Patrick deWitt - Ablutions

At these words the man gradually uncoils. He loosens his fists and rights his stool and moves to sit beside Monty. He orders another double vodka tonic, smiling now as though nothing has happened, and he thanks you when you bring the drink over. His name, he says, is Joe, and he shakes Monty's hand and extends a hand to Madge, who makes a kissing sound but otherwise does not acknowledge him. (Joe does not appear to think this strange.) The three of them become fast friends and throughout the night you hear Joe asking Monty questions:

"How do you make a baby sleep if it doesn't want to sleep?"

"How much do electric razors cost?"

"What is death rock?"

"How does rice grow? Do you know what I mean? How does it grow? "

Monty answers as well as he can, all the while buying drinks for the group. Joe moves in closer and when Monty calls him a curious boy, Joe says that he is very curious indeed, and he rests a hand on Monty's, and five minutes later they stand and leave the bar together. Things are strange and just got stranger and Madge remains behind, her arm working to drain her glass and then the partially full glasses of Monty and Joe, and you say to her, "Looks like it's just you and me, Madgey." Her drinks are empty and you bring her another on the house. Sucking on a Lucky Strike, she fills her cheeks with smoke and exhales in your face. She raises the drink to her lips.

Monty now pays for Joe's movies and drinks in addition to Madge's and his own, and his tips disappear, and he does not speak to you anymore about his favorite special effects and will no longer look you in the eye. He is in love with Joe and grasps his hand beneath the bar and becomes jealous if Joe should look at or speak with any women. Joe does not love Monty and you suspect he is not much interested in men but only playing a part until something more agreeable comes along. Sometimes he leaves with these bar women and Monty's heart breaks; he swears his revenge on the whores of the world and drinks well past happy hour, gleefully spending the money that would be Joe's, saying to Madge that it's just the two of them now, like before, but the next day or the day after Joe will be back, grinning and crazy in his eyes, with Monty at his side, swooning at Joe's dimples and Roman profile. Madge for her part is unaffected by the drama, though she now sits one stool away from her drinking partners and seems for unknown reasons to have warmed to you and once even smiled in your direction when you were doing a funny dance for Simon.

Toward the end of each month when his welfare money and medications have run out Joe begins acting erratically and will usually by the twenty-ninth or thirtieth have thrown a fit and been ejected from the bar. These episodes sometimes happen quickly, in the time it takes to smash a pint glass on the floor, and you will look up to find Joe screaming at the television or the ceiling or into a void, a dark space in the room. Other times his mood will deteriorate in slow stages throughout the night: He will enter the bar with his frenzied eyes and sit with his drink, enthusiastic about his good fortune and friends, when some imperceptible injustice captures his attention and poisons the very soil of his earth, and his conversation drops off and he will begin brooding, then mumbling, then cursing and shouting, and then he will be tossed onto the sidewalk where he will wail and punch holes in the sky. You come to recognize Joe's warning signs and give him room to offend or be offended by someone other than yourself — a lone customer or one of the other bar employees or, as is usually the case, Monty, who afterward is left behind to apologize and pick up glass shards and pay for any damages. Although it is part of your job description to suppress any violence until security arrives, you do not intervene in Joe's tantrums because you have become truly afraid of his eyes and you believe it is only a matter of time before he kills someone, and you do not want to die at the bar, at the hands of a man in flip-flops and a Señor Frog's poncho.

Monty can no longer support both the drinking and cinema habits of this unfortunate crew, and they forgo the movies to spend afternoons and early evenings at the bar. The omission of entertainment in their lives takes its toll on their self-esteem, and Monty and Joe no longer speak to each other except to order drinks or comment on certain television happenings, and so begins their comprehensive degeneration: Monty's every move and gesture is motivated by money and love worries. His hygiene, already dubious, falls further into decline so that people grimace at his approach and gather their things as he sits down beside them. Unaware, Monty jabs his thumbs into his temples, suggesting unchecked and tacit pain. When Joe sits beside him, Monty wants to moan — the unobtainable prize, Joe is now openly on the lookout for another meal ticket. He has become commonly cruel, and will order top-shelf vodkas for the sport of watching Monty's wretched, shivering reaction. Monty holds his wallet like a sick bird and you see in his eyes he will be driven crazy by hopeless love if he cannot slow the process down somehow.

As interesting as all this is, you find yourself focusing more and more on Madge, studying her in secret, and you begin to get an idea about her that you cannot shake, an idea you decide you must get to the bottom of, but in order to do this you will have to speak with her, and you begin asking her questions about her childhood and hometown and mother and father, though she will not so much as nod at you. You tell her that if she will only say her full Christian name aloud you will give her drinks on the house for the entire night up until closing time, and her head jerks and her mouth creaks open but she does not make a noise. Then you offer her drinks on the house until she is dead if she will only say the word hello, and you see that she is heated to the marrow of her bones by the thought of it, and yet she still says nothing but stands stiffly and walks out the door and does not return again that night. (Monty and Joe heard this last offer and are both shouting "Hello! Hello! Hello!" at you.)

The idea you have about Madge is that she is a man, and this is confirmed the next night when she walks into the bar, alone and sober, and tells you in a deep voice that Monty and Joe have hatched a plan to hit you with a club and rob you, and that they will arrive in half an hour to do just this. She says that Joe is all-the-way crazy and speaks about killing constantly and once went after her with a Swiss Army knife. Monty is half crazy and will do whatever Joe says so long as they stay together. She says they have been up for three days on bad amphetamines and that you must lock the door at once and wait for them to move on, but the idea of Joe knocking hard on the door with you alone in the darkened bar is too much to bear and you are walking toward the phone to call the police but Madge becomes alarmed and begs you not to, saying that she loves Monty, that she is all alone, and that Joe will soon be dead or in jail and then her and Monty's life will return to its former harmonious state. She is crying and you tell her you are sorry but will simply have to call the police, and she coughs through her tears and says that she knows another way, and she borrows a pen and writes this out on a napkin:

Dear Montgomery,

The bartender knows cuz I told him. I'm sorry but Joe's a low-down Dog and I love you and you will Die if you go back to Prison. I am leaving this town but will write c/o your Mom once I get somewhere.

Goodbye now,

Tim

Madge dries her face and asks for a piece of tape to stick the note on the front door, only there is no tape and she says she will use a piece of chewing gum. You walk her out and you lock the door behind her and wait. Three cigarettes later you hear this: Footsteps approaching, crinkling paper, a murmur of voices, and the sound of footsteps hurriedly retreating. You will not see Monty, Madge, or Joe at the bar again.