Shelter (11 page)

The woman walks away, scattering coasters across the length of the scratched wood bar, occasionally shuffling them like a deck of cards. When she reaches the opposite side of the room, she stops in front of the television set. The Red Sox are on again. The Red Sox are always on in this town.

“Jesus. He's put on weight,” she says, staring at the dreadlocked Puerto Rican at bat. “For nine million a year, you'd think he'd go on a diet.” She turns around, seemingly eager for someone, anyone, to agree with her. Kyung looks down at his drink.

According to the coasters she left, MacLarens is Marlboro's favorite bar, an unlikely claim trapped in the speech balloon of a grinning leprechaun. It seems more like Marlboro's oldest bar. The place shows all the telltale signs of age: A wood floor that pitches and slopes as if the ground beneath it is sinking. A pair of rickety pool tables lined with threadbare green felt. On the wall nearest him, a dozen autographed photos of celebrities hang from a rail, but when Kyung scans their faces, he doesn't know who they are, or who they were supposed to be when their pictures were snapped. He takes another drink, a longer one this time, closing his eyes as the whiskey warms his throat.

It's been years since he went out to a bar like this. Although he likes alcohol, he's never really enjoyed bars, not even in grad school when his roommates made the rounds every weekend. Occasionally, they dragged him along, but Kyung hated all the noise and shouting, the absence of anything resembling personal space. It's strange that he and Gillian met at a bar, a detail about their past that still embarrasses him. She was working at a sports lounge back then, where her uniform was a tank top, jean shorts, and a push-up bra that squeezed everything north. Tits up to her neck, his roommates said, daring him to ask her out.

Gillian was supposed to be a fling, a pretty girl to help him get over a breakup, but Kyung didn't like playing the field that way. He preferred something steadier, something that required less work, and Gillian actually suited him better than anyone he'd ever dated before. She was twenty-nine and working two jobs to finish her bachelor's degree, so she wasn't always around. She accepted the fact that he didn't want to talk every hour of the day, and she never pressed him about the things he didn't want to talk about. “Needy” wasn't a word he'd ever use to describe her, which was exactly what he needed, someone who just let him be. He'd lost two girlfriends in a row because he refused to get married, as if he'd missed a deadline that no one ever bothered to tell him about. When Gillian started dropping hints after their first year together, he didn't refuse again.

“I got seven on this card,” one of the old men shouts, holding up a slip of paper. He jumps out of his chair and brings his keno ticket to the bar. “What does seven pay out, Dee? That's like, what, fifty bucks?”

The woman slides the ticket through a machine, and the cash register beneath it opens with a ping. She counts out a thin stack of wrinkled bills onto the old man's eager palm. Kyung makes the mistake of watching this transaction, looking the man in the eye as he pockets his winnings.

“Hey, I know you,” the man says.

“Me? No, we've never met.”

“Sure we have. You came in here not even a week ago with your girlfriend.”

Up close, Kyung notices that the man's eyes are bloodshot, his skin a bright, unhealthy shade of red. “You're thinking of someone else.”

“No, don't you remember? Your girl and me, we're both from Rockport. You bought me a beer last time.” The man tries to lean on the bar, but his elbow skids across the surface and he stumbles toward Kyung's chest.

“I told you”—he pushes him away, a little too roughly—“that wasn't me.”

The man makes a whistling sound. “Sor-ry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. He shuffles back to his table, raising his voice as he tells his friend to avoid the asshole at the end of the bar.

Dee walks over and refills Kyung's glass. “Just ignore Arnie. He's a regular idiot. I'll have that fifty bucks back in the till in a couple of hours.”

Kyung didn't ask for a second drink; he's not sure if he should have one. The first went down too quickly. He glances at his change on the bar, wondering if she'll charge him for it.

“Don't worry about that. This one's on the house.”

“It is?” He doesn't understand why she's being nice to him; he's certain he's done nothing to deserve it. “Why?”

