Things We Nearly Knew Page 3

  ‘You counted?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Arlene. ‘I kept a notebook. I wrote down everything he did and the time he did it. I knew more about him than he knew about himself.’

  Marcie raised one eyebrow at me. That’s one of her tricks. Sometimes I try to do it back, but I can’t.

  ‘How old was he?’ I asked.

  ‘Fifty, maybe. He didn’t seem to have any friends. No one came to his apartment and he never went out, or not in the evenings. Imagine spending every night of the year in a small room on your own. Life is sad. No point pretending it’s not. I already knew life was sad. Once I had thought it was sad only when you were a child. When I looked at John, I could see that the sadness never ended. I knew he was my future. I looked at him and thought that was how I would be when I grew up.’

  ‘It isn’t, though, is it?’ said Marcie. ‘You don’t spend every night on your own.’ Arlene didn’t respond to that.

  ‘What about your family?’ I asked. ‘Where were they while you were looking out of your window?’

  ‘Out,’ said Arlene. ‘My mom worked evenings.’

  ‘And your dad?’

  ‘Never been quite sure about him. He wasn’t at home, anyway.’

  ‘Your mom wasn’t married?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘Did you have brothers and sisters?’

  ‘No idea. Not living with us, anyhow. Maybe half-brothers or half-sisters, somewhere. I don’t know.’

  ‘So it was just you and your mom at home,’ said Marcie.

  ‘Yes,’ said Arlene. ‘But it wasn’t really a home. It was three rooms with two people. One of them happened to have given birth to the other.’

  ‘Is your mom alive?’

  ‘No. Not anymore. Sad.’

  ‘Doesn’t do any good to talk that way,’ said Marcie. ‘Life’s not sad unless you make it sad. And it’s not happy unless you make it happy. It’s not what it is; it’s what you make it.’

  This is one of Marcie’s firmest beliefs. I’ve heard it stated a hundred times. It’s the closest she comes to sounding unsympathetic. Other than to people she doesn’t like. I told her that once. Marcie’s view is that, while everyone deserves sympathy, it’s not always what they need. She can be surprisingly dogmatic for someone whose nature is not to be dogmatic.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ said Arlene, definitively.

  That was the closest I heard Arlene come to being sure of anything. It was also the end of the conversation; it had nowhere to go after that. The image has stayed with me, though, of Arlene spending her teenage years peeping out at the world through closed curtains.

  Hovering around this and every conversation with her was the vague presence of Jack. However little we knew, what we thought we knew was that she was looking for Jack. Now I consider the matter, it seems appropriate that the most concrete thing about Arlene concerned someone with a nebulous existence. At one time or another, most of us tried to discover who Jack was. That night, it was Mike who had a go.

  ‘Who’s Jack?’ he asked. Mike’s like me. He goes direct, when he goes at all. Like me, I expect he was wondering if this guy across the street was Jack. John Doe. Jack Doe. Could’ve been.

  ‘I’ll tell you when I find out,’ said Arlene.

  ‘When’s that likely to be?’

  ‘No time soon, at the present rate of progress.’

  ‘I mean, was he your husband? Your lover?’

  ‘Oh, no, nothing like that,’ said Arlene.

  ‘Why are you looking for him?’

  ‘Because I need to find him. He’s important. Or was important. At least, I believe so.’

  ‘You think he’s in town?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Arlene. ‘He used to be in town. And in other places too. I don’t know where he is now. He could be anywhere. Or nowhere.’

  ‘But you think he might be in town?’

  ‘Stop pumping me, will you?’ said Arlene. ‘I’ll tell you when I’m good and ready. If I ever am. And if I feel like it.’

  Mike looked hard at her. ‘You’re some weird lady,’ he said.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, you are, aren’t you? Weird.’

  ‘And you’re not?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say so. Hey. Steve. Would you say I was weird?’

  ‘Weird as hell,’ said Steve.

  ‘There you are, then,’ said Arlene. ‘I guess we’re both weird.’

