Chapter 4 #2
“I’m a bartender, that’s all you need to know about me.”
“Okay, but at least tell me this. A man with a broken heart: in your eyes, does that make him more attractive or less attractive?”
She raised one eyebrow. “Are you asking me what your chances are of fucking me?”
“What makes you think I want to fuck you?”
“You mean you don’t?”
Bob thought about it. “If what people say is true, that fucking other people is a good remedy for a broken heart, then Christ, yeah, I do.”
Bob couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw the ghost of a smile on that hard, closed face.
She pulled a wineglass from a rack dangling above the bar and began polishing it. “Helps about as much as pissing in your underwear when it’s cold, I would think. Does your having a broken heart mean I’m into you? No. For all I know she dumped you because you’re no good in bed.”
Bob slumped forward with one hand held to his stomach. “Ouch, you got me there, Liza. Pour me another drink.”
Liza filled his glass. “Okay. So do you really have a broken heart?”
“Will you fuck me if I do?”
Bob was sure of himself now: she was smiling.
“Come on, Liza, being here bores you as much as it bores me, so let’s just entertain each other a bit. The question is hypothetical and your answer will not be used against you in a court of law.”
“I’d like it better if you entertain me with the story of your broken heart.”
“Her name’s Alice.”
“You have kids?”
“No.”
“Hard up?”
“No.”
“Someone else?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“She stopped loving me.”
“But she did love you once, you think?”
“Yes,” said Bob. “She did.”
“Then why d’you think she stopped?”
“It’s…complicated.”
She returned the wineglass to the rack and started polishing another, looking at him while she did so.
“I thought you wanted to talk about it.”
“Your turn now,” said Bob, and forced a smile. “Could I have had a date with you?”
“No.”
“Hypothetically,” he said. “If you didn’t work here.”
She shook her head slightly, and then added, with an exasperated look, like someone humoring a difficult child: “It depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“What you have to offer a single mom.”
“Ah, a single mom.” Bob smiled broadly. “I can offer her security. I’m a public servant, it’s almost impossible to fire me. And…” Bob slid his hand into the pocket of his cashmere coat and tossed a small rectangular plastic package onto the bar.
Liza leaned forward reluctantly for a closer look. Made a face. “A condom?”
“Safe sex. This is the best money can buy.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re scared you’ll have a kid?”
Bob shrugged. “I’m scared of a premature ejaculation. And with that thing there my prick hardly feels a thing.”
Liza laughed out loud. And from her laughter he could tell she’d smoked her fair share of cigarettes. “Dammit, Bob, you really are cute.”
“Cute enough to let me buy you a cup of coffee someplace else?” Bob slid the condom back over to his side of the bar.
She shook her head. “Is that the way you usually do it?”
“Do what?”
“First the full-frontal assault, then the retreat, then the siege?”
Bob thought about that. “Yes. Does it work?”
“Sure. Just not on me.”
“Why not?”
Liza rolled her eyes.
“Oh, come on,” said Bob, “I’m out of practice. I need a little constructive feedback here.”
Liza spotted a gesture from one of the other customers, an elderly man still wearing his overcoat.
She picked up a glass and unscrewed the top of a vodka bottle.
“Well, okay then. I couldn’t be less interested.
You come in here, I’m the first woman you see, the first living being you see.
You sat there for about five minutes before suggesting a fuck.
A fuck to make up for the fact that your lady’s dumped you.
Let’s say—hypothetically—that I’d been up for it and you and me ended up in the same bed tonight.
Does that really sound to you like the start of a quality relationship involving two quality people? ”
“Ah, but…”
“But?”
“Isn’t quality in general a bit…uh, overrated?”
Liza looked at him and slowly shook her head. She licked her lips a couple of times.
“Then what do you mean by quality, Liza?”
Liza screwed the cap back on the vodka bottle. “Staying power.”
“Staying power? As in…?”
“No. As in, a man who sticks around.”
She placed her hands on the bar and Bob Oz met her eyes.
Then she picked up the vodka glass, emerged from behind the bar and walked across to the old man sitting at his table.
Bob watched her. She put the glass down in front of him and spoke to him as she picked up the crutch that had fallen to the floor and leaned it against the chair.
The phone in the inside pocket of his coat began to vibrate.
He took it out, saw that the caller was Superintendent Walker. He hesitated before taking the call.
As expected, Walker sounded pretty pissed off. “Where the hell are you, Oz?”
“Dinkytown, Chief.”
“Why aren’t you at work?”
“I am. I’m checking the licenses at a couple of shady premises.”
