He nods, starts to step away.
"Hey Lester, you got a second?" I try not to sound anxious, but I can tell it creeps into my voice by the way he narrows his eyes. He turns back, rests his forearms on the bar. He knows something is coming. You don't get where Lester is without an eye for desperation.
I set the towel down, take a breath. "I was wondering if I could talk to you about a loan."
He raises an eyebrow.
"There's a…" I sigh. "My daughter."
"She okay?"
I think about telling him everything, the cokehead, the locket, everything, but I know it's the wrong move. Lester may hang around after hours, but that doesn't make us friends. He's a big man, a player, a very dangerous guy. If I tell him the situation, it's the same as asking him to help directly. A bad play for a couple of reasons. First, he wouldn't do it. Second, I couldn't afford it if he did. Third, and most important, Jess. If something went wrong…
So I just hold my hands open and look him in the eye. He finally bobs his head. "How much?"
I force myself to say it. He stares at me. Sizing me up. Wondering if I'm for real.
I stare back. My daughter, my daughter, my daughter. The bar noise goes away.
After a minute, Lester scrunches up his mouth. "Frank, you know I like you. But ten grand?"
"I'm good for it."
"Say I give you a friend rate, call it seven-and-a-half. Almost a grand a week, and that's just the juice. You stop eating, stop smoking, give me your whole paycheck, it's what, five? So you owe a full grand the week after. One and a half after that. Just in juice, you understand, I'm not talking principal." Lester shakes his head. "Sooner or later, I'd have to send someone to put your fingers in a car door. Can't do it. I like you too much."
I pick up the rag, start wiping the bar. Truth is, I knew what Lester was going to say. But I had to ask. Now there's only one option. The one thing I said I'd never do again.
My daughter, my daughter, my daughter.
I rub the same circle over and over. "What if I worked it off?"
"Doing what?"
I shrug. "Whatever you need." I look up.
Lester meets my gaze, starts to smile like I've told a joke. Then something creeps into his eyes, but I can't tell what it is. He breaks the stare and looks away. "Come on, Frank."
"I'm serious. You're always saying you need good people."
He turns back, and I realize what I saw on his face.
Embarrassment. Lester White is embarrassed for me.
"When I say that, I'm just, you know. Blowing smoke, playing around." He shrugs. "You were a serious man back in the day, but now …" He waves his hand, and doesn't finish the sentence, which was probably meant as a kindness. Except that I can fill in the blank: Now you're a 51-year-old bartender. That's all you are. The days when you were anything else—an earner, a husband, a father—those days are gone.
There's a lead numbness in my stomach that I've only felt a couple of times. When the judge stole five years of my life away. When Lucy told me the doctors had found a tumor in her head. When my little girl called me to weep into the phone and I couldn't do a goddamn thing about it.
Lester is clearly uncomfortable. He breaks the spell by downing the rest of his scotch, then pulling his roll from his pocket. "Look, don't think I'm a bad guy, though," he says. "Let me help you." He flattens a wad of money a half inch thick, and snaps off three crisp hundreds. As an afterthought, pulls off two more. "Here you go, pal." He smiles at me. Then he sets his empty glass on the bar and gives the tiniest nod towards it.
And, sick to my stomach, I reach for the bottle and do what a bartender is supposed to.
#
Usually a couple of guys would stay after I lock the doors, but tomorrow is Friday, so tonight I kick everybody out. Then I pour myself four inches of Jim Beam, light a smoke, and sit on one of the stools in the dark. Through the front window I can see the snow falling. When the El clatters overhead, orange sparks spray out to shimmer amidst whirling flakes of white.
I'm short ten thousand dollars, and I have until tomorrow morning to get it.
I get off the stool and walk behind the bar, punch open the register. Maybe two dozen twenties, twice as many tens and fives, and a thick stack of singles. Call it a thousand dollars. If I'm lucky. Taking it means losing my job, but that doesn't matter a damn.
But it doesn't matter, because a thousand dollars isn't ten.
I crush my square and light another. Suck hard, picture the smoke twisting and curling into my lungs. I tap my lighter against the bar and I take a belt of the bourbon and I think about the way my feet feel like someone is scraping barbed wire across my heels and I watch the sparks and snow mingle and none of it helps relieve the thought that I'm about to let my baby girl down again, maybe for the last time.