  I listened to this from a few feet away. I admired Mike for the attempt. We all wanted to know the answer.

  Despite it having seemed a harmless conversation, it affected Arlene deeply. She got up from her stool, and went to sit on another stool, apart from us. There was a theatricality to her movement, but no petulance. She sat there, looking a little the other way, that’s to say between full face and profile, with every known misery in her expression. As we half watched her, pretending not to, we waited for the tears to fall.

  They didn’t, to begin with. They lay dammed behind large, flat, dark eyes, no escape route open. Tear ducts seemed blocked as autumn streams, debris lining their beds, the dryness of summer months breaking the habits of moisture. Then, after several minutes, the pressure became irresistible and the waters found weak points in the mortar and crumbled her defences.

  If I were a religious man, I could say they were tears of pity for the world, the tears of a Madonna. I am not a religious man, or not in that way. We aren’t, around here; not in that way. We know what life is like and we don’t cry about it. We were taught self-sufficiency by our ancestors, who learned it from experience. We have broad shoulders, but not broad enough to carry the world. Our own problems are a sufficient burden. We take the hand we’re dealt, uncomplaining, and expect others to do the same. Perhaps we lack sympathy. Like Marcie, I think I’d say that sympathy has its limits. After that you have to get on with stuff.

  ‘You all right, Arlene?’ asked Davy, eventually.

  Arlene looked at him in a considered way. She got up and came to sit on her own stool again. ‘Yeah, I’m OK,’ she said. ‘I guess.’

  We were all guessing, it would appear.

  At some point, someone was going to make a pass at Arlene. Everyone knew it, including Arlene, I imagine. The question was who and when. Of course, it might have happened already, without me knowing. But Marcie would have sensed it, you can be sure of that. It’s safe to say that by mid-March it hadn’t happened. Amongst the regulars, there were two contenders, Davy and Nelson.

  I don’t know what it is with guys. Maybe I was the same when I was younger. I’m sure I was. In the days of Arlene’s early visits, those two were convinced that she came to the bar to see them. They both told me that. I don’t think Arlene was interested in either of them. Even though she ended up with Davy, I don’t think she had more than a passing fondness for him. I believe she was doing what she said she was doing: looking for Jack. But that couldn’t have occupied all her time. Who knows what she did with the rest of it, when she wasn’t in the bar? I can’t offer a comment on that. But I think she was bored, and I think she was lonely, and I think that Davy helped to pass the time while she was searching. Anyway, that’s conjecture now. At that moment, Davy and Nelson were vying for Arlene’s attention, and I would have said that Davy was ahead by a length or two. It was surely no coincidence that, on an evening when he was absent, Nelson decided to stake his claim before he found that the gold was already mined.

  Nelson was in an expansive mood that night, buying drinks for all and sundry, for once appearing to talk about something other than himself. Technically speaking, he might not have been buying the drinks. When he first started coming here, Nelson asked for the till receipts, to the point where I handed them over without him needing to make the request. He was not alone in that but, since his job is running a charity, I took a suspicious view of it. Technically speaking, it might have been the donors to Nelson’s charity who were footing the bill that night. Failing tha
t, it might have been us taxpayers. Whoever it was, we got free drinks.

  ‘I’m coming under a lot of pressure at the moment,’ he said, once he’d got tired of not talking about himself.

  This was one of Nelson’s many irritating habits. He made these enigmatic statements that obliged you to seek clarification, which made it sound as though you were interested in the answer, which then gave him permission to talk about himself for the next hour. Steve was better at playing the patsy for Nelson than I was.

  ‘Why’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘They want me to run again.’

  ‘For Congress?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Who’s “they”?’ asked Arlene. Oh, no, Arlene. That’s what he wants you to ask. I should have warned you. Don’t listen to a word he says. It’s bullshit.

  ‘I shouldn’t really say,’ said Nelson. ‘The party bosses. I can’t be more specific than that.’ He looked at Arlene, anticipating the next question.

