Chapter Seven

“APPLESAUCE, COLESLAW, FRENCH FRIES, peppered hash, stewed beets,” the bartender incanted.

“Um, sorry? What?”

“Applesauce, coleslaw, French fries, peppered hash, stewed beets.”

“You’d better decide,” sang the blue-eyed waitress. A lock of her twisty hair attached itself to Charlie Green’s jacket sleeve. It was in the shape of a seahorse. He petted its head.

“Applesauce, coleslaw, French fries, peppered hash, stewed beets.” The bartender moved his bifocals down on his nose to focus on Charlie and his unused menu.

“Listen,” said the bartender, “order two sides, order a fish, order a drink, order more drinks. This is a fish house.”

Charlie opened the menu, but it was upside down.

“Applesauce, coleslaw, French fries, peppered hash, stewed beets.”

The bartender smelled like coffee and cigarettes. He was a tiny wiry man with flaring nostrils that reminded Charlie of the dragons that guarded his family’s Sunday Chinese.

“I think I’d just like a drink,” said Charlie, producing his fake ID.

The bartender took one look at it and threw it back in Charlie’s face.

“Listen kid, this is Philly. You got cash, a liver, and some hair on your balls, I’m not going to waste my time fiddling with my bifocals to look at your fake ID.”

“Why do you think it’s fake?”

“Give me a fucking break. And by the way, if you’re not eating, you really need to order a drink every thirty minutes, or else relinquish the primo real estate you got for yourself near the girl and her service area.”

“Okay. A vodka and tonic, and I’ll definitely order more. sir.”

“Vodka’s just about the only way to keep that barstool. By the way, I’m Neil. Sir’s my dead father. God rest his evil fucking soul.” A hundredth of a smile bunched up in the corner of his mouth, became a bead of coffee-stained spit, then dissipated into a tiny cloud that floated up to live forever on the antique tin ceiling of Philadelphia’s oldest oyster bar.

“Sure you don’t want any oysters with that vodka, kid?”

“I’m allergic.”

“Fuck you,” said Neil, drawing faint applause.

“That’s Neil’s way of saying ‘Sorry to hear about your allergy,’” said the blonde girl. “God, happy hour bites today. It’s weird that people need to be told when to be happy.”

“I agree,” said Charlie.

“But it’s money.”

“Exactly. This summer, I worked as a counselor at Camp Shining Star and spent almost all of it on this Walkman.”

“I can never save, either.”

“What color are your eyes?” he asked. He usually needed several drinks before he’d even speak to a girl like this, but with her things felt easy. Either she didn’t know she was lovely or didn’t care.

“Blue,” she said.

“They’re more than that,” said Charlie. “They look like perfectly faded blue jeans.”

“I’ve had the same pair since I was fifteen. I’ll hold them up to the mirror when I get home tonight.”

“I bet it’ll be a match.”

“I need new jeans for Christmas,” she said, gazing down at her long legs.

“So do I.”

“But yours look brand new.”

“I mean I need to buy worn-in jeans for Christmas.”

“You buy your own Christmas gifts?’

“No, of course not. By the way, we celebrate Christmas.”

“Everyone does.” She slapped her serving tray against her side, challenged by the idea that Christmas wasn’t available to everyone.

“Yes, but we’re Jewish. Not that you could tell.”

“I could see it,” said the waitress. “There was one in my school. He was serious, like you.”

“I have a lighter side.”

“Serious is good. When a stranger tells me ‘Just smile,’ or says ‘It’s not that bad,’ I give them the finger. When I gave it up for Lent, I started using my pointer finger for F-you instead of the middle. It was like a girl’s fuck-you. Softer but equally deadly.”

Monica Miller never said girl. It was always woman or female. Never before had Charlie heard a girl fully embrace the word, embody it. A girl who says girl has girl parts beneath her male-themed work clothes, thought Charlie, happy he was a boy and hopeful that he exuded his gender as effortlessly as this girl did hers.

“I think if you flashed it quickly enough,” said Charlie, “no one could tell the difference.”

Simultaneously, they cursed one another with their second fingers.

“My boyfriend gave up empty promises for Lent.”

“Boyfriend? That sucks.”

John said that no pretty girls were single. And if they were, it was only for 180 minutes.

You’d need the Lord’s timing.

“Excuse me?” asked the waitress. “What sucks?”

“Just his empty promises. They suck.”

“Yeah, always promising the big trip to the old country. At least this time he got me this.” She held up a fat Frommer’s European guidebook, the 1984 edition. She flipped through the pages, fanning Charlie.

