Russell Banks - Affliction

He parked on North Main Street in front of the hotel and, passing under phony gas lanterns, strolled through the bricked-over alley to The Stone Warehouse in back, walked in without hesitation or a preliminary look around the place — as if, though not exactly a regular, he came here frequently — and, using tunnel vision, zeroed in on the bar. He ordered a draft from a tall good-looking youth with slicked-back hair and then turned, glass in hand, and slowly perused the place.

The room was large, with mostly empty booths and rough tables covered with red-and-white-checked tablecloths. Large potted ferns, ornate brass coatracks and spittoons cluttered the aisles, and on the walls old-fashioned farm tools had been hung, scythes and sickles, hay rakes, even horse collars, and elaborately framed pictures of New England couples dead a hundred years, dour and disapproving. Who would have thought junk like that could look good? But it did.

The place smelled of raw wood, beer and roasted peanuts, a downright pleasant smell, he thought. Not like Toby’s Inn. Wade looked down the bar, where a pair of young large-bellied men were watching the Celtics on TV and munching peanuts, and then he noticed that the floor by the bar was covered with peanut shells. A waitress approached the bar, and the shells crackled under her feet like insects.

Next to him on his right, three young women were seated and talking intently, smoking cigarettes with a kind of fury and every few seconds sipping in unison at their large beige drinks. Wade studied them, slyly, he thought, and tried to overhear their conversation, which he soon discovered concerned a man whom one or all three of them worked for. They were in their early thirties, he guessed. Two of the women wore jeans and plaid flannel shirts and cowboy boots; the third also wore jeans, but with tennis shoes and a washed-out yellow tee shirt with GANJA UNIVERSITY printed across the front. When Wade saw that she was not wearing a bra, he tried not to look at her anymore. She was a long-haired blond; the other two were brunettes and had short hair. Wade thought that maybe those two were sisters.

He ordered another beer. The Celtics were leading the Detroit Pistons by twelve at the half. Maybe he ought to try calling Jill again. He pulled his coat off and hung it on the brass rack behind him and went looking for a pay phone, which he found at the bottom of the stairs leading to the rest rooms.

Again, he let the phone ring a dozen times, in case she was just coming in the front door, he thought, and then realized he had visualized not Jill but Lillian, visualized her unlocking the front door, her arms wrapped around grocery bags, key in hand, the phone ringing. He hung up and came back to the bar.

He cast a glance at the breasts of the young woman in the yellow tee shirt, then asked the bartender for a basket of peanuts and started to concentrate on cracking them open and popping the nuts into his mouth. The women, he realized, were talking about the size of a man’s penis. He listened closely: there was no doubt about it: three attractive young women were laughing about some man’s small penis! He did not dare look over; he just bore down on the shells, splitting them open between his thumbs and sweeping them onto the floor, faster and faster, as if he were ravenous.

Two of the women, the blond and one of the brunettes, had slept with the man, whoever he was, and they were regaling the third woman by comparing his organ to a thumb, a mouse, a clothespin — a peanut, for God’s sake! “I mean, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather when I got a look at it!” the blond said. Wade pushed the basket of peanuts away and ordered another beer.

“He’s sort of amazing, though,” the brunette said. “I mean, he gets a whole lot of mileage out of that thing. Wouldn’t you say?” she asked the blond.

“Oh, jeez, yes.” She laughed. “Miles and miles,” she added, and then she shrieked, “Except that you think you’re never going to get there!” They all laughed loudly, and then one of the brunettes noticed Wade and hushed the others. Wade turned on his stool and tried to see what was happening with the Celtics.

“How’s Bird doing?” he called down the bar.

One of the big-bellied pair at the end turned slowly and said, “Oh-for-seven, three fouls.”

Wade said, “Shit,” as if he cared, got up and took his beer to the end of the bar and sat down. “Whatsascore?”

Without turning around, the man said, “I dunno. Seventy-something-sixty-something. Celts by six or seven.”

“Aw right! ” Wade said, and he checked into the game with the same intensity he had devoted to shelling the peanuts. He lit a cigarette and tried to concentrate on the game, but his tooth was starting in again, a low throb that threatened to build quickly, and he was feeling once again like a double exposure: everything the other people said and did was half a beat off the rhythm of everything he said and did, so that the others seemed almost to be members of a different species than he, as if their species had a slightly different metabolism than his and relied on a related but different means of communication than his, so that everyone else in the room seemed to be sharing everyday knowledge and secrets that he was biologically incapable of experiencing. Knowledge and secrets: everyone had them; and Wade Whitehouse had neither.

He looked into the mirror behind the bar and tried to watch himself, as if he were a stranger, look strangely back, and then he saw over his shoulder and behind, coming into the bar from outside, where it was snowing hard now, his ex-wife, Lillian! She brushed snow off her shoulder in that quick impatient way of hers, as if taking the snow personally. He kept her in view in the mirror, saw her ask something of the woman at the cash register and then disappear down the stairs toward the rest rooms.

She must have come in to pee, Wade thought. Maybe Jill was waiting outside in the car. He checked his watch: four-twenty: still plenty of time to take Jill out for pizza. Wade slid off his stool and walked to the cash register and started down the stairs after Lillian, when he saw the back of her long lavender coat and realized that she was using the phone. He halted several steps above her; he moved out of her line of sight and listened.

“That doesn’t matter,” she snapped. “I’ve only got a couple of hours and that’s it. So please , ” she said, and her voice had shifted into a tone that Wade recognized and swelled to: it was intimate and soft, almost sexual. “I’ll be in the lot behind The Stone Warehouse. In the Audi,” she said. And then she said, “Hurry,” and Wade spun and moved quickly up the stairs, crossed back to the bar and resumed watching the mirror.

A second later, he saw Lillian emerge from the stairwell, nod and smile quickly to the woman at the cash register and leave. Wade grabbed his coat and hat and signaled to the bartender that he wanted to pay. The bartender flipped over the check—$ 8.25! Jesus H. Christ! — and Wade gave the man his ten-dollar bill and made for the door. It took him a moment to determine where the parking lot was and how to get there from the front of the Eagle Hotel, and then he jogged back to his car.

The traffic was light — a few cars sloshed past, windshield wipers clacking and headlights on. Wade made a U-turn on North Main and drove back to Depot Street, turned left and left again and drove past the parking lot, where he spotted the silver Audi in the far corner.

He did not think she could recognize his car in the snow, but even so, he went beyond the lot a ways and parked it out of sight beside a big green Dempster Dumpster about fifty yards away. He was on a slope above the lot now and facing the backside of the Audi. The rear window was covered with wet sticky snow, and he could not see inside, but he was sure she was there, waiting. For what, goddammit? For whom?