The Innocent
Mel was still behind the bar. Matt hadn’t been here in, what, two, three years at least, but Mel still knew him by name. The tavern was a classic dive. You see them everywhere across the United States. Men—mostly, anyway—finishing up whatever job they grinded out were now looking to get a buzz on. If that included some boasting or banter, so be it, but places like this were much more about inebriation than consolation or conversation.
Before his stint in prison Matt would have never gone into a dump like Mel’s. He now liked rougher spots. He was not sure why. The men in here were big with undefined muscle. They wore flannel shirts in the fall and winter, and bowling-gut-emphasizing T-shirts in the spring and summer. They wore jeans year-round. There weren’t many fights in here, but you didn’t walk in a place like this unless you knew how to use your fists.
Matt took a seat on a stool. Mel nodded at him. “Beer?”
“Vodka.”
Mel poured him one. Matt held the glass, looked at it, shook his head. Drinking away his problems. Could he be a bigger cliché? He threw back the vodka and let the warmth coast through him. He nodded for another, but Mel was already on the case. Matt threw that one back too.
He started to feel better. Or to say the same thing in another way: He started to feel less. His eyes slowly swerved from side to side. He felt, as he did in most places, slightly out of place—a spy in enemy territory. He was not really comfortable anywhere anymore—his old softer world or his new hardened one. So he straddled both. Truth was, he was only comfortable—pitiful as it sounded—when he was with Olivia.
Damn her.
Third shot down the hatch. The buzzing started in the base of his skull.
Yo, check out the big man throwing back the booze.
He already felt a bit wobbly. He wanted that. Just make it go away, he thought. Not forever. He wasn’t drinking away the blues. He was postponing them, for just one more night, just until Olivia came home and explained to him why she was in a motel room with another man, why she lied about it, why the guy knew that he had told her about the pictures.
Like that. The little things.
He pointed for another. Mel, rarely one to converse or hand out advice, poured.
“You’re a beautiful man, Mel.”
“Hey, thanks, Matt. I get that a lot, but it still means something, you know?”
Matt smiled and looked at the glass. Just for a night. Just let it go.
A big moose came back from the can, accidentally bumping into Matt as he walked past. Matt startled to, gave the moose the eye. “Watch it,” Matt said.
The moose grunted an apology, diffusing the moment. Matt was almost disappointed. One would think he’d be smarter—that Matt, better than anyone, knew the danger in fisticuffs of any sort—but not tonight. Nope, tonight fisticuffs would be most welcome, yes indeed.
Screw the consequences, right?
He looked for Stephen McGrath’s ghost. He often sat on the next bar stool. But Stephen was nowhere to be found tonight. Good.
Matt was not a good drinker. He knew that. He could not hold his liquor. He was already past buzzed and nearing inebriation. The key, of course, was knowing when to stop—maintaining the high without the aftermath. It was a line many people tried to find. It was a line most tripped over.
Tonight he really didn’t care about the line.
“Another.”
The word came out slurred. He could hear it. It was hostile too. The vodka was making him angry or, more likely, letting him be. He was actually hoping for trouble now, even while he feared it. The anger was making him focus. Or at least that was what he wanted to believe. His thinking was no longer muddled. He knew what he wanted. He wanted to hit someone. He wanted a physical confrontation. It didn’t matter if he crushed someone or someone crushed him.
He didn’t care.
Matt wondered about this—this taste for violence. About its origins. Maybe his old chum Detective Lance Banner was right. Prison changes you. You go in one guy, even if you’re innocent, but you come out. . .
Detective Lance Banner.
The keeper of the Livingston gate, the dumb hick bastard.
Time passed. It was impossible to say how much. He eventually signaled for Mel to come over and total him up. When he hopped off the stool, the inside of Matt’s skull screamed in protest. He grabbed the bar, got his bearings. “Later, Mel.”
“Good seeing you, Matt.”
He weaved his way out, one name ringing repeatedly in his head.
Detective Lance Banner.
Matt remembered an incident in second grade when he and Lance had both been seven. During a recess game of Four Squares—the dumbest game since Tetherball—Lance’s pants had split. What made it worse, what made it one of those wholly horrifying childhood incidents, was that Lance had not worn underwear that day. A nickname had been born, one that Lance hadn’t been able to shake until middle school: “Keep It in Your Pants, Lance.”
Matt laughed out loud.
Then Lance’s voice came back to him: “We have a nice neighborhood here.”
“That so?” Matt said out loud. “Do all the kids wear underwear now, Lance?”
Matt laughed again at his own joke. The noise echoed in the tavern, but nobody looked up.
He pushed the door open. It was night now. He stumbled down the street, still cracking up at his own joke. His car was parked near his house. A couple of his quasi-neighbors stood near it, both drinking out of brown paper bags.
One of the two . . . homeless was the politically correct term they used nowadays, but these guys preferred the old standby winos, called out to him. “Yo, Matt.”
“How are you, Lawrence?”
“Good, man.” He held out the bag. “Need a swig?”
“Nah.”
“Yo.” Lawrence made a waving motion with his hand. “Looks like you been having your fill anyway, huh?”
Matt smiled. He reached into his pocket and peeled off a twenty. “You two get some of the good stuff. On me.”
A broad smile broke out on Lawrence’s face. “Matt, you’s all right.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m very special.”
Lawrence laughed at that one like it was a Richard Pryor special. Matt waved and walked away. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his car keys. He looked at the keys in his hand, at the car, and then he stopped.
He was plastered.
Matt was irrational right now. He was stupid. He’d love to beat the hell out of someone—Lance Banner being number two on his list (Charles Talley was number one, but Matt didn’t know how to find him)—but he was not that stupid. He wouldn’t drive in this condition.