Chapter Nine

THE WOMAN BEHIND THE bar at World of Wines had a Spanish accent and a beauty mark near her mouth.

“I’ll have a chardonnay, please,” Charlie said to the woman. He was drunk and needed only food. The Oyster House shuttered at nine and he’d had all of one and a half oyster crackers since first setting foot inside. His body repulsed the idea of another drink, but he could hear his brother’s caveat, that at a place called World of Wines you can break the heart of the Spanish bartender by ordering water.

Charlie had been directed here by Cactus, who advised, “The owner, she’s not all there, so I stay away.”

“You like jamón?” She had a nice lopsided smile, but there was lipstick on her teeth.

“Sure. Who doesn’t?” said Charlie, pretty sure it was ham. “But I think I need a steak.”

“First I will give you the jamón and the wine.”

She opened a bottle. It wasn’t chardonnay. Ordinarily, Charlie would have been offended that someone had edited his life, but he’d only asked for a glass and now there was an entire skinny bottle of Spanish red with black gothic script on the label.

“Tell me your story,” said the woman.

“Well—”

“This life,” she said, smiling, covering her face with her hands. “Okay, Iñez is in love,” she said and poured wine for them both.

“Who’s Iñez?”

“She is me.”

“I could really use some food,” said Charlie.

“This life,” she said again, and hid her smiling face again.

“Maybe some bread?”

She took her time slicing a baguette, stopping more than once to smile her love smile. Sometimes Europeans could be infuriatingly European, Charlie thought. She only placed three baguette slices in the basket but had produced a ramekin of soft butter and a plate of dark, lacquered ham. Just when you want to hate Europeans, they make little miracles, and all is forgiven.

“Really good bread,” said Charlie.

“When you are in love, the bread tastes better.”

Charlie could picture her on the back of a moped with scarves wrapped around her head, holding onto the flanks of an older Spanish guy. Charlie’s mother had a friend like Iñez from when Charlie was very little. Raspy smoker’s voice and a freckly chest. Iñez smoked her cigarette like his mother’s friend, looking down at her Camel Light as if it were a snowflake melting on her hand. Another customer came in singing her name and speaking Spanish.

“You ever been somewhere and be so lost? So, so lost?” Iñez asked Charlie.

“There was a corn maze field trip at fat camp.”

“You should let yourself get lost one day,” she said. “In a place that’s huge—the forest, the beach. Get lost with your love. You fall asleep and you don’t care if you wake up. That is how we fall in love in my country. We don’t care if we die. If we are in love, death is not a problem.”

Charlie had been a single head spin away from needing the toilet, but now he felt calm and stationary. The sandwiches had righted him: more and he might be asleep, less and he might be passed out. Sneaky brilliant Europeans.

“I don’t even think I need the steak anymore,” he said.

“What steak?” asked Iñez.

She had short chestnut-brown hair that fell over her face. Acne-scarred olive skin born of a thousand days at the beach. Charlie could imagine her running in the sand. He wasn’t sure if Spain allowed topless bathing.

“Certain girls are so impressive naked that they permanently change your life just by untying a bikini string in the light of day,” John had warned. Iñez had beautiful breasts. It was her best feature. She wore a boy’s white V-neck T-shirt, no bra.

“What are you looking at?” she asked Charlie.

“This red wine, you served it slightly chilled. It’s interesting.” John would have said your chest and been either slapped or kissed. In John’s stories, he was always getting slapped or kissed.

“You know this guy?” she asked, referring to the Spaniard at the other end of the bar.

“Nope,” said Charlie, popping the P just like Paula.

“You should come over and drink with the guy, such a funny guy.”

“Thanks for the invitation. I have a lot on my mind.”

“I know,” said Iñez. “Que vida, que vida. What a life. You guys be okay a few minutes?” she asked Charlie and the Spanish friend.

Charlie nodded and the Spaniard hunched his shoulders. “Quizas. Maybe, Iñez. Maybe.”

“You so silly,” said Iñez, as she made sure the ten unoccupied bar seats were angled to face the front door. It was an economical place: a long zinc bar, a tiny kitchen, and above the kitchen a curtain-covered loft accessed by a rolling library ladder. She knew her way on that ladder, Charlie could tell, skipping every other rung. He wasn’t sure if the loft was for storage or sleeping until she peeked her head behind the curtain, laughed at something, then disappeared, up and over.

“Iyee,” said the Spaniard.

“Where did she go?” asked Charlie.

“There is a man in there, and she asks us if we will be okay for a few minutes. The question she should ask is if she will be okay for a few minutes. A few minutes behind a red curtain can ruin your vida.”

