He moved slowly, not rushing, and not wanting to be rushed. He was like the classic man who stopped batting his head against the stone wall and was immensely grateful because the pain had stopped.
When Josh Edwards poked his head into the classroom. Rick did not mind the intrusion. Josh was an adult. Josh was someone to talk to.
“Come on in,” he said.
Josh smiled, the lenses of his glasses catching the late afternoon sun that streamed through the windows, reflecting it wildly, giving him a fiery-eyed look. He came into the room and plunked himself down in the nearest seat, propping his feet up on a desk across the aisle. “Pal,” he said, I’m bushed.”
“Rough day, huh?” Rick said, snapping shut his briefcase.
Josh sighed heavily. “As my sainted father oft remarked while cracking Brazil nuts: this ain’t as simple as it appears.”
“It ain’t,” Rick agreed, smiling. “It most decidedly, emphatically, definitely, goddamn well ain’t.”
“You feel like a beer?” Josh asked abruptly, swinging his feet off the desk and sitting upright, almost bouncing in his seat. His store of energy never failed to surprise Rick. In this past week, he had seen Josh after many a difficult session with the kids. They’d usually meet in the corridor, or in the teachers’ lavatory where they went to catch a smoke between classes. They’d spend about three or four minutes together, and then rush back to their respective classrooms in time for the next assault wave. At the start of each of these brief meetings, Josh always seemed exhausted, just about ready to collapse. But before he went in to greet his next class, he had regained all his pep. He was like a handball that got slapped soundly, only to bounce back more strongly when it hit the wall.
“I don’t know,” Rick said. “Beer...”
“I’ll buy,” Josh offered. “Come on, boy, this is Friday.” He paused and then sang, “No more pencils, no more books, no more...”
“Okay,” Rick said, deciding suddenly. “Let me get my coat.” He walked to the closet at the rear of the room, opened it, and called over his shoulder, “Have to phone my wife, tell her I’ll be a little late.”
Josh nodded solemnly. “Duty bound,” he said. They left the room together, and when Rick had locked up, they went downstairs and punched out. A bunch of boys were standing in one corner of the schoolyard when they stepped out of the building, and Josh glanced at them casually and remarked, “They can’t bear to leave the place. It’s like home to them.”
“Oh, yes,” Rick said. “Oh, my yes.”
“Oh, my ass too,” Josh answered. They smiled and walked across the schoolyard and out past the cyclone fence and onto the sidewalk. They did not look back at the knot of boys in the schoolyard.
Rick felt good. All at once, he felt good. There were no more kids to worry about until Monday. No more dead silences. No strategy to be planned, no offensives to be taken. The prospect of a few beers, even if he wasn’t crazy about beer, seemed like the most delightful idea he’d heard in a long time. In a sudden glow of warmth, he clapped Josh on the shoulder and said, “Brother, am I glad this week is over I”
“Ditto, came the reply,” Josh said.
“Are you familiar with the local bars?” Rick asked. The outing had become a thing of excitement to him. He looked forward to getting it started, anticipating the cool dimness of a bar in the afternoon, the bottles stacked before the mirror, the juke box glowing with bubbling reds and oranges and greens.
“Never been inside one,” Josh said. “We’ll pick the closest one, okay? Beer tastes the same all over.”
“Fine,” Rick said enthusiastically. He walked along beside Josh, feeling unaccountably happy as hell. There was a nice nip in the air, a nip that made him appreciate the rough tweed of his collar at the back of his neck. He wished he smoked a pipe. Autumn was the time for pipes, and he had always secretly envied those broad-shouldered, cleft-chinned characters who smoked pipes so nonchalantly, and who apparently enjoyed them. The tall apartment buildings stood out in firm, afternoon-shadowed relief against the clear sky. They made him feel comfortably hemmed-in, like a soldier walking sentry in the courtyard of a fortress. Damn, he was happy.
They stopped at the first bar they found. A few men sat at the bar, watching the television, sipping at their drinks. It was a quiet place, warm with the glow of a neighborhood drinking spot. He felt immediately at home, and he took off his coat and went to phone Anne, leaving Josh to order.
When he came back to his stool, he was surprised to see two martinis resting on the bar top.
“You go for martinis?” Josh asked.
“Yes, but I thought...”
“Beer is everyday stuff,” Josh said. “Hell, we’ve just completed a week at Manual Trades, and we’re still alive. It calls for more than beer.”
“Suits me fine,” Rick said happily. “But no treat if we’re drinking...”
“I just got a dividend check on my GI insurance,” Josh assured him. “Come on, drink up.”
Rick shrugged and picked up the fragile stemmed glass. “Here’s to our own North Manual Trades Reformatory,” he toasted.
“And to its charming inmates,” Josh added, nodding solemnly.
They tilted the glasses, almost draining them. The martini was dry, and it burned a hole clear down to Rick’s stomach, but he enjoyed it, and he finished the drink with his second pull.
Josh put his own glass down on the bar top and said, “This has been a week, Rick. A mighty week.”
“Are you disappointed?” Rick asked.
Josh seemed to consider this a moment. “Not really,” he said. “No, not disappointed. I think the kids’ll shape up. This is just an adjustment period, I suppose. Me to them, and them to me.” He paused and added, “I hope.”
“They’re not exactly what I’d call ideal students.”
“No, not exactly,” Josh answered, smiling. He poked at his eyeglasses with the forefinger of one hand, lifting them, rubbing at his eye, and then letting them drop onto the bridge of his nose again. “But they’ll come around. I’m not expecting any Einsteins.”
“Another drink?” Rick asked. He remembered abruptly that Josh was paying, and he said, “Look, let me split this, won’t you? Otherwise I’ll be drinking guiltily.”
“Drink all you want,” Josh assured him. “I’m loaded, believe me.”
“Well, all right,” Rick said, signaling the bartender. “He mixes a good drink, this fellow.”
“Does he?” Josh said. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Yes, he does.” The bartender came up, and Rick ordered two more of the same. They sat silently, waiting for the drinks, as if they could not manufacture any further conversation until Josh had commented on the quality of the drinks the fellow mixed. When the martinis came. Rick lifted his glass, but he did not drink until Josh had tasted the mixture.
“Yes,” Josh said, “it is good. Very good.”
“Dry, but good.”
“We’re lacking music,” Josh said. “I like music when I drink. Shouldn’t we have some?”
“Sure,” Rick said. “Why not?”
“All right,” Josh said. He rose and walked to the juke box, fishing a quarter out of his pocket and stabbing at five buttons. He came back to the bar, finished his drink standing, and then straddled the stool again. “I like music. Let’s have another one, shall we?”
He signaled for the bartender, and they heard the whir of the juke as it dropped a record onto the turntable, and then the sudden blast of an orchestra erupted into the room.