Sweeney on the Rocks Read online

  Then he called his brother, but the kid didn’t pick up. Tony got tossed straight to voice mail. Said, “I tell you to keep your phone on, you keep your fucking phone on. You going to remember that next time, or you need to start writing it down, or what?”

  Later that evening, feet up in the motel, the kid still ain’t picking up. Tony said for the tenth time, “You get this, you fucking call me, you fucking call me now.”

  “Dancing with the Stars” was on the tube, but he couldn’t really enjoy it. This was his kid brother here. The youngest of four, and the only one with Tony’s ambition to get things done.

  But Montana, right? What kind of trouble could he get in?

  Tony dozed off, red wine in one hand, cell phone in the other.

  Aggie’s the kind of woman, you catch a glimpse of her on the street, and just before recognition, you find yourself thinking wholesome thoughts. Julia Child and Christmas, 1950s TV, early Chevy ads.

  And Aggie’s house? For Sweeney’s money, it’s America boiled down to grit. The last bastion of the unironic, the eye in a cultural hurricane of insincerity and cynicism masquerading as sophistication. The kind of place that makes you want to comb your hair, straighten your tie. It’s got shade trees, sprinklers, kids on bikes delivering newspapers. It’s got…

  But then no. No, it doesn’t. No truck in the driveway. Everything but the woman herself.

  He loves her, sure, but. The woman’s always late. Seven thirty, he’d said. And now he’s disappointed. Another reason he knows this is love, how he looks forward to seeing her at the end of each day.

  He has a key. Coming up the walk, he doesn’t quite dodge a sprinkler. Sticks his head in the door. “Anybody home?”

  From the front hall, it’s a straight shot through to the sliding glass back door. Aggie’s daughter, Elizabeth, responds faintly, “Back here.”

  Sweeney goes to the junk drawer for a wine opener. Uncorks merlot.

  On the kitchen table, a fan of carelessly tossed mail. A bill from Northwest Energy, a couple magazines (Vogue, Guns & Ammo), and then…goddamnit. Another manila envelope. Aggie’s address spelled out in the same block handwriting.

  In the back yard, Elizabeth is sunbathing, kicked back, singing along to the radio. Faintly: “Roll over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news.” Through the kitchen window, the empty driveway.

  Sweeney gingerly pops the seal of the envelope, opens the metal catch. Inside, a single sheet with the same photo that Marilyn had received. Same body, same Charlie Russell print on the wall. This time, a caption: “He’s worse than you think.”

  Okay, okay. What’s a guy do in this situation?

  Only thing he can do: He folds the sheet into fourths, slips it into his back pocket. Replaces the flap on the envelope and flattens the metal ears. Inexplicable, of course, an empty envelope in the mail. But inexplicable is better than unforgiveable.

  Sweeney takes his wine into the backyard. “Are you Lizzie today, or Beth?”

  Aggie’s daughter sits in a black bikini patterned with white sailboats, painting her toenails, knees to her chin. A Horowitz of the sarcastic comeback, a Lolita of the lingering look, she’s one of those teenagers who should only be dealt with by moon-faced monks constrained by vows of silence and chastity.

  She’s also still unemployed two months out of high school, and cute enough to expect the world to come to her. Maybe it will. In her bedroom, she sleeps among the pinks and mauves of a sixth grader, stuffed animals arranged on pillows, boxes of Barbies that never seem to make it to Goodwill. But in the backyard, she’s all teenager.

  She glances up, then devotes herself again to her toes. “Always Beth to you, Mr. Sweeney. Mom tell you about quitting her job?”

  “Told me she was thinking about it.”

  “That’s just her way of opening the subject.”

  Conceived when Aggie was fifteen, these two women circle each other within the awkward boxing ring of not-quite-parent, not-quite-siblings. They clench and uppercut in equal measure, weeping, bleeding, sacrificing, occasionally biting off an ear. Elizabeth resents and loves her mother, barely tolerates her, while Aggie has to deal with seeing her daughter attract more attention than she does. It’s a difficult thing, Sweeney supposes, for a young mother to watch her daughter become competition.

  “She already quit?” Sweeney ponders the implications of an insolvent Aggie.

