 He slept for two days straight, which was to be expected since he had sat by Gloria’s bedside throughout nearly every minute of her final ten days. That sleep, which encompassed two rainy, stormy days and nights, had been a perfect escape and the best rest he had ever had. It had allowed him to dig his way into a deep, dark, still place where he found peace. He didn’t have to talk to anyone or do anything. Most importantly, he didn’t have to think about anything...like what his place in the universe would now be. Gloria had given him not only love but a purpose, a role, something to care about and live for. He hadn’t had that before and didn’t imagine ever finding it again.
Then he had woken up. Abruptly. The sleep was over and, hard as he tried to bring it back, it wouldn’t return. It was Thursday. Looking out the small, dirty kitchen window over the cloudy Bronx tenement skyline, he sipped coffee and nibbled on a piece of stale toast. He thought that if he were a stronger or more thoughtful person he might try to take his own life, just end this existence that now had no meaning. The idea was appealing, but he knew he would never make it happen. After all, his parents had been working-class immigrants from Ireland, not intellectual existentialists from France.
He poured another cup of coffee from the aluminum percolator pot and stirred a teaspoon of sugar into it. He generally liked cream in his coffee too, but what he had in the refrigerator was spoiled. That was okay; the coffee’s bitter blackness seemed appropriate. He lifted the cup to take a sip, but before he did he stared at the orange and blue floral pattern that adorned the white melamine. Gloria had loved these dishes, saying they were both practical and beautiful. Frank had known the Pierre would never use melamine, but he didn’t say anything. Gloria’s sweet naiveté was something he cherished. If she loved these dishes she would have them, and he wouldn’t spoil it for her.
He spent most of the next twelve days–the balance of his involuntary leave of absence–sitting at that table. Going out seemed like too much of an effort, and he wasn’t the kind of man to have anyone in. Gloria had been the spark of life in their marriage, the one who was out and about and meeting and talking and making friends. He was happy to let her do it, and to occasionally accompany her, but he didn’t indulge in that sort of thing himself, preferring solitude and justifying it by pointing out how social he had to be at work.
Some might say it all caught up with him in those weeks after her death, that he was left bereft and sadly alone by virtue of his own introversion and antisocial personality. But in point of fact, he didn’t want anyone around. He thought about the old ditty one of the Café Pierre’s singers regularly crooned with the words, “I’d rather be blue thinking of you than be happy with somebody else.” That pretty much said it all. He preferred the kitchen table, when all was said and done.
Except on Saturday nights. Those were the nights he and Gloria had always gone out. “Our night,” she called it. Sometimes it was a movie, sometimes dinner with friends, sometimes bowling. It didn’t matter. The idea was to be out and together. She loved the out; he loved the together. So, Saturday nights had been special.
In fact, they meant so much to Gloria that Frank had made free Saturdays a condition of his early employment at the Pierre. The powers-that-be had agreed to it because he was a damn good bartender who came from the Algonquin with stunning references. It didn’t hurt that most of the Pierre’s other staff were older and didn’t really care about free Saturday nights.
But ever since the conclusion of his two-week exile, twenty-nine years ago, Frank had insisted on working Saturday nights. That was the one night he could still, to this day, not stand being at home alone.
• • •
So, here he was, working from six until closing, as he did every Saturday night. The Café Pierre had an interesting character on Saturdays. It wasn’t filled with the predictably wacky crowd of regulars he could expect on Mondays, nor was it teeming with tourists or out-of-town businessmen as it was much of the rest of the week. There was instead an eclectic mix of people who had no Saturday night plans and couldn’t stand being alone on the night they would think of as “date night” until they were ninety-nine years old, along with a few after-theater couples who needed a walk and nightcap before turning in, a smattering of single hotel guests who brought work with them in the form of Blackberries, cell phones and even an occasional laptop computer, and the odd and assorted unknown and unknowable individuals who seemed to come in from nowhere and have nothing in particular to do.
How much tending and listening the Saturday crowd would require varied tremendously, week by week. Sometimes the group around the bar was two or three deep; other times the bar was nearly empty, with most everyone preferring a table. Sometimes the crowd was quiet, listening to the entertainment or chatting amiably with companions; other times they were boisterous, raucous and needy.
