Part 49 (1/2)
”I'll have one of the same,” Joe told the bartender
”Make that three,” Rosa said
The bartender was looking at Sae, stout and balding He looked over his shoulder at the television on its shelf above the bar; although it was showing only an ad for Ballantine beer, the set appeared to be tuned to 11, WPIX, the station that had been carrying the hearings The bartender looked back at Sammy, a mean Irish twinkle in his eye
Rosa cupped her hands on either side of her mouth ”hello!” she said ”Three bourbons on the rocks”
”I heard you,” the bartender said, taking three glasses from below the bar
”And turn that TV off, why don't you?”
”Why not?” the bartender said, with another smile for Saarettes out of her purse and tore one from the pack ”The bastards,” she said, ”the bastards The fucking bastards”
She said it a few more times Neither Joe nor Sa to add The bartender brought their drinks, and they drained them quickly and ordered another round
”Sammy,” Joe said ”I'm so sorry”
”Yeah,” Saht”
”How are you?” Rosa said
”I don't know, I feel like I'h he was inclined to attribute the perception to alcohol, Sammy noticed that there appeared to lie no emotion at all, none at least that he could name or identify, behind his shock at his sudden exposure and his disbelief at the way it had happened Shock and disbelief: a pair of painted flats on a movie set, behind which lay a vast, unknown expanse of sandstone and lizards and sky
Joe put an arm across Saainst hihed They sat that way for a while, propping one another up
”I can't help noticing that I' a lot of astonishment from you two,” Sammy said at last
Rosa and Joe sat up, looked at Sammy, and then at each other behind his back They blushed
”Batman and Robin?” Rosa said, astonished
”That's a dirty lie,” Sammy said
They drank one more round, and then soetting back out to Bloo today and Tommy was due hoeneral donning of coats and scarves, some slapstick with dollar bills and the spilled ice from a drink, and then at some point Rosa and Joe seemed to remark that they were headed out the door of the chophouse and that Sammy was not with them
”You're both too drunk to drive anyway,” Sammy told them when they returned for hi the car home later”
Now ca approaching the doubt, thein their faces
”Givedrive into the East River Or anything like that”
They didn't ht?”
Rosa looked at Joe again, and Saht do so to hurt himself; perhaps they orried that, as soon as they left him, he would head up to Times Square and try to cruise a sailor And then Sammy realized that, after all, he could
Rosa ca that nearly sent Sa off his bar stool She spoke into his ear, her breath warm and with a burned-cork sht,” she said ”All of us”
”I know,” Sa to sit here I' to sober up”
Sammy nursed his drink for the next hour, chin in his palms, elbows on the bar The dark brown, sardonic taste of the bourbon, which at first he had found unpalatable, now seeue in hisimperturbably in his chest
He wasn't sure what finally started hi about Bacon Perhaps it was the revived ht at Pa in 1941 Or le pink wrinkle that creased the broad back of the barretted nearly everything about his affair with Bacon except, until now, its secrecy The need for stealth and concealranted as a necessary condition both of that love and of the shadow loves, each paler and more furtive than the last, that it had cast Back in the sumh the shame and ruination of exposure Saard all the things that their loving each other had seemed to put at so much risk-his career in comic books, his relations with his family, his place in the world-as the walls of a prison, an airless, lightless keep fro since ceased to value the security that he had once been so reluctant to i with Bruce and dick, and Steve and Bucky, and Oliver Queen (how obvious!) and Speedy, and that security was gone for good And now there was nothing left to regret but his oardice He recalled his and Tracy's parting at Penn Station on theof Pearl Harbor, in the first-class compartment of the Broadway Limited, their show of ordinary mute male farewell, the handshake, the pat on the shoulder, carefully tailoring and h there was no one at all watching, so finely attuned to the danger of what they ht lose that they could not permit themselves to notice what they had
”Hey, Weepin' Wanda,” said the bartender, in a tone of not quitein this bar”
”Sorry,” Sammy said He wiped his eyes on the end of his necktie and sniffled
”Saw you on the TV this afternoon,” the bartender said ”Didn't I now?”
”Did you?”
The barrinned ”You know, I alondered about Batman and Robin”
”Did you?”
”Yeah Thanks for clearing that up”
”You,” said a voice behind Sammy He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find hiinger mustache had faded and dulled to the color of a turned slice of apple, and the eyes behind the thick lenses were rheumy and branched with pink veins But Salint of nation
Sammy pushed back from his stool and half-fell, half-lowered hiht have been
”George! What are you-were you there? Did you see it?”
Deasey seeaze was leveled at the bartender
”Do you knohy they have to fuck each other?” Deasey asked the ht treave him a more querulous air than ever
”What's that?” the bartender said
”I said, Do you knohy Batman and Robin have to fuck each other?” He took out his wallet and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, nonchalant, building up to the punch
The bartender shook his head, half-sood ”Nohy is that?” he said