps. I got two other women I’m supportin’ for life. You want to lose the house, lose the house. Get off-a my back.’

“See,” the bartender said, “I’m not as dumb as I look. I get her that thing, she’s going to tape all the soaps and I want to watch a football game on my day off or something, she’ll be watching some soap that was on Friday. It’s her television, so I won’t be able to say anything, and I’m going to end up spending Saturday and Sunday in some other barroom, which does not happen to be my idea of a couple days off a week from working in a barroom. But I am not as smart as I think I am, either, because she tells me she can get one of those TV recorder things with the employee’s discount for about six hundred bucks, and I say, ‘Shit, I can get you one on the street for three hundred, but I won’t do it.’ So she throws me out.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Malatesta said.

The bartender shrugged. “Hey, I been eighty-sixed out of better situations’n that. I’m just telling you, you’d better think a few times more about the lady in the powder room, is all.”

“The hell do you mean?” Malatesta said.

“You got the same weakness I got,” the bartender said. “Difference is, I know about my weakness and I can control it. You can’t control yours. That broad, no offense meant, is young and she is good-looking and she wants what she wants when she wants it. You know she made a speech in here Thursday night, ‘fore you got in?”

“I heard she was loud,” Malatesta said.

“Everybody was in here heard she was loud,” the bartender said. “Thing of it is, she was also noisy, you know what I mean, and you didn’t exactly come off too well in the conversation.”

“Who was she with?” Malatesta asked.

“Don’t think she was really with anybody,” the bartender said. “She came in with that broad Judy that’s Finnegan’s regular bimbo, but I think that was just because they happened to get out of cabs at the same time. Judy was waitin’ for Finnegan, and he showed up about forty minutes later, and then about twenty minutes after that, Marion started in singing her songs because you weren’t here and you didn’t call her or anything, and you were cheap and this is some godforsaken place that you only take her because you don’t have to pay anything and you can freeload all night off of her and you never buy her anything or take her any place and all in all, you ain’t much good.”

“Jesus,” Malatesta said.

“I will tell you something,” the bartender said. “You may have calmed her down a little Thursday night, but after what I saw before you got here, if I was you I would just go right back out that door and let her diddle herself in the powder room. Before you get through with her, she is going to get you in a whole puddle of shit.”

Jimmy Dannaher and Leo Proctor sat in the van parked in the woods on the dirt road off Randolph Avenue in Milton, Massachusetts. “You didn’t say we had to walk around in the woods, Leo,” Jimmy said.

“Look,” Proctor said, “everybody knows they close up the dumps at night. At least I’m not asking you to climb over the fence there, the gate. All you got to do is follow me around the gate and we go through the woods and there we are, inna dump.”

“With the rats,” Dannaher said. “Skunks, too, probably. Big, fat, black-and-white skunks that spend all their time getting ready to drown me in their piss the minute I go tramping around in their garbage, and I’ll stink for six days.”

“You stink now,” Proctor said.

“Fuck you,” Dannaher said. “I’m serious about this. I don’t want to go in there with a bunch of rats. They’ve probably got snakes in there, too. They got snakes in the Blue Hills here. Poisonous snakes that can bite you and kill you. What if I step on a rattlesnake or something? Who’ll take care of my kids if I step on a rattlesnake, huh?”

“They haven’t got any rattlesnakes in there,” Proctor said.

“They have got rattlesnakes in there,” Dannaher said. “I know it because I read it in the paper. You don’t know nothing about rattlesnakes. They have had rattlesnakes out here for years. It’s been on television and everything. You don’t know anything. You’re going to get us both in prison before we’re through, and you’re telling me about rattlesnakes. I’m not going in there in the dark.”

“And then who’s gonna take care of your kids?” Proctor said.

“If I don’t go in there?” Dannaher said. “I am, of course.”

“Like you did when you were in the can for a while?” Proctor said.

“If I don’t get into this,” Dannaher said, “I won’t be in the can for a while, and I can do it.”

“With no money?” Proctor said.

“I can get some money,” Dannaher said.

“Yup,” Proctor said, “you can get some money. But you can’t get any money from me unless you come into that fucking dump with me and take your chances with the snakes and the skunks. You will have to find somebody else who is willing to give you some money, and I wish you luck, is what I do, because I think you are going to need it. If I was you, I would rather take my chances with the skunks.”