Empire Falls

pick up a glass of beer just like a human being did, the way that damn thumb curled around. According to the tour guide, the great writer’s cats were much revered; at any rate, they sure had the run of the place. That was what Max liked about the Keys, that pretty damn near everything was tolerated, including Max himself, whose decrepit state, much derided up North, was considered down there the natural, indeed, the inevitable, state of man. In Key West Max was often taken for a local, the ones they called Conchs, and such misguided tourists would happily buy him drinks. Hemingway, being famous, probably never had to buy his own drinks. Which raised an interesting question.
    “Killed himself? Why would he do that?”
    “Probably just woke up one morning and felt the futility of the whole thing,” Horace guessed.
    “What futility?”
    Horace studied his companion. “People have been known to come to that conclusion about their existence, you know. Hell, not all that long ago, the richest man in central Maine blew his brains out right here in Empire Falls.”
    C. B. Whiting, he meant. Charles Beaumont. Charlie. “Twenty-three years ago March,” Max said, aware as soon as the words were out of his mouth that both Horace and Bea were staring at him.
    “How in the world would you know that?” Bea said.
    Max shrugged, as if to suggest that people had a right to know anything they wanted to, this being a free country. Anyway, C. B. Whiting’s killing himself wasn’t even the weird part, to Max’s way of thinking, and he’d thought about it plenty during the past two-plus decades. No, the weird part was that Whiting had taken the time and trouble to come all the way back to Empire Falls when he could have just shot himself in Mexico, where he was living at the time. On the other hand, Max allowed, draining the rest of his beer, a man who’d decided to shoot himself in the head probably wasn’t thinking too clearly in the first place.
    His glass empty again, Max looked over at Horace’s, which was still half full. Max supposed he could try pushing his glass at Bea again, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. You only got one insult-beer per night with Bea, who afterward could insult you for free. Talk about futility.
    “You and I should go down there someday,” he suggested to Horace. “The women all walk around half naked. They don’t mind if you look, either. There’s this one bar down there where the girls take off their bras and panties and nail ’em to the ceiling. You should see it. I’m free, anytime you want to go.”
    “I don’t think so,” Horace said, pushing the twenty toward Bea and signaling to Max Roby his intention to make this a one-draft night. “I might get depressed. Shoot myself in the head.”
    Max saw the gesture and was gravely disappointed. Miffed, too. “Try to miss that thing on your forehead,” he advised. “What a hell of a mess that would make.”
    A FTER H ORACE LEFT , Max downed the last swallow of beer in the other man’s glass and then, annoyed with himself for indulging morbid thoughts, gave himself over to the problem of whom he might entice to accompany him southward. The ideal candidate would own a car and not expect much in the way of gas money from Max. Once in Florida, things would be easier. Once he found a place to stay, he’d get somebody at the Empire Towers to send him his government check at the first of each month. It worried Max a little, the way money evaporated in the Keys. Sun, Max supposed—shining all the while, making you sweat, and it was the sweating made you thirsty. Beer was more expensive down in Florida, but Max much preferred how they served it, with a fresh slice of lime wedged right into the mouth of the sweating bottle. If a man wasn’t careful, he could drink the bottom right out of a Social Security check by mid-month, and then he’d have to scam like mad till the first.
    What Max needed was an honest-to-God live one—somebody with a little dough who was looking to have a good time and didn’t know how. Horace, whom Max had initially cast in this role, wasn’t right, the more he thought about it. Just as well he hadn’t warmed to the idea. He couldn’t imagine trying to explain that damned knot on the man’s forehead everywhere they went. Women, especially, would want to know the story of that purple veiny son of a bitch, at least enough to be reassured it wasn’t contagious.
    Ten years ago there were any number of