Chapter 23
The Miserable
So they whistled past the graveyard and on across the Common to the Park Street T-stop and hopped the Red Line to Andrew Station. A young woman on the train wore a T-shirt saying: “Homelessness is big business! But who’s getting the business?”
Emerging from the tunnel, the finance-administrator led his compadres past the Li’l' Peach convenience store across the street from the station and up the little street beside it and pointed out his condominium, as they passed on their way to the bars.
“I heard that part of your conversation, too,” said Bob. “Do you like your place?”
“The apartment I left to buy it was bigger,” said the finance-administrator, “and I felt like I was rattling around in it. This place is perfect for me, new wooden floors and fresh paint and a nice little wood-burning fireplace and a little deck on the back for reading and getting a little sun in summer. Maybe some people need more. I don’t.”
“The only problem I have there is my upstairs neighbor. She’s a trustee in the condominium association, and she asked during our first meeting after I bought the place that someone else be, and I volunteered. I signed some papers, but she didn’t provide copies to me, although I asked her to. But that’s a meagerly related problem.
“She resents. In that same meeting, she asked whether anyone liked flowers. I said I do, and I suggested azaleas for that little bed there beside the steps, and she accepted that recommendation, or said she did. She also has children visit her often, but she pulls up the azaleas before they can root, like a sneak-thief.
“She likes to talk about law, as church Christians like to talk about medicine, and I guess she wanted another trustee to reduce her liability. But she called the attorney who owns a condo in the other side of the duplex a slumlord, after he rented his condo to an attractive apparently businesslike young black woman.
“Appropriately, she’s Irish and named for the mother of Jesus and the adulterer of Paris, peace in Canaan and war in Troy. I don’t know what her problem is, whether her mother enjoyed flowers more than her, or what. But she reminds me of little old ladies who grow gardens and rail at children who get near enough to enjoy them.
“Bigotry and resentment seem to me to pervade South Boston, beyond its fame for racism. The part I don’t understand is like the part I don’t understand about Israelis and Palestinians. After how United States citizens treated the Irish immigrants from the potato famine, how so little sympathy?
“But, of course, I may be wrong throughout. I’m not a ghost for nothing, or at least I hope I'm not.”
“How are you going to make the mortgage payments after L’Amore de Santa Clara fires you?” asked Bob.
“Maybe I’ll not be able to,” said the finance-administrator. “But I’m not going to sell my soul for mortgage payments.”
“I’m thinking of the people leaving the wounded, to take their furniture from Moscow before Napoleon got there,” said Lev.
“You know,” said Bob. “I own a lot of Texaco stock, and I have a friend who used Texas oil-connections to do a lot of good on Earth.”
“Do you know that Jazzin gent who chairs our board of directors?” asked the finance-administrator. “He seems to me dedicated to minimizing the good he can do, and he could do much, but his suits are tight.”
“No,” answered Bob, “I don’t. But he can’t be all bad with that name. Do you know that a Lebanese owns the only bowling alley in Afghanistan, and uses it to collect a little intelligence on the side?”
“I did know that,” said the finance-administrator. “I didn’t spend ten years in the United States Army for nothing. Do you know that twelve tanks overthrew the Afghan monarchy?
“Who gives a crap?” asked Lev. “Where’s this bar you’re taking us to? Did you know that I have a Texas oil-friend, too?”
“Right there,” said the finance-administrator, pointing to an unlit Budweiser advertisement above a dirty doorway.
By now, the finance-administrator had led his motley crew out of Ulster Street and onto Dorchester Street and across Columbia Road. The Budweiser sign was the only sign on that little building wedged between two larger ones, and no name was on the sign other than Budweiser. Across the street was one of Boston’s under-maintained housing projects, between the bar and the beach on the old harbor. Inside, the bar stank, of beer and cigarette-smoke and the sweat of homeless people.
The floor was of nicked-up unmatched asphalt tiles, and the walls were of veneer paneling, like in house-trailers. The ceiling was acoustical with holes apparently punched by cue-sticks, and with blue spots where the tips had hit without penetration. The barstools were as unmatched as the floor-tiles. But the bar was wood and by far the cleanest surface in the place. And the place was full of customers.
