Free Beware the Solitary Drinker by Cornelius Lehane

evening in casual conversation with the regulars. For most of the first part of the night, with Ozzie Jackson. He kept crying and was too drunk to talk, even though he kept sputtering a language of some sort at Janet. I could tell by the bewildered way she looked about her she had no idea what he was talking about.
    Ozzie Jackson hailed from Arkansas or Alabama—I get them mixed up—and did something downtown that made him a lot of money. Word had it that he was an executive at Manufacturers Hanover. He’d never said what he did, and I’d never asked. He spoke in a Southern accent, waved his glass around when he spoke, said “har, har” fairly often, called me a “son of a gun” fifteen times a night. With his horn-rimmed glasses, his sandy hair and cowlick, and his friendly Southern face, he had a startled look about him, something like a bird, eyes darting, body tensed, ready to scatter, feathers fluttering, at the slightest sound. He looked almost boyish before he got himself sloppy drunk, and a lot more respectable than he actually was. I don’t think I’d ever seen him leave the bar sober.
    In all the months I’d worked at Oscar’s, I never saw Ozzie sit down either. He drank his Jack Daniels standing up and talked standing up, most of the time incoherently.
    Then one night—the night he first met Angelina—he told me about his wife. “You old son-of-a-gun,” said Ozzie when I’d given him his drink on the house.
    â€œThat’s on us,” I said.
    â€œYou old son-of-a-gun,” Ozzie said again, waving his glass in my direction.
    â€œHow’ve you been, Ozzie,” I asked, even though I knew that no attempt at conversation would persuade Ozzie to talk sense.
    Yet this time was different. Angelina had just left the bar, stopping to kiss me on the cheek on the way out. I thought this might be why he was son-of-a-gunning me, but there was really no telling what he meant. I stood in front of him for a few minutes while he har har harred and called me an old son-of-a-gun a couple of more times.
    Then, speaking perfectly clearly, he said, “I married a girl who was fifteen.”
    â€œGood for you, Ozzie,” I said.
    â€œShe died when she was sixteen.”
    This was all he told me; he went back to talking gibberish and never mentioned it again.
    But he really took a shine to Angelina, treated her like a princess, buying her drinks all night any night she chose a barstool next to him. She liked to talk to him, too, sitting beside him while, one foot on the railing and his arm on the back of her chair, he leaned toward her, laughing and listening, calling her an old son-of-a-gun, talking nonsense, and buying her drinks. Now, I wondered if he was telling Janet about Angelina or about his wife. She’d probably never know.
    Learning things about people when their defenses are down and their brains addled is a little like the priest hearing confession. At least according to the old school, it went this way. Telling secrets learned over the bar violated a public trust. If someone got stupidly drunk the night before, you didn’t bring it up the next day unless he did. If Reuben got himself slapped by one of the Barnard girls, you didn’t gossip about it. If Betsy, a little tipsy, necked at the corner of the bar with a stranger, she wouldn’t be reminded of it the next day. The Boss could drop his coke vial in the men’s room; if I found it, it was discreetly returned. Sam the Hammer was not reminded that the absolutely sure thing in the fourth race ran out of the money. If Carl hadn’t made a payment on his tab in three or four weeks, nothing was said when he needed a drink. You take up the stick deaf and leave it dumb, the old bartenders said.
    ***
    Somewhere during this night, when Janet Carter had so clearly lost interest in me, I found myself trying to get it back. I started after her with no more forethought than