  “Uh huh.” Elizabeth puts a final dab on a pinky toe and caps her polish. Sets it aside and stretches languorously back. A kitten on a windowsill. “She’s going to ask if she can go into business with you. Be your secretary or something.”

  “Elizabeth…”

  “Whaaat…?” Drawing it out, teasing him, stretching.

  Sweeney leans forward on his knees. “You want to fuck me, is that it?” Tired, he can feel his veneer cracking. Some putz trying to set him up, meanwhile here’s his future stepdaughter, playing cheap hooker.

  “What?” She half giggles, then sits up. “What did you just say to me?”

  “Want me to give it to you good, huh?” He makes a motion. “Hard?”

  “You can’t talk to me like that…”

  “Well stop fucking acting like it.” He tosses off his wine. Her problem, no authority figure. “I won’t stand for it. You’re like a cat in heat, sticking your tail up under my nose.”

  She turns on her lawn chair, giving him her bare shoulder. “Leave, then.”

  Sweeney’s phone vibrates in his pocket. He checks out the number. “That’ll be the day.”

  ~

  Cousin Eddie used to have a theory about balance. About the universe keeping itself on an even keel. Let’s see if Sweeney can remember this right. A riff on philosophical materialism, a la Fodor. Everything is energy, right? E equals MC whatever. So let’s say there’s a fixed amount of energy in the system. Energy dissipates, it don’t disappear. But if everything is energy, shouldn’t that apply to how folks behave toward each other, too? Good and evil, there’s only so much to go around. Every bad thing, it only follows that there must be a good thing out there to balance it out.

  The notion stuck with Sweeney. The trick is, though, what’s good, what’s evil? And what about repercussions? Unintended consequences? What’s good for me is evil for you.

  Sweeney says into his phone, walking back into Aggie’s house, “Yeah hello, what.”

  In his ear, the laughter and musical confusion of a downtown bar. A woman’s voice: “…sweetheart, I don’t smoke Kools. What do I look like, I mean, hellooo? Here. Here’s five bucks. Get me some Vantage’s…hello?”

  “Yeah, hello.”

  “Who is this.”

  “You called me.”

  “Sweeney?”

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “Teddy baby, Teddy boy, lover boy. It’s Cheryl, sweetheart. You don’t recognize my voice. I’m dev-uh-stated. I’m heartbroken. I’m, uh, hey, you got a, don’t forget the matches there…”

  “What’s up, Cheryl.” Rubbing his eyes. God save him from drunks with cell phones. “And aren’t you supposed to be in rehab or something?”

  “What’s up. Um, yeah. Okay, oh yeah, right. There’s this chick down here, you got to come down and say hello, I mean, got to. Okay?”

  “Why’s that?”

  “She’s talking about this guy, and he sounds just like you. Like he must be your twin brother or something.”

  “What’d she say?”

  She pulled away from the phone again. “I gave Patrick all my change, go find him. Dying for a smoke…”

  “Cheryl?”

  “…no, I said Vantage. What?”

  “What’d she say?”

  “Oh! She said one of her old buddies was living out here somewhere. New York accent, New Yawwk, right? Tall, good looking. Quotes fancy pantsy writers nobody else has ever heard of. Has these scars around his eyes. I mean, right? How many of you guys could there be in the world.”

  “Where are you?”

  �
��God, I owe you my life, thank you, sweetheart. You’re a savior. What’s that now?” The sound of a lighter, then a vast inhale. Montana has smoking laws, but enforcement is spotty.

  “Where. Are. You.”

  “Oh. The Spur, sweetheart. Where else?”

  ~

  Sweeney pulls out of the driveway just as Aggie pulls in, bag of groceries on the seat beside her. They roll down their windows. “Thought we were going out,” she says.

  There’s something of the water bird about Aggie. One of those women who grows more interesting with age. Not quite haggard, not quite mannish, light blue eyes and tobacco-brown cheeks. Good calluses in her handshake. Since leaving high school to have Elizabeth, she’s juggled jobs and checkbooks, a weekly roulette spin of heating bill versus phone bill, prom dress versus gas money. She works forty hours a week at the Park County Library. In slow periods, she’s read her stalwart way up and down the shelves. The only person he knows who has trudged through the entirety of both Balzac and Trollope.