The finance-administrator motioned Lev and Bob to sit at one of the two tables there. A woman was sitting at that table alone, and the finance-administrator bent and kissed her on a cheek, and she said Hi and smiled.
“That’s my Bill,” she said. “Gas bill, electric bill, phone bill, . . . .“
“These are some friends of mine,” said the finance-administrator. “Bob and Lev. This is Shirley. Mind if we join you?”
“No, sure,” said Shirley, offering a hand to the others, while the finance-administrator went to the bar.
“Hey, Jim,” said the finance-administrator to a man sitting at the bar.
“Hello, my friend,” said the man, briefly looking at the finance-administrator, then turning back to the television in front of him high behind the bar, although its sound was down as the jukebox played.
“Hey, Jimmy,” said the finance-administrator to the bartender.
“What can I getcha?” asked Jimmy.
“There are five Jims in here,” said Shirley to Bob and Lev.
“I’ll have the usual,” said the finance-administrator.
“This?” asked Jimmy, touching the tap-handle for a beer called Natural Ice.
“Yeah,” said the finance-administrator, “and two Buds and a Coors Light.”
“Bottles?” asked Jimmy.
“Yeah,” said the finance-administrator. “And whatever John’s drinking down there. He looks like he’s running low.”
He pointed to a man at the front end of the bar, who looked older than both the first Jim to whom he had spoken and Shirley, although all three of them looked quite old.
“You mean Mr. Quinn?” asked Jimmy.
“Yeah,” said the finance-administrator. “And it looks like Jamie’s ready for one.”
“You want to buy Jamie a beer?” asked Jimmy.
“Yeah,” said the finance-administrator. “How’s your life, Jimmy?”
“These viruses are kicking my ass,” answered Jimmy, drawing the finance-administrator’s draft.
“That’s because you’re a faggot,” said a fat man, who until then had been sleeping at the bar on the other side of the finance-administrator from Jim.
“How’s it going, Jack?” asked the finance-administrator.
“Can’t complain,” answered Jack, taking a sip of his beer. “Do I know you?”
Jimmy didn’t reply to Jack or look at him. He set a glass of Natural Ice in front of Jamie, on the other side of Jack from the finance-administrator, and he pointed at the finance-administrator. Jamie looked at the finance-administrator.
“Hey, Billy,” he said. “Did you just get here?”
“I’ve been here for hours,” said the finance-administrator. “You’re just not paying attention.”
Jamie looked into his beer and didn’t answer. Turning to look at Mr. Quinn, the finance-administrator raised his right index-finger to signal to Mr. Quinn that he was welcome to the beer for which Mr. Quinn had signaled thanks by raising quakily his own right index-finger, looking at the finance-administrator. Jamie took a long swig of his beer, as the finance-administrator carried the bottles of Bud and Coors to the table and set them in front of their recipients. When the finance-administrator turned back to the bar to get his draft, a man entered the bar and stopped in front of him.
“Hey, Tommy,” said the finance-administrator. “Where’s your dog?”
“He died,” said Tommy. “That computer stuff you told me worked.”
“I’m sorry,” said the finance-administrator. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” said Tommy. “It made a lot of sense.”
Tommy continued on toward the pool-table, which was so near the backdoor of the bar that some shots required either using a short stick or opening the door. The finance-administrator told Lev and Bob later that one could tell a new customer from a regular by the choice in that, and he said the door was usually unlocked because of fire regulations and so customers could go out back and smoke dope or whatever. Beside the door was a poster depicting the World Trade Center, with some text about how hateful Afghans are. The finance-administrator sat down at the table.
“There’s a picture of Mark Twain advertising Dewar’s Scotch in the frame under that newspaper poster,” he said, pointing. “So, Shirley, how’s it going?”
“Good,” said Shirley.
“How’s the cancer?”
“I’ve got another surgery next week,” she said, after looking at her bandaged hand, which was in her lap as her other hand held her bottle of beer on the table.
“Heard anything from Cheryl?”
