Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

“They’re all bad,” he replied. “Today’s especially bad, but every last one of them sucks.”

“You’re conflating two issues — your job and your grief.”

“Conflating,” Raymer said. “Isn’t that like giving a blow job?”

Jerome thought for a moment. “That’s fellating. ”

“Oh.”

“You need to let her go,” Jerome continued. “Losing that garage-door opener? Best thing that ever could’ve happened.”

Out at Hilldale, Raymer had told Jerome about the device that now lay at the bottom of Judge Flatt’s grave and how losing it meant he’d never know who Becka had been about to run off with when she came down those stairs like a Slinky.

Gert set two full glasses in front of them and then, recognizing that his participation in this conversation wasn’t required, retreated the length of the bar and disappeared behind the racing form.

Raymer drained off about a third of his beer, half expecting his head to detonate from its coldness, but it didn’t. In fact, he could feel the thrumming pain, which four extra-strength Tylenols hadn’t yet touched, begin to recede from right behind his eyes to somewhere deeper in his damaged skull, taking with it the worst of his exhaustion. Maybe sleep wasn’t what he needed after all. Maybe he just needed to get very drunk. Which could be accomplished, he knew from experience, on about three beers. “Oh, yeah, ” he gasped, staring at the bubbles, thousands of them, magically appearing at the bottom of the glass and sprinting up to the surface. “This…this is wonderful. ”

“This,” said Jerome, who’d also taken a drink and was making a face, “is horsepiss. I bet all twelve horses peed in this beer and they all had urinary infections.”

From down the bar and behind the racing form came a discernible grunt.

Raymer took off his dark glasses and studied Jerome. “God, you’re a snob,” he said.

Jerome winced at the sight of Raymer’s face, his eyes swollen to slits. “Please put those back on. You know I’ve got a weak stomach.”

He put the glasses back on. “Okay, but don’t tell me I need to let Becka go,” he said. “You’ve never been married. You’re always dating three girls at a time. You lose one, you’ve got two spares. Plus they’re mostly college girls. Interchangeable. Same exact girl, different major.” According to Jerome, he dated only girls from the college’s three small graduate programs, but Raymer had his doubts. Most of the female population was from the city, and their views regarding tall, handsome black men were on the liberal side. By his own admission Jerome had to beat them off with a stick, though there had to be times, Raymer suspected, when no stick was handy.

“Yeah, but summer is my slow season. The campus is practically deserted.”

“Whereas Becka was a woman.”

“I know that,” Jerome said, sounding surprisingly serious.

“And please don’t tell me fainting into that grave, breaking my face and losing that garage remote was the best thing that could’ve happened, because that’s just plain insulting.”

Jerome was fidgety. “You sure the ’Stang’s all right out back?”

Godalmighty. Despite the blistering heat, he’d carefully put the top up, then double-checked to make sure both doors were securely locked — a car nerd if there ever was one. “Well, you took up two spaces,” said Raymer, who nonetheless wasn’t at all sure it would be okay. The parking lot behind Gert’s was second only to the Morrison Arms in terms of generating calls to the police station. “Only assholes do that, by the way.”

“Spoken like a man who drives a Jetta and drinks Genesee.”

Raymer took another long drag of beer and closed his eyes, tracking the fluid down the back of his throat and into his chest. Lord, it tasted good. Becka had preferred wine, so he’d mostly just gone along. But how the hell had he forgotten beer? He needed nothing else, he decided. Not sleep, not riches, not a woman. Just beer and this cool dark room. He certainly didn’t need Jerome telling him why he should be enjoying anything else. “If you’re so worried about the car, go outside and stand guard. In fact, why don’t you go back to Schuyler and drink microswill at Adfinitum.”

“Infinity,” Jerome corrected him.

“Right,” Raymer said, now remembering the posh sign. No words, just the symbol, a drunken 8 lying on its side. “Go there. Because I intend to sit right here and drink horsepiss until the power comes back on across the street. Maybe a little longer.”

“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Jerome said. “All this shit’s related. You’ve heard of chaos theory? A butterfly flaps its wings in South America and that causes a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico?”

“Connect the dots and win a prize.”

“You’re depressed. That’s the problem. You live in a rathole like the Moribund Arms because you’re still grieving. Worse, you punish yourself by drinking cheap beer in a sleazy dive that smells like the locker room of a metropolitan YMCA.”

From behind the racing form came another grunt.

“You think your job’s the problem, but that’s got nothing to do with it.”

Raymer finished his beer and clunked the glass down on the bar loud enough to signal that he was in need of another, but when Gert didn’t budge, he slid off his stool and said, “I gotta pee.”

“Urinate,” Jerome said. “Women pee. Men urinate.”

“And defecate.”

“Correct.”

The men’s room was only fifty feet away, though it was all Raymer could do to make it there, and he arrived too tired to pee standing up. There was no door on the stall, and the toilet seat was beyond disgusting, but he sat down anyway. This release was nearly as thrilling as that first long swig of beer had been. Life’s simple pleasures, he thought, the phrase materializing, ready-made, in his brain. He needed to pay more attention to these pleasures. He wasn’t even finished peeing before he fell asleep on the commode, then jolted awake again. How much time had passed? Had he already started dreaming? About Becka? He stood, hitched up his pants, washed his hands in the filthy sink and then dried them on his pants, the towel dispenser empty, naturally. There was only one word for the face that stared back at him from the cracked, cloudy mirror: gruesome.

When Raymer emerged, Jerome was right where he’d left him, which suggested he couldn’t have napped for more than a minute or two. “The thing is,” he told Jerome, recalling their aborted conversation, “you can’t even keep your bullshit straight.” His glass was still empty, so he went behind the bar. “First you say it’s all related, then you tell me that my job’s got nothing to do with my depression. So which is it?” Before Jerome could answer, he called down the bar. “I’m drawing myself another beer, Gert.”

“Help yourself,” came the reply from behind the racing form. “You already drove out all my customers. Empty the till while you’re at it. Put me out of my misery.”

“It’s not bad enough,” Raymer continued to Jerome, “I have to hear this same shit all day long from your sister—”

“You’re a good cop, is what I’m saying,” Jerome interrupted, serious again. “Like with that old gentleman across the street. All day long he sits out there on the sidewalk waving his little flag. Every now and then somebody honks. But you stopped to talk to him. That might be the only human contact he’ll have all day.”

“That’s social work,” Raymer countered. He knew Jerome was trying to pay him a compliment, but for some reason he wasn’t in the mood to accept any. “The police solve crimes. Prevent crimes. Apprehend criminals.”