When Tess returned from her first visit alone, she said, “That woman is extraordinary.”
We were at the bar and I was getting ready for the rush, filling the reach-in, cutting limes, moving buckets of ice. She had her elbows on the service end. She was bouncing on her toes. So young, so giddy.
I kept at it. Marrying vodka bottles, arranging glasses. I couldn’t look at her. I didn’t know why it worried me so much. Why it made me unhappy. It should have been the opposite, right? But it frightened me.
Tess is dressed for work. Either tight jeans and a black tank top, or a black miniskirt and a white tank top. One of those two combinations. A little owl over her right breast. Lots of dark makeup around her eyes. Her hair all mussed the way she did it then. She could have climbed out of bed, put on a bathrobe and made a killing. But she truly was something those nights. And as happy as she was, it only made it worse. Or better. Depending on your point of view.
“How is she?”
“She’s great, Joey. She’s fucking great. She’s incredible.”
“What’d you talk about?”
“Everything. You and me. What we’re going to do. My life. My family. The letters she gets, her visitors.”
I looked over at her. “What are we going to do, Tess?”
She laughed. “That’s between me and your mother.”
I’m slicing limes. Plastic handle. Riveted. Blue. Serrated edge. White cutting board. Each lime is six pieces in five moves. I’m fast with the knife. I was a good bartender. Excellent, really.
What else? I’m five foot eleven. And I was a little over six feet with the work boots. And then the thick rubber mats gave me another two inches. I’d been a solid high-school athlete. Shortstop and guard. I kept in shape. Running on the beach. Carrying kegs. Some dumbbells and a bench in the garage. A pull-up bar. I was sturdy like my dad. I still have his shoulders. The point is that back then I was at the height of my power. Behind the bar I was tall and I was strong and next to Seymour Strout I looked like a child.
This night I’m thinking of, he’s walking toward us. I’m back there cutting those limes and Tess has a plastic sword pinched between thumb and pointer and she’s stabbing cherries, which drives me crazy. I don’t like anyone messing with my bar. Not even Tess, but I let her do it.
At the time, I don’t know why I’m so irritated. I’ve got that tight, cold feeling in my spine, which moves upwards into the back of my neck. My vertebrae are compressing, a long and narrow accordion closing, tightening. When that happens, I want to take a hammer to the Pabst mirrors. But I keep it down. I keep quiet. I go about my work. I don’t know if Tess notices. When she’s happy, I don’t think she notices much of anything. She loves to jump on me when she’s like this. And usually that’s what I want more than anything. To have her climbing all over me like an orangutan. But tonight I wish she’d just shut up. I’m nervous. I don’t like that she’s gone to see my mother alone. I don’t like that she’s so happy about it. That she’s so enamored with her. I don’t know why that is, other than to say I felt betrayed somehow.
Then Seymour Strout walked in.
A little about Seymour. He’d played on the defensive line for the U of O.
“Nearly went pro,” he liked to say.
Seymour was one of those guys, the biggest dude I’d ever stood next to in my life. The biggest I’ve ever known. Six-six, two-eighty. People asked all the time.
“Six-six, two-eighty.”
Said it quick as radio code.
He was always hot and always sweating, so he wore a white towel around his neck. He bought packs of them out at Kmart. He kept them clean. Never frayed. If he found a run, or a hole, or a stain, he’d say, motherfucker, and replace it. Man he loved that word. After Oregon, he joined the Army and got out two years before George Senior stormed the desert. He kept his head shaved and was always mopping at it with the towel. He liked to smoke outside even if back then you could smoke wherever the hell you wanted. Like most people who work in that world, he too had a thing for ritual. Plus he was ex-military.
You should have seen him on winter nights standing out front beneath that neon owl. Cold as hell and he’s sweating in his black T-shirt and towel, a Virginia Slim between his lips, smoke and vapor coming off him like some kind of swamp creature. As my dad used to say, he was something else, that guy.
When Seymour worked, he worked the door. He kept the peace, that’s for sure. Anyone got out of line, got loud, gave us shit, started a fight, he ended it fast. And usually just by giving the problem his attention, taking a few steps in the appropriate direction. He was polite. That was his threat. “Excuse me, sir,” he’d say to some sophomore English major, “would you mind lowering your voice?” You’ve never seen anyone shut up so fast. Or, if he happened to be at the bar at the right time, “Excuse me, sir, you seem to have forgotten to include a gratuity.”