“She’ll never come in here again,” answered Shirley. “After you left, after you gave her that book, she threw the book at me. She was so drunk she fell down, right over there. Did I tell you what she did at the house?”
“No,” said the finance-administrator. “What did she do?”
“The guy told her all she had to do was not go on the third floor, but he caught her on the third floor going through his stuff, and he found some money missing.”
“She told me outside, the day I gave her the book,” said the finance-administrator, “that she’d been to court that morning to put a restraining order on some guy, and that he was there trying to put one on her. Is that what that was about?”
“I don’t know,” said Shirley. “But she’ll never get in here again. She was laughing, haw haw haw. You know how she laughs.”
“Yes,” said the finance-administrator. “I know how she laughs.”
“Who is she?” asked Bob. "Who’s Cheryl? What’s she to you?”
“She’s kind of a mess,” said the finance-administrator. “But I like her. So I asked her for a date, to see the American Ballet Theatre perform Giselle at the Wang Theatre, around the corner from L’Amore de Santa Clara. You’d appreciate that, Lev.”
“Yes,” said Lev. “That’s one thing the French did for Russia, give Tchaichovski a raison d’etre, inspire Petipa. Stuff like that.
“And Giselle is a ghost,” said Bob. “Did she accept?”
“Yes,” said the finance-administrator. “And she was talking about buying a dress for the occasion, hunter green, she said. But she backed out after I bought tickets for great seats, a couple of days before the performance. So I gave the tickets to Shirley and a picture-history of the American Ballet Theatre to Cheryl.”
“I gave the tickets to Johnnie, a friend of Jamie’s,” said Shirley. “I don’t know anything about that stuff. Cheryl said they might be worth money and wanted to scalp them. I told her the tickets were for her, not the money.”
“I don’t know anything about much,” said the finance-administrator. “She’s told me about two different men beating her up. I’m starting to think she likes that sort of thing, more than beautiful things like ballet.”
“I heard she might be in jail,” said Shirley. “That’s what I heard.”
“This country is crazier than Russia,” said Lev. “There, we beat servants.”
“Did Johnnie use the tickets?” asked the finance-administrator.
“I don’t know,” said Shirley. “Ask Jamie.”
Now, Jamie was standing behind the fifth of the five chairs at the table, with two bottles of Bud and one of Coors in his hands.
“Mind if I sit down?” he asked.
“No, sure,” said the finance-administrator, as Shirley shrugged.
“Jamie Lewis, Liverpool, England,” said Jamie, shaking hands around, after distributing the bottles of beer, and he returned to the bar for the drafts for himself and the finance-administrator.
“Besides,” said Shirley, while he was gone, “she said she thinks you’re queer. She said somebody told her they saw you kissing Jamie on the mouth.”
“That’s not funny,” said Bob. “But it thickens the plot.”
“That doesn’t happen much in public in Russia,” said Lev.
“I swear I didn’t do it,” said the finance-administrator.
“England isn’t anything but a colony of France,” said the Finance-administrator, after Jamie returned with the draughts and sat in the fifth chair. “England became a world power out of resentment of William the Conqueror. But that isn’t why I didn’t do it. I prefer the warm wet, regression. Know what I mean?
“Hm?” asked Jamie. “What are you guys up to?”
“You know,” said Bob, “you look like Rod Stewart?”
Jamie didn’t answer, except with a smile and a sip of his beer.
“He used to be a Rod Stewart impersonator,” said the finance-administrator. “He came here from Liverpool as a male prostitute, with that Rod Stewart stuff to help market him, and for the woman who recruited him and married him.”
“A boy-toy,” said Jamie, smiling again and lifting his shirt to reveal golden rings in his nipples, besides a beer-belly befitting drinking beer for most of the last half-century.
“Now he blows up balloons for a living,” said the finance-administrator, “or to supplement his third wife’s income as some sort of clerk for the Commonwealth."
“How do you get paid for blowing up balloons?” asked Bob.
“I have my own business,” said Jamie. “Something Special. I do balloons for parties, bouquets for people in the hospital, singing telegrams, stuff like that. My second wife does it too and throws me her overflow, and I have a website Billy’s helping me with, and I advertise in the Yellow Pages, those bastards.”
