When the sun went down, I checked my e-mail one more time, found nothing, got dressed, pinned my hair back, jogged through the snow, bought a can of soup and beef jerky from a bodega, and walked back in the dark feeling heroic and despondent. Mine was not the usual self-pity, but the kind of fearful admiration one feels watching footage of young tribal boys performing dangerous rites of passage.
I passed by Schoolbells and Soda, a bar where all the young, hip gentrifiers of the neighborhood congregated and, as they tended to do, ignored one another every evening, taking advantage of the Tecate-and-tequila special and the plein air seating with fire pit out back. The interior was all old, weathered wood sourced from Navy Yard scrap, the lamps Edison bulbs hanging from thick ropes, the glasses jam and mason jars. At the time, this was considered innovative design. I’d been a regular there until mid-November, when I got caught refilling my beer glass from the tap myself. I’d actually been stealing beer for weeks and could refill my glass one-handed by then. All I had to do was rise slightly from my barstool, get my glass under the spout, hold the rim with my fingertips, and lower the tap with my thumb. It took two seconds. When the bartender, in his suspenders and bow-tie neck tattoo, caught me in the act, he turned red, shut his eyes, and began to inhale and exhale dramatically, his lips moving as he counted each breath. I recognized this practice as an effort to reduce violent rage. I couldn’t imagine him beating anybody up. He looked like one of those portly, nebbish types who if you shaved him and scrubbed him and dressed him in Van Heusen, you’d discover your cousin Ira, a tax attorney in Montclair. The whole bar hushed. Joanna Newsom yodeled and harped from the speakers. After ten breaths had gone by, I felt I had to do something. So I pulled three dollars out of my wallet and waved them in the air. “I’m happy to pay for the extra beer,” I said. The bartender simply shook his beard and pointed to the door.
Mark loved to convict me of being an alcoholic. The Schoolbells story in particular seemed to arouse him. I made the mistake of recounting it a few days later. He listened attentively, said, “I feel like an opportunity has presented itself,” then made a big fuss about silencing his phone. He went on to explain how embarrassed he’d been at his bachelor party two years ago when I’d made a joke of calling his cousin Daniel “Herr Schindler” in front of all the groomsmen.
“I’m Jewish, Nick. That means something to some of us. And why Schindler? How is that even funny? Do you even know what Schindler looked like? Or were you thinking of the actor in Schindler’s List? Ralph Fiennes?”
“It’s pronounced like ‘rape,’ but with an f,” I said.
“Fuck you,” said Mark.
I nodded. “It wasn’t a great joke, okay? But Dan had been making a big deal about paying for the stripper, blabbing every chance he got, being a Schindler,” I said. “It was a joke about self-interested generosity, the glove-on-the-invisible-hand thing.”
“What invisible-hand thing?”
“Like when people tell you they gave money to a homeless person. The invisible hand of selflessness, only it’s wearing a glove so everyone can see it.”
“You could have called him Queequeg or Alyosha,” Mark said. “But did Schindler really brag? Was he blabbing? Is that the takeaway, that he was a blabber?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was insensitive. I get it. Who is Queequeg?”
“The cannibal from Moby-Dick, idiot.” Mark turned the ringer on his phone back on. “In all seriousness,” he said, “please get a grip on the drinking. Have some self-respect.”
For the six weeks since the incident at Schoolbells, I’d limited my drinking to Fridays and Saturdays, and only beer from bottles, and only alone in my room, safely cast away in my dark corner of the flophouse. As a result of this discipline, I was sleeping better. My morning jogs were faster. My small talk at work was funnier and more enjoyable. When I met Britt Wendt, I wasn’t bloated or burpy. My eyes were clear. I was in prime condition. Such self-improvement was worthy of reward, I thought. And it was Christmas, after all. I stopped in front of Iga, a Polish bar across the street from Schoolbells. I’d passed by it countless times, but I’d never been inside. A buzzer sounded. I pushed on the door.
The place was bigger than I thought it would be. There were a dozen tables with red checkered tablecloths and worn metal chairs with black vinyl seats. The floor was parquet, and my footsteps squeaked as I walked haltingly toward the bar. There was no music on, nothing. A small cat slunk by, then rubbed itself against a stack of old newspapers. A radiator hissed and sputtered. The only light came from neon signs on the walls, and an old light-up beer advertisement with a broken clock. The back wall of the room was covered by a dark curtain. In the corner by the door to the toilet sat a large potted plant and a statuette of Adonis or David or Hercules or somebody, a Santa hat on its head. A middle-aged woman stood behind the bar, smoking a cigarette. Otherwise the place was empty.
“Jewish?” asked the woman, waving her cigarette smoke around with a thick, grubby hand. She seemed a little drunk to me. She asked again. “No Christmas for you. So, Jewish?”
“Well, half,” I said.
She put a cocktail napkin on the bar. Her face under the strange pink light was yellowish and waxy, her hair purple, slightly bouffant, but she was not unattractive for a woman her age. “Half is good. You have both sides. What will you? Beer?” She lowered her voice mockingly. “Ho ho. You are a beer man?” I sat on the stool, put my plastic bag from the bodega on my lap. “Or for your Chrystus half, maybe we celebrate tonight. You know slivovitz?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She poured out two shots from an old water bottle. “This is coming from Warsaw. Homemade,” she said, sliding my glass toward me. “The best.”
“Thank you,” I said, smelling it.
“Very good. Na zdrowie. Ha!” She swallowed hers in one gulp, then coughed and belched. Her eyes filled with tears. “Now you,” she said, pointing her thumb at me.
I drank mine and coughed and cried, too. The stuff was like perfume mixed with battery acid and lighter fluid. She gave me a pint glass of water and offered me a cigarette. I took one. We sat quietly, smoking, me fingering the plastic bag in my lap, her tapping a finger on the bar in time to nothing. After a few minutes, she blew her nose and stared into the crumpled tissue. “I see blood,” she said softly, then tucked the tissue into the cuff of her sweater.