“Why? Hell, nobody ever asks that.” She laughs. “I guess you just looked like you could use it.”

“Yes, but
why
?”

Dee shrugs and starts wiping down the bar with a dirty rag. “You don't really seem like the type to drink on a Tuesday night without a reason.” She pauses, then adds: “That's a compliment, by the way.”

He looks himself over, realizing that he's still wearing his dress pants and button-down shirt, clothes that stand out in this part of town.

“So what do you do for a living?”

Kyung slowly turns his glass like a knob. It's another double; the whiskey is almost flush with the rim. “I'm a professor.”

“That must be nice, getting your summers off and everything. What do you teach?”

“Biology.”

“You mean like cutting up frogs?”

“Anatomy, yes.”

Dee shudders. “So the kids who study that, they end up being doctors or something? Is that what you are?”

Kyung shifts in his seat, not certain how to explain that he's the wrong kind of doctor, that he dropped out of med school after his second year. His advisors said he was book smart, but too slow to think on his feet when real patients were involved. The chances of matching into his desired residency—into any residency, they said—weren't good. Kyung ended up transferring to a Ph.D. program in bio because he didn't know what else to do, where else to land. He suspects his colleagues don't think he belongs in academia, that he was only hired at the university because of his father's influence there, a possibility that feels true even if it isn't.

“Some of them become doctors, yes.”

Dee pours herself a shot of Black Velvet and raises it to him, lifting her pinky up to the ceiling. “Come on, shoot one with me. You're killing me over there with your sad mug.”

He wonders if this is Dee's idea of flirting with him. He raises his glass and downs the contents because drinking is easier than talking to her.

“You don't spend a lot of time in bars, do you?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, here's how it works.” She smiles, as if she's recited her next line a thousand times and still thinks it's clever. “I just stand here while you drink and tell me what's on your mind. You don't have to be shy either. I've heard it all before. Besides, the Sox are in the shitter, so you'd probably be doing me a favor.”

Kyung studies the gouges in the bar, thick ones where people probably scratched off their lotto tickets with fingernails and coins. He's certain that Dee has never heard a story like his. Even if he wanted to tell her, he wouldn't know where to start, how far to go back, when it would ever end. He slides off his stool, surprised by the distance between the floor and his feet.

“Thanks,” he says, taking his change from the bar. “I have to go now.”

“Fifty cents?” Dee looks at the quarters still stacked on his coaster. “I buy you a drink and that's all the tip you're leaving? Fifty cents?”

“Oh, sorry.”

From his original twenty, he now has a five- and ten-dollar bill—neither of which he wants to part with. He pats down his pockets, hoping he has more change.

“Forget it,” she says, waving her dishrag at him like a fly. “You have a good night.”

The street is empty when he opens the door to a rush of cool air. The only sound he can hear is the vague thump of music leaking from one of the bars nearby. He takes his keys out of his pocket, dropping them on the sidewalk, and then dropping them again not five seconds later. As he starts his car, the whiskey hits him all at once, two doubles drilling straight into his stomach. He can't remember what, if anything, he ate that day to absorb the blow. Kyung leans back on his headrest, trying not to think about his heart, the way it keeps pounding louder and faster than it should. It sounds like something out of a horror movie, ready to burst through his ribs. His chin bobs toward his chest, and his lids begin to blink, weighed down with lead. He can barely see, so he closes his eyes and tells himself to relax, don't panic, and don't throw up. When he opens them again—a minute, an hour later?—someone is shining a light into his car. Kyung swats at the armrest, locking the doors while the man outside raps on his window.

“License and registration.”

Kyung's head is spinning; he thinks the man might be wearing a uniform, but the light is too bright. He rolls down his window an inch. “Officer?”

“License and registration, please.”

“Why? I wasn't driving. I was just sitting here.”

“I'm not going to ask you again.”

Without the flashlight shining in his face, Kyung can clearly make out a uniform and badge, a gun in a holster. He slides his documents through the cracked window, being careful not to drop them.

