“So I sit there and I am drinking the Bally ale and I am naturally smelling like horse-piss as a result, and after a while I been there what seems like about a week and I am getting hungry again. So I get myself one of Danny’s belly-busters there, that a self-respecting dog would not eat, and I ate it, all them pieces of somebody’s old snow tires and that fuckin’ grease and those goddamned canned green peppers that taste like old green socks, in the fuckin’ roll that if you used it to beat a guy over the head with it, you would fuckin’ kill him, and then naturally I got to drink some more of that ale to settle my stomach and everything, and I stayed there until me and Danny was the last two guys in the joint and he wants to close up so he throws me out.”
“Mean bastard,” Dannaher said.
“Bullshit,” Proctor said. “Guy was doing me a favour. He stayed there, I would’ve stayed there. I would be there now, probably eatin’ another belly-buster and drinking some more ale and ruining my fuckin’ stomach for good. Plus which, I am supposed to be onna diet anyway, for Christ sake. I wonder what the hell that goddamned oil is that they boil up that steak in and throw the peppers in? Is it something they get down the pizza shop from the garbage or something? Jesus Christ, it’s orange. I never saw no meat juice that was orange. And that, that stuff, those bubbles, floating all over it. Looks like the Fort Point Channel down there. I dunno why the fuck I ate that thing. Yes, I do – it’s your fault. You’d’ve been there like you were supposed to be, we could’ve done our business and then I would’ve gone home and I wouldn’t’ve gotten hell from the wife for coming home drunk. Which I was. I was drunk all right.”
“What was the business?” Dannaher said. “See, I was with Clinker and everything, and I didn’t even know what you wanted and everything.”
“Oh,” Proctor said, “it don’t matter. I just wanted to make some plans and stuff. Go over things, give you some money and everything. Doesn’t matter.”
“We can do it now,” Dannaher said.
“Shit, Jimmy,” Proctor said, “shit, no. We can’t do it now. I had to give that money the bank this morning. They got to me before you did, you know? The guy that’s there first? The early bird and all that shit? They got to me first. I don’t give them some interest money, at least, they’re gonna start foreclosing on me. Last night I had it. Tonight I haven’t got it. I haven’t got the stomachache anymore either. I miss the money more. You should’ve been there.” Proctor reached in his pocket and put fifty cents on the tabletop. He started to get up.
“No,” Dannaher said. He put out his hand. “Wait a minute.”
“Why?” Proctor said.
“We can talk about this,” Dannaher said.
The first truck driver dove in through the door like a man escaping from a bear. “Je-zuss,” he said, streaming with rain. The young woman behind the counter cleaned her teeth with her tongue, storing her gum on the left side of her mouth while she worked at the crevices between the teeth on the right, and looked at him with mild interest. He tried to dry his hair with the wet sleeve of his green shirt. He went over to the counter and pulled several paper napkins from the dispenser, using them in a wad to wipe his scalp vigorously. “This goddamned weather,” he said. “It is raining like a bastard out there. Christ, this goddamned weather.”
He sat down heavily on one of the counter stools. “Coffee,” he said. The waitress said, “Regular?” The truck driver said, “Yeah. Cream, sugar.”
The waitress poured a cup of coffee while she finished cleaning her teeth and resumed chewing the gum. She picked a small foil container of lightener from a stainless steel tray where several more containers floated around in ice and water, one of them leaking and turning the water white. “Don’t use cream here,” she said, putting the cup and the service container before him. “This is that sawdust stuff that they just put water in.” The truck driver said, “I don’t care.” She said, “Ya put in your own sugar.” She slid the sugar dispenser to him and resumed staring vacantly across the diner, snapping her gum every so often and looking at her watch every few minutes. “My buddy been in?” the driver said, after swallowing some coffee. She did not look at him. “Don’t know him, mister,” she said. “Lots of guys come in here that’ve got buddies. Can’t remember everybody.”
“No,” the driver said. “He was in here the other night with me. We were both in here, remember? Wears the same kind of uniform I do. Kind of heavyset guy. Red hair. The night it was so warm.”
“Don’t remember him,” she said.
“Oh,” the driver said, “well, he’ll probably be in.”
“Jimma,” Proctor said, “we haven’t got nothing to talk about. I already told you – the bank got the money. I haven’t got no more money right now. I can’t give you no money until we go out and we do it, you know? We got to deliver for the man before I get any more money, and I can’t help it.”
“I was counting on this,” Dannaher said.
“Shit,” Proctor said, “that and fifty cents’ll get you another cup of coffee, Jim. I was counting on you. You didn’t show up. Now I haven’t got your money anymore, which I wouldn’t have if you did show up, but the trouble is, you haven’t got the money – the bank has. I’m gonna have to do this thing myself. Alone. Least I know I can depend on me.”
The second truck driver burst through the door much as the first one. He also was soaked. “Mickey,” the first trucker said. The second trucker shook himself like a dog and dried his face with his bare hands. “Don,” he said, “it’s wetter’n a hot pussy out there tonight.” He took the stool next to Don.
“No shit,” Don said. “You ever see anything like this weather before in your life? I mean, Jesus H. Christ. Day after day, night after night, it just doesn’t stop. It’s awful.”
“Coffee, regular,” Mickey said. “One sugar.”
The waitress snapped her gum and repeated her speech about the synthetic creamer and the sugar. “I don’t give a damn,” Mickey said. “Just gimme the goddamned coffee.”
“Jesus,” the waitress said. “Ya don’t have to jump down my throat, ya know.”
“Ahh, shit,” Mickey said. “I know. I just had a hard night, is all. Fuckin’ roads’re awful out there. Can’t see three feet in front the bumper sometimes.”
“You go up to Chicopee?” Don said.
“That’s affirmative,” Mickey said. “Deadheaded up there like a bat out of fuckin’ hell. Wasn’t rainin” then. Nice day, matter fact. No cops around. No bears in the woods from One-twenty-eight all the way the terminal. Put the hammer down and I didn’t let her up until I hit Ludlow. Naturally, of course, minute I get the load hitched up and I start back, the rain comes in. I tell you, Don, I drove all the way back right in the middle of that goddamned downpour. I’d’ve gotten out of Hyde Park just about forty minutes earlier this morning, I would’ve run ahead of it all the way. Way it was, I got on the double-nickel with the load and the rain got on the double-nickel with me, and we both come all the way back down here together. Son of a bitch.”
“What’d you have?” Don said.
“Detergent and stuff,” Mickey said. “Soap, steel wool, Ajax, stuff like that. It’s all pretty bulky. No trouble, really, no real weight. It’s just that goddamned rain. If there was a Smokey out there tonight, you couldn’t prove it by me. I had all I could do to see my mirrors, and if he saw me, it was all right because I wasn’t doing much of anything. You go to New Beffa?”
“Yeah,” Don said, drinking coffee. “Took a load of cold cuts down, brought a load of Portuguese bread back. Easy run, like you say, ‘cept for the rain.”