Free The Skeleton Box by Bryan Gruley Page B

“Fucking closet.”
    Foghat was grinding out of the jukebox. An old woman sitting at the other end of the bar nodded at me. Stalks of white hair stuck out from beneath her orange LaCoste Builders cap.
    “Angie,” I said.
    She knew my name but probably didn’t want to take the trouble to recall it. Instead she lifted her tulip glass of beer in a halfhearted toast, took a sip, and set it back down next to her cigarettes and Bic lighter. She returned to staring at the soap opera flickering soundlessly on the television over the bar. Beneath the TV hung a sign that said “If you’re drinking to forget, please pay in advance.”
    I didn’t have to worry about a lunch rush at Enright’s. There hadn’t been one since the griddle stopped working in December. I’d been there that evening, awaiting a patty melt. Soupy was standing in front of the griddle, spatula in hand, watching a burger fry when the sizzling ebbed and then stopped altogether. He stared at the half-cooked meat for a minute, then tossed the spatula aside with a clatter and started fiddling with the griddle controls. “What the fuck?” he said. He stood there another minute staring at the grill, then picked up the spatula and scooped the meat into a garbage can. “Fuck it,” he said. “Go to McDonald’s.” He went back to his office and came out with a piece of cardboard he had torn from a gin box. “Grill Not Working—SORRY” was scratched across it in felt-tip pen. He stuck it to the wall over the back bar with a piece of white hockey tape.
    The sorry sign was hanging there still when I walked in that afternoon looking for a Coke and a bag of Better Mades to take to the Pilot. Soupy hadn’t yet fixed the griddle, saying he didn’t have the money. That was undoubtedly true, but even if he did have the money, I doubted he would’ve squandered it on necessary repairs when he could be investing it in booze and the Bay City stripper who came up every other Monday to screw him, ignorant of the fact that Mr. Big Shot Resort-Town Tavern Owner was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and might never emerge. “I know what happens in Chapter Eleven,” Soupy liked to say. “Who knows about Chapter Twelve?”
    Today he came out of his office sucking on a finger. He wore an apron stained with ketchup, or maybe blood, over an old Hershey Bears T-shirt. The Bears were the last minor league team Soupy had skated with before he walked away from his once promising hockey career for the more reliable pursuit of hungover weekday mornings.
    “You hurt yourself?” I said.
    “Shit, Trap.” He flicked on the cold water in the bar sink and let it run over his finger. “Need a damn chain saw to cut into those booze boxes. If they used the same glue on the space shuttle, we’d never had a problem.”
    He turned the water off and reached into a fridge beneath the back bar. “Soup,” I said. “Just a Coke. I’m working.”
    Soupy popped the caps off of two Blue Ribbons on an opener bolted to the sink. He slammed mine down so that foam slopped over the lip.
    “Don’t be a pussy, Trap,” he said. He held his bottle out to me. “To Mrs. B.”
    “Not fair.”
    “She was a sweetheart.”
    I clinked my bottle into his and took a swallow. I usually loved that first burning cold gulp of a beer, but this one was as lukewarm as a Detroit Lions fan.
    “Did you pay the electric bill?” I said.
    “Are you my mother?” Soupy said. “The lights are still on, aren’t they? Why don’t you go back to the fish-wrapper and fix this fucked-up town?Jesus, can’t the cops get anything right? People think they have to stay in their goddamn houses every night instead of going out for a drink with their friends. It’s tearing up the social fabric. Now Mrs. B is dead? It’s killing me.”
    I had heard Soupy’s rant before. He must have heard “social fabric” on some talk show on the bar tube. While it was true that some people were staying closer to home, I doubted the old folks