Wolf Hour

4 Oz, October 2016

Bob Oz hissed through his teeth and put the empty shot glass back down on the bar. Looked up and saw his own reflection in the mirror between the bottles on the shelves. A new guy at work had asked him yesterday why the others called him One-Night Bob. He told him it must be because he always solved his cases in just one night.

Bob looked at One-Night Bob. He’d turned forty, but wasn’t that the same face he’d been staring at for the past twenty years now? He wasn’t exactly a good-looking man, but like his father he had the kind of face time didn’t seem to sink its teeth into. Well, OK, chewed up a little bit. At least chewed away the puppy fat of youth to reveal the mature man’s good or his bad genes, all depending on which way you looked at it. White skin of the type that only got sunburnt, never brown. A thick and unruly thatch of red hair on the kind of head that got Scandinavians nicknamed squareheads, back in the day when his ancestors emigrated here from Norway. A relatively healthy-looking set of teeth, a pair of blue eyes that had got more red in the whites since his separation. His eyes bulged slightly, but at least according to one of his one-night-stand ladies that was no bad thing since it gave the impression he was listening closely to whatever they said. Another had said that as soon as they met she had the feeling of being a Little Red Riding Hood and wondering why the wolf had such big eyes. Bob Oz rounded off the stocktaking by sitting up straight on his bar stool. When he was young he wrestled and swam. Though never a champion in either field it had given him a good body that the years had done little to change. Until now, that is. He put his hand on his shirt, beneath his trademark yellow coat. A nasty little pot belly. And this despite the fact he had never eaten less than in the three months that had passed since he and Alice had split up. And it couldn’t be the pills, because he wasn’t taking those any more. But he was drinking more, no doubt about that. A lot more.

The name One-Night Bob came from a colleague early on in his career, before he met Alice and became One-Woman Bob. It was back in the days when he and his colleagues celebrated every triumph, great and small — and, at a pinch, their defeats too — at the Dinkytown bars, when they were young enough to shake off the hangovers and Bob would more often than not wake up with a woman lying next to him. What especially impressed his male colleagues was the way this pallid, ginger-haired guy could pull women even when he was so drunk he could hardly stand up. Anyone who asked what his secret was always got the same answer: that he tried harder. That he didn’t give up. That some of these women pestered him to take them to bed. When you haven’t the looks, the money or the charm then you have to work harder than the competition. End of story.

‘Another?’

Bob nodded and looked up at the female bartender as she poured his whiskey. She reminded him of someone and now he knew who it was. Chrissie Hynde, the singer and guitarist with the Pretenders. Black hair, fringe cut straight. Sassy, self-assured, interesting-looking rather than pretty. High cheekbones, narrow, slightly slanting eyes. A bit too much mascara. Russian genes? Long, thin limbs. Tight jeans she knew she looked good in. A baggy T-shirt, meaning she had nothing there worth promoting. No problem there, Bob had always been more of a leg-and-ass man. Sure, the half-closed venetian blinds in the bar blocked out the morning sunlight, but he could make out the lines marking her face. She looked like she’d lived a bit. Mid-thirties going on forty. Good. Gave him more of a chance.

Bob took a sip and hissed through his teeth again. The sign on the sidewalk outside the bar advertised Happy Hour, but just for a handful of whisky brands, and you take what you can get. Bob coughed.

‘Liza. It is Liza, right?’

‘Whatever,’ she said and yawned as she picked up the empty beer glass of a customer who had just left the bar.

‘That’s what the guy who was just here called you.’

‘Well, that’s all right then.’

‘OK,’ said Bob and took another sip. ‘I know you’ve heard this before, Liza, but you know what? My wife doesn’t understand me.’

Liza came back at him without missing a beat: ‘And there was me hoping you didn’t have one.’

Bob smiled stiffly. ‘You get tips for that line of yours, honey?’

‘You get cunt for yours, honey?’

Bob looked thoughtfully at her expressionless, stony face. ‘If you want a ballpark figure, and by cunt you mean the whole way, then we’re talking—’

‘Forget it,’ she interrupted. ‘Let’s just say never mind about the tip so long as I don’t have to be...’ She mouthed the word cunt, then turned her back on him to rinse out a cloth in the sink.

‘Fair enough, Liza. But just for the record, my wife really doesn’t understand me. For a long time she understood everything, and then it stopped. Suddenly she couldn’t make me out at all.’

