"I don't know if I can explain it."
"Try."
"He didn't have much of a life," I said, "and he didn't have much of a death, either. For the past year he's been trying to stay sober a day at a time. He had a lot of trouble at the beginning and it never got to be what you could call easy for him, but he stayed with it. Nothing else ever worked for him. I just wanted to know if he made it."
"Give me your number," Bellamy said. "That report comes in, I'll call you."
I heard an Australian qualify once at a meeting down in the Village. "My head didn't get me sober," he said. "All my head ever did was get me into trouble. It was my feet got me sober. They kept taking me to meetings and my poor head had no choice but to follow. What I've got, I've got smart feet."
My feet took me to Grogan's. I was walking around, up one street and down another, thinking about Eddie Dunphy and Paula Hoeldtke and not paying much attention to where I was going. Then I looked up, and I was at the corner of Tenth Avenue and Fiftieth Street, right across from Grogan's Open House.
Eddie had crossed the street to avoid the place. I crossed the street and went in.
It wasn't fancy. A bar, on the left as you entered, ran the length of the room. There were dark wooden booths on the right, and a row of three or four tables between them. There was an old-fashioned tile floor, a stamped tin ceiling that needed minor repairs.
The clientele was all male. Two old men sat in silence in the front booth, letting their beers go flat. Two booths back there was a young man wearing a ski sweater and reading a newspaper. There was a dart board on the back wall, and a fellow wearing a T-shirt and a baseball cap was playing by himself.
At the front end of the bar, two men sat near a television set, neither paying attention to the picture. There was an empty stool between them. Toward the back, the bartender was leafing through a tabloid, one of the ones that tell you Elvis and Hitler are still alive, and a potato chip diet cures cancer.
I walked over to the bar and put my foot on the brass rail. The bartender looked me over for a long moment before he approached. I ordered a Coke. He gave me another careful look, his blue eyes unreadable, his face expressionless. He had a narrow triangular face, so pale he might have lived all his life indoors.
He filled a glass with ice cubes, then with Coke. I put a ten on the bar. He took it to the register, punched No Sale, and returned with eight singles and a pair of quarters. I left my change on the bar in front of me and sipped at my Coke.
The television set was showing Santa Fe Trail, with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Flynn was playing Jeb Stuart, and an impossibly young Ronald Reagan was playing George Armstrong Custer. The movie was in black and white, with the commercials in color.
I sipped my Coke and watched the movie, and when the commercials came on I turned on my stool and watched the fellow in back shoot darts. He would toe the line and lean so far forward I kept thinking he would be unable to keep his balance, but he evidently knew what he was doing; he stayed on his feet, and the darts all wound up in the board.
After I'd been there twenty minutes or so, a black man in work clothes came in wanting to know how to get to DeWitt Clinton High School. The bartender claimed not to know, which seemed unlikely. I could have told him, but I didn't volunteer, and no one else spoke up, either.
"Supposed to be around here somewhere," the man said. "I got a delivery, and the address they gave me ain't right. I'll take a beer while I'm here."
"There's something wrong with the pressure. All I'm getting is foam."
"Bottled beer be fine."
"We only have draught."
"Guy in the booth has a bottle of beer."
"He must have brought it with him."
The message got through. "Well, shit," the driver said. "I guess this here's the Stork Club. Fancy place like this, you got to be real careful who you serve." He stared hard at the bartender, who gazed back at him without showing a thing. Then he turned and walked out fast with his head lowered, and the door swung shut behind him.
A little while later the dart player sauntered over and the bartender drew him a pint of the draught Guinness, thick and black, with a rich creamy head on it. He said, "Thanks, Tom," and drank, then wiped the foam from his mouth onto his sleeve. "Fucking niggers," he said. "Pushing in where they're not wanted."
The bartender didn't respond, just took money and brought back change. The dart player took another long drink of stout and wiped his mouth again on his sleeve. His T-shirt advertised a tavern called the Croppy Boy, on Fordham Road in the Bronx. His billed cap advertised Old Milwaukee beer.
To me he said, "Game of darts? Not for money, I'm too strong a player, but just to pass the time."
"I don't even know how to play."
"You try to get the pointed end into the board."
"I'd probably hit the fish." There was a fish mounted on the wall above the dart board, and a deer's head off to one side. Another larger fish was mounted above the back bar, it was a sailfish or marlin, one of the ones with a long bill.
"Just to pass the time," he said.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd thrown a dart, and I hadn't been good at it then. Time had by no means improved my skills. We played a game, and as hard as he worked to look bad, I still didn't come out looking good. When he won the game in spite of himself, he said, "You're pretty good, you know."
"Oh, come on."
"You've got the touch. You haven't played and your aim's not sharp, but you've got a nice light wrist. Let me buy you a beer."
"I'm drinking Coca-Cola."
"That there is why your aim's off. The beer relaxes you, lets you just think the dart into the board. The black stuff's the best, the Guinness. It works on your mind like polish on silver. Takes the tarnish right off. That do you, or would you rather have a bottle of Harp?"
"Thanks, but I'll stay with Coke."
He bought me a refill, and another black pint for himself. He told me his name was Andy Buckley. I gave him my name, and we played another game of darts. He foot-faulted a couple of times, showing a clumsiness he hadn't revealed when he was practicing. When he did it a second time I gave him a look and he had to laugh. "I know I can't hustle you, Matt," he said. "You know what it is? It's force of habit."
He won the game quickly and didn't coax when I said no to another. It was my turn to buy a round. I didn't want another Coke. I bought him a Guinness, and had a club soda for myself. The bartender rang the "No Sale" key and took money from my stack of change.
Buckley took the stool next to mine. On the television screen, Errol Flynn was winning De Havilland's heart and Reagan was being gracious in defeat. "He was a handsome bastard," Buckley said.
"Reagan?"
"Flynn. In like Flynn, all he had to do was look at them and they wet their pants. I don't think I've seen you here before, Matt."
"I don't come around very often."