I really came to love that guy. We both did.
I tried so hard not to. I tried so hard to hate him, my mother’s keeper, but he was too gentle, too serene, too funny, too kind.
Tonight Tess says, “Hey, Strout,” and gives him a big smile and they slap hands. It’s a thing they started doing. A high five before work. I pour him a shot of Smirnoff and a tall Coke chaser. Same start to every shift.
He’d usually come straight from the prison and I’d ask, “How is she?” And he’d say something like, “She’s great, J,” or, “Better than ever, brother.” And we’d leave it at that. But today, Tess being in the mood she’s in, having had a few already, she says, “Why don’t you let her out, Strout? How do you sleep at night?”
The accordion compresses. Seymour looks at me from behind his Coke. Big fist around the glass, the glass in front of his mouth, his brown eyes turned down at me, that tender expression of sympathy and sadness.
“I wish I could, Tess,” he whispers. “You know how much I wish I could.”
I loved him even if I was frightened by what he knew of my mother and their secret world.
He wasn’t like most of the men who run a door. Washed-up football players, or wrestlers, or off-duty cops, or local fighters. Even if Seymour was a washed-up football player. He may have been sad, but he wasn’t bitter. And he wasn’t like those guys who are in it for the authority, who are more often looking for someone to punch than they are to stop a fight. He wasn’t one of those give me a reason guys. He liked looking after people.
I worked bars from the time I was eighteen years old. From back to owner. From LA to Cannon Beach, to White Pine, and on to Seattle. And in all those years I never met anyone like Seymour. People outside never see these things. They’re blind to it. The skill it requires, the combination of physical strength and intelligence, intuition and style. Artistry. You know how rare it is to find a good waitress? A good bartender? A good bouncer? How difficult it is to be one of those things? And yes, I know I’m supposed to say server, but I don’t like the word. Anyway, I’d rather wait than serve. And fuck if I’m going to say waitperson. Or associate. Or team member. Or any of the other bullshit those drones insist we use.
People walk into a place and sit down and order a drink like they’re talking to a machine. They don’t even glance up at you.
Anyway, Seymour wasn’t looking to break anyone’s jaw. Not at the bar, not at the prison. Everyone liked him. Me and Tess. The other waitresses. The manager. The regulars. He did the thing he was supposed to do. He made The Owl feel safe. He knew names. He smiled. He didn’t do that raised chin, arms crossed thing. He didn’t wear sunglasses. He didn’t need any of that shit. He was calm and he was tough and he didn’t have to pretend. He was gallant too. Those frat boys got away with nothing. I liked him for all those reasons.
And because he was a little lonely. I could see that right away, something familiar in the eyes.
We liked him and he liked us. As a couple. Gravitated, as they say. At the start I thought he had a thing for her, but soon I realized it wasn’t that. He liked us together. Not me, not her: us.
Strange families are born in bars.
What else about Seymour? Mostly he worked days at the prison. He was a guard and had been for a while. He said The Owl was to make extra cash, but I don’t think that had much to do with it. He lived alone in a little apartment down by the beach. He didn’t have much to pay for. The prison was a union job. Gave him a pension, health insurance, a good salary. He wasn’t in debt. There’s so much freedom in living like that. It was the same for Tess and me. Just like it had been in Cannon Beach.
On the other hand, too much freedom will get you into trouble. You start thinking about what you want. What’s next. What’s right and wrong. And what you might change. If you’re working three jobs, taking care of your kids, and paying off a mortgage, there’s no time for that juvenile nonsense.
Anyway, Seymour liked to get away from the prisoners, the other guards. And I think he liked the warmth of the bar. The spirit of it. The nightly celebration to counter the miserable gloom of The Pine. He didn’t go to Lester’s much. He said being with civilians kept him even.
When people asked about the prison, he always made the same bad joke: Difference between The Owl and The Pine? Fewer assholes out there.
The other thing about Seymour is that he rarely talked about my mother. Even with all the shit we gave each other in the course of a shift, he never brought her up. So when Tess suddenly said what she did that evening, it was like something had been broken, changed. A Breach.