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“I think you know what Richetti is. You just won’t accept what your mind tells you.”
“So what is he?” Clete said.
“Maybe he’s like a hologram. Maybe all of us are.”
“Dave, that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.”
He was probably right. But I could already see the lights of regret and pity in his eyes. “Hey, what do I know?” he said. “That’s why I don’t argue. Remember what Dale Carnegie said? The only argument you win is the one you don’t have.”
“You know who else said that?”
“No.”
“Charlie Manson.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It was one of his come-on lines.”
“There goes my whole evening,” he said.
I took a drink from my Dr Pepper. It felt cold and bright inside my mouth, the cherries sliding sweet down my throat. But the fact that it tasted good wasn’t enough. I could smell the alcohol in the drinks of other people, and feel it reach out and lay its old claim on my soul, as though all the pain I had gone through and all the meetings I had attended meant nothing. But the mysterious and glorious elixir-like smell of alcohol, and the transformative effect it had on my nervous system, and the near-erotic relationship I had with it, were not my only problems. Three men had just come in the side door and taken a table in back. Two of them were not taller than five-six and had the determined, vaguely irritable faces of South European peasants and wore suits that had a shine like Vaseline. I was surprised at how good the third man looked in spite of the beating I had given him in his home theater. He was dressed in a tailored gray suit with thin stripes and a crimson handkerchief folded in the breast pocket and an open-necked purple shirt. He looked straight at me as though I were the only person in the club. I felt my heart drop. It was not out of fear. My guilt about Penelope was like a hot coal in my stomach.
“You sick?” Clete said.
“You and I weren’t meant for this kind of life,” I said.
“When did you decide that?” he said.
“Just now.”
He followed my eyes. “Is that Adonis?” he said.
“In the flesh. Who are the guys with him?”
“I don’t know. He imports his hitters. I think we ought to leave.”
“No.”
“Are you trying to commit suicide?”
“I have to get on the square about this stuff,” I said.
“And tell him you bagged his old lady?”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” I said.
“You know what I’d do if I got hooked up with a woman that beautiful and with that amount of class?”
“No, what?”
“I don’t know. I never had the chance.”
Which wasn’t true. But Clete was Clete, always humble, always protecting my feelings. He took another sip from his whiskey sour, holding it in his mouth so he could savor the taste and let it slide slowly down his throat. I could smell the lemon juice and Jack Daniel’s and syrup and maraschino cherry and orange slices on his breath, like a warm gift from the heavens. I felt I was two seconds from ordering one. I coughed slightly and cleared my throat. Before I could speak, Clete said, “Check it out.”
Father Julian Hebert was in the midst of the line dancers, his arms spread on the shoulders of two fat women. But I could not keep my eyes off the rows of liquor bottles behind the bar.
“You got that look, Dave,” Clete said.