Tonight’s crowd had been on the quiet side. There was an amorous couple, pretty much just wrapped up in each other and ignoring their surroundings; there was a spillover Monday night regular, the woman from Yale who shared Frank’s late wife’s name Gloria, but went by Glo; there was the gentle jazzman who resembled August Wilson, a man who always sat at the bar and kept to himself; there was a couple who talked quietly to each other and listened to the music; and there was a group of three young women who were part of a bridal party for a wedding being held at the hotel.
Frank’s job tonight had been mostly restricted to mixing and occasionally delivering drinks. Other than for the Yalie, not too much handholding or coddling had been required, and he was rather enjoying the relative serenity after a week that had been taxing, emotionally draining and very odd.
But then Mike came in, the one man who had the unique ability to send a shiver down Frank’s spine, and not metaphorically. He swaggered–and staggered–through the Café Pierre’s front door, walked straight over to the bar and pulled off his leather bomber jacket. He draped it across the back of the bar stool next to Glo, surreptitiously admired the rippling of his bicep tattoos as he leaned over the bar, and barked out an order for an aquavit, his drink of choice.
“Make it a triple,” Mike said loudly, breaking the spell that had been cast upon the room by a tinkling piano and soft alto voice.
“How’s it going, baby?” he asked Glo.
“Okay,” she replied, “but I could use another Manhattan. This one’s about gone, and I’m not nearly drunk enough to go home yet.”
“Bring one for the lady, Frankie,” Mike said.
Frank hated being called “Frankie,” but he was nothing if not the consummate professional, so he just filled the orders and kept quiet.
• • •
“How’d you like to come home with me, Glo?” Mike said after having downed three triples. He was beginning to slur his words.
He’d been sidling up to her all evening, not saying much but also not paying much attention as she droned on and on and on about herself and her tragic life. Frank almost felt like he should give the guy a tip for taking her off his hands.
“That’s not gonna happen,” Glo mumbled. She’d put away four or five drinks herself and was even less articulate than usual. Then she chuckled.
“What the hell’s so funny?” Mike shouted. A look came into his eyes that gave Frank the chills.
Clearly too drunk to be intimidated, Glo chuckled some more. “Just the thought of me coming home with you.” She smiled broadly, her fat red lips turning up at the corners and making her cheeks pouch out. “Why the hell would I do that?”
Mike slammed a tightly-clenched fist down on the bar. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Glo continued to smile, then chuckled some more. Frank wanted to tell her to quit it, to shut up, but instinct told him to stay out of it.
“It means just that. Why the hell would I want to come home with you?”
Mike pulled back his hand as if he was going to slap her; Glo closed her eyes and ducked her head. Mike looked at Frank, then down the bar at all the other people who were watching him, and let his arm drop back to his side. “I can tell you’re attracted to me,” he said quietly to Glo. “You just don’t want to admit it.”
Frank was relieved to see that this time she was wise enough not to chuckle. The incipient slap had apparently sobered her up a bit.
“You’re attracted to me,” Mike said, “because I’m the kind of guy who makes things happen. I don’t just sit around and take what the world dishes out. I’m an in-charge kind of guy. I don’t whine about my past or about my problems the way you do. I don’t bitch about the way the world’s treated me. If I have an issue, I deal with it.”
Glo looked at the bar, then at her drink, then at her hands, as if she was afraid to look Mike in the eye.
“Give me another,” Mike said, motioning to Frank with his empty glass.
Frank nodded, reluctant to give the refill but afraid not to. He poured the last of the aquavit from the bottle, realizing Mike had downed almost the whole thing. He took Mike’s empty glass from the bar and replaced it with the full one.
Mike took a big swig and slammed the glass down on the bar. “You don’t believe me, do you?” he said to Glo.
“Believe what?” she said.
“That I take care of my issues.”
She shrugged. “How would I know?”
He moved closer to her, so that his mouth was no more than a couple of inches from her nose. “I killed a guy,” he said very quietly, but not so quietly that Frank didn’t hear.
Glo seemed more curious than shocked. “That so?”
Mike nodded. “Faggot.”
“You killed a gay guy?” Glo said, holding her empty glass out toward Frank for a refill.
Mike nodded again, with a smug grin plastered across his face.
“Why?” she asked.
“Revenge.”
“He messed with you?”
