T. Boyle - The Harder They Come

He seemed to have a package of meat in his hand, T-bone steak, slick and wet and red, and when he set it in the cart, there was a fine glaze of blood on his hand, and no place to wipe it off. Some stores provided paper towels to ease the unpleasantness of this little reminder of precisely where that steak or chop or chicken breast originated, but not this one. He stood there a moment, rubbing the pink glaze over his fingertips before surreptitiously wiping it off on the soft plastic wrapper of one of the packages of hamburger buns stacked on the display case behind him.

When he turned back to the cart, reaching down to reassemble the things there and check them against Carolee’s list—1 % milk in the plastic jug, pickles, cookies, more meat, pasta, beans, rice — he felt the twinge in his lower back again, the muscle there balky still. It seemed to bother him more in the mornings, stiffening up overnight despite the form-fitting neoprene pad Carolee had stretched over the mattress, but then he hadn’t slept on that pad or in that bed — their bed — the previous night. He’d wound up on the narrow single bed in the guest room because Carolee was in one of her moods. And it wasn’t all her — he’d been in a mood too, absolutely. And why? Because after they’d finished their celebratory dinner, she’d insisted they go across the street and into the pizza place where Adam was, where Adam had been for the better part of an hour. “For an after-dinner drink,” she said, taking hold of his arm as they came down the stairs at the restaurant.

“They don’t have after-dinner drinks there. Only beer and wine, remember?”

“An after-dinner wine then.”

They were passing by the bar on the lower level — the door swung open on muted lighting and inflamed faces — and he said, “Why not have one here? A real drink, a cognac or that Benedictine you like. I’m wined out, if you want to know the truth.” They were in the hallway now, moving toward the front door. “Or actually, I’ve had enough. More than enough. Let’s just go home, huh?”

She was chopping along in her short swift strides, tugging at his arm as if leading him on a leash. “I want to go to Piero’s,” she said.

And he stopped, right there, right at the door, to tug back at her. “Let it go,” he told her. “Drop it. He’s a big boy now. He’s an adult. You can’t just go around spying on him—”

“I’m not spying on him. I just want a drink at Piero’s, all right? Is that a crime?”

“No,” he said, “but stalking is.”

She’d jerked angrily away from him. “I can’t believe you,” she said, pushing through the door and out onto the street while he followed in her wake, the folds of her dress in violent motion, her perfume an assault on the damp night air, perfume he didn’t like, had never liked, perfume she wore just to make his eyes water. He made a note to himself to find the little bottle amidst the clutter in the bathroom and dump it in the trash when she wasn’t looking, but then of course she’d just go and buy another bottle and he’d dump that and she’d buy another one, a losing proposition all the way round. He hadn’t gone two steps before she swung round on him, combative, her legs braced, hands on hips. “He’s my son. Our son.” She took in a deep moist breath and blew it out again. “I just want to get a look at her.”

The fog softened the lights of the buildings up and down the street. There was no traffic. No noise, no sound of any kind. Even the ocean, no more than five hundred yards away, was silent, as if the waves had been sucked back down the beach before they had a chance to break. “Right,” he said into the stillness, “like we just happened to be passing by and got a sudden craving for pizza, at what — nine-fifteen at night? When we’re normally sitting in front of the TV and thinking about bed? He’s not stupid, you know.”

Her face was contorted, angry, the lines at the corners of her eyes etched in the faint tricolored glow of the neon across the street. “I’m going in there,” she said. “Whether you’re coming or not.”

What he did then was take hold of her arm — or no, he snatched it with a sudden jolt of violence that seemed to explode inside him. “You’re going nowhere,” he rasped, his voice locked tight in his throat.

She tried to pull away but he held on to her, his hand clamped just above her elbow, feeling the bone there, the humerus, and how weightless and weak and fragile it was. She was angry enough to curse him, except that she never cursed — in her quaint moral universe, women didn’t use offensive language, only men did. “Let me go,” she demanded, “you’re hurting me.”

He didn’t know what had come over him but it was all too much — Adam, Warner Ayala, the martinis sent over by two total strangers as if they could buy his approval, as if he’d asked for it or wanted it in any way, shape or form — and he just tightened his grip till all he could hear was the furious chuffing intake of her breath and the kick and scrape of her heels on the pavement. This was a dance, a kind of dance, more jig than polka, and it might have gone on till one or the other of them gave in, but then a car came up the street, headlights sifting through the fog to pin them there as if they were onstage, and he let her go. At which point she lurched back a step and then, without so much as a glance, stalked across the street and into the bar, leaving him with no choice but to follow.

It was a tiny place, claustrophobic, smelling of hops and cold sweat. There was an L-shaped bar that seated ten maybe, kitchen beyond it, a narrow hallway, a cramped array of tables. People were packed in shoulder-to-shoulder, chattering away in a percussive animal hum. In the old days there would have been a dense haze of cigarette smoke and a whiff of marijuana too, but if you wanted to smoke now it had to be outside, on the street. Behind the bar was a chalkboard featuring the brews on tap, with brief descriptions, the most pertinent of which seemed to be alcohol content. One of the ales, Sten noticed, was listed at 11.9 % alcohol by volume, which must have had a real kick to it, but then that was the point, wasn’t it?

Carolee was standing at the bar behind a cluster of people, mostly young, who were hunched over their elbows and their pints of stout, pilsner and ale. Nobody was drinking wine. And Carolee, her shoulders tense with agitation and her hair tucked haphazardly up under the collar of her coat, made no move to flag down the bartender. Her hands were clasped before her as if she were patiently awaiting her turn, when in fact her eyes were fixed on a table in the back, the last one down the narrow hallway which gave onto the restrooms and the rear exit. She was trying to be discreet, trying to look like a thirsty, gracefully aging woman who was only waiting for her pint of 11.9 % ABV ale, but she wasn’t doing much of a job of it — she just looked awkward, that was all. No matter. Adam’s back was to them. He was leaning into the table, apparently staring down into his beer, while Sara, her face animated, did the talking. And gesturing. She was really going at it, her face running through all its permutations, her hands dancing and fluttering as if she were directing traffic on top of it, and what was the subject? The problems horses had with their hooves? The DMV? Dogs? Or was she just talking, was she one of those people — women, for the most part — who just talk to round out the sonic spectrum? Which would have cast Adam in the role of listener, but then Adam never seemed to pay much attention to anyone, off in a trance half the time, as if it wasn’t words that had meaning but the sound itself, voices sawing away like instruments in an ever-expanding orchestra. Sten eased his way through the crowd and tapped Carolee on the shoulder. “Okay, you’ve seen her,” he hissed, “now let’s get out of here before she spots us — or Adam does.”