“Two coffees, two scotches”

Matthew Perry

 

Tom noticed the people at Murphy’s Red Corner. They always acted the same way. Always. They talked to each other, to the bartender, to the waitresses, to themselves. Sometimes they listened, but usually they simply pretended to listen. They waited with their mouths open slightly and eyes down, trying to get a word in here, an idea in there, during their conversations. They talked.

 

Tom watched how they ordered drinks, read newspapers, got up out of their booths and walked to the bar or to the restroom, opened the door letting in cold air to come in or go out. The people moved, acted, reacted; most of them were unaccompanied, but they were not alone. They laughed, they talked, they drank, they stood up, they sat down, they came, they went. Clockwork.

 

Tom closed his eyes and rubbed them with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. The room was noisy. He looked down at his silver wristwatch. He had had it for a long time and liked it very much, although he never took care of it very well. But it still worked. He felt a draft of cold air.

 

“Hello Thomas,” Charles said, coming directly toward him.

 

“My name is Tom,” Tom said without looking up. He waited a few seconds for a response, plunging his cocktail straw up and down in his glass of melting ice. Charles gave no indication that he heard him, so Tom raised his eyes and said “Chuck” slowly, over-pronouncing the word as if he were trying to teach a foreigner some English.

 

“Yes, uh—well, here are the papers Regina wants you to sign,” Charles said, uncomfortably searching the lined inside pocket of his wool trench coat. “If you could sign them, I will be on my way.”

 

“What’s the hurry, Chuck?” Tom asked before Charles could get the agreement out of his pocket.

 

“Oh, no hurry at all Thomas,” Charles said. “I just thought it would be better if you would sign the papers quickly so—”

 

“Why didn’t Jean come?” Tom asked.

 

Charles withdrew his hand from his pocket without the papers. “You know Regina,” Charles said. “Always—”

 

“Yeah—I know Regina.” Tom said flicking the ashes off of his cigarette. Her natural decoration kept her out of such places, but Tom’s kept him in. Straightening his back and signaling for the waitress, Tom said “Sit down, have a drink,” as he took a drag. “I’ll sign them in a minute.”

 

Charles placed his hand on the back of the booth. He had a feeling Tom had been there for a while and had no plans of signing anything without some customary small talk, so he waited.

 

“Whacha need?” asked the waitress.

 

Tom exhaled smoke through nostrils. Setting his cigarette down in the ashtray, he said, “Yeah. Uuh—I’ll have another scotch and the same for my buddy Chuck here—”

 

“No, miss,” interrupted Charles. “I will have a coffee—black . . .”

 

“And a scotch,” Tom added, looking directly into Charles’s eyes. “Two black coffees and two scotches and it’s on me.”

 

“Very well,” Charles said, sitting down carefully as the waitress walked away. He was dressed to the nines and looked very much like a businessman—or a lawyer. Taking off his gold-rimmed glasses and cleaning them with his scarf, Charles said, “Thomas, I do not want a scotch.”

 

“I do,” Tom said laconically.

 

The snow outside had been coming down for the past hour or so, and it was now beginning to stick on the Ohio sidewalk. Tom had watched it since it began, falling lightly at first from gray clouds and becoming heavier as the sky darkened.

 

Rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers as his thumb rested on his temple, Tom stared blankly at the tabletop and asked, “Do you remember the last time it snowed this early in December?”

 

“Yes,” answered Charles. “It snowed last year at this time.”

 

“So it did,” Tom said.

 

“Here ya go,” said the waitress. “Two coffees, two scotches.”

 

“Thanks,” Tom said.

 

“Yes, thank you miss,” Charles said.

 

She sat the drinks down on the table and walked away. Tom looked at all four drinks and reached for the far glass of scotch. Picking it up and stirring it by slightly rotating the glass back and forth in his hand, he asked, “How are the boys?”

 

“Matthew and Michael are fine,” Charles said. “They are presently at the theater with their mother.”

 

He sipped his coffee, and Tom mashed his cigarette out in the ashtray.

 

“Presently at the theater, huh?” asked Tom.

 

“Yes,” said Charles. “Are you going to sign these papers?”

 

Tom knocked back the scotch and set the empty glass down in front of him. Looking at Charles, Tom lit up another cigarette, took a deep drag and exhaled. The room was smoky.

 

“Let me see the goddamned papers,” Tom said. Charles took off his gloves and set them on the table. He reached again into his pocket for the papers. Taking them out, he slid the papers across the table. Tom looked at the first page and flipped to the next and the next and the next. He looked up at Charles sipping his coffee.

 

“What if I don’t sign?” Tom asked.

 

“Thomas, this has already been resolved,” Charles said. “You know what happens if you do not sign these.”

 

“Yeah. I know,” Tom said looking out the window through the snowfall at the run-down, derelict factory building across the street. Most of its windows were cracked or completely broken out, and those that were still intact were discolored; but Tom could not see the windows. The falling snow obscured the building to nothing more than an ominous, lurking shadow veiled by a storm. “But I don’t really know if I care,” Tom said.

