“Fuck that guy,” said Herb.
“Amen,” said my father.
“Fair enough,” Jill said, moving away, wiping the bar down.
“Was that a yes?” Herb whispered.
“Yeah,” Clyde told him. “And now you gotta go now. Get out on that note. Don’t even say goodbye. Do not come back til seven tomorrow.”
“You’re a genius,” Herb said. “That’s exactly the right move here is to go. I’m hammered. Can you drive me?”
“Sorry,” my dad said. “Came here on foot, plus waiting for Biggie.”
“Can you drive me?” he asked me.
“I haven’t got a license anymore,” I said.
“Go have a burger at McDonald’s,” said my father.
“I’m vegetarian,” said Herb.
“That’s womanly,” my dad said.
“It’s a cholesterol thing.”
“No one asked for your story. Just get outta here before things get weird.”
“You really don’t have a license?” Herb said.
“I don’t,” I said.
“DUI?”
“No. I just let it expire.”
“You’re an adult in a suburb. You need a license. You should get yourself a license.”
“Vamoose,” Clyde said, “you stupid sonofabitch. I want another drink.”
“I’m going,” Herb said. “But tell him get a license.”
“You know, he’s right,” Clyde said, once Herb was out the door. “You should probably get a license. You find that girl, things work out, you’ll want to be able to take her places.”
“What girl?”
“The girl, the girl…the one you were about to ask Herb to track down for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Maybe I misunderstood where you were going.”
“When?”
“When you asked Herb if he did missing persons. Which, I happen to know, he does. I think he’s pretty good, too. Way I hear it, he’s had the entire North Shore locked down, PI-wise I mean, ever since he solved that kidnapping in Evanston with—Lisette! Lisette. That’s it. Pretty name, too. How could I forget that?”
“You think I should hire him to find Lisette?”
“I don’t know if I think you should. But it seems to me, way you told me that whole story—you seeing her on the screen and then running to the can to hide out and get yourself together—seems to me she’s got some kinda hold on you, and then, since you asked about missing persons, and you’ve got all this money now, I thought that you would. Hire Herb to find her.”
“That would be kind of loserly,” I said. “Wouldn’t it?”
“Loserly?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Desperate. Needy. To hire someone to find a girl who I liked twenty-five years ago. A girl who was in a study for kids with psychosis—she’s probably a mess.”
“You put it that way, I mean—that’s one way to think of it, I guess. Sure. Other way’s that you’re still wondering about her after twenty-five years, which I think is…romantic. Could be pretty special. Plus you were in that study, Bill, and you turned out alright. Why shouldn’t she? Ah, what do I know? I’ve got a buzz on. If you do hire Herb, though, you should call him up tomorrow before he takes Jill out—that much I know. Likely as not, he will blow that date big-time, and you want to negotiate his price while he’s still on cloud nine, feeling like he owes half the world to your father. Look, it’s Biggie,” he said. “Biggie!” he said.
And here came the lawyer, a sun-bronzed Ichabod Crane of a man who, upon sitting down on the stool next to Clyde’s, introduced himself as “Zbigniew, but you can call me Z,” which statement incited Clyde to mock-berate him about how no one would ever call him Z, let alone Zbigniew. I bought them each a Scotch, and then a second and a third, and as the hour grew later and the tavern filled with patrons, many of whom clustered around our three stools—men and women from the plant, a salesman of cars, a salesman of insurance, some restaurant workers, a flight attendant (the tavern was the only place in Wheelatine to drink after nine on a Sunday, except for Arcades)—Biggie and another man he and my father knew—an accountant called Wiz—argued some fine points of tax- and insurance-law that may (Biggie) or may not (Wiz) have pertained to what I would owe the IRS on my SSDI benefits when I filed my return, but both of them assured us that a onetime payment for independent contract work, no matter how large, wouldn’t prevent me from collecting any future benefits, and so there wasn’t any need to try to do anything tricky with the $100k.
It was a very pleasant couple of hours, despite the only partially Tylenol-masked headache I was suffering. It was nice to meet all my father’s friends, to see him among them, and hear how they joked and watch how they changed as they filled themselves with liquor, but, nice as it was, much as I’d like to linger there a little, none of it has enough relevance to this memoir to detail further. The next relevant thing that happened was right around midnight, when two people entered the tavern at once.
The first was Rick. He was dark beneath one eye, like my father, and his cheek was scabbed just over the beardline. “Asshole,” he said to my father, coming over.
The music didn’t stop. People didn’t freeze in place. No one seemed to notice Rick was there but me and Clyde.
“Asshole,” Rick said again.
“Well right backatcha, Rick,” my dad said.
“I caught one trout, Clyde, and Jim’s really sad now, he’s really broken up, traumatized even. We had to leave Michiana. He’s wetting the bed again. First time in two years.”
“That’s tough,” Clyde said.
“Yeah it’s tough.”
“We ruined the whole trip, I guess,” Clyde said.
“Yeah,” Rick said. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“So what? You want to…go back?”
“Wouldn’t be good for Jim. Needs the security of the home environment.”
“Still taking the week off?”
“I haven’t decided. Tomorrow anyway.”
“Well have yourself a Scotch with us. Sonnyboy’s buying. Go on, grab a stool.”
“Take mine,” I said, already standing.