“Not an option, unless he leaves with you.” I gave Diesel a why not look, and Diesel mumbled something.
“What?” I asked. “I can't.” More mumbling. “You want to run that mumbling by me again?” Diesel slumped in his seat and blew out a sigh. “I keep losing him. He's really sneaky. He turns a corner on me, and he's gone.”
“The stealth Beaner.”
“Something like that. He scrambles my radar.”
“You don't actually think you have radar, do you?”
“No, but I have GPS. And sometimes ESP. And Monday nights I get ESPN.”
Okay, he was a little nutty, but at least he had a sense of humor. And hell, who was I to say whether or not he actually had ESP. I mean, I sort of believe in ghosts. And I sort of believe in heaven. And I sort of believe in wishing on birthday candles. I guess Diesel and ESP aren't too far removed. Sort of in the area of radio waves, spontaneous combustion, and electricity. After all, I don't understand any of those things, but they exist.
“Sometimes you just have to go with it,” Diesel said. I left Diesel on that note and sashayed off to the bar. It was easy to spot Beaner in the lineup of losers. He was the only one with a raspberry birthmark on his forehead. The stool next to him was unoccupied, so I climbed onto it and made sure there was some air between us.
Beaner was drinking something amber on ice. Probably scotch. I ordered a beer and smiled at him.
“Hi,” I said. “How's it going?”
He didn't return the smile. “How much time do you have?” he asked.
“That bad?”
He threw back the liquid in his glass and signaled the bartender for more.
I took another stab at it. “Do you come here often?” I asked him.
“I live here.”
“Must be hard to sleep on that barstool. How do you keep from falling off?”
That almost got a smile. “I don't sleep here,” he said. “I just drink here. I'd drink at home but that might indicate alcoholism.”
“Where's home?”
He made a vague gesture with his hand. “Out there.”
“Out there is a big place.”
“My wife kicked me out of the house,
” he said. “Changed the locks on the friggin' doors. Married for two hundred years, and she kicked me out of the house. Packed all my clothes in cardboard boxes and put them out on the front lawn.”
“Jeez, I'm sorry”
“What am I supposed to do now? Things were different the last time I dated. It was simple back then. You found someone you liked, you asked their father if you could marry them, then you got married and climbed on board.” He took possession of his new drink and tested it out. “Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm saying that was right. It's just the way it was. And I knew that way. Now it's all about talking and sensitivity. I've been married for all this time and suddenly she wants to talk. And it turns out we've been having bad sex, and now she wants to have good sex. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to find out you've been doing it wrong for two hundred years? I mean, how friggin' annoying is that? She said I couldn't find my way south of the border with a road map.”
“I might know someone who could help you.”
“I don't need help. I need my wife to come to her senses. This whole mess is the result of someone trying to help. Things were fine until some meddler stuck her big fat nose into my marriage. If I get hold of her I'll fix her good. It'll be the last time she meddles in someone's marriage.”
“But if she was trying to help—”
“She didn't help. She made things awful.” He chugged his drink, dropped a twenty on the bar, and stood. “I've gotta go.”
“So soon?”
“Things to do.”