The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato (16 page)

Pancho was there one night lying flat on his back listening to the water slap against the dock while he stared up at the star-filled sky.

“Whatcha see, Pancho?” I asked.

“Storm's coming,” he said.

I looked up at the darkness. “There aren't any clouds,” I said.

“There are lots of different kinds of clouds.”

“Sky looks pretty clear to me.”

“Yes, it looks clear,” he agreed. “But I can feel a storm coming in from somewhere. It's very close to us now.”

“Where is it coming from?”

“I don't know. I just feel it. Maybe it's coming from somewhere we never thought a storm could come from.”

“When will it get here?”

“It's been coming a long time, but I'm afraid it will be here soon.”

“Should we go back into town? Will we be okay out here?”

Pancho closed his eyes and frowned in concentration for a few minutes.

“I don't think we'll all be okay,” he said finally.

So I followed him back to town, and we went together to Tia's first and then down to the Cave after Tia's closed. It rained the next day, but only a drizzle.

7

STORM

IT GOT DARK EARLY NOW.
Even though I still mostly worked the first shift, it was as black as nighttime when I got off. There were no lights out back by the dumpster behind the Cave where I parked my car.

“Wait a minute and I'll walk you out there,” Rafi said when he came to relieve me. He was pulling half a dozen Buds on tap for a sullen-looking group of men who had been shooting pool all afternoon.

“Don't be silly,” I said. “I'm only going twenty feet to my car.”

The alley was lovely in the dark. The door of the Cave glowed with yellow light whenever anyone opened it to go in or out, and the music from the jukebox spilled out into the quiet. The air smelled like the chilies that were roasting in the kitchen at Tia's. The noise of the cars going by on Thornapple Street was muffled so it sounded like ocean waves against a beach.

A shadow moved next to the dumpster, and I saw that Stinky was standing by my car, just looking at it.

“Oh,” I said. “You startled me. What are you doing just standing out here by yourself?”

He didn't answer for a minute, but turned his eyes slowly from my car to me.

“Where's your boyfriend, Danny?” he finally said, and I could tell from the sound of his voice that, even though he hadn't been in the Cave at all that afternoon, he was already drunk. It occurred to me that he probably frequented other bars as well.

“I don't know,” I said. “I imagine he's around somewhere.”

“He's not around right now.”

“I'm sure he's around somewhere,” I said again.

“He leaves you alone a lot,” Stinky said, coming closer to me.

“Well, we live together now,” I said. “We don't need to spend every minute with each other.”

I headed toward my car, but Stinky stepped between me and it. He was close enough now that I could smell the odor of stale beer on him.

“You females all say you want to be independent,” he slurred, “and that you want your space. But what you really want is a man with you all the time, giving you attention. Giving you what he's got.”

“Danny gives me plenty of attention.”

Stinky reached out and put his hand on my arm. “He's not giving you attention right now.”

I started to pull away, and his grip tightened. I felt a flutter of panic.

“Let go of me,” I said in my most no-nonsense voice. I didn't want him to know I was scared; I thought that would make it worse.

Instead of letting go, he grabbed my other arm and squeezed harder. I felt his fingernails bite into my flesh, breaking the skin.

“Why don't you scream?” he whispered. “Maybe because you don't really want me to let go?”

I tried to think of something to say that would make him release me, but I felt frozen, not able to move or to speak or to think.

“I bet you'd look really pretty down on your knees,” he said.

“Let go,” I said again, and tried to yank my arm free, but he held on and pushed me backward against the car.

“You'd like it,” he said. “I'd make you say that you like it.”

His face was so close to mine now that I could smell the stench of his breath. I brought my knee up with a quick jerk like Uncle Joe had taught me, but he blocked it with his leg and then laughed.

“Oh, yes,” he hissed. “I'd make you say you like it.”

I was frozen with panic. This was nothing like the high-school boys back home, who were just hoping to get what they could get. Stinky, I knew, wanted to hurt me.

“Whatcha doin', Stinky?” It was Jake, materializing next to us in the dark from out of the Cave's door.

“Just having a little private convocation here,” Stinky said, dropping my arms.

“Oh, yeah? Whatcha talking about?” Jake stepped closer to Stinky so that Stinky had to take a step back.

“Don't you know what private means?” Stinky sneered.

“I know I'll kick your ass in about two minutes,” Jake said. His voice was very quiet.

Stinky didn't say anything for a minute, but then dropped his eyes from Jake's face.

“Don't flatter yourself,” Stinky said to me, and ambled slowly down the steps into the back door of the Cave.

I unlocked my car.

