Get Real

38

WHEN DORTMUNDER WALKED into the OJ at ten that night, Rollo was off to the right end of the bar, in conversation with a tourist. There were many ways to tell he was a tourist, such as the binoculars and camera both hanging from straps around his neck, the sunglasses pushed up onto his forehead, the many-pocketed camouflage jacket with the maps jutting out of most of the pockets, his pants cuffs tucked into the top of his heavy-duty hiking boots, and the fact that he was trying to pay for his beer in euros.

Rollo was having none of it. “We only do American money,” he explained. “It isn’t worth much, but we’re used to it.”

“%#&_#&%$*@ @¼&%#$,” said the tourist, and went on holding out the colorful little piece of paper.

Meanwhile, to the left end of the bar, the regulars were discussing the Internet. “It’s the biggest scam in the world,” one of them was saying. “I mean, why go through all that? The first thing you gotta do, even before you start, you gotta go out and put good cash money right down and buy this adding machine kind of thing.”

“Computer,” a second regular suggested. “They call it a computer.”

“Sure,” said the first. “And what does it compute? It’s an adding machine.”

“Well,” said the second regular, “I think it’s more than that. I mean, I don’t know this myself, but the way I understand it, this machine connects to everything everywhere. Somehow.”

“So?” said the first regular. “My phone connects to everything everywhere. My television connects with everything everywhere.”

A third regular now joined the discussion, saying, “Just last week I got a wrong number from Turkey. The guy wanted me to reverse the charges. I told him what to reverse.”

Meanwhile, the tourist, still waving his euro, was now trying blandishment. “&%$&&@*+, &&%$)**,” he wheedled, with what he apparently hoped was a winning smile.

It lost. “If it isn’t green,” Rollo said, “I got no use for it. Pass that thing at the UN or somewhere.”

To the left, a fourth regular had joined the conversation, while Dortmunder waited patiently in the middle, resting his forearms on the bar, reading the labels on the bottles across the back, remarking to himself how few of them he thought he’d be able to pronounce. This fourth regular began by announcing, “It’s all another government giveaway to the big farm interests, like those subsidies and pushed-up crop prices and all that stuff. If you do sign on to this Internet thing, you know what they make you do? You gotta sign up for shipments of salty meat!”

The second regular veered around as though he’d just seen an iceberg. “You do?”

“It’s true,” the fourth regular insisted. “I read about it, I read about it a couple times. People got all this meat, they don’t know what to do with it.”

The first regular, doubtful, said, “I think you got something wrong in there.”

“No way, Jose.”

The first regular lowered an eyebrow. “Do I look Hispanic to you?”

“I dunno,” the fourth regular said, undaunted. “Lemme see you dance the mambo.”

“Keep it down over there,” Rollo said. Many years of experience had taught him the precise moment for a calm but firm intervention.

The fourth regular kept his mouth open, but perhaps spoke something different from what he originally intended. “All I know is,” he said, “the government’s overdoing all this crap. They’re intruding on everybody’s lives. They’re sticking their nose in everywhere.”

“The camel under the tent,” said the third regular, the one with the pal in Turkey.

This comment was met with such a profound silence that Dortmunder could clearly hear that the tourist had now decided to get on his high horse and was demanding his rights, or respect, or a fair hearing, or a retrial, or something, all in a firm voice punctuated by a fingertip, from the hand not holding the euro, bonk-bonk-bonking the bar. “%#$&&,” he said. “*&+@%%$# %&*++%$, $%#&@1/4**& $%& +*%$# *$%&$+@@.”

Rollo at this point held up a hand palm outward in the universal traffic-cop sign for “stop.” “Hold on,” he told the tourist. “I got an actual customer here, one that doesn’t deal in wampum.” Turning to Dortmunder, he said, “You’re the first.”

“We’re five tonight,” Dortmunder told him.

“I know, the beer and salt told me. Let me give you the makings for you and the other bourbon.”

During this exchange, the regulars had been wondering if a blog was something you could catch and the tourist was giving Dortmunder the fisheye as though suspecting somebody around here was trying to jump the line.

If so, it was successful. Rollo slid the tray with the glasses and the ice and the Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon—“Our Own Brand”—along the bar to stop in front of Dortmunder, but then he said, “Hold on.”

“Hold on?”

Rollo was looking over Dortmunder’s shoulder, so Dortmunder turned and here came Tiny and the kid. “Just in time,” Dortmunder said.

“Which means somebody’s late,” Tiny commented.

The tourist didn’t like it that an entire crowd seemed to have taken his place at center stage, but he was bewildered as to what to do about it. Holding up his euro to show it to the three of them, he said, “&%*$*@, &*$@+ *&%*+,” his manner now showing a plea for international friendship here, some common fellowship, human understanding.

Tiny reached out and tapped the tourist on the binoculars. The tourist flinched, and looked alarmed. Tiny told him, “What you want to do is, when in Rome, don’t be Greek.”

The tourist blinked. All languages, even his own, seemed to have deserted him.

Rollo, having been busy, slid Tiny his bright red drink and said to the kid, “What’ll it be tonight?”

“Well, I think I’d just like a beer,” the kid said.

Rollo, deadpan, gave Dortmunder a lightning-fast look that said, “I believe our little boy is growing up,” then turned and drew a draft as Dortmunder picked up his tray and Kelp, arriving, said, “I’m a little late, let me carry that.”

“Yes,” Dortmunder said, and, empty-handed, led the way toward the regulars, who were now trying to figure out if the Internet could look back at you.

“Wait a second,” Kelp said.

So they all stopped, and Kelp turned to the regulars to say, “The answer is yes. Just a little while ago there’s a woman right here in New York City, she works for the Apple Store, you know, the computer store, and somebody burgled her apartment and took a lot of stuff including her home computer. Now, she’s very savvy about computers, and she knew a way, from another computer, how she could talk to her computer and tell it to take pictures of where it found itself. So it did, and there’s the two guys who boosted it, so she took their pictures down from the other computer and gave them to the cops, and pretty soon the cops got the perps and the woman got her computer and her other stuff back, and the moral of that story is, do not commit a crime anywhere near the Internet.”

Kelp nodded at them, to be sure they’d followed his story, and then said to the others, “Okay, let’s go.” And the four of them took off around the regulars, who were sitting in a row there now like an aquarium full of thunderstruck fish, and on down the hall, where the kid said, “Andy, that’s cool. Did that really happen?”

“Yes,” Kelp said. “And let it be a lesson to you.”

Solemn, the kid held up his beer glass in a toast to lessons learned. “It is,” he said.