poontang around Knoxville, Tennessee, in constant mortal terror over his impending deployment to Vietnam.
Shivering from the AC, he went ahead and put on his new suit, which he’d bought specially from Men’s Wearhouse for the tour. The pants didn’t button all the way, and the jacket was a size or two too small. It was a deep shade of forest green and made of a synthetic material that instantly caused him to pour sweat, but it had also been on sale—Drastic Markdown!—for thirty bucks. The amused clerk had thrown in a red polyester tie as a cruel lagniappe. He hadn’t worn a suit in decades, since an abortive stint in the early eighties selling appliances at a Sears in Fresno. After being fired on the showroom floor for failure to hard-sell defective washer-dryer combos to poor people, he’d headed directly outside across a blistering blacktop sea toward the fata morgana of a Holiday Inn lounge, where, after several gin gimlets, he swore a blood oath to the bemused bartender and the small audience of regulars that he’d never again wear a tie. Filled with the drama of the moment as well as six ounces of Beefeater, he’d wrenched off his tie and set it on fire in the toilet to the applause of two delighted old rummies. Yet here he was, in a Comfort Suites by Marriott, inexpertly tugging on a half Windsor. Well, you never knew, did you?
No, you never knew. Facing down his image in the mirror for a second time as he straightened the tie, he was again struck by the sense of having entered an alternate dimension. A dimension in which he had written a book people were buying, and reading, and wanted to hear him talk about.
Hello, my name is Richard Lazar. Good evening. Hi. I wrote a book.
He strode to the door, bravely facing up to the obvious fact that he needed a drink, badly.
Vance startled and looked up from his book when Richard tapped on the car window. He rolled it down, looking excited, or as excited as it seemed possible for his long, sad face to look. “Did you change your mind about that tour?”
Richard said, “I did. Let’s start with the nearest bar.”
“I don’t drink.”
“That’s fine. You can sit in your car reading”—he leaned into the car to see the cover—“
Don Quixote
there, too, if you want.”
“I’m not sure this is such a great idea.”
“If it would help, don’t consider it a request,” Richard said.
———
Vance took them to a place called J. T.S’ BULLS-EYE —the sign spelled exactly that way. Sitting in a red vinyl booth defaced with knife slits, Richard drank a series of scotches, and Vance bent to the straw in his Coke. A few rough-looking locals played pool and glanced in their direction, and Vance, with his soft hands and pimples and wispy-faun facial hair, seemed nervous, but Richard wasn’t worried. He had gotten old enough that no one messed with him anymore, not even rednecks or idiot teenagers. Too old to mess with, he thought—how depressing.
Vance said, “The manuscript I gave you was a first draft. It’s really rough.”
Richard said, “Look at her.”
A young blonde girl carried a couple of beers across the room. She had the type of cutesy elfin face that would be completely gruesome at forty, but she also had a big, swaying ass showcased by jeans at least two sizes too small. Small ridges of fat rode up over her waistband in the back. She walked over to the guys playing pool, who patted and goosed her around in a friendly way, and Richard was reminded of how long it had been since he’d gotten laid. Or, rather, the fact that he couldn’t even remember when the last time was. In his twenties, going a month without seemed like inhumane deprivation, a breach of the Geneva Convention. The text of some awful novelty T-shirt he’d seen a long time ago scrolled through his head: 20S: TRI-WEEKLY, 30S: TRY WEEKLY, 40S: TRY, WEAKLY . There wasn’t one for
50s
.
“You like that?”
“What?”
“Come on. The girl that just walked by. The
Shivering from the AC, he went ahead and put on his new suit, which he’d bought specially from Men’s Wearhouse for the tour. The pants didn’t button all the way, and the jacket was a size or two too small. It was a deep shade of forest green and made of a synthetic material that instantly caused him to pour sweat, but it had also been on sale—Drastic Markdown!—for thirty bucks. The amused clerk had thrown in a red polyester tie as a cruel lagniappe. He hadn’t worn a suit in decades, since an abortive stint in the early eighties selling appliances at a Sears in Fresno. After being fired on the showroom floor for failure to hard-sell defective washer-dryer combos to poor people, he’d headed directly outside across a blistering blacktop sea toward the fata morgana of a Holiday Inn lounge, where, after several gin gimlets, he swore a blood oath to the bemused bartender and the small audience of regulars that he’d never again wear a tie. Filled with the drama of the moment as well as six ounces of Beefeater, he’d wrenched off his tie and set it on fire in the toilet to the applause of two delighted old rummies. Yet here he was, in a Comfort Suites by Marriott, inexpertly tugging on a half Windsor. Well, you never knew, did you?
No, you never knew. Facing down his image in the mirror for a second time as he straightened the tie, he was again struck by the sense of having entered an alternate dimension. A dimension in which he had written a book people were buying, and reading, and wanted to hear him talk about.
Hello, my name is Richard Lazar. Good evening. Hi. I wrote a book.
He strode to the door, bravely facing up to the obvious fact that he needed a drink, badly.
Vance startled and looked up from his book when Richard tapped on the car window. He rolled it down, looking excited, or as excited as it seemed possible for his long, sad face to look. “Did you change your mind about that tour?”
Richard said, “I did. Let’s start with the nearest bar.”
“I don’t drink.”
“That’s fine. You can sit in your car reading”—he leaned into the car to see the cover—“
Don Quixote
there, too, if you want.”
“I’m not sure this is such a great idea.”
“If it would help, don’t consider it a request,” Richard said.
———
Vance took them to a place called J. T.S’ BULLS-EYE —the sign spelled exactly that way. Sitting in a red vinyl booth defaced with knife slits, Richard drank a series of scotches, and Vance bent to the straw in his Coke. A few rough-looking locals played pool and glanced in their direction, and Vance, with his soft hands and pimples and wispy-faun facial hair, seemed nervous, but Richard wasn’t worried. He had gotten old enough that no one messed with him anymore, not even rednecks or idiot teenagers. Too old to mess with, he thought—how depressing.
Vance said, “The manuscript I gave you was a first draft. It’s really rough.”
Richard said, “Look at her.”
A young blonde girl carried a couple of beers across the room. She had the type of cutesy elfin face that would be completely gruesome at forty, but she also had a big, swaying ass showcased by jeans at least two sizes too small. Small ridges of fat rode up over her waistband in the back. She walked over to the guys playing pool, who patted and goosed her around in a friendly way, and Richard was reminded of how long it had been since he’d gotten laid. Or, rather, the fact that he couldn’t even remember when the last time was. In his twenties, going a month without seemed like inhumane deprivation, a breach of the Geneva Convention. The text of some awful novelty T-shirt he’d seen a long time ago scrolled through his head: 20S: TRI-WEEKLY, 30S: TRY WEEKLY, 40S: TRY, WEAKLY . There wasn’t one for
50s
.
“You like that?”
“What?”
“Come on. The girl that just walked by. The
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