Small Town

He bought a sandwich and a can of V8 juice at a nearby deli. He walked a mile downtown, stopping along the way to salvage that morning’s Times from a trash can, and a block below Fourteenth Street he came to Jackson Square, a little pocket park with benches and ornamental plantings. There was a fountain, turned off on account of the drought.

Fountains don’t use water, they recirculate the same water over and over, and the loss from evaporation doesn’t amount to much. But they look as though they use water, so the law requires that they be turned off during water shortages.

He found this fascinating.

He ate his sandwich, drank his V-8, and read his newspaper. When he’d finished he put the paper and the sandwich wrapper in a mesh trash can and set the empty juice can on top of it, where it could be easily retrieved by one of the men and women who made a living redeeming cans and bottles.

Then he left the park and walked south and east on West Fourth Street.

It was on an afternoon like this one, a lazy overcast afternoon in the middle of the week, that Eddie Ragan had first realized material success was not likely to come his way.

He’d been behind the stick at the Kettle, with a pair of beer drinkers at one end and a regular, Max the Poet, drinking the house red at the other. The TV was on with the sound off, and the radio was tuned to an oldies station, and Eddie was polishing a glass and thinking how this was the time he liked best, when the place was empty and peaceful and quiet.

And that’s exactly why you’ll never amount to anything, a little voice told him. Because nobody makes any money working a shift like this. When you’re jumping around playing catch-up with fifty thirsty maniacs, that’s when the tips roll in. And that’s when an ambitious bartender rises to the occasion, and loves every minute of it.

There were bartenders who wanted to make a lot of money so they could spend a lot of money — on cars, on travel, on the good life. They wanted a Rolex on their wrist and a babe on their arm, wanted to fly out to Vegas and leave their money on the craps table or stay home and put it up their nose. And there were others who wanted to make a lot of money and use it to get their own joint up and rolling, so they could put in even longer hours and make even more money — or bust out and start over, if that’s how it played out.

And there were guys who were just doing this for a little while, waiting for a chance to quit their day job (or night job, or whenever the hell their shift was) and make it as an actor or a painter or a writer. And yes, he’d been one of those wannabes himself for a stretch, taking acting classes and getting headshots taken and making the rounds, even picking up small parts in a couple of showcases. But he was no actor, not really, and by the time he’d gotten a third of the way through a screenplay (about a bartender who got laid all the time, which was art improving on life, wasn’t it?) he realized he wasn’t a writer, either. One thing about paint, he didn’t have to try it to know he’d be no good at it. He’d helped a girlfriend paint an apartment once, and that was plenty.

Nope, he was a lifer in the bartending trade. He knew that, and as of that particular weekday afternoon — he figured it was something like two years ago, though he hadn’t marked the date on his calendar — he’d known he wasn’t going to be a great success at it, either. The thought, which he’d instantly recognized as wholly true, had depressed him at first, and that evening he drank a little more than he usually did, and the next morning he felt a little crummier than usual, and took three aspirins instead of two, plus an Excedrin to keep them company.

By the time the hangover was gone, so was the depression. The fact of the matter was that he’d never really wanted to get anyplace. He just thought he ought to want to, like everybody else. But he didn’t. His life was fine just the way it was. He never had to work too hard, he never worried much, and he got by. There were things he’d never have or do or be, but that was true for everybody. You could be the richest, most successful man on the planet and there’d always be one woman who wouldn’t love you back, one mountain you couldn’t climb, one thing you wanted to buy that nobody would sell to you.

He had a good life. Especially on lazy afternoons like this one, when he didn’t have much to do, and the perfect place to do it in.