“Not exactly. His friend messed with my brother. Different kind of revenge.”
Nothing in Frank’s decades behind this bar had prepared him for anything like this. He was relieved that no one else in the place seemed tuned in on the conversation, but wondered if he should call in security. He set Glo’s drink down in front of her.
She sipped it, then said, “How’d you do it?”
“You don’t want to know the details, baby. Suffice it to say I made my point...and pretty well took care of his in the process.” Mike laughed loudly. “Yep, pretty well....”
“Did you use a gun?”
“Knife,” Mike said. “Right here in the park...right over where the fags congregate. The guy pretty much set himself up for me, made himself a perfect target.”
“Who was the guy?” Glo asked.
“Artist. You probably heard about it on TV. Big story.”
“When?”
“While back. Maybe you weren’t in town yet. Last winter.”
Frank felt like he was going to lose his lunch. This asshole had killed Isabelle’s grandson...if he was telling the truth. Or maybe he was making it all up as some sick form of self-aggrandizement. Regardless, Frank knew he had to do something. He walked away from the bar, trying to appear casual.
He went across the Rotunda and down the long corridor to the lobby where he found Angus, the plain-clothes security man, talking with one of the front desk staff. Frank explained what he’d overheard.
“I’ll call the cops,” Angus said, “but we’ve got to get the guy out of the bar. You know whose heads are going to roll if the folks upstairs hear we made a scene in the hotel.”
Frank nodded.
“If you can get him to step outside, I’ll make sure the cops meet him there.”
So, Frank went out the lobby door, hung around in the cool night air for a minute to clear his head, then went around to the Café entrance and waited for the cops to arrive. As soon as they pulled up in front of the Café’s gold and white awning, Angus appeared and nodded to Frank. “Get him out here.”
Frank went back to the bar and approached Mike. “You’re Mike, right?” They’d never actually been introduced.
“’Course.”
“A friend of yours is waiting outside,” Frank said. “She says she doesn’t want come in.”
Mike looked puzzled but a little pleased, no doubt glad to have Glo hear that a woman was looking for him. “Be right back....maybe,” he said to Glo with a wink, and walked through the Café and out the door.
• • •
“Thanks for your help,” the policeman said when he returned to the bar a couple hours after taking Mike away. Frank was in the process of closing up. “He seems to be our guy. He’s not just confessing, he’s bragging. Pathetic damn fool.”
“How do you know he’s not some kook who read about the murder and decided he’d like the glory?” Frank asked.
“He knew some pretty important facts that hadn’t been publicized, and everything he said jibed with what we know,” the cop said, “not that I’m pre-judging, of course.” He smiled a big, sarcastic grin. “Innocent ’til proven guilty, and all that.” He rolled his eyes.
“Will you notify the kid’s family...the one who was murdered?” Frank said.
“Yeah, we’ll let the parents know. Probably in the morning.”
“Kid’s grandmother lives here at the hotel,” Frank said.
“No kidding,” the cop said. “Good life.” He looked around at the posh surroundings.
Frank nodded. “Mind if I tell her about this? I don’t want her to read it in tomorrow’s paper or see it on TV.”
“It shouldn’t be there; we probably won’t make a release tonight. But you never know. Could leak out. The press’s been all over this one.”
“So, can I tell her?” Frank persisted. “She’s old, and a little...fragile, if you know what I mean. I just don’t want her to find out the wrong way.” He wasn’t sure why he felt so protective of Isabelle all of a sudden, but the fact was he did.
The cop looked at him and spoke matter-of-factly. “I really can’t keep you from doing that, can I? And we wouldn’t have the guy but for you. So, I guess you can pretty well do what you want on that. Just don’t go blabbing it all over town.”
“Don’t worry,” Frank said. “And my bosses would appreciate it if you didn’t make a big deal of where the guy was when he started bragging tonight...know what I mean?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the cop said, heaving himself off the barstool. “Thanks again, pal.” And he lumbered out of the Café.
• • •
Frank picked up a house phone and asked the operator to connect him to Mrs. Peretti’s room.
“Hello? Who is this?”
Frank could tell from the sound of those few words that he’d roused Isabelle from sleep and that she was afraid. He recalled her telling him about the late-night call she had gotten when Jake was killed, just nine months ago. No wonder she was afraid.