 

“Thomas, you know this is the best thing,” Charles sighed. “Do not make this any more difficult than it already is.”

 

“You boys need anythin’ else?” asked the waitress.

 

Tom looked up at her. She had a pencil behind her ear, and her apron was dirty. She looked at Tom and smiled in a way that came more through her eyes than her mouth. Tom smiled back, but his eyes could not. He looked away.

 

“No thank you, miss,” answered Charles as he handed her a fifty.

 

“Ya want change?” asked the waitress. Charles shook his head and motioned for her to leave with two fingers.

 

“Can I ask you a question?” Tom asked.

 

“Sure, Thomas,” Charles said.

 

“Do you know why it doesn’t thunder when it snows?”

 

“I suppose it is because snow clouds aren’t conducive to lightning,” Charles answered.

 

“Well, I know that,” Tom said stoically. “But do you know why there is no thunder, or lightning?”

 

“I’m n—”

 

“Because it seems I’ve always thought about it, but I’ve never really known,” Tom interrupted.

 

“Look, Thomas, it’s getting late . . .”

 

“Yeah—I know, and this doesn’t need to be any more difficult than it already is,” Tom said. He put his cigarette down in the ashtray and watched an unbroken tendril of smoke rise to the solitary dim lamp hanging over their table. The smoke engulfed the pale, yellow bulb, duplicating the hazy orbs—the miniature atmospheres—surrounding the other lamps hanging singularly above each table. Tom picked up his glass of scotch and knocked it back. He looked at Charles and swallowed easily.

 

“Look, Thomas, I need to go,” Charles said. “We can do this another time, perhaps tomorrow, or . . .” Charles reached for his day planner in his breast pocket.

 

“No,” Tom said. “We might as well take care of this now.” He looked down at the papers. “Got a pen?”

 

“Yes,” Charles said as he took a fountain pen out of his shirt pocket and pushed it across the table to Tom. Tom picked up the pen and rolled it between his fingers. He looked out the window.

 

“You need to sign next to the red X at the bottom of the first, third, fourth, sixth, and seventh pages,” Charles said.

 

The snow consumed Murphy’s red and blue neon sign, which normally lit up the alley. Only a hint of light reflected off the snow under the sign as indefinite shapes emerged and sank along the hollow alleyway with every sporadic gust of wind.

 

“And sign the X at the top of page nine . . .”

 

Tom stared at the snow. It had completely covered the vacant sidewalk.

 

“ . . .and initial the X at the bottom of the same page.”

 

The snow wasn’t letting up.

 

“Thomas?”

 

“Wha-what?” Tom murmured and looked at Charles briefly and then glanced around the room. He saw the trash on the wooden floors alongside the walls that traced the bare walkways through the bar. The floors were dirty, cluttered like those of an empty theater after a show.

 

“Tom?!” echoed Charles. “The papers . . .”

 

“Oh. Uh—sorry,” Tom said. He looked down and began signing. “Where do I initial?” Tom asked.

 

“Beside the X at the bottom of page nine,” Charles said, pointing half-heartedly over the top of the document as he set down his coffee cup.

 

Tom initialed the line and clipped the pen to the top of the pages. “There,” Tom said as he slid the papers back to Charles.

 

“Thank you, Thomas,” Charles said. “This is for the best.”

 

Tom put out his cigarette in the ashtray filled with gray dust and smashed butts.

 

“Goodbye, Thomas,” Charles said getting up. “Have a nice holiday.”

 

“Goodbye, Charles,” Tom said.

 

Charles opened the door, and a bell chimed. He walked out, and when the door closed behind him, the closure arm caught Tom’s attention as he heard the bell yet again. It was silvery and helped ring the small bell hanging from the ceiling every time the door opened and closed. He had always heard it announce the entrance and exit of the bar’s patrons, but he had never paid attention to how it worked until now. He sat and watched it for a while. The door opened, the arm extended, and the bell rang; the door closed, the arm buckled, and the bell rang. The arm was small and far away. And the bell was smaller.

 

Tom blinked and looked down at the two empty glasses of scotch and cup of coffee still on the table. Waitresses passed the black and white pictures on the colorless walls, and the bartender methodically cleaned out glass after glass with a towel from his shoulder before pouring drink after drink. Tom picked up the cup of lukewarm coffee and took two swigs. Setting it back on the saucer, he got up. He staggered a bit as he tried to put on his coat, so he braced himself, leaning against the table. He grabbed his hat and put it on cockeyed, then wrapped his scarf loosely around his neck.

 

Tom heard the bell again as he walked out the door. There was at least six inches on the ground, and it was still snowing. The wind was cold, and snow was beginning to drift up against the buildings. Tom walked down the clean, white sidewalk and stopped at the corner. He held up his hand as the cars passed by.