In the Absence of Angels (13 page)

Once or twice Henry and Jack have been known to josh each other over this quirk of Alice’s and Mary Lou’s, but only in the clichés with which men refer to women at the Rainbow, where it is generally conceded that the ladies, all of them sphinxes, are worth the solving at times, but blessedly not here and now. Mostly, however, the two men sit on in silence, accumulating on the abacus of their bar bill an ever huger total of hours they have spent thus together, two eunuchs sitting in a quietude from which trouble has been castrated, at a comfortable, derisive distance from the harem.

This, then, was the way things stood with the four regulars, when Mrs. Henry Lister, on a pink May evening which contrasted, who knows how fiercely, with her sallow day, cut her wrists.

On this particular Monday night, when the phone rang in the booth at the Rainbow, the four men had the bar to themselves. This is often the case on Mondays, for at the Rainbow there is a discernible, taken-for-granted rhythm to the evenings of the week. Sunday is the big night; Denis is rarely able to close the place until four. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are slow; even Henry and Jack may not appear until after ten or perhaps not at all, presumably having gone home for a token dinner and been prevailed upon to stay. Thursdays are pretty normal, and Fridays the bar begins to expand again, with men who drink in a certain propriety, duty-bound, as it were, to honor the inception of the week end. Saturday is a poor night for the regulars, who are shunted out of their niche by celebrants who come (as the four indicate to each other with faint shrugs) apparently from nowhere, and Denis is kept busy shooing minors out of the place. But on Sunday nights the bar really hums, with an added group of familiars who arrive gratefully after the dearth of the day. Meeting on the station platform the morning after, the three regulars (for the judge, of course, does not commute) greet each other with reminiscent shakes of the head, eying each other’s gray gills and red, granular eyelids, and sit at an understanding distance from each other in the smoker, retiring glumly behind their papers. If a man just makes the train by the skin of his teeth, this is the one morning in which he is not chaffed. Even Dicky English has learned to shut his face on Monday mornings.

During this particular first day of the business week, the city streets had been stroked with summer. When the evening train set down its passengers in Northville, it could be seen that the leaves, although still new against the sky, were no longer single and choice. The air had a beautiful, clear expectancy about it, like the inside of a glass bell that was about to be rung. The door of the Rainbow, though not yet screened, had been ajar.

Now, with the bar to themselves, the four were settled restfully on their stools like convalescents from a mutual illness, just able to savor the malted dimness of the place in the safely muted company of their kind. Henry and Jack had been here since train time, the judge was in the middle of his second round, and Dicky had just breezed in.

“Some night last night, eh Denis?” said Dicky.

Denis nodded. He was a profound listener, with a repertoire of silent assent which ranged from the nod to a look of alert, pained sympathy which came, actually, from varicosed veins, but was a great help to his business.

Dicky tipped his hat further back on his head. “Hear Patterson’s still on the town. They say he never did get home.”

“In here about four o’clock for a minute,” said Denis, polishing a glass.

“Better watch himself lately.” Dicky clapped his hands together, raised one to readjust his hat, looked about him minutely as if to search the possibilities of the hour, and let his arm sink around Jack’s neck. “Howja do at the office today pal?”

Jack turned his head carefully within the crook of the encircling arm, and smiled his sweet, ponderous smile. “I died,” he said.

“How about Henry, there? He looks able to sit up and take nourishment?”

Henry screwed his eyes shut appreciatively, but made no answer. Down at the left end of the bar, the judge looked owlishly into an empty glass, Denis moved quickly to replace it with the third and last of his round. And the telephone rang.

No one at the bar flinched in notice, although the telephone rings infrequently at the Rainbow. The phone knew better than to call for any of the men here.

Denis shuffled through the archway into the alcove which held the phone booth and the pinball machine. After a minute he returned, gestured at Henry, and returned to his polishing. Henry pointed at himself with raised eyebrows, shrugged, and walked out to the booth. He was there for some time.

“Da-te-da, da-te-da, da-te-da,” said Dicky, falsetto.

Jack hunched himself over the bar, lit a cigarette, dropped the match on the floor before it was quite dead, and rubbed it out with his shoe.

