Downtown Owl

  And now she was in that unknown place, and she was doing the logical job she did not want. And it appeared that her father was right: The teenagers in Owl were very, very different from the rats in Chicago. They were maddeningly polite and overwhelmingly blond. They always called her Ms. Rabia, although some of them used the prefix “Mrs.” no matter how often she corrected them. More significantly, they just sat there. The students rarely said anything, even when directly asked. Some of them were ambitious and some of them were lazy, but it was difficult to deduce the difference. Almost everyone dressed the same, regardless of gender: A T-shirt promoting an innocuous insignia (often the Led Zeppelin “Swan Song” icon or a Minnesota Vikings logo), acid-washed jeans (Levi’s for males, Guess? for females), and white leather Nike Cortez tennis shoes (red swooshes, blue trim). The poorest kids wore Wranglers and lowcut canvas Nikes, which were always blue. There was no system in place for disciplinary detention, and none was needed. It appeared that wearing a windbreaker jacket indoors was perceived as some sign of rebellion, but Julia had no idea why that was. People parted their hair down the middle and feathered it back; everyone used the same brand of mousse. It appeared that none of the students were left-handed. Only one was visually jarring: One of the male seniors was six foot seven, supernaturally muscular, and organically lean. He had muttonchops and a disquieting, distant expression; it was a thousand-yard stare. Julia didn’t have this student in any of her classes, but she saw him skulking around the halls every morning, talking to no one. People called him Grendel. His given name was Chris Sellers. He was six inches taller than everyone in the entire building, except for the janitor. (The janitor was six foot four.) He was not popular or unpopular.

  Her fellow teachers were friendly, but they did not seem interested in becoming legitimate friends. They mostly talked about the sex lives of the students and sighed indiscriminately. They all seemed exactly forty years old. Barry Rickarski taught science and was either a) gay or b) affable to the point of weirdness. Brenda Giffels taught business classes and dressed almost exclusively in lavender. (Her hair was huge.) John Laidlaw taught English and charismatically smoked cigarettes in the teachers’ lounge five or six times a day. Owen Peterson taught the sixth graders and described himself as a kite enthusiast. Julia felt little connection to any of these people; they were all characters in a book she had only pretended to read. The lone exception was Naomi O’Reilly, who was insane.

  Naomi taught second grade and had an unusual academic philosophy: She believed small children were always lying. Always. She did not believe that eight-year-olds were exactly the same as adults, but she strongly suspected they often used their smallness as a crutch and had been socialized to exaggerate childlike behavior in order to avoid responsibility. Her teaching style involved a lot of accusatory screaming. Whenever Julia walked past Naomi’s room, she would hear things like “Come on, Cory! We all know you understand the difference between a clown and a cowboy! You are not fooling anyone in this room!” Naomi was six feet tall. Her haircut resembled an auburn porcupine. At the age of nineteen, she had been a sex kitten; at the age of fifty-nine, she would be sixty pounds overweight. But in the fall of 1983, Naomi was just a normal-sized thirty-nine-year-old lunatic. Naomi met Julia on the last day of Julia’s first week, in the women’s lavatory, ten minutes after the final bell. Julia washed her paws while Naomi dried her talons.

  “Hello,” said Julia. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Julia Rabia, and I just started…”

  “You live in those apartments,” said Naomi. “You live in those apartments with Chet What’s-His-Name. Chet Yoda, or whatever. What’s it like there? Nice or shitty?”

  “What are the apartments like?” Julia asked herself aloud. “I guess they’re okay. Who is Chet Yoda?”

  “Well, his name really isn’t Chet Yoda,” replied Naomi. “Obviously.”

  “Who are we talking about?”

  “The doofus who runs Yoda’s. The sorta cute kid who runs the bar. The mean motherfucker with the dog. The Dog Lover?”

  “I have no idea who you’re talking about. Is he a cool guy or something?”

  “No, he’s an asshole. But he’s a bartender, so, like, how bad can he be, right? Where are you supposed to be from?”

