fifteen

I had never been in a bar before. I should say I had never been in a bar without my father. He would bet baseball games with JR, a local bookie my dad went to grade school with. JR’s office was in the Piper’s Kilt, a little Irish pub in Woodside that I think is still open to this day.

The place Lou took me to was a narrow, dark joint near the 59th Street subway. It smelled like old beer, mold, cigarettes, and sweat. The bar was on the left side of the room as you entered. It was long and high. About a dozen men and no women sat on tall stools in quiet contemplation of alcohol, nicotine, and regret. Lit by strands of half-burned-out holiday lights along the length of the back of the bar: the ghosts of Christmas past.

There was a row of four or five red vinyl booths along the right side. They were all empty. The booth closest to the entrance was sealed off with tape. There was a hole the size of a toilet seat in one of its benches. The hole was stuffed with newspaper, matchbooks, empty cigarette packs, and broken glass. It looked like they were in no rush to repair it.

We sat in the rear booth, the pay phone and the bathrooms just beyond us. A jukebox stood right next to the phone. Lou sat on the bench facing the entrance, I sat opposite. He took out a pack of Marlboros and lit one up.

“You got any change? I want to play some music.” He started combing through his thousand pockets.

“I have a quarter.” I handed it to him.

“Get me a gin and tonic. And get yourself something too.”

He stood up and took a deep drag. I waited for him to give me the currency to pay for his drink but that custom didn’t seem to apply to his world.

“I don’t have any more money on me,” I said. I felt guilty that I couldn’t buy the man a drink. Which made no sense, of course, since he asked me to accompany him as a favor, not to mention I was strictly prohibited by law from purchasing alcoholic beverages. I guess it was just the way he said it, like we were pals and had gone drinking together many times before. I felt very mature when I walked into the bar with him and now I was just a kid again. A measly, shrimpy kid who couldn’t afford to buy his buddy a cocktail.

Lou stared at me like he had forgotten who I was and why I was there. “Oh.” He said it like he regretted bringing me along. Then he took off his boot and searched inside. Finding nothing, he took off the other boot and extracted a crumpled bill. “Here ya go, and get some more quarters.”

It was a ten-spot. I unfolded it and walked to the bar as Lou scanned the titles on the juke. The bartender came and stood across the bar from me.

“What can I get you?” He said it neither friendly nor unfriendly.

I hadn’t done much drinking in my life and was not partial to any particular alcoholic beverage. I was sure the bartender would refuse me because of my age anyway, so I just ordered two gin and tonics. “And some quarters, please.”

“How many?” His voice was scraped with years and years of booze and smoke.

“Two.”

“Two quarters?”

“No, two gin and tonics.”

“Yeah, I know, but how many quarters?”

“Umm . . . four, please.”

Some fifties doo-wop started playing on the jukebox. It was sad. Sad and perfect for this afternoon. I’ve heard the tune many times since: “Angel Baby” by Rosie and the Originals. Every time it plays I go right back to the rear booth of the Subway Inn on that long gray day, with Lou’s black-leather-covered back to me as he studies the songs on tap.

I brought the drinks and the change back to the booth. Lou was on the phone and it looked like he was faking a conversation. He was laughing, chatting, and smiling, but in this forced and stilted way. It seemed so phony to me that if I didn’t know him, I would have taken him for a lunatic. A bona fide Creedmoor case who wandered the streets in deep discussions with invisible friends and enemies.

He hung up the phone and sat across from me. He was still smiling and drank half his gin and tonic in one big gulp.

“She’ll be here in ten minutes,” he told me, as if I had been in on the arrangements. I assumed it wasn’t Rachel because he’d said she wouldn’t be back till the next day. He gave me two quarters from his pile of change. “Play us some tunes. This is the best jukebox in the city. It’s the only reason I come to this shithole. I mean, for a shithole it’s a cozy shithole and I do happen to like shitholes.”

He didn’t say my name at all. I don’t think he knew what it was anymore. Since that first night he hadn’t called me anything but kid once in a while. I couldn’t even remember if I’d told him my name or not, but it didn’t matter to him anyway. He just needed somebody next to him.

I stood at the jukebox rolling through the many songs and intimidated by the possibility that I would choose something Lou didn’t like. I was not musically hip or savvy. My favorites were the Beatles and I listened to a lot of Top 40 stuff on the radio. I liked the Pink Floyd album Wish You Were Here but I only had it because I’d won a contest at King Karol’s record store. They had a fishbowl of jelly beans and I made the closest guess of how many were inside. (I said 41,111 and the real amount was 42,505.) It was the only contest I’d ever won. So Pink Floyd was as cutting edge as I’d gotten. I had not been exposed to the underground scene and I really had no desire to seek it out.

I was at a loss and didn’t know what to choose. I finally settled on “Mrs. Robinson,” which I’d always liked a lot. I meant to punch B491 into the keypad but because I was so nervous and scared of fucking up, I mistakenly entered B419. I didn’t even realize I had done it until I sat back down and Tiny Tim’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” began to play.

Lou looked at me like I was something stuck to the bottom of his boot, like a wad of dog shit he was about to scrape off with a sharp stick. “Tiny Tim?? Did you play Tiny Tim??!!”

“No. It wasn’t me. I played Simon and Garfun—”

“Tiny fucking Tim!!” He laughed his ass off, and with more good nature than I had ever seen from him.

Now he knew what my name was. I was no longer Matty, Jack, or Kid. I was now Tiny Tim and usually just plain Tim. That was what he called me from that day forward and he would never forget it. Soon the memory of how he came up with the name would fade and both he and Rachel assumed it was my real name.

I abhorred being called it but was too timid to protest or correct him. So Tim I became.