“The second wife was the boy-toy recruiter,” said the finance-administrator.
“What bastards?” asked Bob. “The Yellow Pages people?”
“Yeah!” said Jamie. “They overcharge me, and they keep trying to collect, and they put me in the wrong category, and they screwed up my web site. Billy helped me get them to fix my website, and he showed me they’ve got me in the wrong category.”
“Did Johnnie use those ballet tickets?” asked the finance-administrator.
“What ballet tickets?” said Jamie. “Yeah! Of course! I think so.”
At that moment, a short man with a black mustache and a camouflage hat with its brim folded down entered the bar and sat silently at the bar with his back to the table. A few minutes later, Jimmy brought another round of beer to the table.
“Hey, Tio!” said Jamie.
“Hey, Tio!” said the finance-administrator.
“What?” said the small mustachioed man, turning to the table.
“Come join us,” said the finance-administrator, dragging an empty chair from the other table, after getting a nod of approval from that table’s occupants.
Tio, looking a little reluctant, moved from the bar to the table. He sat in the chair and set his bottle of Heinekens on the table. He opened his eyes wide and smiled and looked at each of the others, one at a time, left to right.
“Thanks for the beer,” said the finance-administrator.
“Thanks for the beer,” said Jamie.
“Tio’s a gypsy,” said the finance-administrator.
“I’m a gypsy,” said Tio.
“He’s from Romania,” said the finance-administrator.
“Romania,” said Tio.
“That’s like Russia,” said Jamie. “Same thing.”
“Romania isn’t Russia,” said Lev. “You British are worse than the French, maybe even worse than the Germans. How did you get here from Romania?”
Jamie grinned, and Tio declined to answer.
“It’s a secret,” said Tio. “I’m a spy. Everybody’s a spy. That’s why we have so many niggers and Russians in this country. She’s a Jap. Look.”
He nodded toward a woman entering the bar, a dark-haired woman with a ring in her nose, and somewhat oriental features, maybe. The woman was remarkably physically weighty, and her T-shirt revealed her breasts to be below where a brazier might hold them. She walked to the restroom, speaking to no one, and went in.
“See?” said Tio, as she passed the jukebox on her return from the toilet.
“Up yours, Tio,” said the woman.
“How’s it going, Pauline?” asked the finance-administrator.
“Oh, hi,” said Pauline.
“How’s your new marketing approach?”
“What?” asked Pauline, gazing away but stopping at the table.
“How’s your new marketing approach?”
“Fine!” said Pauline, now smiling at the finance-administrator.
“Still losing weight.” said the finance-administrator. “And no bra.”
She lifted her T-shirt, confirming that indeed she wore no bra.
“Let’s see down here,” said someone at the pool table.
Pauline turned in that direction and repeated the display. After a few speechless seconds, she sat at the other table, behind Tio.
“What can I getcha?” asked Jimmy from the bar.
“Water,” said Pauline, and she sank into silence.
“Jim,” said the finance-administrator, to the only other person now at the other table, not the Jim who had been watching television but was now gone, but a younger Jim in a freshly starched and pressed white shirt. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
“Who’s my girlfriend?” asked Jim.
“Cheryl,” said the finance-administrator.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” said Jim. “We’re just friends. I hear she’s in the shelter for battered women in Cambridge. That’s what I heard. I don’t know.”
Another man entered the bar, a balding man in an undershirt, no outer shirt. He stopped and stared at the finance-administrator, before turning to the bar and telling Jimmy what he could get him. After ordering, he turned and punched the finance-administrator in the ribs. Then he leaned back, staring again.
“You’re getting fat, Ralph” said the finance-administrator.
“Fat?” exclaimed Ralph. “You want a piece of me?”
“Which piece?” asked the finance-administrator.
Ralph laughed and walked on back to the pool table, where Jimmy had his beer waiting for him. All at Shirley’s table quieted for a while, until the next customer entered the bar and didn’t respond to the finance-administrator’s greeting.