  “Milwaukee.”

  “So you must drink then, right?”

  “Well…yeah, I drink,” said Julia. “I drink. I like to drink.”

  “I love getting drunk,” said Naomi. “I. Love. Getting. Drunk. We are going to get intoxicated together. Do you want to go out and have a few?”

  “That would be great.”

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  “I’m still sort of unpacking.”

  “Fuck that shit. You are getting drunk. With me.”

  “Where?”

  “Well, since you evidently haven’t been there yet, meet me at Yoda’s at eight o’clock,” said Naomi. “There are four bars on Main Street. Yoda’s is the one on the north side with the sign that says YODA, in all capital letters. It’s not like you’re going to get confused: Either you’ll walk into Yoda’s, or you will walk into the goddamn post office. Does this sound okay?”

  “Oh, sure,” said Julia. “What is this place like? Is it cool?”

  Naomi laughed and shook the water off her hands. She looked like Godzilla, surfacing in the Sea of Japan.

  “Is it cool?” she responded. “It’s a bar.”

  “True, true,” said Julia. “Well, this is great. I’m excited. I’m excited to go to the bar and get drunk.”

  “Excited? I’m fucking stoked,” said Naomi. “I’m jazzed. I knew this was going to be a good year. I’m so jazzed that you’re in Owl, Julie.”

  “Julia,” said Julia. “It’s Julia.”

  “Jules!” said Naomi. “Either way, it’s gonna end up being Jules. And we are going to rock it up tonight, Jules. We are. Going to. Rock it up. Tonight. You can meet my boyfriend. Well, he’s actually not my boyfriend—I’m married and I don’t cheat on my husband, but I still have a boyfriend. You know what I mean? You know what I mean. You know what I mean. So if you have an extra liver, you might want to throw it into your glove box. I might need to chew on it.”

  Naomi O’Reilly walked out of the bathroom without saying goodbye. Julia was somewhat terrified by her new best friend. But this was still the best thing that had happened since she left Wisconsin.

  Julia went home and took a shower, mostly to kill time. She considered hanging her movie posters from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Manhattan, but they suddenly seemed childish; they needed to be framed. She ate Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and watched the local news out of Bismarck, followed by Entertainment Tonight. She decided to wear a skirt and a less comfortable bra. When she arrived at Yoda’s it was 8:02 p.m. Naomi was not there; there were ten people in the bar, but Julia was the only woman. It looked like the kind of bar that would be in a made-for-TV movie: One dartboard, one undersized pool table, one jukebox, and one TV hanging from the ceiling (its volume competed with the jukebox, which was playing Billy Joel’s “Tell Her About It”). There was one guy behind the bar drying a glass with a towel. Everything was made of fake wood. It was the most bar-like bar she had ever entered.

  Being alone, Julia sat by the taps. Seven people looked at her, including the bartender. He did not ask her what she wanted to drink, but she could tell this was what he wanted to know. His eyebrows were raised.

  “Rolling Rock,” said Julia.

  “What?” said the bartender.

  “I will have a Rolling Rock,” Julia said.

  “You’re in the wrong place,” said the bartender. This was Chet the Dog Lover, but Julia did not yet know it. “We don’t serve mineral water here.”

  “Rolling Rock is beer,” she said. “But don’t worry, it’s cool. It’s cool. Everything’s cool. What kind of beer do you have here?”

  “We have Budweiser, we have Bud Light, we have Miller, we have Miller Lite, we have Hamm??
?s, we have Schmidt, we have Old Milwaukee, and we have…I guess that’s what we have.”

  “Can I get a gin and tonic?” asked Julia.

  “Well, this is a bar,” he said. “One can generally order mixed drinks in bars. At least one can at the bars I frequent.” He free-poured the gin, added a few ounces of tonic, and slid it in front of her. “Two fifty,” he said. She gave him three dollars. He gave her two quarters in return, which she pushed back in his direction as a tip. He didn’t take it. Tips made the Dog Lover angry; they were degrading.

