Laura Adamczyk - Hardly Children

The light was leaking from the day, bleeding out on the snow. It pained me how fast it went from white to dirty gray. I went inside the first bar I saw: an old one, familiar in its dark normalcy. Red and silver metallic garland in the shape of canes hung from the deep wood ceiling. Christmas lights looped down in half circles behind the bar. I found a spot in the corner, where I could see the few faces down the line. The short, bald man in glasses behind the bar walked the length of it to me.

Hello, there, stranger. Where ya been? he asked.

Oh, I—

You’re not cheating on me with another bar, are ya? He was holding eye contact with me, as he’d done many times before with someone else.

Well, no, I wouldn’t do that.

Haven’t seen you around.

I’ve been busy.

Well, welcome back. What can I getcha?

You know what I like.

He nodded, then rapped the bar with his fist and walked down to the other end. A few stools away was a middle-aged man in a blue baseball cap. He was buttoned up in a tan canvas jacket, as though he’d just arrived, but his posture—his head to the top of the bar— said that he’d been there for hours, if not years. So convincing was his look and manner—wrinkles deep, eye drooping wetly—that he could have been a character actor for Rummy or Barfly or Hopeless Regular. Beside him was a taller, straighter-sitting man wearing a newsboy cap, his face handsome in the lithe way of a snake or ferret.

They were talking about rock climbing.

You put your line in the rock, you get it secure, but there’s no guarantee it’s gonna hold, the tall man said.

The slumped man was nodding into his beer.

I know, I know, he said. He did not look like a rock climber. He looked barely able to climb onto a stool. The tall man looked like any other city folk, his arms made to hang from subway car slings. But they kept using words I didn’t know.

The bartender returned, slid my drink before me, and retreated. It had the milky opacity of clay water.

Hey, miss. Hey, miss, the tall man said. He was holding his beer can out. Cheers to you, he said. I’m getting my buzz on.

His dark pupils were already swimming in red. Cheers, he said again. He was too far away and the corner of the bar was between us, so I lifted my glass to my chin, looking at him then the other, before taking a sip. It was as sweet and thick as a child’s safety-capped medicine. Someone who looked like me liked this, enough to where she was remembered here. I drank it to figure out what it was.

But anyway, the tall man said. I was on that rock face and it was straight up . I was basically hanging on with just my body.

Oh, man, said the other.

You wanna know what else is crazy?

What?

My son is in a coma.

What did he get into?

Put his trust in the wrong people’s hands.

The other man nodded.

They don’t know what’s gonna happen and his mom, my ex-wife, is out of her mind with it.

Yeah, the other man nodded.

She’s a crazy bitch, and I can’t take it.

The other man shook his head.

So listen, man. How is it getting laid in this neighborhood? You know some women around here?

The hunched man raised his eyes to me. I looked away and back. They shoved their heads together, their voices dipping low. They needn’t have been so shy. The man wanted to find a woman to pour his grief into, and who could blame him for that?

When the hunched man stood, two hands on the bar to push himself up, and shuffled down to the bathroom, the other man called to the bartender.

Hey, hey. Can I get some shots? He held up his can and shook it. Can I get some shots?

The bartender walked down the line and said, Yes, my sir. Shots? How many shots?

The man said three.

One for me (he put his hand on his chest), one for my man (he pointed down hard to the empty stool), and one for my girl.

Me?

You’re with us now, girly, he said. You know too many of my secrets! His laugh was scattered, broken into pieces. Plus, he said, tipping his empty can down his throat, you strike me as a hip chick.

The other man returned and the three of us drank. The man behind the bar filled my glass with the same sweetness I couldn’t recognize, and who was I to disappoint him? Or the tall man or the hunched man? When the next round came, I laughed and tried to say, My man is gonna be so mad at me, but the hunched man said, You’re too old to be worrying about yer ma. By the time the three of us limped out of the bar, arms thrown over each other’s shoulders, it was hard to remember what had come before or what might come after. The sun was pushing itself above the horizon, lighting the new snow that had covered the alley in its gray-blue sheet. We all three together hugged. The tall man was crying, the hunched man’s face was scrunched up, and he was saying, Oh, naw, man, don’t be like that. I whispered, Oh no. Oh no, oh no. That’s no good. We released each other, our faces smeared with time and truth. The tall man and the hunched man started off down the main drag of bus depots and motels by the hour. I turned and walked east. I looked into the sun, the earth’s inevitable birthing of a new day, until its light was all that I saw. I knew you weren’t supposed to stare right into it, but with such beauty, how could it ever hurt me?

For their friendship, camaraderie, and valuable feedback on these stories, thanks to Caro Beth Clark, Mike Don, Sara Gelston, Amanda Goldblatt, and the “Werkshop”: Alex Barnett, Christi Cartwright, Hugo dos Santos, Caitlin Hayes, and Annie Liontas. For their guidance and support, thanks to my teachers and mentors Monica Berlin, Audrey Petty, and Alex Shakar. And for helping to bring this book into the world, special thanks to Emily Bell and Allison Devereux.

Laura Adamczyk lives in Chicago. Her fiction has won awards from the Union League Civic & Arts Foundation of Chicago and has appeared in McSweeney’s , Guernica , Hobart , Chicago Reader , Salt Hill , Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and other publications. Hardly Children is her first book. You can sign up for email updates here.

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FSG Originals

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

175 Varick Street, New York 10014

Copyright © 2018 by Laura Adamczyk

All rights reserved

First edition, 2018

These stories previously appeared, in slightly different form, in the following publications: Chicago Reader (“Gun Control”), Copper Nickel (“WANTED”), Guernica (“Girls”), McSweeney’s (“The Summer Father”), Salt Hill (“Needless to Say”), Sycamore Review (“Intermission”), Vol. 1 Brooklyn (“Give and Go”), and Washington Square Review (“Here Comes Your Man”).