There was probably a futon up there; it made the most sense, given the space. John was a big proponent. He’d told Charlie that almost every pretty girl owned one. “They treat it like a flying carpet. They’re obsessed. It’s weird. They think it makes them seem more grounded, but also sexually aloft. Girls are really into their own paradoxes.”

The Spaniard approached Charlie and pointed at the plate of ham. “Iñez knows the good jamón. She knows the good vino tinto. Then why she don’t know which is the good man, and which is the bad?”

“The bad man is up there with her?”

“He doesn’t like me, and I don’t like him,” he whispered, and wagged a cautionary finger at the red curtain. Sometimes it would flutter and Charlie could make out a cigarette glow. It was dark up there, and dark in the restaurant as well, just the light of many votive candles. There was a huge candelabra at the end of the bar, from which flowed decades of multicolored wax. But its candles were frozen in time, stuck on some other night.

“They should light these candles,” Charlie said to the Spaniard.

“It’s a mess, this place. I tell her to open a video store. Easy money. You buy Gandhi once, and rent it to everyone a hundred times.”

They were both watching when the red curtain parted, and the man backed his way down the ladder. Barefooted and plodding, his weight made the ladder creak.

“What wine did you say?” he called up to Iñez.

“Whatever you want, darling,” said Iñez.

The man paused on the ladder, swung himself around, and jumped down, landing on both feet like a gymnast. His shoulders slowly rose.

“Tommy?” asked Charlie. “What are you doing here? Wait, you were up there? Wow.” An amazingly good turn of events, thought Charlie. His heart’s divided. Like a Crumb’s cheating heart.

“Holy shit,” said Tommy. “You’re the gent from Oyster House. Shit.”

“Listen, Mister Tomas,” said the Spaniard. “We are paying customers, and this is not your bar. This is not the Four Seasons, this is the World of Wine, and you have no right—”

“Your drinks are on me, gent,” he said to the Spaniard, his eyes on Charlie, who picked nervously at a candle-wax scab. “How you be, gent?” he asked Charlie, then said something about being there to repair the refrigeration units. He sat elegantly, gentlemanly, at the bar, legs crossed at a feminine angle, and scratched his head. “How you be, gent?”

“Good,” said Charlie.

“Iñez and I are old friends.”

“Old friends. Please,” yelled the red curtain.

“She’s very nice,” said Charlie. “Very European.”

“That’s right, gent. We bummed around Europe a while back.”

“Bum around. How can you?” yelled the red curtain.

“Are you coming down, Iñez?” yelled the Spaniard. “If not, I have to get my own wine. I tell you, open a video store. Buy one of Gandhi and rent it to the people a thousand time.”

“You know where the wine is,” yelled the red curtain. “And if you want to give people a hundred Gandhi, you open the store.”

“You know I don’t have the time to make my own drinks,” said the Spaniard, grudgingly making his way behind the bar.

“Tell him, Tomas,” yelled the red curtain. “Tell this boy about the Black Forest. Tell him about our camping. Tell him it wasn’t just bum around. Tell him that my refrigerator is not broken. Tell him that this bed smells like our love. Tell him that I cry when I have to wash these sheet. Tell him about the Black Forest, Tomas.”

“It was a good time, gent. That’s for certain. It’s just that not everyone appreciates hearing these yarns about the camping trip, if you understand what I’m telling you.” Tommy mouthed “Paula” and Charlie nodded.

“Who wouldn’t love these story, Tomas?” yelled the red curtain. “Whoever it is, they don’t have a heart.”

“I won’t tell her,” said Charlie.

“What he say?” yelled the red curtain.

“He say,” yelled the Spaniard, “that he won’t tell it to Paula.”

The red curtain grew silent, and Tommy bent his head.

“You know that Paula’s just a kid,” yelled Tommy. “She’s just a friend.” The red curtain said nothing in return.

Two-timing was exhausting, thought Tommy, at least if you did it at all well and drank with both of them, not just with one or the other. It should be an Olympic sport. Iñez had followed him to Philly after their summer in Europe—a wealthy Spaniard with a world-class chest. She was two years older and didn’t want kids. She’d told him he could name his own salary if only he’d work at World of Wines and live with her in the loft. He’d agreed and then he’d met Paula, who kissed his fingers. Iñez who bit and sucked his fingers. Paula who folded all of her clothing into these perfect little piles. Iñez whose jeans were either on her naked ass or somewhere in the sheets. The home fire in Paula’s eyes, the bonfires in Iñez’s.