Liza gazed longingly in the direction of the tables where the only other two customers were sitting, as though hoping they would give her something else to do other than have to stand and listen to this. Bob moved his right hand toward his jacket pocket. The No Smoking law had been in place for the last ten years, but after a drink or two old habits took over and he could still find himself reaching for the cigarette pack that wasn’t there. It hadn’t been there since that evening twelve years ago when they’d met. He’d been sitting there, minding his own business, listening while a colleague hypothesised about what turned the ladies on; it was Bob’s French inhaling, the way he slipped the smoke out of his mouth and at the same time drew it up into his nostrils. That showed muscular coordination at the same time as there was something vulgar about it, he said. Something suggesting an unbridled and dark sexuality. That was the moment another colleague entered the bar with this woman. He’d introduced her, her name was Alice, she was a psychologist, a couple of inches taller than Bob and insanely good-looking. So good-looking Bob immediately crossed her off his list. Another of his pickup rules involved setting realistic goals, and Alice was obviously way out of his league. On top of that — and this was a practical rather than a moral hindrance — she was on a date with a colleague. And anyway, this colleague had already warned her about him, she knew his nickname was One-Night Bob, and even before Alice got the first drink down she’d asked him straight out about it. Not, like the guys, asking him how he did it, but asking him why. Why did he have to have all these women who he didn’t really want? Because she was a psychologist, and because anyway he’d already made up his mind she was out of his league, he decided to tell her as honestly and openly as he could, and not give a damn about how bad it would make him look. He said it probably came from having a weak bond with his mother, that he hadn’t been loved enough as a child, and that this gave him a compulsion to seek out intimacy and recognition, at the same time as he didn’t dare to risk a closer relationship for fear of being rejected. And that, as well as all that, it was exciting and pleasurable to fuck new women. He asked her what she made of this. She said he seemed self-obsessed and radiated a deep loneliness, and that she didn’t like men who smoked and had it never occurred to him that the smell would get into the fibres of his cashmere coat? Bob then embarked on an intense lecture on the subject of the difference between the goat hair of his coat and camel hair generally, segueing into an equally intense lecture about how ‘Purple Rain’ was so much more than the clichéd rock ballad people thought it was, that when the last verse was over the song wasn’t even halfway through, after that came five minutes of a brilliant, howling guitar solo, an implosion, followed by two minutes of beautiful, delirious anarchy. He got the bartender to put the record on and sang along with it, doing the guitar parts too, dancing like Axl Rose. Alice looked as though she didn’t know whether to laugh or throw up. A month later they were a couple. And from that day on Bob hadn’t cast so much as a glance at other women, she’d transformed him, she’d kissed the frog. Until three months ago. Now — twelve years on — the frog was out hopping again.

‘If you really want to know, she’s left me,’ said Bob.

‘I don’t want to know.’

‘No, well, now you know anyway. Isn’t that actually part of your job? To listen and pretend to understand?’

‘No. But OK, she’s dumped you and I can’t say I’m surprised.’

‘No?’ Bob took hold of the lapels of his cashmere coat and parted them, heard how his speech was a little slurred. ‘Do I look to you like a guy ladies would dump, Liza?’

‘Dunno. But when someone comes in here in the middle of the morning and drinks like an amateur then it’s a good guess they’ve been kicked out either by their lady or by their boss. And from the way you’re dressed you look like a guy who has a job to go to.’

‘Jesus, you ought to be a detective.’

‘You trying to tell me I don’t make it as a bartender?’

Bob laughed. ‘Tough lady.’ He held out his hand. ‘The name’s Bob.’

‘Hello, Bob. No offence, but I don’t touch the customers and they don’t touch me.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Bob and withdrew his hand. ‘What about you, Liza? You ever had your heart broken?’

‘I’m a bartender, that’s all you need to know about me.’

‘OK, but at least tell me this. A man with a broken heart: in your eyes, does that make him more attractive or less attractive?’

She raised one eyebrow. ‘Are you asking me what your chances are of fucking me?’

‘What makes you think I want to fuck you?’

‘You mean you don’t?’

Bob thought about it. ‘If what people say is true, that fucking other people is a good remedy for a broken heart, then Christ, yeah, I do.’

Bob couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw the ghost of a smile on that hard, closed face.