  Julia sipped her drink through its straw and reflexively gagged. It was 93 percent gin. She took a second sip—this time mentally prepared for the burn—and it went down easier. Before her third sip, someone was standing next to her. He was five foot six and weighed 230 pounds, but his cheeks were boyish and his eyes were squidlike. His cap promoted DEKALB seed corn.

  “Hello,” said the stranger. “You’re Julia, correct? You teach history, correct? And you live in those new apartments. Correct?”

  “Wow,” said Julia. “I am. Wow. All of that is true. That’s amazing.”

  “Oh, we’ve all heard about you,” said the round little fellow. “It’s great to see you out on the town. And you know, I was thinking: I keep hearing about this movie, E.T. I’m sure you’ve heard of it, too. According to the newspaper, it’s breaking every movie record that’s breakable. And you know what? It’s currently playing in Jamestown. So I was thinking we could maybe go check it out tomorrow, assuming you haven’t seen it and you’re into science fiction. I find science fiction fascinating.”

  Julia blinked four times.

  “Did you just ask me out on a date?” she said.

  “Oh, no. No,” smiled the little round man. “Unless that’s what you want to call it. It’s just a movie. Don’t you enjoy movies?”

  “I just met you, like, eight seconds ago,” Julia said. “In fact, I didn’t even meet you. You didn’t even say your name. I just saw you eight seconds ago. Do you have any idea how crazy that seems?”

  “Does it seem crazy?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It seems very crazy. It seems completely crazy. But, I mean…don’t be discouraged. You might be a great person, for all I know. It’s just that there is no way I could possibly know whether that’s true or false, at least not at this point. You know what I mean? And if this is the case—if you are a great person—maybe we could discuss this movie again, sometime in the future. After we’ve been friends for a while. Okay? Then we could maybe, possibly see a movie. Or not see a movie. Or whatever. Do you see where I’m coming from on this?”

  “Oh, no problem. No problem,” said the stranger, pleasantly unaffected by Julia’s rejection. “Good enough. And nice meeting you.” He walked back across the bar and sat down in front of his freshly opened Hamm’s, which he finished in four consecutive pulls. Julia took two more sips of her gin and tonic. It tasted like a Christmas tree soaked in gasoline. By the time the fifth mouthful was obliterating the walls of her stomach, another man was talking to her.

  “Let me apologize for Bull Calf,” said stranger number two. He was also a farmer, but he didn’t look like it. He looked like an Italian frat boy. “Bull Calf has no idea how to talk to women. On behalf of this entire bar, I’d like to sincerely apologize for Bull Calf’s actions. I know how hard it must be to be the new girl in town.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Julia. “He seemed like a nice enough guy, from what I could gather. I suppose I should be flattered. Why do you call him Bull Calf?”

  “Because he’s like a little Bull Calf,” said the man. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Maybe. I have no idea.”

  “Well, let me tell you: It’s obvious,” said the man. “My name is Kent. Kent Jones.” He extended his hand, which Julia shook. “And you’re right: Bull Calf is a good guy. Sensitive. In fact, I would wager five dollars that he’s the person who played this homosexual Billy Joel song on the jukebox. Bull Calf is confused about how the universe operates. But seriously, tell me—how do you like Owl? I had heard you were coming out to the bar tonight with Naomi, so I was immediately interested in hearing an outsider’s perspective on our thriving metropolis.”

  “How did you know I was meeting Naomi O’Reilly here?” Julia asked. “How does everyone know everything? We made these plans, like, less than five hours ago.”

  “I don’t know who told me,” he said. “Woo-Chuck, maybe? I think it was Woo-Chuck.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind,” said Kent. “It doesn’t matter. But like I said: Owl. The city of Owl. What do you think of it?”

  “It’s nice,” said Julia.

