Small Town

The Mets were playing a day game in Chicago, and the set was on with the sound off, so you could watch Mo Vaughn take the big swing without some announcer telling you what you were seeing. On the radio, the Beach Boys were proclaiming the natural superiority of California girls. Max the Poet sat with his usual glass of red, reading a Modern Library collection of Chekhov’s stories, and an older dude with a tweed cap was at the corner by the window with a bottle of Tuborg, and two semiregulars, wannabe actors or writers, he couldn’t remember which, were drinking glasses of draft Guinness and talking about the woman whose household goods they’d just moved from her ex-boyfriend’s place in NoHo to a studio apartment in the Flatiron district. She was nice, they agreed, pretty face and a great rack, and the tall one said he got the feeling she liked him.

The other one shook his head. “That was flirting in lieu of a tip,” he said.

“She tipped us.”

“She tipped us five apiece, which is the next thing to stiffing us altogether. In fact it’s worse, because when they stiff you maybe they didn’t know any better, or maybe they forgot.”

“You know Paul? Big Paul, got the droopy eyelid?”

“Only sometimes.”

“What, like you only know him on months that got an r in them?”

“The lid only droops sometimes, asshole. And I know what you’re gonna say, because I seen him do it. He never gives ’em a chance to forget, or not know better, because he tells ’em in front that a tip’s expected.”

“ ‘Just so you know, sir, we work for tips.’ Takes brass balls, but only the first time. Only I have to say I’ve seen it backfire.”

“I guess you got to know when to do it. He works it right, they’re scared of him, they overtip. The only thing is it feels like extortion, and for chump change at that.”

“Well, chump change is what we just got, all right, but maybe it’s all she could afford. I still say she liked me.”

“You gonna make a move?”

“I might. Give her a chance to settle in first.”

“Give her a chance to forget all about the studly moving man.”

“You think? How long is too long, that’s the question.”

Jesus, Eddie thought, he could listen to this shit all day.

He turned to see how the guy in the cap was doing with his Tuborg. The bottle was still there, the glass still filled to the brim, but the guy was gone. He’d come in what, half an hour ago? Sat there with his tweed cap halfway down his forehead and his plaid shirt buttoned up to his neck and his shoulders hunched forward, never spoke a word. There’d been a Tuborg coaster on the bar, and the guy had picked it up and tapped it with his forefinger. Eddie’d said, “Tuborg? Only got bottles,” and the fellow nodded, and put a twenty on the bar. Eddie hadn’t said anything when he brought the beer or when he came back with the guy’s change, and whenever he’d glanced over there the guy was in the same position, and so were the glass and the bottle.

And now he was gone. Unless he was in the john, which was possible. He turned to the TV to see how the Mets were doing, and somehow the score had gotten to be seven to four, with the Mets on the short end of it. They’d been up four-three last time he’d noticed.

Maybe Sosa’d hit one out. When the wind was blowing out, your grandmother could hit the ball out of Wrigley. And Sammy Sosa, shit, he could do it when the wind was blowing in.

He watched the Mets go down in order, then went to refill a glass for one of the moving men, and he checked on the Tuborg, and it was still there, the bottle and the glass, and the guy was still missing.

And he wasn’t in the john, because Max was just coming back from there, and there was only room for one at a time. He asked Max if he’d seen the man leave, and Max didn’t know who he was talking about, hadn’t even seen him come in.

He could have ducked out for a breath of air, or to buy a newspaper. Or cigarettes; the ashtray where he’d been sitting was empty, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a smoker, and he could have discovered he was out and gone out to buy some.

But he’d been gone too long for that. And he’d scooped up the change from his twenty. Some people did that automatically, just as others left the change on the bar top until they were ready to call it a day or a night. This man, this fucking enigma in the tweed cap, had originally left the change in front of him, never touching it or his Tuborg, and now he was gone. Vanished into thin air, just like Judge Crater, except he didn’t even walk around the horses first. Just plain disappeared.