Menacing reunion
The room was long and dark, like the three-day vacation ahead of me. I approached the bar cautiously and with respect. I didn’t want to blow this. I needed them more than they needed me. There weren’t many people in the bar. I was on the lookout for someone in attire featuring heroic truck imagery. But if he was there, he was undercover. The bartender and I converged at the center of the bar. He was about to ask me what I wanted to buy from him. “I like that truck out front,” I said to him, maybe too desperately.
“What truck?” he asked, wiping a glass.
I turned to look out the dim window. You couldn’t see the truck. I stepped back a few paces and leaned. You couldn’t see it from inside. “This green truck parked out front, I thought maybe it was somebody’s from here.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“It’s parked outside, I guess to the left. To the left when you—”
He was squinting at me. “Hey, do I know you?”
The few other patrons, grizzled daytime drinkers, eyed me. “I don’t think so,” I told the guy. “I haven’t been in town for years.”
“But you’re from here?”
“Yeah.”
“You look familiar.”
“Well, I’m from here….tell you what, let me have a whiskey and ginger ale.” We had finally gotten around to that. He indicated that that sounded reasonable and went off, wiping that glass, which he then filled with ice, whiskey, and ginger ale. It got a little red straw and was placed in front of me, where I already had money ready, which he exchanged for less money. I left it on the bar, like I used to do in New York before some homeless guy shoved it into his mouth and ran off.
After some more cross-talk, it became clear that the bartender remembered me from high school (we had both gone to Park). He capped this with, “Yeah. I remember you, but I guess we didn’t really know each other. You knew a lot of people, though.”
The awkwardness of this vaguely menacing reunion had left me without a drink in my glass. I said, “Well, let’s have another drink. Let me buy you one.”
He looked at the clock behind him. It was early to be drinking. But we were already here. “All right,” he said. He mixed another drink for me in my glass. He poured himself a shot of tequila, which bartenders often drink, for some reason. We held our glasses up in the air, then drank from them. I just sipped mine, of course.
Abandoning further tact, I asked him, “You still keep in touch with any of the old gang?”
“‘The old gang’? Who is that?”
“I don’t know…people we went to high school with.”
“Well, sure. I see people. Mark Lund runs the laundromat next door. Sam Grady was in to watch the game the other day.” I had no idea who those people were, which he probably realized. “Oh yeah?” I said. “How about—”
“Girls?” he asked with a glint.
“Okay, yeah, how about some of the girls from those days.”
“I see a few of them now and then. I married one.”
“Congratulations. Who was the lucky—”
“Patti Reineking, she was a sophomore when you were a senior.” I thought about the name but it didn’t ring any bells. She must not have been that hot.
“Well, congratulations,” I said again. “Do you ever talk to Sharon Houseman?”
He chuckled. “Sometimes. Yeah, I remember your big fling with her. Times have changed, you know.”
“Well, of course.” It was getting a little creepy. I wasn’t sure I wanted an embittered Racine bartender to be my unauthorized biographer.
He picked up my empty glass and went to refill it. “It’s not high school any more,” he cautioned me.
“I know. What about Aman—”
He chuckled again as he traded my glass for more money. “I was wondering when you’d ask me about her.”
Clearly if he was familiar with my “fling” with Sharon Houseman, he was an expert on my relationship with Amanda Granger. I had had others before her, but she was the first one I was proud of. Amanda had introduced me to the world; not to sex as an act but to sexuality as a part of life, rather than just something you need a dose of now and then. Not that we could be open about it in those days, of course. But that didn’t stop the bartender from giving me a dirty look as he poured himself another tequila, which I found out I was also paying for when he took more money from me.
“The fair Amanda,” he said. “You keep in touch with her?”
“No. Not for a long time. I think we talked in college on the phone.”
“She’s got a new phone number now,” he said.
“Well, I imagine so.”
“She’s not ‘Granger ‘any more.”
“She got married?”
“Yeah.”
“Everyone seems to have got married.”
“Basically.” He frowned and nodded again. “You thinking of getting in touch with Amanda?”
“I’m only in town a few days. I wasn’t planning on looking up anybody. You’re the one who brought up—”
He waved it away. “Say no more,” he said, and then the phone rang, and he went down the bar to answer it. I inspected the ice in my drinkless glass. Would one of my trusted bartenders in New York leave a guy without a drink when they weren’t even busy? I guess probably they would. I looked around at the other few guys in the bar. One was watching the television. One was watching his glass. The other guy was throwing darts. He looked like the type who probably had his own set. I watched the bartender on the phone. When he was done, he stood around shuffling bottles and adding up figures in a notebook. I tried in vain to get his attention without shouting out. He had cowed me. Eventually he came back over and handed me a napkin. “Go ahead, let’s see what happens.” On the napkin was Amanda’s name and her phone number. The bartender chuckled at me once again.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t like taking orders from this guy. I didn’t like the interest he took in my sordid past. I thought about Amanda, all those years ago, and I stepped over to the payphone. She was at home; she was not that surprised to hear from me; she was not that adverse to seeing me; I was invited over to her apartment, the address of which she freely gave. It sounded like her except more blasé. Reeling a bit, I collected my coat and said goodbye to the bartender, who chuckled. I swung by a supermarket and got most of what was on the list, secured the bags in the trunk, and found my way to the apartment of a woman who loved me once.
TO BE CONTINUED….
by Jack, March 4, 2005 2:43 PM | More from Amanda | More from Drinking & Women
Within the Chronology
Leave a comment