“God, he's a creep,” I said to Jake, trying to sound calm, but
my voice was shaky. “Thanks for being all knight-in-shining-armor for me.”

Jake didn't smile. He lit two cigarettes and gave me one. I was glad he couldn't see my face in the dark.

“Don't come out here by yourself in the dark,” he said.

“It's okay,” I said, trying to steady my voice. “I could have just yelled, and somebody would have heard me.”

“I know,” he said. “I know that. But you don't need to be out here by yourself when it gets dark so early. I don't want to have to be bothered hanging around beating up drunks for you.”

“Don't worry,” I said. I tried to laugh, but it came out as a cough.

“Just promise.”

“I promise.”

He watched me get into my car and fumble with the keys before I could get it started. He stayed in the parking lot looking after me, and I could see his silhouette against the light from the back door until I turned out on to the street. I drove a block and then pulled over and vomited into the grass by the side of the road.

Danny wasn't home when I got there. I took a long hot shower, but I could still smell Stinky.

The sixth labor of Hercules was to destroy the Stymphalian birds.

The birds were the creatures of Ares, the god of war. They had terrible razor-sharp metal claws and metal beaks and metal wings, from which they shot out their metal feathers like arrows to kill men. The bloodthirsty birds then feasted on the flesh of the dead. Flocks of them had settled on Lake Stymphalos in
Arcadia, so that even in those idyllic valleys of imagination, the servants of war were lurking.

In the end, Hercules did not destroy the Stymphalian birds, but managed only to shoot some of them and drive the rest away by frightening them with the noise of a great brass rattle given to him by Athena. Like Ares himself, the birds of war—no matter how savage—were cowards at heart. They fled Arcadia and settled on the island of Ares. They were there when Jason and the Argonauts had to stop on the island during their quest for the Golden Fleece. Again the ravenous birds shot their razor feathers at the heroes, screaming down at them from the sky. But again the heroes were able to fend off the birds by frightening them with the noisy clashing of spears on their shields. The birds scattered and fled. But they were never destroyed.

The Greeks knew that the birds of war, cruel and cowardly, still lived, waiting for their chance to feast on the flesh of the dead. They were never very far, even in Arcadia.

I developed a callus on the end of my right index finger from opening beer cans and another one down the side of the same finger from opening twist-open beer bottles. In the downtown world of bars and night cafés, these twin calluses were marks of honor.

Now sometimes on Friday or Saturday nights, I would work along with Vera when things were busy. The space behind the bar was small—only three or four feet deep—and when two bartenders were working together, they had to coordinate their movements and be always aware of one another to keep from constantly colliding. And it was inevitable that someone sitting at the far back end of the bar would be drinking beers stored in
the coolers under the far front end, and vice versa. Even with my calluses of honor, I was still a novice at double-bartending and could be clumsy sometimes working around another person.

But Vera was a pro and could dance down the whole length of the bar opening beers, making change, pulling drafts, ringing up tabs, and keeping disparate conversations going with different people all along the way, with only the slightest touch on my shoulder as she slipped past behind me. When she wasn't behind the bar, Vera mostly seemed tough, but when she was working, you could see how elegant she was, how graceful. When she and Rafi worked together, it was like watching a ballet. There were nights when between the two of them they served a thousand beers.

So when I worked with Vera, I relied on her skill to keep us both from ending up black and blue. The hubbub could be intense, especially if the band was any good and the bar was crowded. And yet even in the midst of all the commotion, one word—no matter how softly spoken—could catch my ear like a gunshot. A girl sitting near the tip jar said, “Danny.”

I heard her say it to her friends. Vera heard it, too. I could tell by the way she missed a step in her flight from the Rolling Rocks to the PBR and by the way she didn't make eye contact with me.

“Another round?” Vera asked the girl and her friends, even though they still had half-full bottles. She did that twice more so I wouldn't have to serve them and so that maybe they would leave sooner, before Danny showed up. After a while, they were gone.

Later, after we closed and I was restocking the coolers and Pancho was sitting in the corner shuffling the cards for rummy, Vera looked up from where she was filling out the deposit slip for the bank bag and said to me, “It's a common-enough name.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said. But I thought to myself that Vera was right.

There are many skills involved in being a good bartender, and Vera had them all. She had a way of making me feel safe just by being near her. It seemed like nothing bad could happen while she was there, watching over us all with eyes that had seen everything already. My worries were held at bay by Vera's calmness. Even the menace of Stinky faded into the background when I was working with her. I hadn't seen Stinky since Jake ran him off, and his absence seemed sinister, like he might be lying in wait somewhere just out of sight.

But Vera, solid and comforting, made me feel braver.