and you realize it’s just never going to make any sense. You start to wonder what the hell you’ve been doing with your life.”
Janie had finished her drink and ordered a third and she leaned her hip against the counter, cocking her head sideways at him. “What did you say you were doing out here anyway?”
Hank hadn’t said, but he responded with, “I’m a surveyor.”
She laughed. “I totally did not expect you to say that. I never thought about it, but I guess surveyors have existential crises too.”
“Why, what did you think I did?”
She paused and took a sip of the fresh drink the bartender had brought and looked like she was giving it some serious thought. “I suppose if I had to guess, I’d have said you were a cop, or maybe a spy.” She grinned.
Hank gave her a wide smile and said, “Is there anything to spy on around here?”
She cocked her head to the side and said, “Not really. The only thing worth looking at is standing right here.”
What could he say to that?
It got late in a hurry. Hank had a few more beers. The crowd thinned out. Three more hours faded into the oblivion of history as Janie fed the jukebox quarters, and Hank and the chemist shot pool and smoked cigarettes and started to feel good and loose. Hank knew it was the worst thing he could do when he was on a job. But why not? What the hell? Everything had gone wrong anyway. The car crash. Everybody talking about him. He was already making a spectacle of himself. It was just turning out to be one of those jobs. And besides, this was the middle of nowhere. By the time anyone started paying attention—if anyone started paying attention—he’d be just another guy people got drunk with one night and no one could remember later.
Hank watched the chemist lean over the table, take too much time to line up a bank shot, and miss badly. The guy wasn’t much of a pool player. “I guess I need to get out more,” he offered, pushing his glasses back up his nose. But that wasn’t the guy’s problem. He wasn’t loose. He tried to make everything too precise. Pool was all about feeling it. Hank smiled and thought of his older brother, years before, in a pool hall near Columbia University. You have to become one with the cue, his brother used to say. You look at the situation. Maybe you walk around the table once or twice. You take everything in. But then you lean over and do it. You just take the shot. Hank always thought that playing pool was kind of like pulling a trigger. When the time came, when the moment finally arrived, you had to be able to get it done without thinking.
“What are you smirking about?” Janie asked from the other side of the table, swaying a little to Rolling Stones’ Let it Bleed.
“Nothing. I was just thinking about playing pool. My older brother and I used to play a lot, back when he was in college.”
“Where was that?”
“Columbia.” Then he added without thinking, “We all went there, everyone in my family.”
“Is your brother a surveyor too?” She winked at him.
“No.” Hank leaned over the table, lined up his shot, and added, “He’s dead.” Then he threw his weight into a two ball combo, filling the room with the crack of colliding balls. He stood and watched them race around the table for a few seconds. He could see out of the corner of his eye that Janie’s smile was gone. He could see she was wondering what to say next. He hadn’t meant to ruin the mood, it just came out. He picked up the chalk and looked for his next shot.
“It’s not a big deal. It was a hell of a long time ago. Vietnam. It happened to a lot of people. A lot of families.” Hank tried to cut the six in the side pocket and missed.
The chemist had been listening. When he got up to take his shot, he said, “I had three cousins got killed within three months of each other over there. I was just a kid, but I remember going to a lot of funerals that summer.”
Janie didn’t seem to have much to say. She had stopped swaying to the jukebox, and the song had switched to Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen,” which seemed oddly appropriate to Hank. The chemist missed and Hank