Threshold (8 page)

And this asshole parked on the stool next to him, talking, talking like he’s just invented The Mouth and it needs a test drive; Deacon turns and stares at him, stares hard at the very fat man with greasylong hair and a black T-shirt that reads KILL ALL THE MOTHERFUCKERS, happy clown face and KILL ALL THE MOTHERFUCKERS in drippy red letters. The fat man has a zit at the left corner of his mouth as big as a peanut and skin the cheesewhite color of something washed up on a beach. The fat man slurps at his beer and is talking again before he’s even swallowed.

“Now, don’t
think
they’re gonna stop with the faggots and niggers,” the fat man says. “All this AIDS shit, that’s just a smoke screen, you know, what you might call a red herring to get us all lookin’ off the other way while they get the
big
guns in place, while they get FEMA and the fuckin’ EPA and the fuckin’ FBI all workin’
together
. . . .”

And every single word from the man’s mouth like a threepenny nail hammered between Deacon’s eyeballs, and he glances over to Sheryl, railthin girl mopping lazily at the bar with a gray rag, and she’s not even pretending to listen to the fat man anymore, so you’d think the asshole would get a clue and shut the hell up.

“Oh man, you don’t even want to get me started on AIDS,” the fat man says, and the happy clown face jiggles like cottonblack Jell-O. “You get me started on AIDS and I’ll be here until Gabriel blows his horn, I fuckin’ swear. You wanna know how much money, how much of
our
tax dollars, goes into so-called AIDS research? You wanna hear how we’ve had the goddamn vaccine since 1975?”

Deacon lifts his mug, pisscheap beer gone lukewarm, but he has to pace himself, better to spend the whole afternoon sipping flat, lukewarm beer than run out of cash with half the day left to go. He swallows, wipes the scabbed knuckles of one hand across his chin, stubble there like sandpaper to remind him he’s forgotten to shave again.

“Are you as tired of listening to this guy as I am?” he asks Sheryl. She stops mopping the bar and glances at Deacon, cautious glance that says Maybe it’s better just to listen until the asshole gets tired and goes away, better because she knows Deacon, and Jesus, her shift’s over in another thirty minutes and she’d rather make it until three without a fight. All that in her tired green eyes like dusty emeralds, and Deacon nods, sets his mug down; Sheryl sighs, loud, resigned sigh, and goes back to her gray bar rag and the countertop like maybe nothing will happen if she isn’t watching. Deacon turns to the fat man, jabs one thumb towards Sheryl.

“The lady’s getting tired of listening to you, buddy,” he says, and immediately, “I did
not
say that, Deke, you son of a bitch,” Sheryl sounding more annoyed than worried, and Deacon Silvey’s glad it’s the fat man he’s telling to shut up instead of the bartender.

But the fat man has stopped talking, stares wide-eyed at Deacon like he’s some exotic species of fungus sprouting from the bar stool. “What d’you say to me?” he says, and his tongue flicks past chapped lips, licks nervously at the huge zit.

“Of course,
she’s
way too polite to tell you to shut the fuck up. But that’s what she’s thinking. Ordinarily, I’d just sit here, drink my beer, and mind my own goddamn business. Figure, hey, you know, if the girl’s gonna work in a dive like this, she has to expect to listen to creeps like you. Am I right?”

Not a peep from the fat man now, just his doughy face changing color, turning the shade of funeral-parlor carnations, and Sheryl tosses her rag somewhere beneath the edge of the bar, snakehiss between her teeth that might have been a word or only anger looking for a way out.

“I swear to God, Deke, you start a fight with this guy on
my
shift and
I’m
gonna call the cops,” sounding like she means it, already reaching for the telephone beside the register, and the fat man still hasn’t said anything else.

“So we’re cool then?” and Deacon almost manages half a grimace, his head hurting way too much to smile, but one eyebrow cocked like a pistol. “You’re gonna save the rest of your cut-rate, anti-Semite, conspiracy-theory bullshit for somebody that cares, okay?”

“You’re some kinda faggot, ain’t you,” the fat man says, not asking, telling, and now his face is almost the exact color of strawberry preserves.

“Hey buddy, seriously,” Deacon says, pointing a finger at the guy’s forehead. “If you don’t calm down I think you’re gonna blow a corpuscle or something—”

“I’m picking up the phone, Deke. Do you
see
me picking up the motherfucking telephone?” and “Yeah,” he says, “I see, and I know you mean it, Sheryl,” enough calm in his voice to keep her from dialing the police for at least another fifteen or twenty seconds, so she just stands there, holding the receiver, glaring at him and chewing at the stainless steel ring in her lower lip.

“But we’re not gonna
need
the cops, are we, buddy?” Deacon asks the fat man, and now everyone else in the bar is watching, all those booze-and-smoke bleary eyes squinting from the shadows, all those faces waiting to see how much more interesting this is going to get.

“You’re gonna need a meat wagon, you say one more word to me, you crazy Jew fairy,” the fat man growls. “I don’t have to sit here, in a public place, and get myself verbally assaulted ’cause you believe everything
they
want you to believe. Jesus, I oughta have my fuckin’ head examined, even comin’ in a place like this.”

And Deacon’s up and moving then, hands faster than the eye, too fast for the fat man to do anything much but make a small squeaking sound, stepped-on mouse sort of sound, and then Deacon’s left fist is tangled deep in the man’s long hair, right hand holding tight to the seat of his baggy jeans. Almost like the fat man’s suspended on piano wires no one can see, dangling weightless, half an inch off the dirty tile as Deacon shoves him towards the door. The fat man hasn’t turned loose of his beer mug, and he’s trying to use it as a weapon, cut-glass cudgel flailing side to side and beer splashing the walls, splashing Deacon until the man manages to hit himself in the head with the mug and yelps.