“I told you about that, didn’t I?” asked Shirley.
“About what?” asked the finance-administrator.
“Cheryl asked me once, before I knew you were interested in her, who was the best choice in here, and I told her Freddy.”
“You didn’t tell me,” said the finance-administrator. “But I was here the first night she left with him. She was sitting with Jim here awhile, but then she sat with Freddy and left with him. He’s a good choice, I guess. He has property in Maine.”
“That’s important!” said Lev.
“It’s unimproved,” said the finance-administrator.
“Any oil under it?” asked Bob.
“He told me he’s just a friend, too,” said the finance-administrator, looking at Freddy now sitting beside Mr. Quinn at the front end of the bar.
“She’ll take you for everything you’ve got,” said a thin man with big eyes and camouflage combat-boots, who had come in and filled the seat at the bar Jamie had vacated, turning now to the finance-administrator.
“Donna says you’re a mook,” said the finance-administrator.
“I’m not a mook,” said the big-eyed man in combat-boots.
“Anyway, I don’t have anything,” said the finance-administrator.
As the man in the combat-boots turned back to the bar, another man entered. He looked around and walked up to Freddy and punched him square in the face. Then he turned and left the bar, walking out the door and leaving Freddy’s nose bleeding. Freddy looked at the man as he left, and then down the bar at Jimmy. Then he looked down at his beer, as a drop of blood dripped there. He looked at Jimmy again.
“I never saw him before in my life,” said Freddy.
The finance-administrator rose from his chair and walked to Freddy.
“Jimmy,” said the finance-administrator. “You got any napkins?”
“I’m alright,” said Freddy, his own fist now at his nose.
The bar didn’t use cocktail napkins, but Jimmy found some old ones, maybe from past marketing wishes, and he took Freddy a few. Freddy accepted the napkins and began holding them, one at a time, to his nose.
By this time, a third person had joined Pauline and Jim at the other table, and he rose from his chair. He took a couple of steps toward the toilet and stopped, looking down at the finance-administrator, who had returned to his chair.
“How’s it going, Joe?” asked the finance-administrator, of this man maybe as old as Shirley, one of his arms in a sling.”
“Let it stanch!” said Joe. “It’ll just keep bleeding, if he keeps messing with it! Even I know that!”
“Tell him,” said the finance-administrator, and Joe passed on to the toilet.
Bob’s putter was sitting idle between his legs at the table.
“I realize this is a combat zone,” said Bob. “But I think my learning-curve has peaked for it. Do you know of any other places?”
“Want to go to Kiley’s?” asked the finance-administrator, looking at Jamie.
“These guys don’t want to go to Kiley’s,” said Jamie.
“I want to go to Kiley’s,” said Lev.
“I want to go to Kiley’s,” said Bob.
“You’re in charge,” said Jamie.
“You’re in charge,” said Tio.
“All for one,” said the finance-administrator. “One for all.”
“But now there are five of us,” said Jamie.
“I thought you were an engineer,” said the finance-administrator.
“I can’t do that kind of calculation,” said Jamie.
“The Pythagorean theorem is too much for you,” said the finance-administrator to Jamie, and then he told Lev and Bob that Jamie was a mechanical engineer before he became a Rod Stewart impersonating boy-toy.
“Calculate this,” said Jamie. “Calibrate that.”
So they agreed to go to Kiley’s upon finishing that round of their beer. Before they left, Christine and Raymond came in and did whatever they do in the toilet despite the pen-and-ink sign on its door proscribing more than one person being in it at once. But Bob wasn’t interested in that kind of combat. So they left.
“Do you want to go with us?” the finance-administrator asked Pauline.
“Where are you going?” asked Pauline.
“Kiley’s,” answered the finance-administrator.
“Not this time,” answered Pauline.
“Alright,” said the finance-administrator.
They rose to leave, but had to wait a few minutes, because little fat bald kidney-cancer Bobby and his big-breasted laughing girlfriend Pearl had come in, and Bobby had played “God Bless America” on the juke box, and everybody in the bar sang along with the CD. Of course the five musketeers had to join in that before their next battle.