Patrick deWitt - Ablutions

The lights are up and Antony is shouting for everyone to leave the bar. He is learning that people want more than anything not to leave and will have many excuses at the ready, but now their excuses are running thin and his mood is ugly. He has kicked everyone out and moves to close the heavy steel door when Simon calls out his name and he turns. He speaks with Simon while trying to close the door but it is jammed and he slams the door three times with all his weight and finally the latch catches and he walks away but hears a wailing outside and returns to look out the peephole and there is the man with the missing thumb spinning around and bleeding and Antony is stepping on something, later he says he thought it was an old cigar. The thumb is cleaned and wrapped in ice and given to a friend of the man who lost it and they rush off to the hospital together, and you tease Antony, calling him a terrific racist intent on de-fingering innocent white men. His eyes rise level to yours and you see that he is heartbroken by what he has done. "I know how important a man's hands are," he says. His shoulders are trembling and the bar workers say nothing. It is at this moment that you fall platonically in love with Antony.

When you sleep, your dreams are those of a dullard: You polish ashtrays, stock the ice bins, reach for a bottle and find it there or not there, and exchange names and pleasantries with familiar-looking customers. These scenarios run in a spinning wheel and are identical in texture to your drunken memories. As a result you have only a dim idea what is fact and what is fiction and are constantly referencing past conversations with people you have never spoken with or else ignoring those you had for fear you had not. And so the general public is of split minds about you: Some say you are stupid, and some say you are rude.

Discuss the ingesting of pills in the storage room at seven o'clock and waiting on a barstool for the high to hit. There is a faint chalk line of daylight at the base of the front door and two customers are looking over at you. Their drinks are empty and they want to call out but you make them uncomfortable. Why, they are wondering, is that man smiling? The bar is silent and the pills congregate in your fingertips like lazy students in an empty hall.

Discuss the effects of the full moon on the weekend crowds and the dread you experience when you see the full moon wedged in the corner of the sky. Discuss the short muscleman who is stripped to the waist and eager to fight. He hits a larger man over the head with a bottle and is apprehended by a doorman. The muscleman makes a show of taking his time to leave and so when he reaches the exit there are many angry people waiting for him on the sidewalk. You move to the door to watch because the world is full of short musclemen wanting to fight and you hope to see one hurt or killed.

The muscleman stands behind two doormen and spouts profane threats to the people on the sidewalk; the man with the head wound stands at the front of the pack, proud of his bloody face. His injury has awakened a subtle greatness in him and he licks at the blood and his eyes are wild and wonderful and it is just as he says: He is going to murder the muscleman. The doormen are in no danger but do not like protecting a villain and finally they give up the muscleman to be slaughtered when he will not keep his mouth closed. He is backed against the building and to the last is confident he will emerge victorious and he asks the crowd of twenty who will be first and there comes an answer in the form of a tremendous fist in his face. The fist belongs to the man with the head wound, who is delighted with the punch, as well he should be — it is as in a heroic dream. The muscleman drops like a stone and the crowd swarms over him in search of available openings.

Discuss Curtis, a disconsolate black man and regular with a law enforcement fetish. He wears a bulky leather motorcycle-cop jacket and mirrored cop sunglasses and a heavy leather gun holster without a gun in it. He has another holster on his belt for his Zippo lighter; he knows many tricks involving the lighter and offers people cigarettes so that he might showcase them, though Curtis himself does not smoke. He suffers from the skin condition vitiligo and both his hands from the knuckles to the fingertips are patchy with raw, pink flesh. He plays the Rolling Stones' "Memory Hotel" over and over on the jukebox, a song you once liked but which he has poisoned for you. He sings along, eager to show that he knows every word, and his tongue falls from his mouth like a tentacle, his gums like dirty purple curtains. His hair is short, with a part shaved into the side of his head; he has a silver-dollar-sized bald spot to which he applies an egg-smelling cream, the scent of which oftentimes alerts you to his presence. His head bobs deeply as he drinks and his neck stretches long like caramel taffy on a pull.

He has many annoying habits, not the least of which is mimicking your brand of drink. When you made the final switch to Jameson, for instance, Curtis followed suit. When your liver began to ache and you took to mixing ginger ale into your whiskey and chasing this with cranberry juice, Curtis did as well. This could be the sincerest form of flattery but most likely it is his plan to instill in your subconscious the repellent notion that you and he are kindred spirits. Also this practice of copycatting makes it easy for him to shout out that you should make it two when he sees you moving toward the bottles to fix yourself something. After the drink slips down his throat he bombards you with praise and brays at any little joke you make, though it cannot be said that he is looking for friendship, only free whiskey. You supply him with this because he has been drinking on the house for years and the alternative would be to sit him down and essentially break up with him, and because the whiskey after all is not yours, and it is easier to give it away than to have so intimate a conversation with someone you spend every night trying your best to avoid even glancing at.

Curtis was not always like this. When he first came around he was a model customer. He tipped well and bought rounds and picked up tabs that were not his and at the end of each night he would help clean the bar or stock beer and was bashful and sweet if you should thank him. He never got overly drunk, he never leered at women, he rarely spoke and then never about himself, and he never once wore his mirrored sunglasses indoors. Everyone liked him, you included, and you showered him with warmth and gratitude, and eventually with alcohol.

He had at first refused any complimentary drinks, feigning shock, as though the idea was the farthest thing from his mind. Then he allowed it infrequently, and only when it was demanded of him, and his tips would reflect his appreciation of the gesture. Slowly, though, he accepted the drinks more and more and in time, six months perhaps, it was understood that Curtis was one of those who drank on the house. Once this was established, once he was inextricably enmeshed in the fiber of the bar, once he became a regular, then he began to change, or as you believe, to reveal his true self, the man he had been all along: He took an interest in women and became one of those who approached and bothered them; he drank to the point of drunkenness and spoke of his life, or rather, lied about his life, and the lies were feeble articles, too sad even to handle and dismantle; he ceased helping with the after-hours chores but stayed on all the same, making asides and offering peppy talks where none were needed; and finally his tips trickled away, from tens to fives to ones to change to nothing at all, and this was the worst aspect of the new Curtis because he hoped to replace the divot in the tip jar with his oppressive, counterfeit friendship. Now he stares long and hard until you cannot help but return his gaze, and he motions you over as if you were close companions with great things to share. He imparts an obvious falsehood about an imaginary girlfriend before squeezing your shoulder and asking if you have had a drink lately, and if you tell him you have not he says, let's the both of us have one together. If you say that you have he tells you to slow it down until he catches up and he asks with reptilian humility for a double shot of whiskey and a beer, anything cold, anything besides Budweiser, or Pabst, or Tecate, and he names off all the beers besides Guinness, the most expensive beer, which is what he wanted all along.