“It’s used. Look at all these notes. I think it used to belong to an old lady. I hope she had a great trip. I hope she’s alive. People who mark up books should leave their address.” A lightning bolt of a curl bisected her face. “God, I need a haircut.”

“No!” said Charlie.

“You’re just like my boyfriend. What is it with guys and long hair?”

Charlie played with his Walkman’s buttons and drank too quickly. Of course she has a boyfriend. Why wouldn’t she?

“So, what’s your boyfriend like?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A guy. An Irish guy. My Irish guy. He has blue eyes, too. What’s the big deal with eyes, anyway? They’re closed when you kiss.”

She said kiss so crisply, Charlie had to look away.

“I should check on my tables. Only an hour more to go.”

“Then what?” asked Charlie

“Date,” she said, teasing, challenging, tongue inside her cheek, hand on her hip.

Paula was being playful. Ordinarily she’d say date, then make an about-face and be done with it, but this boy, with his dress jacket and clunky Walkman? He had big, patient hands that rested on the bar when he spoke to her. He was gentle, that’s what he was. In New Hope, Pennsylvania, where she’d spent all but the last fourteen months of her life, the only gentle men owned antiques stores and lived with other gentle men.

“Well, have a good date,” said Charlie, feigning gravity about the ribbon peeking out from his Walkman’s battery compartment.

“So, what are you doing tonight?” Paula was taught that a young man wearing a suit jacket was bound for the theater, or maybe even the opera, with a provincial girl he aimed to bed. These lessons came from her mother, who had a strict and (to her mind) irreproachable sense of the world and its secret meanings.

“I’m not sure. I sprung myself from college earlier today and came here to the Oyster House. This could be the beginning of something rather life-defining, or maybe—”

“I should check on those tables before I get sacked,” said Paula. “That’s what they say in Ireland instead of fired.”

It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich boy, Paula’s mother often preached. Although Paula didn’t care for the way rich boys affected unhappiness in order to seem poorer and sexier. This one seemed well on his way to a big-time buzz, which was Neil’s handiwork. She wondered if he’d end up in the gutter, or at a diner. Or maybe he’d take his buzz to a college bar and meet a nameless girl he could kiss in the dark. But by then, she’d be with Tommy, by his side at one bar or another, where he used to bartend. Now he worked at the Four Seasons Hotel, where employees weren’t permitted to be customers.

“Sacked. I like that,” said Charlie. “You know a lot of things.”

“For a barmaid from New Hope?”

“No, for a person.” Her cheek bones so sharp and her cheeks so red, he thought. A Vee softened by its own blood.

“That’s definitely me, a person,” she said, and left Charlie for the back room.

“Who wants dessert?” he heard her ask. She was in a good mood, and Charlie wanted to believe he was the cause, not only today, but every day. John had spoken about making a petulant girl smile, how it was a clear and glorious victory, but this girl wasn’t petulant. Wintry? Maybe some weather inside.

“This drink is great, Neil,” said Charlie. “And so is this place. This was almost exactly what I was wishing for this morning. You should have seen me this morning. I was a mess, driving to Philly with my dad.”

“The shit customers do before they come in here and after they leave interests me about as much as my own life did before I was born and after I’m dead.”

“Oh, sorry. I’m just happy. This day has become magical.”

“Magic? It could be the four highballs I’ve been sneaking into your glass. Or the two twenties you had the good sense to plunk down. If it wasn’t for those bills, you’d be banished to the shucker’s bar, where Cactus the shucker is the prettiest thing going, and the booze tastes like frog juice.”

“I’ll keep the bills coming. My father gave me an envelope. I mean, I’m going to get a job soon, a real job, something using my hands, maybe a merchant marine, or maybe—”

“My father died last month,” said Neil.

“I’m sorry,” said Charlie.

“I hadn’t spoken to him in twenty years, but he asked for me at the hospital, so I went because I had something to tell him.”

“When my grandmother passed, or died—you’re right, ‘died’ is better—”

“Kid, when I’m talking about my things, don’t relate it to your things.”

“Sorry.”

“I had something important to tell my old man, okay?” said Neil, bearing down on Charlie.

“Okay, sure.”

“Pop was short like me, so I wanted to thank him for giving me a big wiener.”

“Oh,” said Charlie. “Wow, that’s—”

“Christ, here comes a Crumb.”

“What’s a Crumb?”

A large man in a tight terrycloth sweater-shirt sat next to Charlie. “Yo, Neil,” he shouted and threw his money clip on the bar. “Neilly, Neilly,” he said. “I’m thirsty thirsty.”