The policeman examines the license, squinting at it as if it's a fake. “You know this is expired, right? It expired in December.”

“No, that can't be right.” As soon as Kyung says it, he remembers the notices that came in the mail. The first was printed on plain white paper, the second on urgent pink. He had a choice between paying the water bill that month or paying for his renewal. It wasn't hard to decide which one to ignore.

“I still don't understand what I did wrong. I wasn't driving. My car was in park.”

“Step out of your vehicle, sir.”

“For what?”

“If you haven't been drinking, then you won't mind taking a field test.”

Kyung sits up straight, trying his best to look sober, although he knows his breath stinks of alcohol. His whole car does. This can't be happening, he thinks. This can't happen.

“Officer McFadden,” he says. “Will you call Officer McFadden? I'm married to his daughter.”

The policeman shines the light on Kyung's face again. “You're Connie's son-in-law? The one whose parents were involved in that thing up in the Heights?”

That thing.
So this is what they're calling it now.

“Yes, that's me.”

“Stay put,” he says.

Ten minutes later, as a second cruiser pulls up behind the first, Kyung braces himself to say everything that he rehearsed during the wait.
I'm sorry for bothering you. I wasn't actually driving. I know better than that.
He repeats these words over and over again, reminding himself to speak slowly and clearly so he doesn't sound drunk. He looks in his side-view mirror as the car door opens and out steps Tim, not Connie. Somehow, things have just gone from bad to worse. His brother-in-law is an idiot, an asshole. He's always turning Kyung into the butt of a joke. His favorite is the one about teachers, how they teach because they can't do anything else,
harharhar.
Gillian tells Kyung to ignore him, to be the bigger man. She says her brother is insecure around educated people because the kids at school used to call him “retard” when he was little.

Tim circles around to the passenger side and stands with his hands on his hips, surveying the neighborhood. Kyung already knows what he's thinking. The topless bars are hard to miss—both of them have blinking neon silhouettes of women hanging in their windows. He unlocks the doors and waits for Tim to climb into the passenger seat.

“So who'd you manage to piss off tonight?”

It's not the first question he expected to hear. “No one. Why?”

“You must have. Someone called in a possible DUI. People don't normally do that in this neighborhood unless they're pissed about something.”

Kyung thinks of Dee, having a laugh inside MacLarens at his expense. He wonders if this is what she meant when she told him to have a good night. “I wasn't driving—did the other guy tell you that? I was just sitting here, trying to sleep it off before I went home.”

“You don't have to be driving. You started your car—that's all it takes to get a DUI in this state.”

In his mirror, Kyung notices the first officer turn on his headlights and drive away. He's relieved—a little. At the very least, he won't be arrested. Now all he has to do is listen to his brother-in-law gloat.

“So which one did you go to?” Tim wags his finger from left to right, pointing at the topless bars.

“No, it's not like that. I went to the Irish one, the pub. You can ask the lady inside if you don't believe me.”

“Oh, I don't care if you went to a titty bar. But if you want to see girls, you can find better places than these shitholes. Next time, you should hit up that big one on Route 5, next to the old airport.”

Kyung's head is pounding. He needs a bathroom and a glass of water; he needs to stop thinking about Tim sitting in a strip club, slipping dollar bills into a woman's G-string. Drunk or not, he's still sober enough to understand that topics like this are off-limits with his brother-in-law. He and Tim aren't friends. They certainly aren't buddies. Even if Tim wanted that kind of relationship, Kyung isn't the type. Being an acquaintance, a roommate, a colleague—all of that was easy enough, but real friendships always seemed like too much work to him, too primed for disappointment.

“I don't go to strip clubs.”

“Oh, sure.”

“It's true. I'm married.”

“I was married once too. I know how it is.”

A car drives toward them, shining its headlights on their faces. Kyung crouches down in his seat to avoid being seen.