She pulled a wine glass from a rack dangling above the bar and began polishing it. ‘Helps about as much as pissing in your pants when it’s cold, I should think. Does you having a broken heart mean I fancy you? No. For all I know she dumped you because you’re no good in bed.’

Bob slumped forward with one hand held to his stomach. ‘Ouch, you got me there, Liza. Pour me another drink.’

Liza filled his glass. ‘OK. So do you really have a broken heart?’

‘Will you fuck me if I do?’

Bob was sure of himself now; she was smiling.

‘Come on, Liza, being here bores you as much as it bores me, so let’s just entertain each other a bit. The question is hypothetical and your answer will not be used against you in a court of law.’

‘I’d like it better if you entertain me with the story of your broken heart.’

‘Her name’s Alice.’

‘You have kids?’

‘No.’

‘Hard up?’

‘No.’

‘Someone else?’

‘No.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘She stopped loving me.’

‘But she did love you once, you think?’

‘Yes,’ said Bob. ‘She did.’

‘Then why d’you think she stopped?’

‘It’s... complicated.’

She returned the wine glass to the rack and started polishing another, looking at him while she did so.

‘I thought you wanted to talk about it.’

‘Your turn now,’ said Bob, and forced a smile. ‘Could I have had a date with you?’

‘No.’

‘Hypothetically,’ he said. ‘If you didn’t work here.’

She shook her head slightly, and then added, with an exasperated look, like someone humouring a troublesome child: ‘It depends.’

‘Depends on what?’

‘What you have to offer a single mom.’

‘Ah, single mom.’ Bob smiled broadly. ‘I can offer her security. I’m a public servant, it’s almost impossible to fire me. And...’ Bob put his hand into the pocket of his cashmere coat and tossed a small, rectangular plastic package onto the counter.

Liza leaned forward reluctantly for a closer look. Made a face. ‘A rubber?’

‘Safe sex. This is the best money can buy.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re scared you’ll have a kid?’

Bob shrugged. ‘I’m scared of a premature ejaculation. And with that thing there my prick hardly feels a thing.’

Liza laughed out loud. And from her laughter he could tell she’d smoked her fair share of cigarettes. ‘Dammit, Bob, you really are cute.’

‘Cute enough to let me buy you a cup of coffee some place else?’ Bob pulled the condom back over to his side of the counter.

She shook her head. ‘Is that the way you usually do it?’

‘Do what?’

‘First the full-frontal assault, then the retreat, then the siege?’

Bob thought about that. ‘Yes. Does it work?’

‘Sure. Just not on me.’

‘Why not?’

Liza rolled her eyes.

‘Oh, come on,’ said Bob, ‘I’m out of training. I need a little constructive feedback here.’

Liza spotted a gesture from one of the other customers, an elderly man still wearing his overcoat. She picked up a glass and unscrewed the top of a vodka bottle. ‘Well, OK then. I couldn’t be less interested. You come in here, I’m the first woman you see, the first living being you see. You sat there for about five minutes before suggesting a fuck. A fuck to make up for the fact that your lady’s dumped you. Let’s say — hypothetically — that I’d been up for it and you and me ended up in the same bed tonight. Does that really sound to you like the start of a quality relationship involving two quality people?’

‘Ah, but...’

‘But?’

‘Isn’t quality in general a bit... eh, overrated?’

Liza looked at him and slowly shook her head. She licked her lips a couple of times.

‘Then what do you mean by quality, Liza?’

Liza screwed the cap back on the vodka bottle. ‘Staying power.’

‘Staying power? As in...?’

‘No. As in, a man who sticks around.’

She placed her hands on the counter and Bob Oz met her eyes. Then she picked up the vodka glass, emerged from behind the bar and walked across to the old man sitting at his table. Bob watched her. She put the glass down in front of him and spoke to him as she picked up the crutch that had fallen to the floor and leaned it against the chair.

The phone in the inside pocket of his jacket began to vibrate.

He took it out, saw that the caller was Superintendent Walker. He hesitated before taking the call.

As expected, Walker sounded pretty pissed off. ‘Where the hell are you, Oz?’

‘Dinkytown, chief.’

‘Why aren’t you at work?’

‘I am. I’m checking the licences at a couple of dodgy premises.’

‘You are a homicide detective, Oz.’

‘Then let me guess. There’s been a murder?’

Pause.

‘Have you been drinking, Oz?’

‘Any address for that murder, chief?’