“Jesus Henry what’s wrong?” said Dicky.

Henry stood in the archway, his face white, his arms dangling uncertainly at his sides. “The police. They took Alice to the hospital.”

Jack lurched to his feet. “Something with the car, Hen?”

“She tried to ...” Henry turned his head from side to side. “She acted all right this morning,” he said on a high note. “She acted perfectly O.K.”

“Drive you down, fella?” said Dicky.

Henry seemed not to have heard him. He reached out and touched the bar surface, moving his hand along as if he expected to find a tab there. “They want to type my blood they said.” He moved toward the door.

“I’ll go with you, Hen.” Jack went toward him, weaving a little.

“No,” said Henry. His eyes returned to focus. He shivered. “No. Don’t do that, Jack.” He went out the door.

“Call me here. Call me if you need me.” There was no answer except the current of air from the swinging door. They heard the splutter of a motor, its outraged whine and diminuendo. Through the door, which remained ajar, came the dark, stealing scents of May. After a minute, Denis walked over and closed it.

“She have a miss, you think?” whispered Dicky. No one answered him.

The judge coughed, and spoke. “Sold them that house they have. Over on Summit. June ’42 it was, just before the rise. Nice little property.” He shook his head, as if he could not be responsible for the way people mishandled the lives to which he had helped them attach a property of value. Then, glancing at the clock, he saw that it was time. Pulling his hat brim lower, he nodded and left.

“Well, guess I’m on my way too,” said Dicky. “Drop you, Jack? Well, see you in the morning then.” He eased himself halfway out the door, then poked his head back in. “Chilly,” he said, shaking his head solemnly, and shut the door behind him.

It can be awkward, drinking alone at a bar. Is the man behind it wholly a servitor at such times, or must recognition be made of the fact that two human beings are together in an otherwise empty room? At such times it is good to be where one is known. Denis sat reading his newspaper, his shell-rims far down on his nose, his presence as sane and reassuring as a night nurse. It was a racing final he read; occasionally he made a mark on it with a pencil, or rose to freshen Jack’s glass. There were no other demands on his attention either from his customer or from the phone. Gradually the room, although it had no fireplace, took on the guttered look of a room in which a fire has died down. When the late freight chuffed by on her way to Newburgh, Denis went to the booth, called a cabby with whom he had an arrangement, shook Jack by the shoulder, and sent him home.

The next day, Dicky English, purveying the news to the smoker, had the field to himself. Henry, of course, was absent, and Jack did not appear for several days. On the second of these, the smoker heard, as the town had already heard, that Mrs. Henry Lister had muffed it. She would survive. This was received as such news is. The suicide attempt which is successful has an awesome achievement about it, before which we quail, but bow. It is a terrible epitaph, but it is one, and its headstone will sooner or later be obscured like any other. But the incompetent who has botched, who has been retrieved against his will, has committed an indecency. He has brought his nakedness not to the tomb, but to the tea table. Later, his existence will fret us like that of the invalid whose ailment death refuses to dignify.

On the morning when Jack returned to the train, it was observed that he had the drained, pearly look of dedication of the man who is on the wagon. No comments were made, since it was known how close Jack had been to Henry — too close, it was assumed, for comfort. Not a few of the other men who had been riding the circuit a little too steadily were, over that week end, unwontedly solicitous of their wives and gardens. But, the following week, when Henry, too, returned to the train, it was plain that the shaft which Mrs. Lister had aimed at her husband, had not only struck glancingly at his friend but had also sheared between the two. Their steps no longer joined naturally with each other’s, when they greeted, it was with the creaking tact of constraint, and although they both were avoiding the Rainbow, they did not do so together.

When Henry, taking his month off early, took his wife down to Atlantic City, both the town and the smoker were relieved. It was felt that he had done the proper thing not only for his wife, but for the community. At present, for instance, it was neither natural to inquire after her, or to neglect to. But for a long time, even after things blew over, Henry would be a constriction on any company he kept — precisely because he had suffered no conventional loss.