“Shut up, Crumb,” said Neil. “First of all, you’re late. Second of all, that shirt makes you look like you have tits.”

Neil called his worst and most loyal customers Crumbs. They nursed their drinks until closing, ordering labor-intensive dishes like ice cream sundaes. Having to shake a whipped cream canister and apply a cherry bedeviled Neil like nothing else. There was such a commingling of disgust and pity in Neil’s heart for the lonely adulterers. Most of them were lawyers who’d been flung from their comfortable Main Line homes after getting caught. Now they lived in all-suite hotels, blocks from the beautician, the actress, the stewardess; blocks from the Oyster House, where they’d tell Neil about how they’d gifted gym memberships, Corvettes, and cases of champagne for a few weeks of young skin at the expense of a decade and a half of marriage.

“Don’t mention that chick’s name again, Crumb. Or I’ll write it on your hand with your cigarette.” Neil was no fan of cheaters. “I told you to start a porn collection years ago. Now look at you! Fuck it, no more ice cream, Crumb. Not ever.”

“Hey, kid,” the Crumb said to Charlie. “You know you’re in my seat, right? Eh, don’t worry about it. Just that I miss yapping with Paula is all.”

“Her name’s Paula?” asked Charlie.

“I actually call her Pauly, like the loser guy in Rocky, but that’s just our little thing.”

“Paw-La,” said Charlie, the next time she was back at the service bar.

“Paw-Lee,” said the Crumb, and laughed himself into a coughing fit.

“I like my middle name more. Katherine. But my mom wouldn’t let me change it. I think I have seven ancestors named Paula.”

“I’m Charlie. Charles Green. No one calls me Charles. My Dad’s French and calls me ‘Charl.’”

“I’ve never been. Maybe next summer.” She placed her hand atop the Frommer’s.

“I might be there,” said Charlie.

“Really?” asked Paula, for a moment excited about seeing a familiar face in a foreign country. Then she heard her mother’s voice in her head and bit her lower lip. Paula’s mother had assured her that she would not be in an airplane this summer, that men promised many adventures for the five-minute adventure in your pants. Regardless, Paula had invested in a set of Le Sac travel bags that she kept hidden under her bed.

“My mom has an art gallery in Paris,” said Charlie. “But I’ve only been two times. At least to Paris. The other time, we stayed at my dad’s childhood house in the country. You know? Up until this very moment I had little feeling for that old country house, but now I miss it.”

“Paris, France,” said the Crumb. “Where the ladies drop their pants.”

“Is that so, Crumb?” asked Paula. “You think that’s what ladies do in Paris?”

“Come on, Paula, you don’t got to call me a Crumb, too.”

“Neil says I should, and talking about girls’ pants doesn’t help. Well”—she turned to Charlie—“have fun in Europe at the gallery. Send us some postcards.”

“I thought you said you were going to visit?”

“Maybe. Just a crazy plan. Maybe in two or three summers I’ll visit your mom’s store. I’ll tell her I met her well-traveled son at the Oyster House. I was going to say ‘well-heeled.’ I like words like that.”

“God,” said Charlie.

“What?”

“Nothing, but I like those words, too, and so does my mom.”

“Rich people words.”

“I’m not rich, my parents are. I mean, they own two galleries, which really isn’t a lot, compared to some other dealers.”

“Two galleries.” Paula tried to sound sarcastic, but it came out reverential. “What sort of stuff is in these galleries?”

“The classics,” said Charlie. “They sort of fell in our lap. My grandmother found them during the Second World War, and hid them from the Nazis, in the basement of a synagogue. When the war ended, she reclaimed them, hundreds of them, and most of them by the masters.”

“Well excuse me, master bates,” said the Crumb.

Two galleries full of old paintings is beautiful, Paula told herself, and hoped there were velvety couches where wealthy women drank tea and pointed at what they wanted.

“The Nazis were going to burn them,” Charlie continued. “I think she stole them in the middle of the night. She was an intense woman. People compare her to me, except that she had green eyes. These famous green eyes everyone always talks about.”

“You’re really into eyes,” said Paula. She gathered a trio of beers that seemed destined to overflow but did not. Charlie watched her disappear into the back dining room, certain she’d leave a few drops in her wake, but there was nothing, just a question mark of that caramel-colored hair snaking down her perfect back.

“You can sit here this time,” said the Crumb. “But I like yapping with her, too. Don’t get me wrong, I got a daughter her age. I guess she reminds me of my daughter. You know, the time my daughter came in here, Neil didn’t call me Crumb. He called me ‘Mister So-and-So.’ I’ll never forget that act of kindness.”

