Faster on My Own: Chapter 18
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“I don’t care what you’re fighting about.” Steven hadn’t expected indifference. “Just sort it out. Or don’t. Just don’t feud publicly.”
“So, don’t harm the family reputation because that would hurt the business. That’s it?” Steven clamped his phone between his ear and shoulder as he tied his shoe. The campaign had offered an intern to take care of shoe-tying, putting on and taking off jackets, as well as tightening and loosening belts, but Steven had refused, preferring to keep a tenuous grip on his humanity. As he hunched over in the back seat of his town car, he questioned his wisdom in doing so. Still, the last thing the voters needed to see was a rich kid who couldn’t even do basic tasks for himself; he couldn’t use any of the time he spent cut off from the family fortune as evidence of self-reliance without blowing his cover. The voters didn’t know about his time spent as an anarchist, and they wouldn’t unless his parents or Ben blew his cover. Or his sister, but she might not even know. It would be in character for his mom to lie for a decade. As Steven exited the car, he wondered what lies his mother might have told Lindsey. Endless graduate school? Safari? Maybe that he was taken hostage and Mr. Williams was negotiating on the ransom for a decade.
A faded green door welcomed Steven as he got out of the car. Neon beer signs blinked in what first appeared to be no rhythm at all, but maybe it was morse code, each sign asking to be put out of its misery. Above the door, a faded banner rippled in the wind. “Large Kevin’s Little Bar: Grand Opening.”
Rick appeared next to Steven. “Okay. You feel like you’re up to this? You go in, look like you’re relating to their problems. But not too much, we don’t want people thinking you’ve got the same problems as some bar flies.”
“Chummy, not scummy. Got it.” There was a sandwich board stationed just outside the bar’s front door which had a chalk “$” written on it and nothing else. “What do you think that means?”
“Who knows?” The campaign manager held his phone right in front of his eyes. “Probably telling these guys to pay for their drinks. Let’s get in there.”
Steven and his team of advisers and the four photographers they hired poured into the bar. A ceiling fan lit the entire bar, leaving pockets of darkness scattered around the bar, and it swirled the cigarette smoke around rather than allowing the smoke to float and stagnate. As soon as his eyes adjusted to the low light, a gradual process of blurs resolving into shapes resolving into actual seen reality, Steven realized that his team now outnumbered the bar’s patrons. Four men sat at the bar, scowling, and a fifth lounged in the darkness. Perhaps he and the other four didn’t get along. Maybe there was a bad bet, or some drunken insult flung out and fell with such force it shattered the relationship between those men beyond repair. All of them glared at Steven as he approached the smiling bartender.
“Mr. Williams! So good of you to come to my little bar.” The bartender wrapped a sticky hand around Steven’s and shook until Steven’s shoulder hurt.
“Please, Mr. Williams is my father. And I’m glad to be here. Between you and me, this was always the kind of place I preferred in my younger days.” Time for the smile. He used the one he and his campaign manager had practiced. Good lift on the corners, not too wide, remember to scrunch the corners of the eyes so it looks real. When they were working on it, Rick had gone on and on about politicians who had been destroyed because their smile wasn’t adequate. He listed Stephen Douglas, Richard Nixon on his first campaign, even Robert Kennedy. When Steven questioned that choice, Rick said he should have been able to charm his way out from the front of that gun.
“Younger? Look at you. You’re what, thirty? Have a shot.”
“Thirty-four. I’ll just take a beer, thanks.” The bartender poured a beer without asking what kind Steven would like and handed it over– warm, foamy, and in a dirty glass. Steven took a sip. Even though he drank much worse in his old life, the last year of cold, craft beer had taken its toll. He felt a cough developing mid-sip and tried to suppress it, but like a massive wave hitting a wall, some still got through. Wiping the foam off of his mouth, he spun the stool around to face the other men at the bar.
“So, don’t let me interrupt. What were you talking about before I came in with all of this?”
The four men glanced at each other, then the nearest one to Steven– leathery skin, gray mustache with ends that dangled past his mouth– said, “We were talking about how much we hate faggots like you.” The other three men chuckled and drank in unison.
Steven considered his response. His first instinct, a holdover from the past, was to get angry over the use of the word “faggot.” And he was angry, but it only shook loose a few bubbles from the depths, rather than the full boil from his past. So he pushed that aside. Republican voters were not looking for that person. Still, he found himself in a bind. He could laugh along with them. He could get offended at the insinuation that he was gay. Neither felt like a strong position. So instead he arose from his chair and gripped the man’s shoulder with all his strength. As the man protested, Steven grabbed the sweat-stained collar of the man’s shirt, shielded from the cameras by his body, and whispered, “You’re going to get up and walk out of this bar right now. You are nobody, and I can make sure they find you in ten different ditches around the state. If anyone asks about today, you say you weren’t here, but you’ve heard great things about me. Use your own words, make it your own. Or else.”