Had he done so, however unusually, one could still have offered him the normal currency of condolence. One could have demonstrated one’s fealty at the funeral parlor, or, meeting him at a later date, extended to him, according to the degrees of delicacy and acquaintance, either the mute clasp of the hand, or one of those basso-timbred remarks with which we acknowledge to one another that we are all as dust. Still later, after his sorrow was a little out of its black, one could have propelled him tenderly toward drink, as one propels a widow toward tears. As things were, however, Mrs. Lister, and death, in their brief affair together, had cuckolded Henry, had made of him, moreover, a man whose cuckoldry is known.

During the weeks of Henry’s absence, Jack returned, little by little, to the Rainbow. Each evening he walked in earlier and stayed on later, until, rosy once more, he was back at the old routine. On those evenings when Denis judged him unfit to drive himself home the cabman was called. Or sometimes the cabby checked for himself, in a friendly sort of way.

On one of these evenings, just after Denis had made the call, Jack brought his glass down on the bar with a rap that raised Denis’ startled glance from his paper, and leaned intently over the bar.

“Not the same around here, is it Denis?” he muttered. “Not the same.” He looked into his glass, which he was swiveling in his hand. After a moment he looked up again. “It never will be the same,” he said, in a voice suddenly free of rheum.

Denis, who, in his trade, witnessed few of the soaring denouements of drama, but often administered to its tag-ends and dispersals, kept his own counsel.

On another Monday night, this time late in June, Dicky, the judge, and Jack once more had the bar to themselves. It was again the time of the judge’s second round, and Dicky, again, had just breezed in. There was nothing oddly Aristotelian about this unity of time, space, and character; as must be clear by now, the very predictability of the Rainbow, the very reassurance of the way in which evenings spent there tend to blur into one long, continuous evening, is a part of its stock in trade. This night, however was the one on which Henry Lister chose to return.

When he walked through the door, which was screened now, and had been closed against the humming insect tide of summer, his manner in no way admitted that this was a return, or that there had been, at any time, a choice to be made. Denis, alone of the men there, was not surprised. On the faces of the other friends there was a momentary flash, like that on a mirror turned once against the light and laid flat.

To the right of Jack, who was farthest down the bar, there were three empty stools. Henry sat down on the middle one of these.

“Evening,” said Henry. “Judge …Jack …Dicky …evening.”

From the quiet chorus of greetings, Dicky’s rose with verve. “Well look who’s here! If he isn’t a sight for sore eyes!” He walked over and pumped Henry’s hand with unction. “Looking fit, boy,” he added, in the low, secret tones of allegiance. “Real fit.”

Behind him, the others stared into their drinks, but on Henry’s face there was a singular look of gratitude. It was as if Dicky, in doing what might be expected of Dicky, had shown him that whatever else he had returned for was likely to be here too.

Now the other men began to talk, each punctuating his remarks with the helpful arc of his glass. They said little of local affairs, of all that can happen in a town, or a bar, while some one is away. They talked rather of things in the tenor of the times, of the National League and the American, of the price of government, and the probabilities of war. They spoke of the things people have to keep up to date on, no matter what has happened to them or where they have been.

Time passed, enough for the judge to leave and return for his final call. When the judge was on his last drink of the evening, Henry bought a drink for the crowd, sliding down a stool to the one next to Jack’s. “How about you, judge?” he said. “Break down and have an extra?”

This was an old gambit, and the judge made his accustomed response. “Oh no,” he said, frowning, made for the door, as if frightened, and left. Behind him, the men smiled at each other, taking pleasure in the foibles of their kind. On Henry’s face there was again the look of gratitude.

After a while Dicky went into the alcove to play the pinball game. When the cabman poked his head with an inquiring look, Jack looked down at the floor. “Tell him never mind,” said Henry’s voice over his shoulder. “I’ll drive you home.”

It grew late, but the tawny light in the Rainbow deepened and mellowed, as if it, not the whisky, had the power to turn men rubicund or gray. The silence purred, that silence of the Rainbow which is like the purring of a great tom resting from the rat cries of reality, from the quest for cream, and the squeaky, flagellant voices of women. From time to time came the ratchety-slat of the pinball machine, than which there is no more aimless sound in the world. And after a while, it was the same.