Chapter One
When I Woke Up This Morning, Everything I Had Was Gone
The man I want to tell you about, the one I met at the bar at Jimmy’s Steak
House, was on a tear. Hardly surprising, since this was a bar, after all, and
what do people do at bars except drink, and one drink leads to another-and if
you’re in a certain frame of mind, I suppose, you don’t stop for a day or two or
maybe more. But this man-he was in his forties, tall, no fat on him, dressed in
a pair of stained Dockers and a navy blue sweatshirt cut off raggedly at the
elbows-seemed to have been going at it steadily for weeks, months even.
It was a Saturday night, rain sizzling in the streets and steaming down the
windows, the dinner crowd beginning to rouse themselves over decaf, cheesecake
and V.S.O.P. and the regulars drifting in to look the women over and wait for
the band to set up in the corner. I was new in town. I had no date, no wife, no
friends. I was on something of a tear myself-a mini-tear, I guess you’d call
it. The night before I’d gone out with one of my co-workers from the office,
who, like me, was recently divorced, and we had dinner, went to a couple places
afterward. But nothing came out if-she didn’t like me, and I could see that
before we halfway through dinner. I wasn’t her type, whatever that might
have been-and I started feeling sorry for myself, I guess, and drank too much.
When I got up in the morning, I made myself a Bloody Mary with a can of Snap-E-
Tom, a teaspoon of horseradish and two jiggers of vodka, just to clear my head,
then went out to breakfast at a place by the water and drank a glass or two of
Chardonnay with my frittata and homemade duck sausage with fennel, and then I
wandered over to a sports bar and then another place after that, and I never got
any of the errands done I’d been putting off all week-and I didn’t have any
lunch either. Or dinner. And so I drifted into Jimmy’s and there he was, the man
in the sweatshirt, on his tear.
There was a space around him at the bar. He was standing there, the stool
shoved back and away from as if he had no use for comfort, and his lips were
moving, though nobody I could see was talking to him. A flashlight, a notebook
and a cigarette lighter were laid out in front of him on the mahogany bar, and
though Jimmy’s specialized in margaritas-there were eighteen different types of
margaritas on the drinks menu-this man was apparently going the direct route.
Half a glass of beer sat on the counter just south of the flashlight and he was
guarding three empty shot glasses as if he was afraid someone was going to run
off with them. The bar was filling up. There were only two seats available in
the place, one on either side of him. I was feeling a little washed out,
my legs gone heavy on me all of a sudden, and I was thinking I might get a
burger or a steak and fries at the bar. I studied him a moment, considered, then
took the seat to his right and ordered a drink.
Our first communication came half a second later. He tapped my arm, gave me a
long, tunneled look, and made the universal two-fingered gesture for a smoke.
Normally this would have irritated me-the law says you can no longer smoke in a
public place in this state, and in any case I don’t smoke and never have-but I
was on a tear myself, I guess, and just gave him a smile and shrugged my
shoulders. He turned away from me then to flag down the bartender and order
another shot-he was drinking Herradura Gold-and a beer chaser. There was
ritualistic moment during which he took a bite from the wedge of lime the
bartender provided, sprinkled salt onto the webbing between the thumb and index
finger of his left hand, licked it off and threw back the shot, after which
the beer came into play. He exhaled deeply, and then his eyes migrated back to
me. “Nice to see you,” he said, as if we’d known each other for years.
I said it was nice to see him too. The gabble of voices around us seemed to
go up a notch. A woman at the end of the bar began to laugh with a thick,
dredging sound, as if she were bringing something up with great reluctance.
He leaned in confidentially. “You know,” he said, “people drink for a lot of
reasons. You know why I drink? Because I like the taste of it. Sweet and simple.
I like the taste.”
I told him I liked the taste of it too, and then he made a fist and cuffed me
lightly on the meat of the arm. “You’re all right, you know that?” He held out
his hand as if we’d just closed a deal, and I took it. I’ve been in business for
years-for all the years but one since I left college-and it was just a reflex
to give him my name. He didn’t say anything in response, just stared into my
eyes, grinning, until I said, “And what do I call you?”
The man looked past me, his eyes groping toward the red and green neon sign
with its neatly bunched neon palm trees that glowed behind the bar and apprised
everybody of the name of the establishment. It took him a minute, but then he
dropped my hand and said, “Just call me Jimmy.”
(Continues…)
Viking Books
ISBN: 0-670-03435-5
Excerpted from Tooth and Claw
by T. C. Boyle Excerpted by permission.
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