  “Great! Excellent,” said Kent. “I know it must seem boring to someone from Milwaukee, but this is a nice town. I like living here. But I grew up here, so—even if it sucked—I probably wouldn’t know the difference. Unfortunately, the movie theater is closing.”

  “I heard that,” said Julia.

  “It’s really too bad. The owner was simply a bad businessman. I really don’t think it had anything to do with the movies themselves. They say it’s been a great year for the film industry, all things considered. In fact, I happened to overhear you talking to Bull Calf about E.T. They say that movie is supposed to be really good. Really moving, the critics say. There was a huge story about its unprecedented box office success in the Fargo newspaper last weekend. Personally I have not seen the film, but it intrigues me. I think it’s interesting that this is a movie about aliens that are not attacking us. The alien is apparently a force for peace. We attack the alien, which is a twist.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Julia. “I read about it when it came out last year. People love it.”

  “They certainly do,” said Kent. He looked at the bartender and gestured to his beer. “So, what do you think?”

  “About what?” said Julia.

  “Would you like to see E.T. on Sunday night?”

  Julia blinked seven times.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” she said.

  “Why?” said Kent. “Did you already see it in Milwaukee? I guess it did come out a while ago.”

  “You just asked me on a date,” said Julia. She was trying very hard not to laugh, although this laughter would have been from discomfort rather than amusement. “You came over here and told me your friend was nuts for asking me on a date after only knowing me for eight seconds. But then you talk to me for maybe eighty seconds, and then you do the exact same thing.”

  “Well, I just got the impression you were interested in the movie,” Kent replied. “You kept saying how much other people liked it, so I figured you were up for seeing it. I’m sorry. I guess it was my mistake. I guess you don’t like movies.” Kent got up and walked to the bathroom. The bartender put another gin and tonic in front of Julia. “This one is from B.K.,” he said.

  “Who?” she asked.

  It was 8:06. The juke was now playing Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” another Bull Calf favorite. At long last, Naomi arrived. She was already buzzing, having enjoyed three wine coolers with supper.

  “Jules!” Naomi squawked, grabbing Julia’s shoulders from behind. “You made it here. I was afraid I was going to have to break into the post office and look for your decomposing corpse.”

  “Naomi, this place is bonkers,” she said in a half whisper. “You would not believe what just happened. That guy over there? The person they call Big Calf, or whatever? The minute I sat down, he immediately asked me to go to E.T. with him. Like, on a date. And we hadn’t even talked. And then thirty seconds after I said no, some other guy asked me the same question. This all happened in the span of, like, three minutes. What kind of bar is this? Am I losing my mind?”

  “Jules,” said Naomi. “The only new, single women who move to Owl are teachers. That’s it. You’re it. And I don’t know what your life was like before, but get ready, because you’re Raquel Welch now. And if you pay for even one drink over the next
twelve months, I will kick the living shit out of you. Just stay sexy and we’re all gonna win.” As Naomi said this, a third gin and tonic showed up in front of Julia.

  “This is from Disco Ball,” said the bartender.

  “Who are these people?” asked Julia.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Naomi. “Just drink it. Drink it, or give it to me.”

  Yoda’s closed at 1:00 a.m., which was ten minutes before the two women finally left. Julia awoke the next day at 11:30 a.m., alone in her apartment, fully clothed and sleeping on her face. Her hand was wrapped around a plastic cup that was half full of gin, which had been given to her by the bartender to sip while she drove home. Somebody had told her a bunch of crazy shit about John Laidlaw, but she couldn’t remember any of the details.

  Julia didn’t think she was going to E.T. that weekend, but she also wasn’t positive that she wasn’t.

  SEPTEMBER 8, 1983

  (Horace)

  Horace shook the bones and rolled a pair of threes, a pair of fives, and a lonely deuce. Gary Mauch followed him with three of a kind, so Horace lost again. Horace had not won a round of poker dice since the middle of Monday. He glared at the table through eyeglasses that were too large for his face, silently wondering if he would ever win again.