Walker sighed heavily before giving the address.

‘No surprises there then,’ said Bob as he wrote in his notebook. They ended the call and he stood up and buttoned his cashmere coat just as Liza came back round behind the bar again.

‘Duty calls?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Bob as he put some dollar bills down on the bar.

Liza held one up to the light to make sure it was legit. ‘Will we be seeing you again, Bob?’

‘Do we hope so?’

‘If you keep on tipping like this then definitely.’

‘When do you close?’

‘Nine o’clock. But maybe you need a bit of a break from the drinking. Heart, liver — it all adds up, you know.’

‘Thanks for the advice.’ Bob smiled. ‘Ha det bra.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Norwegian. Be well.’ Bob turned and headed for the exit. Could feel he was a little bit unsteady on his feet. Stopped in the open doorway and walked back to the bar where Liza was standing with her hand out and a grin on her face. Bob Oz grabbed the condom from between her fingers, gave an exaggeratedly gallant bow and then left.

Bob sat behind the steering wheel of the car parked by the sidewalk on the other side of the railroad bridge. Like the majority of the cars in the police service fleet it was a Ford, but it was unmarked and in the state he was in he couldn’t give any guarantees about his driving. So he took the Kojak light from the glove compartment, opened the window, pressed the magnetic foot down onto the roof and checked that the blue light was on. This part of Dinkytown was mostly barflies and white farmers’ sons come to town to study and to party, but even here the police would never risk stopping a cop car on call-out and ordering a DUI test. Bob took the route through Marshall Street and Broadway Bridge across the river — it shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes anyway. Tucked in behind a car with a blue bumper sticker. GUN OWNERS FOR TRUMP 2016. Donald Trump was entertaining, give him that, but then Hillary Clinton and the Democrats had rejoiced when the Republicans managed to nominate an unelectable lunatic as their candidate. Something the opinion polls now, just before the presidential election, seemed to confirm they had good reason to. Bob pulled out his cell phone, navigated to the last number called and pressed the call button. Listened to the female voice on the answering machine.

‘Hello, you’ve reached Alice’s answering machine. Will you please stop calling me, Bob?’

Bob waited for the beep so the recorder would pick up everything he said before he began speaking. ‘OK, that was new, Alice, I’ll give you that. I’m calling to say I’ve changed my mind, I’m not going to let you have the house, and definitely not at that price. And to inform you I fucked a girl of twenty-six last week. Says she’s an aerobics instructor when she isn’t studying law at U of M and that her grandfather was an Ojibwe chieftain. I take that with a pinch of salt, women lie, we all know that, or don’t we, Alice? Anyway, I’m not telling you this to make you jealous or anything like that, after all, we are — as you said — adult human beings.’ Bob stopped at a red light. He was pleased that he was managing to keep his voice under control. ‘I’m only calling to tell you that she called me last night and told me I’d given her a sexually transmitted disease, one I’d never heard of, apparently a new one just arrived from the West Coast. So this is just a bit of friendly, grown-up advice to get yourself checked. Because it’s only natural to wonder if the source was Stan the Man, and that you, contrary to what you told me, were actually screwing him before I moved out, and passed it on to me that last time we fucked, on Hidden Beach.’

Bob could hear now that his voice was no longer under control and that he had actually yelled the words fucked and screwing since they happened to be very well suited to being yelled.

‘Because you remember that fuck, right? Yeah, you damn well bet you do, because I guess you’ve never been fucked so well since. Or have you? Have you, bitch?’

Bob threw the phone at the windshield and it bounced around the car before disappearing somewhere. Put both hands against the wheel and breathed out heavily. Became aware of the zebra-striped car in the lane to his left, and the man in the passenger seat staring at him through the open window. Glazed eyes and slack mouth. Like he was in the bloody zoological gardens. Bob knew he shouldn’t but he couldn’t resist it; he lowered the window.

‘What the fuck are you staring at? Never seen anyone go berserk before?’

The man’s eyes remained glazed, his mouth stayed slack, and Bob wondered if he was a bit simple, but then the guy put his hand out of the window and pointed upward and said in a slow, toneless voice:

‘Why stop for a red light when you’ve got one of those on the roof of your car?’

Bob opened and shut his mouth several times, but his brain came up with nothing. The zebra-striped car next to him pulled away and he heard a horn blaring behind him. Bob cursed under his breath and hit the gas.