“Go tell Paula whatever you want,” Tommy said to Charlie. He was tired of lying. Only shots of Jameson could numb the guilt, and on more than one occasion he drank himself to the verge of making things right. Telling Iñez no. No more. But then he’d see the busty Spaniard and remind himself that dancing around the bonfire with a bottle in hand was his wheelhouse, not spooning or holding hands. His life couldn’t wear tenderness, much as he tried with Paula.

“I’m not going to tell anyone anything,” said Charlie, unsure if he believed it. It would be so easy, now, to strike this monster down. Guess who I saw tonight, Paula?

“Is there a pay phone in here?” Charlie needed to speak with John about how to proceed.

“Who you calling, gent?”

“What do you care?” Iñez had been sauntering up to the bar, taking her time. The slow rotation of her hips. “We make the Black Forest blush. Remember, Tomas?”

Tommy had said as much after thirty-six hours of extraordinary, interactive nudity that ran parallel to a hashish fog, a wine fog, and an endless bag of homemade beef jerky, whose smokiness was the anthem of their blush-making.

On the contrary, his and Paula’s vacation had been pure. They read books by the pool. She taught him—a nineteen-year-old girl taught him—how to be on vacation. Early to bed, early to rise. The smell of Coppertone.

“I could use the pay phone outside,” said Charlie.

“Use the house phone,” said Iñez. She sat in Tommy’s lap, grinding her hips into his belt, his ribs. “Call the curly-hair blonde girl.”

Tommy sat there nodding, trancelike. He wasn’t ready to lose Paula. He wasn’t ready to go back up the loft ladder and into the Black Forest. He could tell from how Iñez moved in his lap that she was wet.

“Fuck it all,” said Tommy.

“I’m sorry,” said Charlie. He actually was. Tommy looked stuck, with that woman sitting on him, a bottle in one hand, the other hand barely free enough to scratch his nose.

“Why are you sorry, gent? There’s all the wine in the world here, and a beautiful ass in my lap.”

They all drank to that, Tommy from the bottle. Charlie could see the wine pass behind his Adam’s apple. His throat was thick and venous, a drinking muscle.

“I should probably make that call,” said Charlie.

“Sounds urgent,” said Tommy.

“Let him call her, Tomas. Let him find his own messy sweetness.” Messy sweetness. Charlie could relate. His lips were dehydrated from the day of drinking, chapped red and wine-stung. He’d nervously picked a hangnail, at the Oyster House, and now it bled. Sweat had baked and then cooled his T-shirt, like those birth-of-a-planet movies when the lava finally starts to steam off. This was a birth, he decided, and dipped his hangnail into the wine.

“Get your finger out of your Rioja,” said the Spaniard. “No polite, chico.”

When? Charlie wondered. When exactly did it happen? It was probably when she said that she’d hold up her blue jeans next to her eyes that he fell in love, because he believed that she would do just that. He could see and feel her doing it. He felt her doing it right then, even though she was nowhere in sight. He felt her when the wine entered his cut. He felt her before, when his gums itched with hunger, and felt her again when he tasted Iñez’s salty ham sandwich. He didn’t even wonder if she was feeling him; it was irrelevant. If he never saw her again? Irrelevant. This was the scene well after the lava had cooled, when the oceans teem with sperm-like fish, and one of them has the audacity to step out onto a rock. The ultimate leap of faith that gills will turn into lungs and that air is real; that these thoughts about a girl will turn into the girl herself.

“The house phone is in the back of the restaurant,” said Iñez.

“Have a good call, then,” Tommy said and toasted with his bottle, then expertly flicked his wrist, shattering the vessel against the bar. Iñez bore the brunt of the crimson splatter, her T-shirt soaked through, her hair, her legs. But all she could do was laugh, “Bueno, Tomas. Bueno, darling.”

Tommy was expressionless. He held the broken bottle by the neck, glass stalactites pointing at Charlie.

“Really, I was just going to call my brother,” said Charlie. “I don’t even have her number.”

The lurid, laughing woman stained in red. The Spaniard and his high-pitched iyees. Tommy’s eyes, the driest eyes Charlie had ever seen; he wouldn’t have been surprised if they popped out of his head and bounced on the floor like marbles. It was a dark scene, these thirtysomethings and their thirty generations of glassware.

“You should go, chico,” said the Spaniard.

“I didn’t pay.”

“Go,” implored Iñez. “Go and leave me with my own messy sweetness.”

Fuck these crazy old people. “I’m going,” he said, taking on Tommy’s eyes. One whisper in her ear. One whisper, gent.