Beware the Solitary Drinker by Cornelius Lehane Read Free Book Online Page B

things.”
    I hadn’t gone back. But I guessed now that Angelina had …or maybe she’d already been there, just protected me from knowing she was more depraved than I thought.
    Rocky, when not a movie mogul, was the super of the building Carl worked in. He came into Oscar’s every night, except the one night a week he went to visit his girlfriend in Staten Island, and drank anywhere from eight to a dozen Dewars. He’d been doing it for twenty years, Oscar told me. I marveled each night that his rotted liver didn’t explode right in front of me. Reuben told me once that the day after Rocky got married he came home and found his wife in bed with someone else. “Right in his own bed,” Oscar said, as if he’d been there. Reuben repeated it, “Right in his own bed.” All of Reuben’s unfaithful wives, it seemed, had enough savoir faire to use someone else’s bed. Rocky had gone to sea after that, worked in the engine rooms of the big ships, studied during his sober times, eventually landed up in New York a stationary engineer peddling sadomasochistic bondage flicks on the side. Other women had acted for him, I knew, none as pretty as Angelina though. I couldn’t guess why any woman would go near him. He was grimy, leering, missing half his teeth, mumbling and drooling and slurring words when he was drunk. He wore the same clothes all week and the cellar smelled of urine from the bottles he pissed in when he was too drunk to get off the couch. Yet other women had gone to him—and now Angelina.
    ***
    On the way back to the city in the dim and shadowy light of the Peter Pan bus, Carl seemed much wiser than I was as he talked about Angelina. I discovered she visited him on many nights and spoke to him for hours at a time, sometimes all night long, in his booth off the lobby of 811. I was surprised by how much he knew about her.
    â€œShe wanted to do things,” Carl said. “She wanted to be a singer. I told her to take lessons, and she did. She was really serious.” Carl was serious also. He wrote for hours every night, had been to writing workshops, had published poems in small magazines. I admired him because he was his own barometer of success. I was even impressed that he liked me; it made me feel that I might not be altogether full of shit.
    â€œWhy did she have such a fucked up thing for men?” I asked, even though the answer no longer made any difference.
    â€œShe said she felt closer to you than anyone she’d ever known.”
    â€œI don’t know what that means.”
    â€œIt’s what she said. It means she hadn’t given up. She said you and I were the only men friends she had and that we’d changed her way of looking at men.”
    â€œGreat,” I said. “Do you think that’s what got her killed?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œDo you know who killed her?”
    â€œNo. She couldn’t stay away from fucked-up men. The part of her she could control, she worked hard on to become something. She really was quite remarkable. But the other part she couldn’t do anything about.”

Chapter Three
    I was off Monday, the day after we got back from the wake in Springfield. On Tuesday night, about half an hour after I got to work, Janet Carter appeared. I saw her through the window walking down Broadway to the bar. She held herself straight when she walked, her arms swinging by her side, taking long strides, her shoulders back. She wore gray slacks and a black jacket that on a man would be called a sports jacket.
    My mind dreaded the sight of her. She meant trouble, no question about it. Yet my heart quickened. I kept my eye on her from the moment I spotted her, lest by some chance she not come in after all. When she opened the door, conversation stopped and heads turned.
    â€œGood evening,” she said, holding out her hand like a businessman again. “Do you remember me?”
    Sitting