The Tender Bar (41 page)

“Huron or Pontchartrain?” Cager said.

“Which is bigger?” Uncle Charlie said.

“The biggest is Pontchartrain. I think you meant to say Pontchartrain?”

“In my whole life I’ve never meant to say Pontchartrain.”

Some of the credit for the record-setting receipts that fall went to Wall Street. The stock market was on fire, which translated into a boon for every bar within the tristate metropolitan area. But the real reason for Publicans’ runaway success, according to Uncle Charlie and other sages along the bar, was Steve. Steve continued to draw people to the bar in ever greater numbers, for reasons that were hard to put into words.

“That’s why Chief’s expanding,” Uncle Charlie said. “Between us. Sotto voce. Kapish? Deal’s not done yet. He’s opening a joint in the city, a second Publicans, on the South Street Seaport.” He folded his arms and opened his eyes wide. “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he said.

I wasn’t sure where South Street Seaport was, and my ignorance played to Uncle Charlie’s strength. Few things gave him more joy than drawing a map on a cocktail napkin. He was the bar cartographer, and he made for me an elaborate diagram of lower Manhattan, with the Seaport here, the financial district there, a blue
X
marking the spot where Steve’s new joint—Publicans on the Pier—would be. It would sit at the end of Pier 17, with a vast wall of glass facing the Brooklyn Bridge. Spectacular view, Uncle Charlie said. Great location. Heavy foot traffic. Right next door was a popular restaurant owned by quarterback Doug Flutie, and not twenty feet away was a majestic hundred-year-old twin-masted schooner that was a floating maritime museum. “It’s a half block—not even—from Wall Street,” Uncle Charlie said, “and maybe half a mile from the Trade Center. If that. As far from the towers as we are right now from St. Mary’s.”

Not everyone thought Publicans on the Pier such a good idea. As word got out about Steve’s new venture, many in Manhasset said they didn’t understand why Steve wanted the headaches, the hassles. He already owned the entire block of Plandome Road where Publicans was located. He was the most popular publican in the history of Manhasset, which was saying something, given Manhasset’s status as the Valhalla of Alcohol. According to these isolationists, Steve was like America—big, rich, powerful, admired. He should stay home, they said, count his money, play it safe. If the outside world had anything for Steve, let the outside world come to him.

I got the sense that what the naysayers really didn’t like was the idea of sharing Steve with the outside world. They were jealous in advance of the throngs in Manhattan who would soon discover Steve, the swells and hotshots and high rollers who might turn Steve’s head, woo him from us. When Steve became another Toots Shor, a world-famous restaurateur carousing with celebrities and hobnobbing with mayors, he’d have no use for the peons he’d left behind. As Publicans on the Pier became a hit, Publicans in Manhasset would be relegated to an afterthought.

In those first months of 1987, the naysayers seemed to be right. Steve wasn’t around anymore. He was always dashing into the city, negotiating deals, signing contracts, overseeing the start of construction. “More and more we see less and less of Chief,” Uncle Charlie said dolefully.

The barroom, without Steve’s Cheshire smile, was noticeably dimmer.

In Steve’s absence we talked a lot about him, eulogized him as if he’d died. But the more we talked about Steve, the less I felt that we knew him. The most beloved person in Manhasset, the most studied, Steve was the least understood. People always mentioned his effect on them, but I never heard anyone describe his essential qualities. Everyone seemed to feel that he or she had a claim on Steve—but everyone shared the same few threadbare facts about him. He loved hockey. He loved Heineken. He lived for softball. His spirits soared the second he heard doo-wop music. He’d split his sides over a good pun. We all knew—and repeated—the familiar Steve stories. The time he stayed up all night drinking and then drove his red ’51 Chevy to the end of Long Island for a drag race with some punks—Manhasset’s own James Dean. We laughed about his stock phrases. Whenever he was asked what he did for a living, especially at the end of a fourteen-hour workday, he’d say wryly, “I’m independently wealthy.” Whenever he was asked the secret of running a bar he’d say, “People come to a gin mill to be abused and I provide them with that service!” Whenever a bartender asked if his new girlfriend could drink free, Steve would say, “She ain’t earned her wings yet.”