  It amazes him that no one else in this small town recognizes this woman for what she is.

  “Just got a handyman call. Gimme an hour? You okay with a late dinner?”

  With Aggie, the tiny lies are more dangerous than the big ones. She has a nose for duplicity. “Okay…”

  “I opened a bottle of wine on the counter. Have a drink. I’ll be back before you can finish it.” Sweeney puts his truck into gear, the transmission bitching a little. “Oh, and your daughter’s going to be talking shit about me. Lies, all lies.”

  Familiar territory, complaining about Elizabeth. Sweeney’s relieved to see Aggie roll her eyes, briefly distracted. “That girl, I swear.”

  “Okay. See you in an hour. Love you.” This last said quickly. Not the first time, but still one of only a handful. Special occasions all. He leaves her staring after him, squinting.

  Not necessarily a bad thing, to keep a woman guessing.

  ~

  There are twenty-one churches in Rockjaw but twenty-three bars. Self-absorption and regret have, for now, beaten out self-congratulation and piety to the tune of at least two taverns. People keep count.

  The bar lately calling itself the Rusty Spur is, as it happens, one of Sweeney’s favorite joints. Sipping his Scotch, swirling the ice. Amid the haze and mirrors, the wink of bottles and the smell of ancient cigars, here, at least, he is not confronted with the cheerful and scrubbed faces of the more successful, the younger and less regretful.

  A long bar and, at the back, a pair of cigarette-scarred pool tables. Two TVs and yesterday’s newspaper spread out in pieces. A small, late-eighties boombox churns out an endless melancholy mix of Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson. Ten years ago, he’d been a Mahler fan, liked his Berlioz. Now it’s outlaw country.

  He stands in the door, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. He hears his name in a boozy, feminine flute of a voice. “Sweeeeney!” And down the bar, just ahead of the beaded curtain that leads to the bathroom, a tiny platinum-haired shadow peels away from a circle of drinkers.

  “Cheryl. Light of my life. How’s tricks?”

  Ninety pounds of cheerful, over-exuberant meth addiction, Cheryl’s one of Sweeney’s less successful social projects. Five years ago, she’d been a high school volleyball player of genuine talent. But a stripper mother and an absentee father, turns out volleyball’s for losers. Sweeney had encouraged college. Helped her navigate some student loans. But here’s where good intentions get you. Two weeks out of rehab, she’s twitching like one of those windup toy penguins that dance across your desk. The complexion and lips of a porcelain figurine but the teeth of a Kentucky tobacco chewer. She grabs him by the arm. “Come on, come on, come on. Getcher ass over here. Got to meet this gal, got to meet her. I mean, hey. Is that a new shirt? Lookin’ smaaart! How’s Aggie doing, by the way. Hey, you ever want to take a break from that same ol’ same ol’, you be sure and let me know…” She hauls him forcefully up to the bar. “Ted Sweeney, here’s, uh, what’s your name again sweetie?”

  “Tina.” The woman straightens, turns. Gives him La Giaconda with attitude.

  Sweeney’s heart stutters and backfires. His next breath is something less than a theory.

  She. Her. Them. Ten years ago, one day before Cosmo died, he’d laid in bed, studying this woman’s naked body. He’d thought then, knowing it was the last time, Remember this. And now he does.

  “Lazarus is arisen,” she says, “walking west on the pieces of broken hearts. You’re a hard man to find, Cosmo.”

  Think fast. A dozen faces around them, all staring expectantly. Despite the various levels of intoxication, there’s collectively enough consciousness here to scuttle Sweeney good, to pull the chain on this whole lengthy charade. The word will spread: Cosmo is Sweeney, and vice versa. If he doesn’t do the opposite of the wrong thing here, he’s done in Montana.

  He sticks out his hand. “Yeah, I know. Everybody says you, you got one of those faces. But we haven’t met, I’d have remembered.” Going all flirty, clearly (as far as the audience is concerned), making a play. “Ted Sweeney.” Sends a thought her way: Please, please, please.

  He watches her tumblers turn and click, click, click toward a conclusion.

