The Stooper

Episode 13

Larry dumped the slop down the toilet and wrung out the mop for the last time. He stashed it and the towel in the pail and plodded morosely back to the kitchen. Before he could duck back behind the swinging doors, he heard a familiar voice bellow loudly behind him. "Izzat you, Ajax?" Larry froze. Instinctively, he knew he should have continued walking but the instinct to turn and acknowledge the inquisitor was too great. He obliged the way people invariably do when a stranger calls out, "Hey asshole."

"What the fuck are you doin' here?" demanded Vic once he confirmed Larry's identity. Larry said nothing. He just stood there, apron soiled, hair mussed up. "Don't fuckin' tell me you work here, ya fuckin' dirtbag." Vic was seated in a booth accompanied by a young, Asian tart who looked to be no older than 20. Larry presumed correctly she was one of those exotic girls rented out by dating services advertising in the back pages of the tabloids. Dougie was there too with his date, a mannish-looking woman with pink-blond hair swept up in an anachronistic bouffant. She looked vaguely like Myra Hindley, the sexually sadistic psychopath famous for the Moor murders in England in the 1960s. Before Larry could muster a reaction Vic clambered noisily out of the booth and approached him. The diner patrons stopped eating and the waitresses froze in their tracks; they all trained their attention on the developing fracas. The owner of the diner looked over from his perch by the cash register and then rushed in to intercept Vic and defuse the looming altercation. "What seems to be the trouble, sir?" asked the owner with more deference than Larry thought appropriate. After all it was Vic who was barking insults and making a scene.

"Trouble? I'll tell you my trouble, Jack. This jagoff workin' anywhere near a place that serves food. That's my trouble."

The owner furrowed his brow in confusion. Larry shifted his weight back and forth, debating whether to beat a retreat to the relative security of the kitchen where, if necessary, he could lay his hands on a cleaver, or to stay put and mount a defense. Vic turned toward the rapt audience of diners and brazenly announced, pointing with an outstretched, accusative arm at Larry, "This piece of shit crawls on the floor at OTB for a living. He's like a fuckin' rat, pickin' up tickets and cigarette butts and wads of gum." Larry shook his head frantically. "Who knows what filth is under his fingernails. This fucker has no business workin' in a restaurant . . ." Vic then directly addressed the owner, ". . . even in a shit hole diner like this one." Mortified, Larry gulped hard. The owner nervously scanned the floor and watched as several patrons exchanged glances and simultaneously put down their silverware. A moment later people at two tables rose and headed for the cash register even though they had just started their meals. Panicked, the owner announced to the entire room, "Please everybody. Don't leave. Listen to me." Larry expected the owner to denounce Vic and his outrageous claim but instead he groveled. "This is all news to me. It comes as a complete shock." The owner looked quickly at Vic, assessing his demeanor, and then faced Larry and exclaimed in an assertive, executive-sounding voice for all to hear, "Larry, please get your things and go. You're fired." Vic nodded in approval and returned to his booth. Dougie yelled out "hoo-ah!" The owner looked out across the room again for signs that his command decision had mollified the clientele. Larry felt the heat of obloquy upon his face and skulked into the kitchen. He exchanged the shit-stained apron for his new Wal-Mart coat and held out his hand to Pablo. "Nice knowin' ya, Pedro. Tell that maricón Arturo he should replace the mop head."

Having no interest in making unprotected contact with Larry's hand, Pablo folded his arms and said, "Bad beat, man. Buena suerte."

Larry exited into the alley behind the diner. With $18 in singles and some loose change in his pocket, Larry trudged off to a brightly-lit liquor store and bought a pint of Mr. Boston rye. After quickly dispatching the libation, he decamped bleary-eyed for a squalid shots-and-beers bar on the Bowery. By 4 a.m. Larry was the sole patron of the bar, a dingy space that had been a drinking establishment since the late 1880s except for the dark years of Prohibition when a merchant operated a storefront dealing in vacuum cleaners and electric wash tubs. Anxious to close, the bartender had pulled the plug on the jukebox, achieving a desired effect: creepy silence that rendered the bar doubly dismal.

Larry's droopy ass hung on the edge of his barstool, a half-glass of beer and a shot of cheap booze sat before him. Larry lifted the shot glass to his lips and took a tiny sip.

Larry continued, "So I . . . I picks up the ticket, y'know from the floor, cause like I said, I'm a fuckin' stooper. You know, right? I tol' you that, right?"

"Yeah, yeah," replied the glaring bartender who busied himself wiping up spills from the bar with a rag.

"An' the fuckin' ticket's got like this slime or somethin' on it. Smeared on it. It gets on my fingers, y'know? Now I shoulda know'd better but I sniffed my fingers. I took the fuckin' bait 'cause I'm a goddamned loser! I took the bait an' sniffed my fingers and got a nice fuckin' whiff of dogshit. Then I look over an' see Vic the Prick laughin' his ass off." Larry took another sip. "That ain't right. Is that right?"

Checking his watch, the bartender said, "Depends."

"So then I . . ."

Interrupting, the bartender announced, "Listen, man. I'm closing. Finish up."

Larry hung his head and muttered, "Oh, sorry." He downed the rest of the booze and chased it with the beer, then asked hopefully, "Can I have one more?"

"Go home, man. Get some sleep."

"C'mon."

Irritated, the Bartender grabbed a glass and wrung out the bar rag's contents into it. He slid the glass toward Larry. "On the house."

Larry guzzled the putrid bar-topeffluence in one gulp, fell off his stool onto the damp, gritty floor, and crawledaround for a moment, laughing. "Gotta be a winner around here somewhere."