Lawrence Block - Hope to Die

"So June can drive your car back," he said, "and I'll run you and me over to Hershey's."

"God, not the Hershey Bar," Michael said. To me he said, "It's a beer bar, it's all high school and college kids, it's crowded and noisy. You wouldn't like it. As far as that goes, I wouldn't like it."

"You used to," Andy said. "Before you turned into an old man. Anyway, it's an afternoon in the middle of the week. How rowdy do you think it's going to be?"

"Jesus, the Hershey Bar," Michael said.

"Well, pick someplace better, if you can think of one."

"I can't, and they're waiting for us, so I guess it's the Hershey Bar." He gave me quick directions and then the two of them let one of the mortuary staff guide them to their places on opposite sides of the now-sealed casket. Anita's brother, Phil, had the spot behind Andy, and there were three other men whom I didn't recognize.

I left them to their work.

I drove out to the cemetery after all. I hadn't planned on it, but somehow my car wound up queueing along with the others, and I sat there and followed the car in front of me. We had a police escort, so we didn't have to stop for traffic lights, and I told myself the cops out here had it easy, with nothing to do but take an occasional run out to the cemetery. But I knew better. They have crime onLong Island, and people selling drugs and other people using them, and men who batter their wives and abuse their children, and others who drive drunk and plow head-on into a school bus. They don't have Crips and Bloods and drive-by shootings yet, not that I've heard, but they probably won't have long to wait.

I stayed in my car at the cemetery while everybody else walked over to the graveside for the service. I could see them from where I was parked, and as soon as the service was over I started my engine and found my way out of there.

I hadn't paid close attention to the route to the cemetery- you don't when all you have to do is tag along after the car in front of you- and I took a few wrong turns on the way back, and a few more finding my way to the Hershey Bar. I parked and went in, expecting my sons would already be there, but the place was empty except for the bartender, a blue-jawed skinhead in a Metallica T-shirt, its sleeves rolled up to show health club muscles, and his sole customer, an old man in a cloth cap and a thrift-shop overcoat. The old fellow looked like he belonged on a bar stool at the Blarney Stone or the White Rose, but here he was at a college kids' bar in Syosset, drinking his beer out of a heavy glass mug.

There were college pennants on the rough wooden walls, and beer steins hanging from the exposed beams, and the bar and tabletops held bowls of miniature chocolate bars. Hershey bars, of course, in several varieties, along with foil-wrapped Hershey's Kisses. It was consistent with the name of the joint, to be sure, but why would anyone want to nibble chocolate as an accompaniment to beer? I could think of several bars that used to set out complimentary bowls of peanuts in the shell, and I remembered the chickpeas at Max'sKansas City, but who'd want to pair a Dos Equis or a St. Pauli Girl with a Hershey's Kiss?

The bartender was looking at me, eyebrows raised, and I didn't want a beer or a chocolate bar. I wanted bourbon, better make it a double, straight up, and leave the bottle.

I patted my pockets as if I'd lost something- my wallet, my car keys, my cigarettes. "Be right back," I said, and got out of there and sat in my car. I turned the key so I could play the radio, and I found a station that featured what they called Classic Country, which Elaine would call a contradiction in terms. But they played Hank Williams and Patsy Cline and Red Foley and Kitty Wells, and then Mike and Andy pulled in and got out of a gray Honda Accord. When they reached the entrance Mike said something, and Andy gave him a poke in the shoulder and held the door open, and the two of them disappeared inside.

I waited for the last notes of "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels." Then I went in after them.

Mike ordered a Heineken's and I said I'd have a glass of Coke. The bartender asked if Pepsi would be all right, and I said it would be fine. Neither one was what I wanted, but I wasn't going to have what I wanted, and the fact was I didn't really want it anymore. The urge had been strong enough to get me the hell out of there, but wanting a drink is a world away from having one, and now the wanting had passed. A Coke would have been fine, and a Pepsi would be fine, and so would a glass of water, or nothing at all.

Andy said, "What the hell, we're onLong Island, right? I'll have a Long Island Iced Tea."

They thought that one up after I stopped drinking, so I never learned what's in it, but I gather it contains a mix of liquors, and that tea's nowhere to be found. The name's ironic, and I suppose it's a reference to rum-running during Prohibition, which would make it doubly ironic, since the kids who get wasted on it can't even rememberVietnam.

The drinks came. Andy sipped his and pronounced it a stupid drink. "Who thought this up?" he wondered. "It's supposed to have a kick like a mule but it doesn't taste like anything at all. I suppose that's the point, especially if you're nineteen years old and looking to get your girlfriend drunk." He took another sip and said, "It grows on you. I was going to say this is my first Long Island Iced Tea and it's going to be my last, but maybe not. Maybe I'll finish it and have six more of them."

"And maybe you won't," his brother said. "Gray needs us back at the house."

"Is that what you call him? Gray?"

"It's what Mom called him," Andy said. "I never had much occasion to call him anything, really. Just if he answered the phone when I called, or the couple of times I visited."

"Which would have been four years ago," I said.

"Plus once since then."

"Oh?"

"I guess it was last Thanksgiving. I never did come into the city, I just visited here for a couple of days and flew straight out again." He looked at his glass. "I called you a few times," he said unconvincingly. "I got the machine every time I called, and I didn't want to leave a message."

I said, "He seems like a nice enough fellow, Gray."

"He's all right," Andy said.

"He was good for Mom," Michael said. "He was there for her, you know?"

Unlike some people. "I never thought I'd see this day," I said, surprising myself with the words, evidently surprising them as well from the looks on their faces. "I always assumed I'd go first," I explained. "I didn't think about it much, but I guess I took it for granted. I was older by three years and change, and men generally die first. And all of a sudden she's gone."

They didn't say anything.

"Everybody says that's the best way," I said. "One minute you're here and the next minute you're gone. No pain to speak of, no long-drawn-out illness, no standing at the brink and staring out at the abyss. But it's not what I would want for myself."

"No?"

I shook my head. "I'd want time to make sure I wasn't leaving a mess. My affairs in order, that sort of thing. And I'd want time for other people to get used to the idea. A sudden death may be easier on the victim, but it's harder on everybody else."

"I don't know about that," Michael said. "June's got an aunt with Alzheimer's, she's been hanging on for years. Be a lot easier on all concerned if she stroked out or had a heart attack."

I said he had a point. Andy said when it was his turn he wanted to be lowered into a vat of lanolin and softened to death. That seemed funny, but not funny enough to laugh at, given the mood at the table.

"Anyway," Michael said, "we had a warning. Mom had a minor heart attack about a little over a year ago."

"I didn't know that."