Читать книгу Out of the Storm - M. Saverio Clemente - Страница 11

The Ragged Urchin wasn’t Thomas’s favorite pub. It wasn’t anyone’s. But it was cheap and it was quiet and it was dark. It had food and beer and scotch and tables. It had places to sit and places to piss and it had a middle-aged mother of four with a fat belly and a prosthetic leg to bring you your food and tell you when you were drunk. If you didn’t stare at her leg, she talked to you sweetly. If you asked about her four children, she gave you an extra pickle with your burger. She didn’t expect a tip and always seemed surprised and grateful when she got one. She was pleasant enough and only spoke to customers who spoke to her.

She spoke affectionately of her late husband—how he was a tireless worker and a loving father. It was the work, she often said, that killed him. He’d wanted to be able to send their four children to school. He’d wanted to provide. He worked for them. He died for them. And when he stopped by each week to leave them with her at the end of her Sunday night shift—the court had seen fit to give him custody on weekends—no one asked any questions. To her he was dead. And so he was.

The Ragged Urchin wasn’t Thomas’s favorite pub but it was the pub at which he took his Saturday night dinners. He’d been doing so for almost a year. Before that, he was a regular at another bar which he liked much better. He’d been a regular there for almost a decade. Then the owner fell ill. When his son took over the business, he instituted a number of changes. The dark, dank, quiet, bar where Thomas was accustomed to eating dinner without being bothered became a trendy night club full of twenty-somethings just out of college.

For the first few months, Thomas attempted to ignore the changes. He was the type of man who would rather adapt than go through the hassle of finding a new place. And to some extent, he was successful. The one good thing about humans, he often reminded himself, is that they can get used to anything. Then he would look around his new habitat and remember that it is also the worst thing about humans.

He was forced to find The Ragged Urchin after a slight altercation at his old pub. It was shortly after happy hour one Saturday night and the young crowd was starting to file in. Thomas had just finished eating. He stared at the white head of his beer which tossed and turned along the bottom of his glass like the frothy foam which crashed along the coast the morning after a storm. As he considered whether or not to order another drink, something on the other side of the bar caught his attention. One of the young patrons—just a boy, really—was barking out orders at the frightened girl seated next to him. She had a sweet face and long, brown hair and she looked as if she was about to cry. It was clear by their body language that she and he had entered together and that—as young girls often do—she’d done something to make him jealous. Asserting himself, the boy grabbed her by the arm and began to insist, forcefully, that they leave.

Thomas scanned the bar and noticed that, of the few patrons who had looked up from their phones, no one was willing to intervene. He wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin and got up from the table. He crossed the bar with a few quick strides and, when he reached the frantic couple, dug his fingers into the pressure point located between the boy’s shoulder and his neck. The boy cringed and released the girl instantly. He stood—frozen in place.

“Sir,” said Thomas. “I would appreciate it if you would leave this nice young lady alone.”

He smiled kindly at the girl and noticed that her eyes, red and full of tears, seemed to whisper an unheard thank you.

Then her fist struck Thomas square in the groan. As he doubled over in pain, he looked up at her innocent face. It was red and full of tears.

“Fuck you, old man,” she said. “Mind you own goddamned business.”

“Fuck you, old man,” said the boy and he buried his fist in Thomas’s back.

Thomas fell to the floor. He felt the boy’s boot thump against his ribs. He heard a loud crack. Then he felt nothing. He touched his hand to the back of his head. It was wet. He wasn’t sure if it was blood or perspiration or if they had spit on him. He lay there—beaten and broken.

When the commotion settled and all was said and done, the manager attended to the defeated old man.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said in an unsympathetic voice.

“Makes sense,” said Thomas.

“And don’t come back, you do-goody old fuck,” said the manager as Thomas walked out.

“I could’ve done without that,” Thomas said.

But manager had already closed the door behind him.