Beware the Solitary Drinker by Cornelius Lehane Page B

the Grim Reaper were lurking behind me. “Maybe you should eat something,” he said, changing direction and heading for Tom’s.
    As we crossed Broadway, I got the sense of something unusual. Broadway’s a busy street, teeming with cars and cabs, trucks, buses, vans, baby carriages and strollers, and, because 110th Street is where the 24th Precinct ends and the 26th begins, more often than not, you see a couple of squad cars nosing around. But this morning, there were too many cop cars, marked and unmarked, from the two-four and the two-six, on either side of 110th Street and both sides of Broadway, doing that slow crawl they do when they’re looking for someone. I noticed the cops the way you sometimes notice something out of the ordinary: it registers but you don’t remark on it.
    At Tom’s, Danny sat across from me drinking a cup of coffee that he’d put five teaspoons of sugar into. I played with my fork, drank my coffee, looked everywhere in the restaurant except at him, racking my brain for a piece of small talk so I could stop sitting there looking like I expected him to murder me as soon as I finished breakfast.
    â€œYou got a good appetite,” he said after my eggs and sausage arrived. I kept eating. I didn’t have to talk if I was eating.
    â€œYou know what I want to talk about?” His expression was less angry. It was more like impassive; I couldn’t tell what he felt.
    I said no, but I was afraid I did.
    â€œAngelina…”
    I didn’t look at him but I felt his eyes on me all the same. “What about her?”
    â€œFinish eating and let’s get out of here.” We were in a booth next to a plate glass window that faced 112th Street. Danny’s reflection in the window when he stopped looking at me to stare out of it seemed sad rather than anxious. I’d never been afraid of Danny, whether he was drunk or sober, which was not something I’d say about most of Oscar’s patrons. We’d spent a lot of time talking about mostly nothing on the slow nights during the band’s breaks. I liked him for how good he was at what he did. He played for the pure joy of it, not because he thought he was going to be famous or rich or successful; he got off on the music; it was enough all by itself. My liking him was instinctive, built up of watching him through many things over a long time. You knew when someone was genuine. You called him a good guy when you talked about him. You knew he’d do the right thing.
    Watching his reflection in the window, I remembered one time when Oscar was getting antsy about a friend of Danny’s who sat nodding out at a table near the band. “I don’t want these tough guy junkies coming in here,” Oscar said. He was trying to get Danny to tell the guy to leave so he wouldn’t have to.
    â€œThere’s no such thing as a tough junkie,” Danny told him. He went over, gently touched the junkie’s shoulder, and nodded toward the door. The guy got up without a word and tiptoed out.
    Drinking my third cup of Tom’s coffee, I remembered hanging out with Danny when he opened for groups at the Lone Star or played downtown at the Bottom Line and Tramps. During the band’s breaks, when the other guys were seeking out the sleek chicks, the assistant record producers, and the cool people in the audience, Danny wandered over to sit with me and whoever I brought with me. It was cool to be a friend of the band, but I would have been glad to see Danny if he’d been taking a break from washing dishes in the back. We were on some kind of wavelength that didn’t require a whole lot of explanation.
    One night, a drunk Dominican guy I was trying to eighty-six reached under his sport coat toward his belt line at the center of his back just as I came around the bar after him. Everyone in the joint knew what he was reaching for and froze, including me. As soon as he reached, I saw the gun