“Neil’s a great bartender. He might even be better than this bartender in New York who works at Adam’s Rib. Have you ever—”

“Of course he’s the best. He sat you in my seat, figuring you’d be all gaga over Paula, knowing you wouldn’t stand a chance. That sort of stuff teaches you a lesson. A lesson about what is yours, and what isn’t.”

“Why wouldn’t I stand a chance?” asked Charlie. “I think we got along. Actually, really well. It was weird, in fact.”

“Hey, listen, she’s Tommy’s girl. Game, set, match.”

“Who’s Tommy?” asked Charlie.

“Who’s Tommy? You ain’t from these parts, are you kid? Hear that, Neil? Who’s Tommy.”

“Shut up, Crumb,” said Neil. “It’s her boyfriend, kid.”

“Oh. Well, what’s he like?”

“Tell him, Crumb,” said Neil.

“What’s he like? He’s a mick, you know, a bruiser, but he has a soft side, too, knows his poetry. Knows his Robert Frost, or whoever the mick version of Bobby Frost is. And the red hair on this guy’s head, you’d think it could start a fire.”

The Crumb told Charlie the story of Tommy. How he started as a teenager kicking bums out of his father’s saloon in North Philly and made it all the way to Italy, where he apprenticed under the head barman at Harry’s in Venice. “Tommy learned real class from the real I-talians. They’re not like the ones we got here.”

Talking about Tommy and Paula was something you did at the Sansom Street Oyster House, thought Charlie, just like talking about roast beef and Reagan was something you did at Adam’s Rib.

“The key to Tommy is his broken nose,” said the Crumb. “Don’t you think, Neil?”

“I don’t think about men’s noses, Crumb.”

“Well, chicks love a broken nose. That, and all he drinks are brown drinks. Some chicks like that, too.”

“Paula doesn’t seem like much of a drinker,” said Charlie. “She looks healthy.”

“Of course she’s healthy,” said Neil. “She’s fucking young.”

Tommy and Paula had apparently been together for almost a year, the relationship crowned by a recent trip to the Bahamas. The trip photos had been viewed right where Charlie sat.

“They were nice pictures,” said Neil. “Couple like that in the water? Nice.”

“And the bikini when she was on the Jet Ski? Madone,” said the Crumb.

“But Paula can get Tommy to behave himself,” said Neil. “Some girls like Tom’s freckles and gym rat muscles exploding all over their lives, but not Paula, God bless her.”

“So, what does Paula like?” asked Charlie.

“How the hell do I know?” said Neil. “You have to be on the inside to find out, kid.”

“Here she is, Miss America,” said the Crumb. “Hey Pauly, how much you say those Jet Skis cost you and Tommy for a half hour?”

“Twenty each,” said Paula.

At one point, she leaned on Charlie’s shoulder for balance while she slipped a finger inside her tennis shoe and scratched. She was five feet nine, Charlie knew. He’d memorized Monica Miller’s height and John’s height, and Paula was exactly in the middle. Almost twelve hours ago, Monica Miller’s five feet seven frame had been against him in the kitchen. Now it seemed like such a modest height. A parody of being tall. In heels, sure, she shot up to five nine, but would talk about it all night, how she was practically six feet. Paula was probably the sort of girl who didn’t know her height, or her weight, and would offer up a ballpark number, or say it didn’t matter.

While Neil and the Crumb spoke about the Jet Ski racket, Charlie concentrated on the ball of her wrist, the little mound of bone, a tiny island, the down of her arms lapping against its shore. She’d play with her sleeves, trying to roll them up evenly, but get frustrated and let them find their own homes on her arms. All of the waitresses at the Sansom Street Oyster House wore white dress shirts, ties, and khaki pants. Paula’s rolled-up sleeves, loose knot, cuffed pants—at Camp Shining Star, there was a deserted train car in which flowers seemed to have poked holes. Charlie had remarked to the Very-Brown-Eyed Counselor that the train car was no match for nature.

“Who says the train car is resisting?” she’d asked. “Who says the train car isn’t nature, too?”

Watching Paula in her Oyster House uniform, Charlie agreed: he couldn’t tell anymore where the girl began and the schoolboy getup ended. It was all her. All five feet nine of her. And her posture made her seem even taller. He’d once seen an egret on a golf course in Palm Beach; how could something so still also suggest a pirouette?

“Date night,” Paula chirped and showed Neil her watch.

“You’re free to go,” said Neil.

