The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of by Joseph Hansen Page B

and getting his signals mixed. By phone was not how he wanted to talk to young Jerry. The boy. He wanted to walk in on a television baseball game, a tall can of beer, a bag of potato chips. Or the sleep of innocence. He set the phone on the floor, went into the bathroom where the lights still worked, and splashed his face and the back of his neck with cold water. The beer had left a brown taste. He brushed his teeth and rinsed his mouth. He went back through the tumbled room, pulled shut behind him the unlatchable door, walked along the deck above the white boats rocking asleep at their moorings, and went down the steps.
    Along the wooden waterfront, candle flames fluttered in colored glass chimneys on the outdoor tables at El Pescador. Above the quiet lap of water beneath his feet, sounds of soft laughter reached him, the clink of silver and glassware. A small red neon sign spelled COCKTAILS against a sky beginning to streak with fire colors. There wasn’t time but he wanted a drink anyway. The bar had old curved ship beams, coils of tarry rope, brass ship lanterns. No one sat on the stools. They ate in a farther room where a guitar played—sensible people, people with a grip on their lives, people able to mind their own business. The bartender wore puff sleeves and a silver-embroidered red vest but even with a handlebar mustache he didn’t look like Mexico. He looked like Sioux Falls. Dave asked for a drink and the local telephone directory. He put on his glasses, SANGRE DE CRISTO—MADRONE — LA CALETA . The book still wasn’t thick. But the listing was there—“Orton, Gerald B., 310 Sandbar Rd., LC.”
    A plank gallery hung over the bar. Windows were up there. He could look at the sunset on the water. He took his double whiskey up a spiral iron staircase and sat on a canvas-cushioned nail-keg stool at a barrel table. Outside the windows, gulls stood one-legged on a shake roof. He tasted the drink, lit a cigarette, and looked at the ocean and then into the face of the frail old man he’d seen hours ago, drunk in the patio under the jacaranda tree. Tyree Smith. He sat down. He still wore the age-yellowed white linen suit. He was still drunk. Or drunk again. He was clutching a finger-smeared glass with nothing in it.
    “I don’t want you to misunderstand me,” he said.
    The bartender called from below, “Smith, I thought I told you to get lost. You been sleeping up there? Get down here. Leave the gentleman alone.”
    “The gentleman and I are having a drink.” Smith’s false teeth gave watery clicks. “We’re clearing up a misunderstanding. The gentleman is my guest. You have no right to treat me like a bum. I’ve paid off my bill. Bring us both another drink. Each. Drinks.”
    “We don’t have a misunderstanding,” Dave said.
    “You were at Mona’s gallery. You think I’m some dirty old drunk that goes around molesting women.”
    “I think you’re a good painter,” Dave said.
    Smith closed an eye. It wasn’t a wink. It was an attempt to focus. “Thank you. But you mean ‘was.’” He thought about that and shook his head. “‘Were,’” he said. “‘Were’ a good painter.”
    “Those aren’t old pictures,” Dave said.
    “Just finished,” Smith said. “But the last. No use—you understand me? Best I could do—best I ever did. But too late. Time ran out. Ground shifted on me.”
    The bartender’s heels gonged on the metal stairs. His head and shoulders appeared. He threw Smith a look of disgust and raised his eyebrows at Dave. Dave shook his head and the bartender brought into sight a pair of drinks on a black-lacquer tray painted with floppy cerise flowers. He set the drinks down and Smith struggled in a pocket. When he drew out his fist, coins rattled to the floor, crumpled bills fell. But he held on to one, smoothed it on the table, eyed the man in the red vest with the insolence of wealth. The man in the red vest grunted, made change, picked up Smith’s empty glass, and went