  ‘Politics sucks,’ said Arlene. Yes, Arlene. That’s my girl. I’ve said that to Nelson a thousand times. It sounds so much better when you say it.

  Nelson laughed in a way that suggested he thought Arlene was joking. That was because he did think Arlene was joking. For one thing, he thought that no one could seriously believe that politics sucked. For another, since Arlene had come to the bar because she was infatuated with him, obviously she wouldn’t be dismissive of a subject so dear to his heart. Nelson concluded that Arlene must want to hear more of politics, and of his own political achievements. So he began to answer the questions he had prompted Arlene to ask, and which she hadn’t. This could have continued for the rest of the evening but, after a few minutes, Arlene set down her unfinished glass, smiled sweetly, said, ‘See you, guys,’ and headed for the door.

  Nelson laughed again. ‘I like a woman who plays hard to get,’ he said.

  ‘Nelson,’ I said. ‘Arlene isn’t playing hard to get. She is hard to get. For you, she’s impossible to get.’

  ‘For anyone, I’d have thought,’ said Marcie. She put her hands on her hips for emphasis, the way that Ollie Hardy did. That’s another of her mannerisms. She’s always doing that.

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Nelson. ‘I’ll show you.’ He strode out through the doors.

  We didn’t see them again that night. When Nelson next came in, he had a scratch down his face. Davy, who didn’t know the story, asked him the cause of it. Nelson didn’t answer directly, but gave the impression it was the result of a night of wild lovemaking. The fact that he winked at Steve and me was meant to implicate Arlene. When Arlene came in herself a little while later, she ignored Nelson. On reflection, that was the night that she started to take an interest in Davy. On further reflection, it was Arlene who made the first move, not that Davy was raising objections. By the end of March, they were an item.

  It’s strange this business of who ends up with who, and how. Admittedly, Arlene didn’t end up with Davy long term but, if she had, it could have been partly because of what Nelson did or said in the parking lot. When I first started dating Marcie, it had to do with what had happened to her with someone else, not that I knew that at the time. It’s timing and coincidence, that’s all. Collisions and near misses. Nothing else.

  I’ve not said much about Davy till now. The first time he came into the bar, he was unconscious. I’ve known customers who arrived vertical and left horizontal. This was the only time it happened the other way around. What occurred, I discovered later, was that there were these four guys, Davy being one of them, having a debate on a street corner in town. They decided to adjourn the argument to a bar. One of the four occasionally drank here, so this is where they came, in the same car. During the journey, the argument became more heated, so that when they spilled out into my parking lot, a fight commenced. We heard the noise from the bar, stepped outside as quick as we could, and got ourselves ringside seats for the bout. It didn’t last long. Davy got knocked cold. The others decided enough was enough, picked him up, carried him into the bar and laid him on a table.

  Marcie got the first-aid box and I went to call the cops. The other three were anxious I shouldn’t do that and began fiddling in their pockets for twenty-dollar bills. The more bills got produced, the more I could see their point. Then Davy came round, sat up on the table, realized what was happening, and added his vote to the no-cops lobby. Marcie patched him up and gave him a brandy. Two of the protagonists disappeared in the car, and I called a cab to take Davy and the fourth guy away. We gossiped about it the next few nights and thought that was the end of it.

  A week or so later, Davy showed up again on his own, face still the worse for wear, holding a bunch of cheap flowers as a thank-you gift for Marcie. That was a courteous gesture, so I stood him a beer and he ended up staying the rest of the evening. By the end of the month, Davy was a regular. That was two years ago.

  To start with, he said nothing about himself, except that he’d recently come to live and work in town, but wasn’t from these parts. We knew that already. After a while, he was forced to tell us more. Forced by peer pressure, I mean. The fact is that you can hold back for a few evenings. You can’t do it for ever. Being a regular in a bar is like joining a poker syndicate: there’s a stake to get you into the game. Once you’ve laid it down, you don’t have to raise it, and you don’t have to meet another guy’s raise, but the opening stake has to be sitting there on the table. Davy sussed that after a while. Perhaps he’d never been a regular in a bar before. Or in a poker school.

