Last Bender

8.2
Early next morning around 11 I was awakened by Joseph’s booming laugh (a rare sound at that hour), followed by Raph’s gentler, drier one. “Which way does it go?” Joseph asked.
There was silence. I got out of bed, put on a robe and came out into the big room. By the door the two men [...]

8.1
The Phoenix Park Restaurant dinner was not the first time Roy told me to become a librarian. Once, when I was in high school he met me at the main branch of the Public Library and we walked over to Grand Central together. We were to meet our father there for dinner at the Oyster [...]

7.4
It was my day off and I had to meet my mother for lunch in the East Sixties. I had time to walk; I preferred it to watching Sally go to work on the Opus, which had swelled to 100 closely argued pages, half of the intended length. With only a month to go she [...]

At home Joseph, Lou and Deb and Jayda were watching Straw Dogs and drinking frozen strawberry margaritas. Periodically there was a loud cracking of ice followed by a whine. Every time a gun went off they went, “Aw!!” and laughed. Joseph called out my name, waved with his cigarette and smiled. His hair was a [...]

An hour and a half later we sat in his living room on a couple of lawn chairs watching the southern skyline and sipping gin and tonics.
“It’s just like being at dad’s, only the gin is better. No Gordon’s around here.”
The view south was of buildings like foothills slowly mounting the Wall Street towers. Several [...]

7.1
It didn’t take long for me to settle into the afternoon shift at Pain et Poisson. The two heavy rushes were at breakfast and lunch, and a diligent, pigtailed waitress worked them both. On a good day she could make 80 bucks in tips. I filled in the afternoon and evening hole, a long, tedious [...]

6.4
There was no point in trying to sleep. It was like living in a bowling alley. I stumbled out of bed and barely looked at the few human remnants of the night before, coasting back and forth as I left. I looked around at the empty street, still deep in shadow and cold. Everything smelled [...]

6.3
Simon and Tammy walked right by us. They stopped a few feet down the sidewalk and backed up. “Hey,” they said.
“Hey,” we said. They each had a six-pack of beer under their arms. They looked at each other, we moved up and apart and they sat down.
“Help yourself to the beer,” Simon said.
“His is better [...]

6.2
There were a couple of fifty-year-old men at the end of the bar and some guys in their late twenties at a table drinking a pitcher and shouting.
“I’ll have a frosty schooner of your finest, barkeep,” Sally said when the bored, haggard, middle-aged man wiped up some beer spill from the place next to ours [...]

6.
We walked into Washington Square at around 11, having not said a word in many blocks. Drummers drummed, dealers dealt from dark benches, people were hanging out, roller skating by, getting drunk on wine, throwing their asses around.
A glob of glue and glitter had adhered to Sally’s cheekbone and was sparkling in the orange streetlight. [...]