The Troubles We Share

The sign above the door is from the seventies. The light’s purple fluorescent and a guy who looks like Tony Curtis with a silly ascot flowering out of his collar, he’s giving the thumbs-up sign and has a cartoon bubble above his head that says TC’S—A PLACE WHERE THE SINGLES MEET.

I walk inside and the doorman, a guy I sort of know named DJ, holds me back with a redwood of an arm. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Neither do I,” I say. “I’ve had plenty.” I look at him, but his face is blank. “It’s me, DJ—Nick Ray.”

I must look bad, because it’s taking him a long time to make sure it’s me.

“Honest,” I say, and walk toward the bar, where Mr. Frank Carr is sitting drinking a tap beer.

I sit down next to him. He turns and looks at me. He doesn’t seem shaken by my appearance.

“I should see the other guy?” he says.

“The other guy’s in a straitjacket at St. Mary’s,” I say.

I try to get Shine, the bartender’s, attention. She’s leaning with her back to the mirrored glass at the other end of the bar. She wears a clingy silver skirt that looks like some futuristic metal—like its out of a sci-fi movie, a cutoff black T-shirt that shows a muscular stomach with a silver belly stud and a sunburst tattoo that explodes from the navel. She’s into bodybuilding—all tension and angles and beautiful hardness and looks like she could be a cartoon superhero. We slept together once—she didn’t seem to have much interest in a second time, but Tara’s still jealous—she’s got a crush on Shine and when I want to hurt her feelings I remind Tara that I slept with her and she hasn’t.

Timothy Shay/Mr. Frank Carr doesn’t want to hear about my troubles, about my bloody, pounding, suffering head or any other wrong turns I may have taken. “You’ve got your troubles,” he says. “I’ve got my troubles. Some troubles we share, and that’s why we gather and talk.”

“So what troubles do we share?”

He takes a sip of his drink. “Two—one is that we’re both in contact, or getting close to contact, with Spencer Durrell, which is very bad.”

How would he know this? “Who?” I say.

He makes a face. “Don’t fuck with me, kid. You’re leaning on me, you have to have something to lean with. There’s only a couple of people who hold a hammer over me—and Durrell’s one of them.” He looks at me. “So—are we done fucking around?”

I nod.

Mr. Frank Carr says, “I know him—you don’t. You do not want a part of this.” He looks at me for a minute. “I’m making a decision here—a decision to trust you, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, though I doubt that he trusts me—he only wants me to think he does.

“You’re small-time,” he says. “I say that in the most sincere, nicest way possible—but look at yourself, pal.” He holds his hand up to stop me from saying anything. “Sit and listen, let me buy you a beer, and then tell me what’s on your mind, okay?”

I nod and hold my hand up to Shine for a beer.

Mr. Frank Carr says, “These people will fuck you up. And if you don’t owe Spencer Durrell money, he will kill you. If you owe him money, he may let you survive long enough to pay off—but you? My advice is that you take my ten grand, you split it however you want, and you stop this nonsense as soon as you can.”

Shine brings me over a beer. “Christ, Nick,” she says, and winces. “What happened?”

I tell her it was an accident. She looks at me like I’m pasta with worms, that kind of oh-my-how-gross face. It doesn’t make you feel good.

“Car accident,” I say.

She nods a little nod of understanding and she saunters away.

Mr. Frank Carr says, “I’m trying to help you—believe it or not.” He pauses, takes a drink, and sets the glass back on the table. “How many names on that list have you contacted?”

“What list?” I say.

“I can add two and two. I don’t know how you got it, but you’ve got my name, and my name isn’t alone. And now people talk, kid. People will know what you’re doing. You’re in deep water. If Durrell doesn’t kill you for the list, the feds will arrest you for it. This doesn’t end well, this movie you’re making.”

Fear cracks and pops inside me like ice in a drink. “Why should I tell you?”

He looks at me like I’m an idiot—it’s the same tired shake of the head I got an hour ago from the paramedic cleaning my cut eye. “Don’t be cool,” he says. “Don’t be hip. Cool is stupid and hip will get you killed. I’m trying to tell you something here.”

I tell him I’m listening.

He says, “You think this is the way to make it in this life, but you’re wrong. You hang out with losers, you lose. It’s easy math, pal.”

I ask him if he’s got a cigarette and he tells me he quit when he left Mr. Frank Carr behind him. He says, “I know—you look at me and what do you see—some fucking boring straight life in Orange County, right?”

“Pretty much,” I say.

“Kid, you couldn’t pry me out of my life with a crowbar. And that’s what you and your people are doing—you see, I’ve got things I care about, things I’ll fight you for. Things I’ll kill you for, understand.”

“No offense,” I say. “But I don’t see what you’ve got to bargain with.”

“You’re a phone call away from Spencer Durrell knocking on your door.”

And I’m wondering, Why? “You would call him? Wouldn’t he come knocking for you?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve already changed everything—names, jobs, history. I don’t want to again, but I know how. By the time he came looking for me, I’d be somewhere else. Someone else.”

“It’s that easy?” I say.

“It’s not easy,” he says. “It’s what I’m prepared to do. I’m your fucking Vietnam, see? This is my homeland and you’re an outsider. You need to know what you’re doing. What you’re up against. I know small-time—I was small-time. When the pressure hit, I blew the whistle and talked to anyone who’d listen. I’m trying to save you time. Get out and go away. Have some kids that like playing ball in the backyard. Find yourself a woman who’s fun to talk with who likes sucking cock and being ass-fucked and get a barbecue and a sunset and enjoy life.”

“That’s the secret?”

He looks hard at me. “I’m not kidding—you fuck with what’s mine and I’ll kill you and enjoy hurting you. I’ll wrap your body in a carpet and you’ll just be another Nevada body drop. My wife, my kids—that’s my life. You and your friends? You’re flies on the world’s windshield. No one misses crap like you.”

He gets up and throws a twenty on the table. “You’ll get the ten grand,” he says. “But if I hear anything from you or about you after that, or if I hear anything squirrelly about you, the deal’s off and you’re dead.” He puts his hand around my shoulder and to anyone looking, I’m sure it appears that the nice-looking handsome Orange County-ish looking guy is saying a quiet good-bye to the bloody guy, nice and friendly. “I’ve got a human stake in this. You’ve got money. It’s not a contest.” He pats me twice and walks away. I watch him in the bar mirror. He doesn’t look back at me. There’s plenty of change from his twenty and I order another beer and think about how he said no one misses crap like me and I’m not sure I could mount much of an argument.

I drink a beer and start sinking down into remorse and self-loathing the stuff of broken knuckles, empty hotel rooms, and weepy country music, and I figure it’s time to go. Cut myself off before the depression settles, takes root and grows. Part of it is drinking alone and looking at Shine standing twenty feet away and acting like we don’t know each other. Dylan’s song “She Acts As If We Never Have Met,” the live Halloween 1964 version, snaps into my head. Shine’s working not to look over my way and she’s flirting heavily with a muscular, good-looking guy with dual barbed-wire tattoos on his biceps. I know it’s probably because she’s fucking the guy and she doesn’t want trouble—but it feels like more. It feels like me erased, feels like, not only would crap like me not be missed, but that some people would breathe a sigh of relief and feel good about it. I’m not sure why, but I leave Shine a nice tip and take the rest of Mr. Frank Carr’s money and decide to go outside and see if Blake is back with the painkillers.