“You are a homicide detective, Oz.”
“Then let me guess. There’s been a murder?”
Pause.
“Have you been drinking, Oz?”
“Any address for that murder, Chief?”
Walker sighed heavily before giving the address.
“No surprises there then,” said Bob as he wrote in his notebook. They ended the call and he stood up and buttoned his cashmere coat just as Liza came back behind the bar again.
“Duty calls?” she asked.
“Yeah,” said Bob as he placed some bills down on the bar.
Liza held one up to the light to make sure it was legit. “Will we be seeing you again, Bob?”
“Do we hope so?”
“If you keep on tipping like this then definitely.”
“When do you close?”
“Nine o’clock. But maybe you need a bit of a break from the drinking. Heart, liver—it all adds up, you know.”
“Thanks for the advice.” Bob smiled. “Ha det bra.”
“What did you say?”
“Norwegian. Be well.” Bob turned and headed for the exit.
Could feel he was a little bit unsteady on his feet.
Stopped in the open doorway and walked back to the bar where Liza was standing with her hand out and a grin on her face.
Bob Oz grabbed the condom from between her fingers, gave an exaggeratedly gallant bow and then left.
—
Bob sat behind the steering wheel of the car parked by the sidewalk on the other side of the railroad bridge.
Like the majority of the cars in the fleet it was a Ford, but it was unmarked, and in the state he was in he couldn’t give any guarantees about his driving.
So he took the Kojak light from the glove compartment, opened the window, pressed the magnetic base down onto the roof and checked that the blue light was on.
This part of Dinkytown was mostly barflies and white farmers’ sons come to town to study and to party, but even here the police would never risk stopping a cop out on a call and ordering a DUI test. He took the route through Marshall Street and Broadway Bridge across the river.
Tucked in behind a car with a blue bumper sticker.
“GUN OWNERS FOR TRUMP 2016.” Donald Trump was entertaining, give him that, but then Hillary Clinton and the Democrats had rejoiced when the Republicans managed to nominate an unelectable lunatic as their candidate.
Something the opinion polls now, just before the presidential election, seemed to confirm they had good reason to.
Bob pulled out his cell phone, navigated to the last number, called and pressed the Call button.
Listened to the female voice on the answering machine.
“Hello, you’ve reached Alice’s answering machine. Will you please stop calling me, Bob?”
Bob waited for the beep before he began speaking so the recorder would pick up everything he said.
“Okay, that was new, Alice, touché. I’m calling to say I’ve changed my mind, I’m not going to let you have the house, and definitely not at that price.
And to inform you I fucked a girl of twenty-six last week.
Says she’s an aerobics instructor when she isn’t studying law at U of M and that her grandfather was an Ojibwe chieftain.
I take that with a pinch of salt, women lie, we all know that, or don’t we, Alice?
Anyway, I’m not telling you this to make you jealous or anything like that, after all, we are—as you said—adult human beings.
” Bob stopped at a red light. He was pleased that he was managing to keep his voice under control.
“I’m only calling to tell you that she called me last night and told me I’d given her a sexually transmitted disease, one I’d never heard of, apparently a new one from the West Coast. So this is just a bit of friendly, grown-up advice to get yourself checked.
Because it’s only natural to wonder if the source was Stan the Man, and that you, contrary to what you told me, were actually screwing him before I moved out, and passed it on to me that last time we fucked, on Hidden Beach. ”
Bob could hear now that his voice was no longer under control and that he had actually yelled the words fucked and screwing since they happened to be very well suited to being yelled.
“Because you remember that fuck, right? Yeah, you damn well bet you do, because I guess you’ve never been fucked so well since. Or have you? Have you, bitch?”
Bob threw the phone at the windshield and it bounced around the car before disappearing somewhere.
Put both hands against the wheel and breathed out heavily.
Became aware of the zebra-striped car in the lane to his left, and the man in the passenger seat staring at him through the open window.
Glazed eyes and slack mouth. Like he was in the goddamn zoo.
Bob knew he shouldn’t but he couldn’t resist it; he lowered the window.
“What the fuck are you staring at? Never seen anyone go berserk before?”
The man’s eyes remained glazed, his mouth stayed slack, and Bob wondered if he was a bit simple, but then the guy put his hand out the window and pointed upward and said in a toneless voice:
“Why stop for a red light when you’ve got one of those on the roof of your car?”
Bob opened and closed his mouth several times, but his brain came up with nothing. The zebra-striped car next to him pulled away and he heard a horn blaring behind him. Bob cursed under his breath and hit the gas.