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Twenty-Three

HARVEY LEFT the office muttering to himself about the ice machine. It was broken again, and the ice company had shown up late with the bags of ice, just a few minutes before the end of service. Carol was waiting for him at the bar, well into her second Glenlivet on the rocks, and Harvey sat down next to her with a groan and gave her a kiss on the cheek that rapidly evolved into a longer kiss on the neck. He looked over at the bartender and signaled for a cognac.

The group from Long Island at the corner of the bar had thinned out. Only four girls with big hair remained, talking to the bartender and giggling. The bartender interrupted his monologue and poured Harvey a double shot of Remy. He put the snifter in front of Harvey and returned to the girls. He leaned over the bar, one elbow resting on a pile of cocktail napkins, and continued flirting.

"Will you look at that," said Harvey. "Those girls gotta be sixteen. This fuckin' guy is gonna get me my license pulled with this shit."

"Why don't you say something?" asked Carol.

"Oh, I'm sure they all got ID says they're thirty-two," said Harvey. "Fuck it. It's not worth it. Right now I got other problems." He continued watching the bartender nervously.

"Bad day?" asked Carol.

"The worst," said Harvey.

"You look tired," said Carol, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I am tired," he said. "Janis called me today. On top of everything else, I gotta get a call from her."

"She wants money?"

"She always wants money," said Harvey. "This is different. This is something new. I mean it's still money. It's still gonna cost me. It always does."

"You just bought her a new pair of tits. What does she want now? Her ass lifted?"

"It's my daughter. She told my daughter she could take riding lessons. Riding lessons! I'm late with the alimony, the child support every fuckin' time. She knows I'm getting killed down here, that I'm not makin' any money. She knows that. But she wants me to fork over so Sarah can take riding lessons. Of course I said I couldn't afford it. 'But it'll break her heart,' she says. All her friends go,' she says. Of course, you know she already told her she could do it. So I say, okay, how much is it gonna cost me? She says fifty a week for the lessons. Alright—I don't like it, I don't like it, but I can live with that, I have to... Then she hits me with the rest. You gotta buy the clothes, she says. You gotta get the pants, the shirt, the jacket, the little helmet. And the boots! You gotta have them made special. It'll hurt her feet you don't have 'em made special. You have any idea what all that shit is gonna run? You just watch—next she's gonna tell the kid that Daddy's gonna buy her a fuckin' horse!"

"She's a beautiful little girl," said Carol. "If it makes Sarah happy, it can't be such a bad thing. The lessons I mean."

"Jews don't ride horses," said Harvey.

"When I was a little girl, I loved horses," said Carol. "I went riding sometimes. At camp."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, Little girls love horses. I know that. I know that. But Janis is gonna pack her off to some Nazi country-club riding academy bullshit where they probably wouldn't even let me in the fuckin' door. They probably use the fuckin' horses to run me off the green, I try to play a little golf there."

"The place is restricted? You know that for sure?"

"No, I don't know. The point is, she's doing it on purpose. To get to me. She's trying to make my little girl into some kind of Protestant or something. And she wants me to pay for it."

"If it makes Sarah happy—"

"Let's talk about something else," said Harvey, a sour look on his face. He took a long belt of cognac, made a fist, and pressed it against his solar plexus. "How was it at work today?"

"The doctor screwed up," said Carol, lowering her voice to a whisper.

"Oh," said Harvey, brightening. "I'm cheering up already. What did he do?"

"He did an extraction yesterday. Old lady with an impacted wisdom tooth. He should have put in stitches. I told him so in a nice way. Just a suggestion. He gave me such a dirty look. So he packs her with gauze and sends her out the door. This morning, she comes in with a hematoma like you wouldn't believe. Today he puts in the stitches." Carol made a face. "I would have loved to say 'I told you so.

Harvey groaned. "Lazy. The man is lazy. That never would have happened, I was there. I never would have let that happen... " He got up off his bar stool. "Let's go home. I feel like a sack of shit. I gotta get outta these clothes. Office is right over the kitchen, right up the stairs. The cooking odor gets in everything. I smell like Charlie the Tuna in these clothes. I wanna change. First, I wanna shower, then, maybe take a Jacuzzi, maybe get a nice back rub, maybe?"

"Do I get a back rub too?"

"Me first," said Harvey.

Tommy and Stephanie emerged from downstairs and stood by the service bar. Tommy had a funny expression on his face. Stephanie was reapplying her lipstick, looking at herself in the mirror behind the bar.

"I don't even want to think about what they been up to down there. This place is like Sodom and fuckin Gomorrah lately," said Harvey. He took a last worried look over at the bartender. He was still huddled with the big-haired girls, a portfolio spread out on the bar in front of them. The girls were oohing and ahhing and giggling, whispering comments to each other over the bartender's head shots.

"Christ," said Harvey. "I hate actors."

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