Steven sat down and smiled again and waited for his bluff to work. After a few seconds of intense concentration, the man left the bar without a word. The rest of them looked perturbed by this sudden change. All of them murmured, none of them to each other or to anyone. “So,” Steven said, now confident in his command of the room, “why does that guy sit apart from everyone else?”
The man furthest from Steven, bald and fat with a thin goatee ringing his mouth in almost a perfect circle, said, “That guy’s a real piece of work. We don’t get along but Kev won’t throw him out.”
“He pays, he tips, he gets to drink.” Kevin laughed and winked at the camera.
From the shadows, the outcast glowered at Steven. He returned the stare, but felt uneasy, as if this man could see that Steven was a fraud. So he turned his attention to the rest of them, still cowed by Steven’s display of power. “Anyway. You guys know what this is. I come in, drink, look like I’m connected the the working man, you get to be heard. Everyone wins. What kinds of problems are you having with the country right now? Also, what’s your name?”
“Alright. I’m Roger.” He took a long drink from his beer, then exhaled for longer. “I don’t talk about this a lot. Doesn’t seem like there’s much point. What happens, happens. But I’m tired of watching jobs disappear. I used to make twenty dollars an hour. Twenty. Now I work nights for ten and I’m not even scraping by.”
“You hit the nail on the head, Roger. That’s my number one priority as well.”
“Your number one priority,” said Kevin, “should be taking out those damn North Koreans. Those wacky bastards have a nuclear bomb? I don’t like it.”
“I’m not going to be able to do much about that, but I certainly agree that something needs to be done. I can push for a harder line on that.”
The man from the shadows emerged. He walked over to the bar and sat next to Steven. Late fifties, with a full head of white hair and a strong chin, he was more handsome than Steven had expected a strange drunk sitting in the corner of the bar to be. As he leaned even closer, Steven smelled a mix of liquors coursing from his body like pheromones. “What if all the businesses in the United States merged together to make one giant super-business? Then it’d be powerful enough to become a better government and put all of you fuckers out of work.”
Steven said, “Well. I think it’s better to just let government and business get out of each other’s way, you know? As for the mergers, I think you run into a problem with monopolies. We want competition. That’s how we become the best.” Rick gave Steven a thumbs up from behind the bar’s patrons, then returned to his phone.
The outcast laughed and leaned close to his other stool neighbor, who leaned away like the two of them were magnets of the same polarity. Kevin wiped down the bar and said, “Pierce, if you don’t keep it cool, I’m gonna cut you off.”
He laughed again. “You’ve never cut me off in your damn life.”
“Sure I have. You just don’t remember it.” With that, Kevin retreated and flashed a quick grimace at Steven.. Regardless of how drunk he was, Steven wanted to find out what this man had to say. Certainly, he thought, it would be more interesting than talking about jobs that were never coming back. “Pierce, right?”
“That’s me.”
“Tell me more about this super-business idea. I don’t agree, but I’d like to hear more of your thoughts on it.” He glanced up to try to ward off his campaign manager’s inevitable warnings, but as soon as Rick saw Steven was looking at him, he gave him another thumbs up and again resumed his phone-induced trance.
“Well, it’s like this. Everything doesn’t have to be Wal-Mart. Right now it is. Even though other ones are different, they’re all Wal-Mart. I say, everything is the Mail. Or maybe the UPS. I don’t know. I can see it in my head, but out here it’s harder. Why not make everything one of those lawnmower companies? They’re good mowers. Probably make other stuff just as good. Not like we should get to choose what we do.” Pierce gestured at himself and everyone else sitting at the bar.
“Speak for yourself.” Roger slammed a fist down on the bar, and Kevin flinched. “I can run my own damn life. I don’t need any white-collar asshole telling me what to do. Just give me a job and I’ll do the rest.”
“So that’s why you’re here with me, huh?” Pierce’s high-pitched laugh sounded like a tropical bird’s call. Before Steven could register the motion, and certainly before Pierce was done laughing, Roger was off of his stool and halfway over to them. He yanked Pierce to the ground by the back of his grimy plaid shirt, then raised a fist to start pummelling him. But Steven grabbed his arm.
“Let’s be reasonable. No need for violence right now.”
