Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

one in the bunch. He was the one convinced the others to give me another chance down here.«
    I wondered what he possibly could have done that was so bad, within the context of his family. »Good of him.«
    »He’s staying out of touch this year, though,« he said, smiling. »Long as the race is on.«
    »Probably what his henchmen tell him to do.«
    »They don’t tell him anything he hasn’t told them first.«
    Sometimes you look at somebody and you can almost see the clouds take shape overhead. Jim looked at that instant like the only one to have gotten out of the family alive, and at the same time looked like he wished he hadn’t. »What happened, anyway? What’d you do to them to give ’em such fits?«
    Looking at the ceiling, he stuck out his hands palms up, as if expecting rain, or pleading his case. »The curse of the Irish.«
    I nodded. Say what you would about them but that was one grave the Kennedys always kept clean. »How long you been off the sauce, anyway?«
    »Two years. After the first anniversary they got me the store. Bobby said it was only right. I could live like I wanted down here, long as I was down here. That was the deal.«
    »Good deal?«
    »No room for argument.«
    »So how do you manage?« I asked. »You go to AA?«
    He shook his head. »Long as you know you have to stick with something, you do. Long as you got will power.« With a quick jerk he downed his fizzy like it was a triple highball. Good as any reason to explain the cat’s stare he’d sometimes get, looking into the corner of an empty room as if spotting his own ghosts. Alkys who get with the programme say if you break the habit on your own you’re not really sober, only dry, and they know their stuff. Soon as the shades come down, next thing you know you’re looking at the bottom of a bottle of Old All Bets Are Off. »Knowing about the family,« he said. »That make any difference to you?«
    »How so?« I asked.
    »People have strong opinions about ’em,« he said. »I always worry it carries over. I’m not like them, you know. I never fit in.« I nodded. »Never liked football. Flunked out of Harvard, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Didn’t make any difference downtown, of course.«
    »What’d you want to do?«
    »What I’m doing,« he said. »What I’m doing now, anyway.«
    However often I left my conscience somewhere behind me it always came crawling back, begging to be let in; and I’d always weaken, and throw open the door. No way I could see that Jim could be of any assistance to those DC clowns, no way I’d agree with at any rate. Started thinking I’d let things taper off; tell Martin that the truck wouldn’t start. I was tired of playing their reindeer games, anyway.
    »Lady, stop!« I heard somebody shout. Jim and I turned around to see what was up. The bartender, a white-haired potatohead from the old sod, looked as if he’d just been told his mother was a child molester. Some of the barflies appeared as bumfuzzled but I couldn’t see what had them in such a tizzy. »What the hell, lady, you can’t come in here. Women aren’t –«
    »What’s meant?« Eulie. She stepped between a couple of hulking louts as she sidled into the bar, brushing past elephants terrified by a mouse. Chlojo didn’t appear to have made the scene, else I suspected the patrons wouldn’t have been quite as vocal.
    »Jim,« I said, standing up, »you’ll have to excuse me.«
    »She belong to you?« he asked, smiling as he took in the melodrama.
    »Vice versa. I –«
    »Lady, what is it with you? Please, get out of here. Fucking Jaysus –«
    »See you later, Walter.«
    I shot over to where Eulie stood, slouching as if waiting for the crosstown bus. She had on a bus driver’s jumpsuit, black instead of grey. It looked three sizes too small. Some of the sots were so dumbfounded that they were slumping against the bar, nearly in tears, but a few of the younger – as beefy in head as they were in body – clearly wanted to mix it up.
    »Get your hoor outta here, you fuckin’ idjit,« shouted a balding lout with broken teeth as he shoved me into the bar. The man in the apron leaned over and fixed a lobster claw on the back of my neck, squeezing hard as if he wanted to break it.
    »Get her out of here,« he said. »Bring her in again, you’re eighty-sixed permanent.«
    Eulie grabbed my arm and we stumbled to the door, trying to avoid the imbeciles who kept sticking out their feet to trip us. When we finally got outside we