Six, maybe seven feet left before the closed door, and there’s already blood streaming down the man’s face, blood in his eyes, and Deacon is beginning to wonder in a sluggish, drunken way if he’s strong enough, or the man’s heavy enough, if there’s enough velocity, enough momentum, to break through the redpainted glass. But a skinny kid in a yellow Curious George shirt opens the door, quick sidestep as the fat man sails out of The Plaza and into the brilliant July afternoon, trips on the sidewalk and lands on his ass in the middle of the street.

Deacon quickly pulls the door closed again, turns the dead bolt fast, and for a moment they can all hear the man cursing, bellowing out there in the heat about papists and homos and fucking space aliens before the screech of tires drowns him out, car-horn blat like an exclamation point; Deke thanks the skinny guy who opened the door, stares a second at his banana-colored shirt, and then heads slowly back to his stool at the bar.

“You’re crazy,” Sheryl grumbles, still holding the telephone receiver. “One day, you’re gonna pull that shit with the wrong guy and get your sorry punk ass kicked to hell and back. You know that, don’t you?”

And yeah, he says, yeah, sure, whatever you say, boss lady, but she’s setting the receiver back in its cradle, anger traded for disgust, pouring him another beer even though he hasn’t asked for it and there’s still at least three inches of the waterthin draft left in his mug.

“On the house, you crazy fuckin’ drunk,” she says, frowning, and Deacon Silvey finishes off the warm beer before he lets himself start on the cold.

Ask Deacon Silvey where and when his life first landed in the shitter, how it got there and never really climbed out again, and every time he’ll point to an October afternoon and the ratmaze-neat Atlanta suburb where he grew up, October 1970, when he was eight years old and his mother lost her car keys. Had promised to take him to the movies, and he can never remember which movie, never mind, it doesn’t matter, but she’d promised, and then she couldn’t find the car keys. His father out back raking leaves and his mother searching the house, annoyed, probing under sofa cushions and then down on her knees to peer beneath the recliner, beneath the china cabinet, Deacon watching the clock, and pretty soon it wouldn’t matter, another ten minutes and it would be too late to make the matinee, anyway.

So Deacon going to her purse on the coffee table, then, because that’s where the keys
should
have been, that’s all, opening the metal catch and the pungent smell of new patent leather before he began to feel sick, suddensharp pain at his temples, stomach rolling, and when Deacon opened his eyes he was lying on the carpet staring up at his mother bending over him, the pinched look on her face that said she was scared to death, and “Deke, oh god, honey, are you okay? What happened?” and he told her that the car keys were in the pocket of her coat. Long and silent second as her expression changed from worry to confusion, finally helping him up off the floor, and Deacon’s legs unsteady, helping him to the sofa, and, “They’re in there, Momma. Really,” he said. And they were, right where she’d left them the night before. “How’d you know that, Deke?” but it didn’t matter because his head hurt too much to go to the movies, hurt so bad that he spent the rest of the afternoon in his bedroom with the curtains pulled closed and didn’t even come out for supper.

A trip to the doctor after that, several trips, several doctors, specialists, and after the tests each of them assuring his parents that their son wasn’t epileptic and, no, he didn’t have a brain tumor, either, and neither his mother nor father mentioning the car keys. Like that wasn’t really a part of the story, just the blackout and the headache afterwards. His father complaining about the bills the doctors sent when there was nothing even wrong with the kid, but no one asking Deacon about the keys again, and a month, two months, and the whole thing forgotten by Christmas.

But that was the beginning, that’s where it started, not nearly as dramatic as the story about Davey Barber’s beagle puppy, nothing grisly or sad about lost car keys, and later everyone would always point back to the dead dog, never the sunny afternoon and the lost car keys.

Five minutes left until Sheryl’s shift is over before anyone remembers that Deacon locked the door, convenient amnesia, and then a fist pounding hard on the glass,
bang, bang, bang,
and Deacon thinks maybe it’s the fat guy come back with the cops and so maybe he won’t have to go to work at the laundromat tonight after all. Sheryl glaring at the door and cursing Deacon, glancing up at the Budweiser clock over the bar and cursing because Bunky Tolbert is late again. She steps out from behind the counter and Deacon swivels on his stool, turns to face the door just in case it really is The Second Coming of the Fat Guy.

“You locked the fucking door, Deke,” Sheryl says, then she yells at whoever it is outside to please stop banging on the glass, give her one second for Christ’s sake.

“You ain’t heard nobody complaining,” Deacon says coolly.

“You’re gonna get me fired, you asshole,” she snaps back, door open now, and it’s not the fat guy after all. Just Sadie in black polyester and the eyeliner she never bothers to wash off, easier just to put more on so she always looks a little like an anemic raccoon. Sadie Jasper, with her silver purse shaped like a coffin, and Deacon smiles for her, easy drunken smile, only a little disappointed that it isn’t Mr. Kill-All-The-Motherfuckers and he still has to go to work.

“Hey babe,” he says, and Sadie sits down on the stool next to him, kisses Deacon on the cheek, and she smells like clove cigarettes and vanilla oil, comfortable, safe smells, and “You didn’t happen to see a really fat son of a bitch dead in the street out there, did you?” he asks her. Sadie stares at him with those eyes that still give him the willies every now and then, heavy-lidded and her pale, blue irises surrounded by all that smudged eyeliner and her coalblack hair.