‘Where the fuck did you learn words like “displacement activity”?’
‘I’m trying to improve myself.’
‘The only way is up.’
‘Just have one, will you? Stop playing with them.’
‘Sorry,’ said Dempsey, and he meant it, but still he kept moving the pack.
Ryan looked at the clock above the bar.
‘You think that clock is right?’
‘If it is, it’s the only thing in here that’s right. Even the jukebox is crooked, and there isn’t a straight edge in the place. Fucking disgrace, is what it is.’
‘It’s old.’
‘It’s not old. Castles are old. France is old. This place isn’t old. It’s just badly built. It’s a hole. It’s worse than a hole. A hole is just empty. This is a hole with junk piled up inside it and deadbeats propping up the walls.’
‘It’s old for around here,’ said Ryan.
‘You have shares in it?’
‘No.’
‘Does your old man own it?’
‘No.’
‘Your mom turn tricks in the men’s room?’
‘No. She couldn’t make enough here to cover the cab fare.’
‘Then what’s it to you if I criticize it, especially if it’s true?’
‘It’s nothing to me.’
A couple in their late twenties at the table behind them laughed loudly and made a joke about Harvard and MIT. They looked too well dressed for the Wanderer, and even without the joke it was clear that they were slumming it for a night. The woman wasn’t bad-looking, but her face was a little too long, and her mouth had too many white teeth for its size. The man wore a striped Ralph Lauren polo shirt, and khakis. His hair was excessively neat, and was held in place by a product that Ryan suspected was not meant to be worn by men. As far as Ryan was concerned, the guy looked like a dick, but although he was younger than Dempsey by six years, Ryan’s attitude toward the world was less combative, and he had learned that if he allowed himself to be riled by every dick he encountered in his daily life he’d be dead of an aneurysm before he reached thirty.
Dempsey scowled at the couple’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar, and Ryan felt his stomach tighten. Sometimes there was no telling how Dempsey might react to even the most innocuous of situations. For now, though, he contented himself with giving them the hard eye.
‘You said it: nothing,’ said Dempsey. ‘That’s what they are to us. This isn’t our neighborhood. These aren’t our people. We can say what we like about them.’
‘I know that,’ said Ryan. ‘You think the clock is right?’
‘Don’t change the subject. You were born where?’
‘Champaign, Illinois.’
‘You ever been back there?’
‘No. My old man was working out there when I was born. Didn’t spend more than a month there before we moved to Southie. I’ve never been back.’
‘Right. Don’t get sentimental about a place that you left when you were a child. Remember what Oscar Wilde said.’
‘Who’s Oscar Wilde?’
‘Jesus. He was a writer.’
‘I never heard of him. That clock must be right. It feels right.’
‘He said that “sentimentality is the bank-holiday of cynicism.”’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘It means that if you’re sentimental you’re really a cynic deep down. You don’t want to be a cynic. I should know.’
‘I’m not sentimental. I just think there are worse places than this.’
‘There are worse places than just about anywhere. That doesn’t mean anything, unless you’re living in the worst place in the world, in which case it can only get better.’
‘Africa.’
‘What?’
‘I figure the worst place is in Africa somewhere, one of those countries where they’re starving and fighting and cutting off limbs. I’ve seen pictures: women with no arms, little children. Animals, they are.’
‘Whatever. We have our share of them here as well. You don’t have to go to Africa to find them.’
‘Can I take a look at your watch? I want to check if that clock is right.’
‘Leave the watch alone. What are you so worried about?’
‘I don’t want us to miss him.’
‘We won’t miss him. In fact, the longer we wait, the less likely we are to miss him.’
‘Hey.’ Ryan beckoned the bartender to him. ‘Is that clock right?’
The bartender sidled over, wiping his hands on a dishcloth that hung by his belt over his crotch. He was skinny and bald, with bad teeth, and had tended bar at the Wanderer for almost two decades. Some said that he could even remember a time when the jukebox worked. He wore a green T-shirt with the bar’s name on the left breast. The T-shirts were not for sale. Then again, nobody had ever tried to buy one.
‘Yeah, I make sure it is. I don’t want to spend a minute longer in here than I have to.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Dempsey. ‘Make the customers feel wanted.’
‘If I make them feel wanted, they’ll stay,’ said the bartender. ‘They’ll try to talk to me. I don’t want the customers talking to me.’
‘Not even me?’
‘Not even you.’
‘Anyone would think that you didn’t want to make any money,’ said Dempsey.
‘Yeah, I was saving up to buy a yacht with my tips, but that dream died.’
‘The clock is right,’ said Ryan. ‘We should go.’
‘Yeah, yeah, all right. Jesus, you’re like an old woman.’
There was more laughter from the couple behind them, louder this time. Dempsey looked back at them over his shoulder. The laughter was silenced, but it was followed by a soft giggle from the woman as the man said something to her. Dempsey took one of the cigarettes from the pack and stuck it between his lips but didn’t light it.
‘You know them?’ he asked the bartender.
‘No,’ said the bartender. ‘But then I don’t know you either.’