But that was all we knew, and when we added it all up, it felt like much less than the sum of its parts.

During one discussion about Steve, I heard Uncle Charlie say what I’d always suspected, that the key to Steve was his smile. Whenever Steve walked into Publicans, Uncle Charlie said, he bestowed that smile like a gift. People would wait all day, saving up stories about funny things that happened to them, dying to tell Steve, to get one of those smiles. “It’s never like—Oh brother, here comes the boss,” Uncle Charlie said. “It’s like—hey, what took you so long?”

I put forward my theory again. When it came to the Aladdin-Publicans metaphor, I was a dog with a rag. I suggested to Uncle Charlie that everyone reacted so strongly to Steve because he was Aladdin. He gave people what they wanted.

“I don’t think Aladdin was the one who granted the wishes,” Uncle Charlie said dubiously, pulling on his earlobe. “I think Aladdin was the guy who wrote the story of the lamp and the genie.”

At last I went to the Manhasset library and checked out a copy of
Arabian Nights
. I sat at Uncle Charlie’s end of the bar, reading, and learned that Aladdin is the name of the rootless boy who is the hero of the story; that one day a sorcerer, who the boy believes to be his uncle, sends the boy into a cave to fetch a “wonderful lamp”; that the sorcerer seals the boy in the cave with the lamp; that the boy rubs his hands together nervously and, in doing so, summons a genie who offers to provide whatever the boy needs.

I relayed all this to Uncle Charlie and we got into an intense back-and-forth about whether Steve was more like the lamp or the genie. I held firmly that Publicans was the lamp, Steve was the genie, as well as the source of the light. Without Steve we were hanging out in a lightless, genieless lamp.

Later I talked to Dalton and DePietro about my theory and told them excitedly that Aladdin might be the key to my Publicans novel. I would write a modern version of
Arabian Nights
and call it
Publican Nights
. DePietro wasn’t listening, because he was trying to score with a woman known around town to be a loon. He wasn’t listening to her either, just pretending to listen, a remarkable piece of acting since she was as boring as she was loony, and ended every sentence with the phrase, “like you
read
about.” Dalton was only half listening, his nose buried in a collection of Emily Dickinson. On the bar was a folder of poems Dalton had written about Publicans, including several about Uncle Charlie, who was to Dalton what the blackbird was to Wallace Stevens. “Fuck Aladdin,” Dalton said. “Listen to this.” He read me “It might be lonelier.” We talked about Dickinson, then women poets, then women in general. I told Dalton that I’d noticed his way of eyeing a beautiful woman who walked into the bar—not with lust but delight. Very observant, he said. Women don’t like being leered at, but they love being looked at with delight.

“Do they?” Uncle Charlie said. “Because I find it a burden.”

I mentioned Sidney, and I was shocked to learn that Dalton had his own Sidney, a woman in his past who broke his heart and now was the benchmark by which all subsequent women were judged. Every man, Dalton assured me, has a Sidney. It was the only time I’d ever heard him sound sad.

“Emily knew,” he said, wagging the book. “Daffy bitch hid in the attic because she preferred loneliness to the horrors of love.”

DePietro looked away from his date and considered Dickinson’s picture on the book cover. “Not exactly a looker,” he said.

“She’s got a sourpuss like you
read
about,” said his date.

“She was an angel,” Dalton said. “Think of the sensitivity. Think of the pent-up passion. What I wouldn’t give to go back in time and nail that little hellcat. Give her a good enjambment. Know what I mean?”

“If anyone could score with a virgin spinster hermit in nineteenth-century New England,” I said, “it would be you. And, come to think of it, if Publicans were Aladdin’s lamp, I’d wish for just a little of your power with women.”

“The power,” Dalton said, “is realizing that we’re all powerless against them, Asshole.”

Besides, he added, you’ve got it all wrong: Most likely we tell the bar what we want, and the bar, like a magic lamp, shines a light on what we need.

“
Steve
is the lamp,” I said.

“I thought Steve was the genie,” DePietro said.

“Steve’s the light,” Dalton said.