  She reaches up to touch his chin with a knuckle. Turns his face this way and that. “Yeah, my mistake. Sorry about that, Mister, uh, Sweeney? You’re the spittin’ image of this guy I used to know back in Brooklyn.”

  “Brooklyn, eh? What part?” Sweeney lifts a finger for a beer.

  “Bensonhurst.”

  “Gangsters, huh? Williamsburg, me.” Sweeney can’t stop sneaking glances. Tina, here, in Montana. The incongruity of it. It’s like gravity reversing itself, the sun rising at midnight. She’s aged, sure, but…damn.

  “Hipsters. Even worse.”

  “So they tell me.”

  The beer arrives, and Sweeney gives it a distracted sip. Says under his breath. “Parking lot. Ten minutes.” Then to Cheryl, “Gotta go, sweet little thing. You stay clean now, okay?”

  “Eh? Oh, yeah, hey.” Her half-shuttered eyes flutter fast to a private tune.

  Us and our poisonous appetites. The luckiest among us are devoured across our lifetimes. The rest go fast as paper matches.

  ~

  Sweeney’s weakness is women. Chin, cleavage, calves. Over the years, he’s loved them indiscriminately, unwisely, urgently. They’re his idols and his altars, his chalices of wine. A pair of tight, sunburned calves under a sundress will pull him clean out of a conversation. Is she a tennis player? A careful tuck of hair behind an ear and a laugh big enough to reveal her molars. Is she really such a happy person or is she compensating, covering up? He wants answers.

  And because he’s tall and thin, and because he has self-confidence, the interest is usually reciprocated. Best drug in the world, that initial meeting of the eyes, the mutual appraisals. Even after he got married, he couldn’t stop. It became more dangerous, of course, but…no choice. His love of Marilyn didn’t legislate against his interest in the tennis player’s calf.

  Sweeney sits on the hood of his International, thinking about Tina. It’s like gnawing at a thumbnail, equal parts pleasure and pain, peeling away satisfying strips of himself.

  She walks toward him under islands of yellow light, heels echoing on asphalt. Used to be, her beauty was effortless. A Hunter College sweatshirt and hair pulled back with a hank of yarn. One touch of her fingertip was enough to send him off like a tuning fork. But she’s wearing makeup now, and keeping the fingertips to herself.

  He says, “I forgot how tall you are.”

  “Part of it’s these boots.” Calfskin numbers in lavender and rhinestones.

  They’d met in a bar in the East Village. An afternoon of stained concrete floors, tattooed bartenders, Tom Waits on the stereo. Off Sweeney’s turf, but he was just looking for a place to read the racing sheets and get quietly fucked up. Make notes on tomorrow’s bets. Over in the corner, here’s this twenty-year-old Mediterranean-
looking chick. Beautiful in a Staten Island sort of way. She maybe had a little Arab blood back in there somewhere. That smooth, smooth skin and dark eyes. Her crooked teeth kept her from flawlessness, but with her mouth closed, she was Salome, Helen, Beatrice. The kind of woman, every time you looked at her it was like a tiny little vacation.

  Her date was a dump truck of a man. A weight lifter, rebel flag stitched on his jacket. He had her by the arm. “I can’t trust you to do a single simple goddamn thing? I tell you to make just one…”

  Tina, squirming: “Offa me!”

  And so much for a quiet afternoon with booze. “Hey buddy.”

  “Mind your own goddamned busin….”

  Sweeney twisted the guy’s wrist up against his back, hit the shoulder with the heel of his palm. Just that quick, he’d popped the joint. Watched the guy go pale as Elmer’s glue. Doesn’t matter how big you are, nothing hurts like a dislocated shoulder. You’re helpless, emasculated. The guy slipped to the floor like a sodden towel, patch of piss darkening his lap.

  Sweeney looked at Tina. “Buy you a drink?”

  Twelve years later, here she is in a parking lot in Montana, saying, “I don’t know whether to hug you or shoot you, you sonofabitch.”

  “I’m ready either way.” He raises his arms like a rood.

  She sighs, produces a pack of smokes. Sweeney’s helpful with his lighter, and they have a moment. Sweeney says, “You need to get off the street.”