He was in his early forties. Lean, a little stooped, a little paunchy. He lived on the second floor of the old house, above the bar. The house itself had once been a funeral parlor. Then a speakeasy. Then, and currently, a dive. Stories that were told about Ralph Damien said that he had dropped out of three colleges before joining the army. And turned down an offer to attend Oxford after beating the “head guy” at chess in a London pub. And accepted another to service a society matron in Saratoga Springs when he was nineteen. He wore his dark hair long at a time when most middle-aged men still didn’t, and had a drooping mustache at a time when every college student who could did too. He was languid and sarcastic and worldly-wise, a source for pot and hash as well as for beer and schnapps and tequila-for cheap stereo equipment, sometimes; sometimes for a stash of watches, commemorative gold coins, leather jackets; once for sealed boxes of Chanel No. 5 to take home to your mother.
Like Michael, most of them who hung out at Damien’s were juniors and seniors. Most of them had done at least one semester of student teaching in some smelly local school-in their dress pants and button-downs and ratty, poorly knotted ties. Most of them had a pretty clear idea of what the next few years were going to be like.
But stop into Damien’s at four o’clock in the afternoon with a cold rain falling, and there would be Ralph, a joint burning in an ashtray on the bar, the newspaper spread before him. He’d open the refrigerator in the back room to show off a dozen choice sirloins wrapped in white butcher paper-payback for a favor he’d done someone. He’d berate, leisurely and with a cool amusement, some perspiring liquor salesman in a cheap suit and a hunting jacket who was trying to sell him piss for beer. He’d hunker down at a side table with a pair of locals, his thumb to his jaw, his ringers splayed across his cheek and then rise, laughing, slapping backs. He’d be in Aruba over Christmas, he’d tell the college kids, great little hotel, great little woman waiting for him there, the color of caramel. At ten or eleven on a weekend night, he’d ask, “Anyone want to pump beer for a while?” And then step out from behind the bar to slip his arm around the waist of the woman or the girl who had been waiting on a corner bar stool. He’d bend down first for an openmouthed kiss and then, with his thumb slipped behind her belt, walk her to the stairs.
It never occurred to Michael Keane, to any of them, it seemed, to wonder what women saw in Ralph Damien, this middle-aged townie with his low-slung jeans and paunch and long hair (and-after the Christmas in Aruba-a diamond earring at a time when no middle-aged men, no men they knew of, wore one). The hours Michael had already spent in those green-walled classrooms had given him his own pretty clear idea of what the next few years would be like, but he wasn’t quite ready to believe that he’d be there, polyester dress slacks, frayed button-down, knotted tie, at thirty-five or forty. Better to imagine vaguely a life like Ralph’s, to imitate his weary smile, his cool squint, his way of palming the cash register or the beer pull. His nonchalance when he returned from upstairs with the girl in tow and either threw on the lights for last call or bought shots all around, or just took up one of his own bar stools for the rest of the night, the girl’s hips in his hands, her rump pressed firmly between his skinny legs.
On a night of cold rain turning to sleet late in October, Ralph put an elbow on the bar and slipped his hand under the long blond hair of a girl Michael knew-Caroline. He leaned toward her and she, stepping up on the bar rail, all graceful and delicate in muddy construction boots and blue jeans and an army surplus parka, leaned toward him. They kissed, just briefly, before she stepped back and raised her plastic cup of beer. Ralph lifted his cigarette from the edge of the bar and said, through the smoke, “You guys want to pour for a while tonight?”
He never paid anyone for working but he was generous with free drinks for those who did. Michael turned to the guy beside him to see if he was game. The kid looked blanched. Michael didn’t know him very well. A transfer from Nassau Community, he was observing at the same middle school where Michael was teaching social studies that semester. Michael had introduced him to Damien’s at the beginning of the year and now the kid followed him to the place after school as a matter of course. He was a surfer and didn’t much like the upstate weather, but, Michael thought, a nice enough guy, a little doe-eyed and baby-faced-you’d put him closer to fifteen than twenty-and a heavy but inept drinker, which was the first thing he thought of when he saw the kid’s bleached lips. But then he saw the way he looked down the bar at Caroline.
Michael had passed around a bag of miniature Hershey bars in his class that afternoon, in honor of Halloween, but a lot of the kids had refused to take one-because of their acne or their efforts to be cooler than the student teacher, he couldn’t tell-so he’d brought the extras into Damien’s. He took one now and slid it down the bar to Caroline, who turned as it bumped her elbow. She had one of those wide, clean faces that seem ordinary only on first glance, and beautiful hair. The girls he lived with filled their off-campus firetrap with the smell of hot rollers and singed scalp, but Caroline still wore her hair perfectly straight and nearly waist long. She picked up the candy bar and once again stepped up on the bar rail, leaning to see who had sent it.
“Trick or treat,” Michael told her. There were probably half a dozen backs and elbows and reaching arms in the short space between them, so he leaned forward and said, “Come here for a minute.”
He saw her glance at Ralph before she stepped down again and made her way through the crowd. He could see her smiling as she squeezed through, knowing everyone, having a fine night at Damien’s. She pushed through the crowd, flushed and grinning. She put her hand on his shoulder and he put his to the back of her head, just to feel the heavy silk. It was, he understood, why he’d called her over in the first place.
“You know my buddy here?” Michael asked her because he had momentarily forgotten the kid’s name.
But she shifted her hips a little and dropped her eyes for just a second before she said, “Hi, Terry.”
And Terry looked casually away from her, sipping his beer all nonchalant to say, “How’s it going?”
The crowd pushed her closer and Michael took the opportunity to slip his arm beneath her parka and around her slim waist. “How do you know this lowlife?” he said.
Terry was still looking straight ahead, his right leg jiggling.
“High school,” Caroline said. “We went to Valley Stream Central together.” She smiled at his averted face. There was something regal about her although she was not tall. She shook her hair, brushed some stray electrostatic strands of it off her cheek. The gray fake fur that edged her hood could have been ermine. “We ran into each other his first week here,” she said primly. “When he was thinking about going back home, he was so lonely.” She pouted a little, imitating his loneliness. “I tried to make him feel better,” intimating with her smile a certain benevolence bestowed, back when he was so lonely.
Terry glanced at her from over his shoulder, his color restored.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Nice mouth,” Michael told him even as Caroline sighed and slowly shook her head. “He does it even quicker than he says it,” she said. A few people around them laughed. Charlie Hegi, who was reaching for the bag of Hershey bars, said, “Zing.”
Now Ralph was in front of them, a bottle of tequila in one hand and four shot glasses in the other. “Play nice, children,” he said. Terry swung off the bar stool and immediately someone else took his place. A big guy, made bigger by his long doughboy coat. Bad skin and short arms and a ponytail that smelled unwashed. Bean was what they called him. He seemed to expand to fit whatever space was left for him, bellying up. “Hey, Ralph,” he said, with that false belligerence guys like Bean substituted for wit. “Where the fuck are your decorations? It’s Halloween, man.”