“Sounds good. You want me to check with Henry?”
“We’ll save that for another occasion.”
“How long will you be here?”
“Don’t know yet,” he said.
After breakfast, we reclaimed our respective vehicles from the parking valet and then he set off for Con Dolan’s house while I continued on to the nearest gas station, where I dropped off my tire. The service bays were closed, but the two mechanics would be in Monday morning, and the fellow manning the pumps said he’d have one of them get on it first thing. He’d call when the tire had been fixed and was ready to be picked up. In the interim, the spare tire, while not optimal, was sufficient to get me around.
That issue out of the way, the job I assigned myself was to round up Dandy and Pearl, who by all accounts were using Felix’s precarious medical state as one more excuse to misbehave. I was reasonably certain the sports bar where they played darts on weekends was one called the Dugout I’d seen on Milagro, a block and a half past the minimart where I’d bought the three packs of cigarettes a lifetime ago.
I found street parking around the corner from the Dugout and hoofed my way back. A judiciously placed waste container had done double duty as a trash can and as a barf receptacle for a patron who’d almost managed to reach it.
The place was open, of course. Ten in the morning on a Sunday was the same as church to some folks. As this was the Pacific time zone, football games being broadcast from the Midwest and the East Coast would soon be underway. The bar itself looked like every other sports bar you’ve ever seen. Booths, free-standing tables and chairs, six big-screen television sets mounted at intervals, each tuned to a different sporting event. The bar itself extended the length of the room on the left-hand side, with stools lined up smartly, most of them occupied. A second room was furnished with foosball tables and pool tables. I caught a glimpse at the rear of a series of dartboards, but no one was throwing at that hour. Twelve men at the bar turned to look at me as I walked in and then went back to their drinks.
The bartender ambled in my direction. He was a middle-aged man, short and stocky, wearing chinos and a vintage jersey of some vague hockey-like sort. He placed a cocktail napkin on the bar in front of me. I said, “I’m looking for Pearl.”
“Too late. Her and Dandy came in yesterday, kicking up a fuss. Now they’re eighty-sixed.”
Being eighty-sixed was the drunkard’s equivalent of being barred for life, though most bar owners would eventually relent.
“You know where they went?”
“Shape they were in, it wasn’t Harbor House. Curfew’s at seven. Last I saw ’em it was two A.M.”
“They were here all that time?”
“They went out for a while and then came back in. Spreading the joy, I guess.”
“What kind of trouble did they make?”
Mockingly, he put a hand to his chin. He twiddled his fingers and looked skyward, as though trying to remember and calculate. “Well, let’s see. Second time they showed up, they started knocking back shots. Dandy’s not a maudlin drunk like she is, but he gets in everyone’s face. He’s a guy who wants to engage in long, rambling chats. Folks don’t want to deal with that. The two of ’em tried throwing darts but neither one could see straight. Pearl fell over backward and busted up a chair and then he weighed in and broke a second one for good luck. She got sick and then he fell down. I should have called the cops at that point, but I got too big a heart.”
“I heard they were on a bender.”
“I can testify to that. Here’s the deaclass="underline" I like Pearl. I wish her the best and I mean that. Who knows what put me where I am and put her on the street? Call it the Fickle Finger of Fate, but she’s wanking on about how everything’s so unfair. I got no patience for that. Like I said to her, I didn’t invent the game and I didn’t make the rules. Maybe it all stinks and I’m sorry as hell, but I got a bar to run.”
“She’s a tough one,” I said, hoping to defuse his irritation and sidestep an argument.
“She says she’s down on her luck but luck’s got nothing to do with it. She makes choices the same as I do. I don’t know if she’s lazy or stupid or mentally ill, and I don’t care. Point is, I got fifteen employees dependent on me, but how the hell can I run a business when Pearl and her ilk come in here and puke all over the place?”
I shook my head, saying, “I hear you” in what I hoped was a sympathetic tone. In truth, I was more interested in their current whereabouts than a history of their bad behavior.
“Fact is, my taxes pay for her room and board and her medical care. You ever think about that? And you know what? My wife got sick and ended up in St. Terry’s for ten days. You want to know how much that cost me? Ninety thousand bucks. I kid you not. I’ll be paying that off until I’m ninety myself. Pearl gets sick? It’s not gonna cost her a dime. They got programs. Shelter and clothing and three meals a day. I should be so unfortunate. Point is, I’m done with her and I’m done with her friend. Tell you something else and this makes no sense: Dandy’s a smart guy. His father taught math at the high school. You ever hear about that?”
“Actually, I did.”
“Dandy could have made something of himself, you know? He decides to take the low road, why does that obligate me?”
I made a few more mouth noises and then excused myself. Raise the subject of the homeless and everybody has a strong opinion. Fifty percent of the local citizens are sympathetic and the other fifty are pissed as hell. Does the problem get solved? No, it does not.
I retrieved my car and headed back down Milagro toward the beach, hanging a right when I reached the small side street where Harbor House was located. Again, I parked the car, hoofed the half block, and went in. The common room was largely empty, but there they were, Pearl and Dandy sprawled on adjacent couches, both of them dead to the world. She had her jacket pulled over her head but her body type was distinct. I couldn’t miss the bulk of her, swaddled in fake leather. Dandy reclined in an upholstered chair, hands clasped across his lap, his legs extended in front of him. He was slack-mouthed and snoring. The air around them smelled of fruitcake.
I found a chair and watched for a while, wondering at the life they led. I couldn’t handle it myself. I don’t have the discipline. I might manage to be idle for half a day and then I’d be back in my routine: getting up at six, jogging my three miles, going into the office, walking up to Rosie’s for a bite to eat. Doing nothing makes me itch. I don’t have the temperament or the strength of character.
After a few moments, Pearl roused herself and sat up. Her face was high-blood-pressure pink, her hair as stiff and dry as straw. She’d bleached it blond once upon a time and what was left had worked its way down to the tips. In the wake of her drinking binge, I could tell that many of her elementary body parts were in full mutiny. I didn’t feel sorry for her, but I could identify to some extent. She must have felt she’d been stricken with a tropical disease, some hideous malady she’d done nothing to deserve. I could see her looking inward, perhaps measuring her nausea level on a scale of one to ten. I would have pegged her at a six and rising.
“How’re you feeling?” I asked.
She said, “Man, oh man.”
She ran a hand across her face and peered at me as though the light hurt her eyes. “Where’d you come from?”
“Back from Bakersfield.”
“How’d it go?”
“Not that well. What about you?”
“I think I picked up that stomach bug that’s going around.”
“It’s a bad one from what I hear.”
She held a hand up. “Hang on a sec.” She pushed herself to her feet. She pressed two fingers against her lips and walked with great purpose toward the ladies’ room, speeding up as she got closer. Even with the door closed, I could hear the misery. Such are the charms of drink. Dandy would be lucky if he managed to sleep for a while, letting his body metabolize the excess alcohol in his poor beleaguered system.