“Let me just make sure my ladies at table twelve are okay with their coffee.”

“See that?” said Neil, after she’d gone back into the restaurant. “You can’t teach that. She’s overqualified for this gig. There’s nothing sadder than an overqualified barmaid.”

“Pauly’s the best,” said the Crumb.

“I really like her uniform,” said Charlie. “Is that weird?”

“Someone tied that tie for her on her first day, and she hasn’t untied it since,” said the Crumb. “Just slips it on and off.”

“Who tied it for her?”

“Not you,” said the Crumb. “It was Tommy. I saw it coming a mile away. Paula’s nervous because it’s her first day, and here comes Tommy with his Irish charm. Tell you what, if I’d seen Tommy tying my daughter’s tie, I’d give him permission to take her out.”

Neil had met the Crumb’s daughter. She was sweet, but gene by gene resembled her father.

“Your daughter’s a good kid,” said Neil. “You don’t want her to fall in love with Tommy just because he made nice with a necktie. Your daughter should marry the son of the baker, or the priest’s boy.”

“I buy my cakes and shit in the grocery store. I don’t know who baked them,” said the Crumb. “And the last time I saw a priest, it was in the mirror on Halloween.”

Fucking Crumbs, thought Neil. Every time you try to humanize the fat bastards, they crumble right in front of your face. Arrogant Crumbs who think Sinatra won’t die during their lifetime. He looked over at the kid in his blue jacket and stiff jeans. Rare to see a rich kid at a fish house. One or two came in each year. But that was one of the reasons fish houses existed, he figured—so the prettiest barmaids could get swallowed up by a vodka-happy loner in his five-hundred-dollar blazer.

“If Paula marries anyone, it should be someone like this kid,” said Neil. “And as for Tommy, he’s a bartender and a drunk. In time he’ll be a drunk and a bartender. Then he’ll lose his job. One of the neighborhood micks will take pity on him and give him a job bouncing at the local, but he’ll drink, steal, or screw his way out of that, and then there will be a last bender. A monthlong bender that will erase him from the face of planet Earth.”

“Yeah, my daughter will find a nice boy. No benders,” said the Crumb.

“You really think I might marry her?” asked Charlie. “The crazy thing is, if someone said I had to marry her, I think I’d say yes. I know I’d say yes.”

“Whatever,” said Neil. “The future’s bullshit, always running late. Like the milk train to Atlantic City. A 4:37 a.m. departure should mean 4:37 a.m., not fucking 4:49 a.m.”

“What the hell’s the difference, Neil?” asked the Crumb. “Hey, I’m out. Got to make the rounds.”

“Tip me double today,” said Neil.

“Why?”

“You don’t have proper respect for the milk train, plus I had to talk serious with you just now about your daughter. Double it up, Crumb.”

“Why not? It’s only money, Neily. Are you staying, kid?”

Charlie’s drink had risen two inches. Somewhere in between the marriage predictions, Neil had made a deposit, ice and all. Charlie turned to face the stairwell that led to the restrooms and the employees’ locker room.

“Have you ever been in the employees’ room?” Charlie asked the Crumb.

“I don’t want to see that shit. The one time I saw Neil in his regular clothes, it freaked me out. It was just his Members Only jacket, but it didn’t seem right.”

“Do the employees have to exit up here, or is there a separate way?”

“Jesus, kid,” said the Crumb, sidling his stool away from the bar an inch at a time until there was room for his girth to rise and turn. “Trust me, this way is better.” He motioned to the front door. “When your time at the bar has ended, you get to go home, only a little poorer, and a little drunker. Bargain of the century: all this fun, pretty girls, Neil’s bullshit and his Neilisms. You get all that and you never have to sign your name to anything or anyone, unless you pay by credit card. You know how you fuck up that deal? By marrying the waitress or buying the joint. As for me? My home is a suite at the Radisson. Right on Arch Street near the museum, above the new TGI Friday’s. Probably stop in there for a last pop; they got a few cute girls working there. See, that’s what I’m saying, you have to spread your wings. Girls like Paula, they’re everywhere.”

Charlie’s attention was on the stairwell door. A faint red light emanated from below.

“Not like her,” he said, watching the light.

“Yeah, she likes her nature, you know, science magazines, and some days she doesn’t say too much, so those parts are different,” said the Crumb, “but when you turn off the lights, they’re all the same. Don’t let Tommy break your nose. He notches his belt when he breaks a nose. Probably has ten notches in that belt of his. Just ask Neil. Fucking Neil,” the Crumb said, and left.