We all looked at each other, confused. DePietro turned back to his date, Dalton turned back to Emily, and I turned to face the door, to await the bar’s next gift—a woman. I prayed it would be a woman. I knew it would be a woman. The ideal woman. The woman who was going to save me. I had an unwavering faith in the bar and in my theory. And in women.

But Dalton was right. The bar didn’t grant wishes, it filled needs, and what I needed at that moment was not a woman but a certain kind of friend. Days later a large man walked into Publicans, said hello to no one, and stationed himself beside the cigarette machine. He was two feet taller than the machine and his shoulders were several inches wider. I put him in his late thirties. He ordered a Screwdriver and stared straight ahead, making eye contact with no one, as if he were Secret Service and the president’s motorcade was on its way. “Who’s the mameluke?” I whispered to Uncle Charlie.

“Mameluke,” Uncle Charlie said. “Good word.”

I agreed, though I wasn’t sure what it meant.

Uncle Charlie narrowed his eyes and looked toward the cigarette machine. “Oh—yeah—he’s on the job.” I shook my head, not familiar with the term. “Copper,” Uncle Charlie said. “Fuzz. NYPD. Just bought a house at the bottom of one of the hills. He’s a good man. Very good man.” He lowered his voice. “There’s a story there.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not at liberty. But it’s a doozy.”

The man walked over. “Hey Chas,” he said.

“Ah,” Uncle Charlie said. “Bob the Cop, I’d like you to meet my nephew, JR.”

We shook hands. Uncle Charlie excused himself and ducked into the phone booth.

“So,” I said to Bob the Cop, noticing that my mouth was suddenly dry, “my uncle says you’re a police officer?”

He nodded, an economical nod, as though telling a blackjack dealer, Hit me.

“What precinct?” I asked.

“Harbor.”

Neither of us said anything for a full minute.

“What do you do?” he asked.

I cleared my throat. “I’m a copyboy.”

He frowned. I’d called myself a copyboy hundreds of times, but this was the first time I heard how ridiculous it sounded. Not many job titles ended with “boy.” Bellboy, paperboy, stable boy. Standing before Bob the Cop, seeing his reaction, I wished I could say I was a copy
man
. Or, at least, Carbon Separator.

But it wasn’t my job title that Bob the Cop found distasteful. “I’m not too crazy about newspapers,” he said.

“Oh?” I said. “Well, I’m scared of cops, so I guess we’re made for each other.”

No reaction. Another full minute passed. Again I cleared my throat.

“Why don’t you like newspapers?” I asked.

“My name was in the papers once. Didn’t enjoy the experience.”

“What were you in the papers for?”

“Long story. Look me up sometime.”

He went to make a donation to the Don Fund. Uncle Charlie returned. “Your friend,” I said to him, “is a mite terse.”

“Man of few words,” Uncle Charlie said.

“Man of no words,” I said.

“I like it. People talk too much.”

Bob the Cop returned. I smiled. He didn’t.

It took me half the night to figure out which movie star Bob the Cop looked like. (I had plenty of time to think, since the silences yawned on for minutes at a time.) With a jolt, I realized—John Wayne. It wasn’t the face so much as the physique and phrenology. He had Wayne’s body—that wide hipless torso—and Wayne’s oversize rectangular head, which seemed made expressly for a cowboy hat. If you put a cowboy hat on Bob the Cop’s head, I thought, he wouldn’t flinch. He’d just reach up and touch the brim and say, “Howdy.” He even held his body like Wayne, that slightly swaying stance that proclaimed,
All the Apaches in the world won’t take this fort.
I half expected him to saddle up his barstool before he sat on it.

Once he’d obtained the right amounts of alcohol and undivided attention, the Quiet Man actually made some noise that night. In fact he told some of the finest stories I’d ever heard in Publicans. Bob the Cop loved stories, and he was in the right line of work for finding them. Stories floated past the prow of his police boat every day, especially in the spring, when the water turned warm and corpses bobbed to the surface like corks. Floaters, Bob the Cop called them. During those first balmy days of April, when everyone’s mind was on rebirth and renewal, it was Bob the Cop’s job to take a grappling hook and fish stiffs from the murky ooze. Mob hits, suicides, missing persons—the harbors and rivers were apple bobs of tragedies, and telling stories was how Bob the Cop coped.