Instead of the calming effect that Steven expected his words to have, they only produced a snarl on Roger’s face. “You let go of me or you’re next, pussy”
Backing down on camera would be a problem. While Steven didn’t feel much of a need to fight Roger,though he didn’t care for the use of the word “pussy” in this context, he knew Republican voters didn’t want a soft politician. For decades, their ideal candidate had been someone who could pretend to know their way around a horse and a farm, who could deliver cowboy justice– a phrase which had no meaning, but one hell of a connotation– and promised national strength. But getting into a bar fight could scare away the moderates.
Roger hit Pierce in the face, sounding a stomach-turning crunch. He couldn’t stand by for another one, so he grabbed Roger’s arm and thrust him back the way he came. The old man was heavier than most of the people Steven had ever fought, and Steven’s heavy breathing reminded him that he had barely exercised in the past year. Roger bleated incoherently and charged back, but Steven ducked and dropped his shoulder into Roger’s sternum.
With an exhalation like a balloon deflating, Roger crumpled to the ground. He clutched his chest. Steven said, “Shit. I hope I didn’t kill him. Call an ambulance.”
Kevin glanced over the bar, still cleaning glasses that never got any less dirty. “Nah, he’s fine. I’ve seen him take way worse than that.”
“You know, you’re right.” Pierce stood up and brushed off his shirt, which didn’t remedy the dirt that had worked its way into the very fibers of the cloth. With just the tip of his tongue stuck out, Pierce dug through his front pocket. He retrieved a knife and clutched it in his hand.
“No no no.” Steven reached out to him as Pierce shoved the blade into Roger’s shoulder. As he wound up for another stab, Kevin leapt over the bar and tossed him aside.
“Alright, now we call an ambulance. And the fucking police.”
Rick perked up and approached them, stepping over Roger and ignoring his wailing. “The police? What for?”
“Rick.” Steven said as he pointed at his photographers. “Get the cameras, delete everything. As for the rest of you, please give your phones to me. If there are no pictures, no evidence I was here, you can have them back. If there is evidence, we’ll delete it.”
“Our phones? What’s wrong with you? Roger is bleeding to death.”
“Yeah, because you let a psychopath stay at the bar because he bought a lot of drinks. That’s my read on the situation. And I’m not letting your fuck up taint my campaign. So, phones, now.” He thrust out his hand. The two men at the bar obliged, and had no pictures or video on their phone.
“Can I call the police first?”
“Rick, call an ambulance. By the time they get here, I need to be gone. Your phone, Kevin.” He stared into Rick’s eyes, trying to avoid thinking about the man bleeding at his feet. The Plan required such cruelty, but even a glance downward would break Steven’s resolve. A few seconds passed.
Rick paced near the door. “Yeah, the address is…” He clasped a hand over the phone. “He give it up yet?”
“Not yet.” Steven kept staring at Kevin as he answered.
Rick nodded. “Shit. Sorry for swearing, bad habit. Bad ass habit. I swear I know the address, just give me a second. My memory is so hazy.” He looked at Kevin and shrugged.
“The address is-”
Muting the receiver on the phone again, Rick said, “I know the address, dipshit. Give up your phone. Or else we’ll just take it and this fucker might be dead by then.”
“Fine.” Kevin tossed his phone to Steven and knelt down to Roger’s side. “It’s all going to be okay. Just breathe.”
“I’m not pregnant you asshole.” Roger said.
Rick called in the address, then swiped through the collected phones. After a couple minutes, he stacked them on top of the bar. “Nothing. Let’s go.” He tossed a jacket over Steven’s head, and his campaign staffers crowded around him to block any outside photographers from getting a picture. Inside the dark world of the jacket, Steven felt the cluster shuffle to the door and bump their way through the door.
“Shit!” Two sets of footsteps slapped against the ground, neither in any kind of rhythm. Steven’s protective wall dropped away from him and he emerged from the jacket. Down the street, Rick chased after someone, but Steven couldn’t quite see who it was. He crossed the street, trying to get an angle on whoever was evading Rick’s slowing pursuit. A man, tan jacket, bad haircut, long mustache.
The same man who Steven threatened out of the bar ducked into an alleyway and Rick bent over, hands on his knees and heavy breaths racking his whole body.
They drove around to the other side of the alley to cut him off, but it was empty. The man was gone. Rick couldn’t say if he had a phone in his hand, but that uncertainty didn’t reassure Steven at all. Nor did any other ways they could wriggle out: maybe he used the camera wrong, or didn’t get a clear shot of anything damaging, or he doesn’t know where to go with that footage. But Steven knew the hammer would drop, and it did.
Two days later, video shot through a crack in the door showed Steven standing by while Pierce stabbed Roger. It also showed Pierce ducking behind the bar and pouring himself a stein full of Goldschlager while Steven and Kev fought over phones. That brief amusement, however, was scrubbed from Steven’s mind by the flood of speculation over why he was there and what role he played in the stabbing.