So I belched miserably. I raised the scotch glass to my hanging head and sucked in the liquor with a slurping noise. “Aaaaaah,” I said, as I let the glass drop back to the bar. “Wha they have ta dopt me for anyway? Who ast em? Where they get me, fer Crissake?” My eyes filled with tears and I asked myself-I asked the whole arena packed with the audience of my imagination-who there could be, anywhere, more pitiful than I? “Always try’n push their things-their notions on me. Tellin me wha was right, wha was wrong. Li’l, gentle instrushins.” I held up thumb and index finger to show how teensy-weensy my parents’ moral instructions were. “Li’l, li’l lectures bout every fucking little thing. Be nice, be fair, be good. Ah Christ it was unbearable shit. Practically see in their eyes which stupid book they’d been reading, which stupid article in which stupid magazine. Who asked them to dopt me in the first place anyway? Where was my real father? Hanh? Thas wha I wanna know. What am I doing here? Where’s my fucking father? Somebody tell me that, why don’t they.”
“Jesus Christ, Everett.” Neil Gordon sighed. “Go the fuck home, will you.”
I laughed oh so bitterly, lifting my heavy head. “Got no home, Neil-o,” I said. “Neil-o-rama. Got no fucking home.” With some difficulty, I reached into my shirt pocket and removed Barbara’s wedding ring. I rolled it between my fingers, holding it up in the dim barlight. “See? An now my son too. Got no father. My boy, my poor boy, my poor little baby, baby boy … What the hell’s he gonna do? Ruin his life. His fate, see, that’s what I’m talking. No fault o his jus …”
I sniffed pitiably. Neil’s mouth puckered as if he smelled something awful. I held the ring out to him.
“See dat?” I said. “Inside there? Thas her name. Our name. Barbara Everett. Sposed ta be … a fambly! Sposed to be … together. That’s the thing, that’s the heart of … everything. One name. Change yer name ta one. Together, A fambly.” The ring seemed to become too heavy for me to hold up like that and my hand dropped to the bar. As it did, as if I were some sort of mechanical toy with all the parts connected, my other hand rose, bringing the glass to my lips again. I gasped out of the sting of the whisky. I peered into the wavering depths of Neil’s flowered shirt. I did not think I could keep the tears from falling anymore. “I had that name carve into the gold …” I said in a strangled voice. “To be there for … to be there …”
And so I sat, my mouth twisted, gaping, my eyes, full of tears, blinking stupidly into the nauseating whirl of printed flowers. And once again, as I sat, there seemed to be a lifting of the mortal veil, or a drunken skewing of it anyway, to reveal-blurred, unstable, moving toward and away from me at once-the hidden chain of sense behind events. I opened my mouth even wider. My tongue wagged and bulged as I tried to form words to express my revelation.
“Duuuuuuh …” I said.
Neil shook his head, casting a wistful look at the TV again.
“Locket,” I finally managed to say.
“Hm?” said Neil, interested just barely if at all.
“Duuuuuuuh,” I said. “The locket. That locket.”
With which remark, I slid off my stool, catching myself by my elbows on the edge of the bar and hanging there a moment, my chin floating just above the wood, before I clawed and climbed my way back to an upright position. The fall jogged my mind, cleared it somewhat for some few seconds. I cast my gaze over the shelves of shiny bottles, over the red uniforms moving on the televised ballfield, back again to the cool brown eyes behind Neil’s spectacles, trying desperately to focus through the lenses of my own.
“Doncha see?” I asked him. “She’s still wearing the fuckin locket.”
“Who, man? Who are we talking about now?”
“Miz Russel. Warren’s granmother. Can that be? Is that right?” I ran my hand down over my face, rubbing my eyes hard. But the idea would not go away. I stared at Neil. I reached a hand out and clasped his shoulder. “The locket, Neil-o! Jesus. Jesus.”
“Take it easy, Ev.”
“I gotta go. I gotta go. Where am I?”
“Hold on, hold on, you’re drunk.”
“Christ, I know I’m drunk. What’m I, stupid? I’m smashed outta my fucking head. But thas why he shot her, see?”
“Warren’s grandmother?”
“Amy Wilson!”
“What?”
“Doncha see? I saw him. Her father. He was on TV. I saw him. He said-he said the killer tore the locket off her. The one he gave her when she was sixteen. He said that.” Thunderstruck, my grip on the bartender’s shoulder went weak. I let him go, sliding back down onto my stool. “That’s what happened,” I said. “She’d already given Russel the money, but he wanted the locket and that’s why he shot her in the throat. It all makes sense. They gotta see it. What time is it? Where the fuck am I going here?”
“Wait a minute, let me get you some coffee.”
“No, no, no!” I cried, waving my hand at him wildly. “Neil. Jesus. Listen. Listen! It’s all true.”
“Sure it is, buddy. Everything is true. It’s all a matter of how you look at it.”
“Yeah, but this is, like, true true.” I shook my head, wondering. Even I couldn’t believe what I was saying. I tried to think it out, to make sure it wasn’t just the fantasy life of despair. But it was hard to think straight now. The bar heaved and hoed and my stomach heavehoed with it. “He was holding up the store, right? And she gave him the money,” I said to no one in particular. “But then he saw her locket, he wanted her heart locket with the initials on it. For his grandmother, see. Because they were her initials, the same initials. Angela Russel. And Amy said, ‘Please, not that!’ Not the locket. Porterhouse heard her. And Russel shot her-in the throat because he was pointing at the locket with the gun.” I hauled myself to my feet again. “And she’s still wearing the fucking locket. The grandmother. For him, Warren, to remember him. Jesus Christ. What time is it?”
“Five of eleven.”
“Jesus Christ! Put me in my car!”
I took a step-and I tripped on something-a thick piece of air, I think-and the next thing I knew I was on my hands and knees, my glasses hanging sideways across my face, my stomach bubbling thick as lava. Neil was next to me, kneeling next to me. The other guy was there too-the guy who’d been watching TV. The two of them had me by the shoulders. They were helping me to my feet.
“It was her maiden name,” I was mumbling, drool spilling down the side of my mouth. “Her father gave it to her when she was sixteen. Mr. Robertson. It was her maiden name. A.R. And Russel wanted it for his grandmother.”
I grabbed hold of Neil with both hands now as the two men righted me.
“I could do it with the locket, Neil,” I said. “I could show that to Lowenstein. If I could prove it’s Amy’s, if I could prove Warren gave it to his grandmother. That would do it. That would be just enough.”
“Awright, pal, awright, but now you gotta sit down.”
Neil had me by one arm, the other guy was taking hold of the other. The floor beneath my feet seemed an open drain with all the barroom swirling down into it.
But all the same, I broke away from them. My violent twisting movement took them by surprise, my gym-trained muscles broke their hold on me. I stumbled into the center of the room and swung around to face them. The two men moved in on me, poised to spring. I backed away from them toward the door. I righted my glasses.