The Book of Joe

think it would be in everybody’s best interest if they didn’t have to drink with him. We wouldn’t want an unfortunate incident.”
    “What,” Louis says nervously. “You want I should kick him out?”
    The coach holds up his hands in a placating gesture. “It’s your place, Louis, not mine. You run your business at your own discretion, and no man has any right to tell you how to do that.”
    Louis looks at Dugan for a minute and then turns to me.
    “I think you’d better go,” he says quickly. “It’d be best for all concerned, you know.” Dugan nods at him, beaming like a proud grandfather.
    “Fuck you, Louis,” Wayne says disgustedly. “Grow some balls, would you?”
    “Why, so you can lick them?” someone in the crowd shouts, and the place erupts into malicious laughter.
    “Who said that?” Dugan roars, and the crowd falls instantly silent again. “Who the hell said that?”
    Brad turns to me and says, “Time to go.”
    I nod, and we head for the door, with Wayne trailing behind, cursing and spitting at everyone he passes.
    “You had to go out and get wrecked, didn’t you?” Brad practically shouts at me when we get outside. “You had to go and stir things up.”
    “Hey, he attacked me,” I say weakly.
    “He would have finished you off too,” Brad says angrily, and then snorts incredulously. “You don’t get it, do you? You can’t go running around the Falls like you never wrote that goddamn book. You pissed off too many people.”
    “So nobody likes me,” I say with a defensive shrug. “That isn’t exactly breaking news. I don’t see what you’re so angry about.”
    Brad turns on me, seething. “I live here, you asshole.
    This” - he gestures around at the buildings - “is my home. I realize it’s just literary fodder for you, but I have to face these people every day.”
    “No one asked you to butt in,” I say. “If I want to go out and get my ass kicked, it’s not your problem.”
    He looks hard at me, his face a twisted mask of complex emotions that will never be articulated. At least, I hope they won’t be, because I don’t know if I could stand hearing what Brad really thinks of me right now. At this moment I become aware of two things: that my older brother really doesn’t like me very much and that I want him to. Brad exhales slowly, audibly, shutting his eyes and shaking his head from side to side. “I’m going home,” he says tiredly. He turns and walks away, and I watch him go, disliking myself intensely and thinking that maybe an asshole does realize he’s an asshole at some point after all. There just might not be anything to do about it.
    I turn to Wayne, who’s leaning against the window of the bar, looking terribly skinny and ragged. “You ready to go home?” I say.
    “Nah. It’s just getting good,” he says with a grin, then steps into the street and vomits onto the curb.

Fourteen
    Sobriety is best approached slowly, like a scuba diver emerging from watery depths, stopping to decompress every so often. Having the shit kicked out of you denies you that luxury, slamming you into the brick wall of sobriety all at once, which hurts like hell, placing into excruciatingly sharp focus your newly acquired bruises and lacerations. On the plus side, I feel perfectly capable of driving Wayne and myself home, which I do with exaggerated care, already picturing the gleeful, rat-faced smile on Mouse’s face as he books me for driving under the influence, his mind already sprinting forward to how he’ll tell the story in mock heroic tones over beers the next night.
    There is a tightness in my throat, a warm blockage at the junction of my esophagus and chest, and I realize that I’m holding back tears. I wonder if I’m still in shock from the raw violence of Sean’s unexpected attack or if there’s something deeper going on.
    In the passenger seat, Wayne lies back, a tired, satisfied grin plastered across his gaunt face. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”
    “I’m so glad that my public beating made for good entertainment.”
    “No blood, no foul,” Wayne says.
    “Excuse me - have you seen my face?” I pull the rearview mirror down and examine myself. I have a gash on my left temple where Sean’s punch cut me, and the skin around it is swollen and turning purple. Somewhere in the melee, my nose started to bleed, and my upper lip is now caked with dried blood and feels as if it’s been cemented to my nostrils.
    There is another bruise