“It’s me, Frank...the bartender downstairs,” he said. “Can I come up for a minute? There’s something I need to tell you.”
There was silence at the other end of the phone for a long moment until Isabelle finally responded. “It’s almost two o’clock...in the morning. Can’t you just tell me by phone?”
“I’d rather tell you in person.”
Another long pause. “Is this really necessary? I’m not dressed.”
“I can wait,” Frank said.
He heard a long sigh. “Give me ten minutes,” she said.
• • •
Isabelle came to the door in a full-length blue silk robe and satin slippers. She had obviously taken time to pull her hair back into its usual neat bun and put on a little face powder; tiny tan flecks spotted her collar. She showed Frank into the living room.
The view of the park at night, with the lights of Central Park West across the way, was breathtaking. Frank couldn’t imagine going to sleep and waking up to such a sight, and couldn’t help thinking about his own view across to the public housing complex with its dirty, graffitied walls and barred windows.
Isabelle motioned for him to sit on the sofa, which he did as he thought about how he’d say what he’d come here to say.
Finally he just said it. “The police have arrested a man they think murdered your grandson.”
Isabelle stared at him. She hadn’t spoken a word since he’d arrived. Her small body sank heavily into the overstuffed chair opposite him. “Who?” she finally said.
“His name is Mike; he was in the bar downstairs.”
“How did they know....?”
“He talked about it.”
“He confessed?”
Frank nodded.
“Why are you telling me this?” Isabelle asked.
“Because I didn’t want you to read about it or see it on TV...just didn’t seem right.”
She sat with her mouth open just a crack and looked at Frank. She took a deep breath and said, “Thank you. You are a good man.”
Frank shook his head, not sure what he was denying. “I’m sorry about all this, Mrs. Peretti,” he said. “Sorry you have to go through all this.”
“I’ve already gone through it,” she said very slowly. “Jake’s dead; he’s not coming back. I’ve learned that. I’ll never understand it or reconcile it, and I’ll always miss him desperately, but I know it and I’ve dealt with it. This is something else entirely. This is, maybe, what they call justice being done...although it’s hard for me to use that word in this context.”
Frank was amazed at her ability to meet this whole thing so calmly.
“There really is no justice in this whole thing,” she continued, musing aloud. “I’ve finally figured that out. Life is not about justice and about people getting what they deserve. Life is much simpler than that; it’s about things happening to you and about dealing with them. Things happen to everyone, randomly and arbitrarily. We deal with them, we all do. The tragedy of Jake’s life is that it was so short...but he dealt with all aspects of it magnificently.”
“Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Peretti?” Frank said.
“You’ve already done me a great service by coming up here and delivering this news. That can’t have been easy. And you’re right; I would not have wanted to learn about this...in any other way.” She managed a small smile. “You are what we once would have called ‘a prince of a man.’ You have been so good to me this week, talking to me, counseling me, helping me deal with the most difficult and confusing things I’ve ever had to cope with.” She gazed into Frank’s eyes. “Who would have ever thought a bartender would have been so much more helpful to me than my priest?”
Frank laughed, not knowing what else to do. He felt his face flush.
“I mean it,” Isabelle said earnestly. “You are a fine man. Your wife is a very lucky woman.”
Frank supposed she said that because he had never removed his wedding band...not in twenty-nine years.
• • •
As he rode the subway up to the Bronx, Frank thought about Mrs. Peretti’s reaction to the news and what she had said about him. Morning was just beginning to dawn by the time he got home, and he noticed that the first rays of sun filtering onto the dirty window pane were actually quite beautiful, more so than when they glinted off sparkly, clean glass.
He made himself a pot of coffee and watched the sun come up. He wanted to believe Mrs. Peretti when she said he had helped her; it meant more to him than he’d ever imagined something like that might. Though he’d always considered himself a professional and fancied himself a counselor of sorts, as any bartender did, he’d thought of himself more as a kibitzer than as someone who might have actually made someone’s life better. For the first time in twenty-nine years, he felt like Gloria might really be proud of him, and he kind of hoped she had been watching tonight.
To be continued....
Judy Pomeranz, an Arlington-based freelance writer, critic and lecturer, is élan’s Contributing Editor for arts and books. In 2003, we published her novella, Lies Beneath the Surface.
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