The Talisman

little, Jack walked toward the bar. He was almost there when a flat voice said from behind him, ‘This is a bar. No minors. What are you, stupid? Get out.’
    Jack almost jumped out of his skin. He had been touching the money in his pocket, thinking it would go just as it had at the Golden Spoon: he would sit on a stool, order something, and then ask for the job. It was of course illegal to hire a kid like him – at least without a work permit signed by his parents or a guardian – and that meant they could get him for under the minimum wage. Way under. So the negotiations would start, usually beginning with Story #2 – Jack and the evil Stepfather.
    He whirled around and saw a man sitting alone in one of the booths, looking at him with chilly, contemptuous alertness. The man was thin, but ropes of muscle moved under his white undershirt and along the sides of his neck. He wore baggy white cook’s pants. A paper cap was cocked forward over his left eyebrow. His head was narrow, weasel-like. His hair was cut short, graying at the edges. Between his big hands were a stack of invoices and a Texas Instruments calculator.
    ‘I saw your Help Wanted sign,’ Jack said, but now without much hope. This man was not going to hire him, and Jack was not sure he would want to work for him anyway. This guy looked mean.
    ‘You did, huh?’ the man in the booth said. ‘You must have learned to read on one of the days you weren’t playing hooky.’ There was a package of Phillies Cheroots on the table. He shook one out.
    ‘Well, I didn’t know it was a bar,’ Jack said, taking a step back toward the door. The sunlight seemed to come through the dirty glass and then just fall dead on the floor, as if the Oatley Tap were located in a slightly different dimension. ‘I guess I thought it was . . . you know, a bar and grill. Something like that. I’ll just be going.’
    ‘Come here.’ The man’s brown eyes were looking at him steadily now.
    ‘No, hey, that’s all right,’ Jack said nervously. ‘I’ll just—’
    ‘Come here. Sit down.’ The man popped a wooden match alight with his thumbnail and lit the cigar. A fly which had been preening on his paper hat buzzed away into the darkness. His eyes remained on Jack. ‘I ain’t gonna bite you.’
    Jack came slowly over to the booth, and after a moment he slipped in on the other side and folded his hands in front of him neatly. Some sixty hours later, swamping out the men’s toilet at twelve-thirty in the morning with his sweaty hair hanging in his eyes, Jack thought – no, he knew – that it was his own stupid confidence that had allowed the trap to spring shut (and it had shut the moment he sat down opposite Smokey Updike, although he had not known it then). The Venus flytrap is able to close on its hapless, insectile victims; the pitcher plant, with its delicious smell and its deadly, glassy-smooth sides, only waits for some flying asshole of a bug to buzz on down and inside . . . where it finally drowns in the rainwater the pitcher collects. In Oatley the pitcher was full of beer instead of rainwater – that was the only difference.
    If he had run –
    But he hadn’t run. And maybe, Jack thought, doing his best to meet that cold brown stare, there would be a job here after all. Minette Banberry, the woman who owned and operated the Golden Spoon in Auburn, had been pleasant enough to Jack, had even given him a little hug and a peck of a kiss as well as three thick sandwiches when he left, but he had not been fooled. Pleasantness and even a remote sort of kindness did not preclude a cold interest in profits, or even something very close to outright greed.
    The minimum wage in New York was three dollars and forty cents an hour – that information had been posted in the Golden Spoon’s kitchen by law, on a bright pink piece of paper almost the size of a movie poster. But the short-order cook was a Haitian who spoke little English and was almost surely in the country illegally, Jack thought. The guy cooked like a whiz, though, never allowing the spuds or the fried clams to spend a moment too long in the Fryolaters. The girl who helped Mrs Banberry with the waitressing was pretty but vacant and on a work-release program for the retarded in Rome. In such cases, the minimum wage did not apply, and the lisping, retarded girl told Jack with unfeigned awe that she was getting a dollar and twenty-five cents each hour , and all for her .
    Jack himself was getting a