  None of us believed the story Davy told, or not all of it. He must have been early forties when he made his debut with us. He was tall, good-looking and alert. Sandy hair, thinning. He looked like a regular guy, the sort you’d expect to be married with a kid or two. On the waiting list at the country club, that sort of thing. He seemed bright enough. Marcie and I guessed he had some middle-ranking executive position. Davy didn’t confirm these assumptions. What he did confirm was the one thing we already knew: he had a temper. It was Nelson who first got under Davy’s skin when he tried to tease some information from him. This was ironic, because there was plenty we didn’t know about Nelson, or weren’t sure of.

  ‘Your wife work?’ he asked one evening.

  ‘I don’t have a wife,’ said Davy.

  ‘Split up, huh?’

  ‘Never married,’ said Davy. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’

  Nelson stared at the band of pale skin on Davy’s wedding finger. ‘Amazing what birthmarks people are born with,’ he said.

  That set Davy off. We learned in time that sarcasm and Davy didn’t rub along too well, specially when the sarcasm was at his expense. His face reddened. He got up from his stool, knocking it over, and moved to grab Nelson by the lapels. Nelson handled things well. He didn’t react, just sat there unruffled. Big guys can afford to do that. Davy, realizing that it took two to have a fight and only one contestant had signed the contract, extricated himself from the situation, righted his stool and sat on it again.

  ‘We don’t have fights in here,’ I said. ‘Ever. I’m not counting the first time, because that was outside. Your first fight in here is your last. Is that clear, Davy?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said Davy. ‘I’m sorry, guys. I’m a little over-sensitive right now.’

  The trouble with this exchange was that it shut the door on the substantive issues. We couldn’t easily raise the subject again. We didn’t believe he’d never been married. We didn’t believe that the photo in his wallet was of his niece and nephew. The others thought the kids both looked like Davy. I didn’t like to look at the picture myself. We played along with the fictions because, short of telling Davy he was a liar, there was no choice.

  The question of his employment was resolved more easily. He said he worked as a pump attendant on the other side of town. We didn’t believe that either, until Mike found him at the gas station one day. The job surprised Marcie and me. We thought he’d have something better t
han that. Davy must have felt the same way. He did it for a few months, then found another position. So it went on: a new job every few months, each one a little better than the last.

  I don’t know how much of Davy’s affair with Arlene took place away from the bar, but plenty took place within it. For a while, Arlene was in three or four nights a week, and Davy was in every night, waiting to see if Arlene would show. He never seemed to know if she would or not. They didn’t appear to make prior arrangements. The nights that Arlene came, the two of them would sit together in a far corner, in rapt attention, wrapped up in each other. Sometimes, when they had sunk a few drinks, they would sing songs together, quietly, almost under their breath. Old songs, songs that must have meant something to them once, when they were young, when the world had seemed kinder. Not ‘My Guy’, obviously. They could pass an evening doing that. The first few times, people looked at them, surprised at the performance, or straining to catch the melody. After a while, no one paid them any mind.

  I asked Davy why they did it. ‘Better than talking,’ he said. At the time, I thought he meant he didn’t like talking to Arlene, or they didn’t have much to say to each other. I don’t think that was true. Other nights, they talked the whole time. I think he meant his reply literally: that they liked the talking, but liked the singing better. Perhaps they found they could sing things to each other that they could not say. Perhaps the melodies took them to happier corners of respective memories and let them linger there for the evening.

  Before Arlene, Davy was one of the guys, one of the regulars who would sit at his place at the bar, chewing the fat with the rest of us. After Arlene, Davy was a man apart: he was the one who talked to Arlene, and the two of them sat at their own table. We didn’t talk to her so much, after that. There were two vacant stools at the regulars’ end of the bar: Davy had removed himself from the group. There was no difficulty that I noticed. Everyone greeted him in the old way, and he them. But it was different.