Famed as much for its bullet-sprayed bar as its handcrafted lagers and stouts, the brewery is part sanitarium, part hospice, part decaying church, its graffiti-covered toilet stalls a compendium of disgraceful customs and bawdy incantations culled from decades of drunken conversation, its cold ashen walls a safe haven for gangsters and hoodlums, a refuge for unemployed merchant marines and longshoreman, a retreat for heretical priests, a confessional for unrepentant sinners. Inside, a dozen or so men—bald, bearded, brutal, their teeth chipped or missing altogether, their skin translucent in the flickering light of the television, their eyes blinded by the muddy daylight trickling through the dirty windows—hunch on their stools like things not seen in the open air but only in caves that have been sealed up for untold centuries. In silence they drink tall beakers of piss-colored beer and chew stale pretzels.
From the moment he walks through the door, de Vere understands that fist fighting is standard practice here. He skips over a pile of broken glass and makes his cautious way through a minefield of hostile stares. He has been beaten before, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not, and as he mentally prepares himself for the possibility of another trashing, he flags down the ruddy Irishman tending bar and asks for a vodka tonic on the rocks (it's best to anesthetize oneself beforehand) "with a twist of lime" (he refuses to abandon his more urbane sensibilities, even in the face of danger). He notes how his drink seems to irritate these men, makes them slurp their beer with purpose and glare at him with even greater intensity. Why such malice, de Vere wonders? Is it because he is too clean cut, his clothes too flashy, his hair too shiny, sculpted, and unnaturally dark? Maybe he should cut down on the dye, let a few gray strands grow in. He looks artificial, more mannequin than man. He uses his fading looks to disguise something ugly, but these men are not easily fooled by disguises. They sniff him out right away. He reeks of corruption, perversion, disease.
The bartender leans over and squeezes de Vere's shoulder. His forearms are thick and hairy, his knuckles raw. His tongue moistens a busted lip. He blows angry jets of smoke in de Vere's face and intentionally ashes on his shirt cuffs.
"Enjoying your cocktail, buddy? Having a good time? You know how to treat a lady? You gonna behave yourself?"
De Vere smiles sheepishly and thinks it wise to keep quiet.
The other men offer the woman a seat at the bar, hand her some cigarettes, buy her a few drinks. They ask how she's getting on. Does she have enough money, enough to eat? Does she need anything, clean clothes, a safe place to stay?
"This guy bothering you?" they want to know.
"Him?" The woman laughs. "Naw, he's a real gentleman. Can't you tell? Went to some kind of finishing school. Looks like a wax dummy, don't he?"
She throws her head back to swallow her whiskey and then nods with some vague sense of accomplishment, her eyes flashing like little strobe lights that briefly illuminate a dead, dreaming world. The booze cascades over her brain, baptizing her in a river of endless possibility. She smiles at her reflection in the dusty mirror the way a child might smile with equal parts fear and amusement at a total stranger passing on the street.
De Vere feels his guts suddenly rumble. He clutches his stomach and lets out a low groan.
"The shitter's that way if you need it," the woman tells him.
De Vere stands up, gives a little bow. "Excuse me, will you?"
"Oh, I'll be waiting, honey."
He tosses a few bills on the bar and then darts to the restroom where he locks himself in one of the filthy stalls. While he sits on the toilet, huffing and groaning in an unsuccessful attempt to extract the hardened stool lodged inside his colon, he reads the limericks and racial epithets and homophobic slurs on the door. Above the roll of toilet paper, someone has written a story in a small satanic hand, chronicling the lives of the reprobates who have descended into this stinking Hades—a high school quarterback, a football coach, a guitarist in a death metal band, a failed writer, an oversexed teacher. Modern day scripture for the drunk and dispossessed.
Rocking back and forth on the seat, De Vere scans the lines but is unable to concentrate for long. He grinds his teeth, bears down until his face turns red, but it's no good. He's been constipated for days now. He pulls up his pants and buckles his belt. As he stands at the sink, scrubbing his hands, he pretends not to hear the violent clangor of chapel bells coming from the Jesuit school a few blocks away, his alma mater, hallowed ground where he first learned about the pleasures of the flesh and the awful prospect of eternal damnation.
