Becky had been together for five years, and she’d been good for him, but his vanity made him reluctant to attribute too much of his success to her input. On the other hand, Barbara Kelly, the woman who had recommended Becky, had also been responsible for providing seed capital, and for putting him in touch with a whole network of likeminded people: advertisers, syndicators, dealers in influence and information.
But Barbara Kelly was dead. He had to tread carefully here.
‘If you think it will help,’ said Tate.
He tried not to sound too skeptical. He lived in fear of being dropped, of being sent back to the minors. His third beer arrived. He looked over at the bar and saw the bartender staring back at him. The freak took the empty bottle from the waitress, stuck his finger in the top, and dumped it in the recycling bin. While Tate looked on, he then sucked the finger that had been in Tate’s bottle, and winked.
‘Did you see that?’ asked Tate.
‘What?’
‘That fag bartender put his finger in my bottle and sucked it.’
‘What, that bottle?’
‘No, the last one, the one I just drank from.’
‘Force of habit.’
‘He winked at me while he did it.’
‘Maybe he likes you.’
‘Jesus. You think he did something with this one too?’ Tate eyed the bottle suspiciously. ‘Maybe his finger isn’t the only thing he tries to put in bottles.’
‘I got a wipe, if you want to use it.’
‘It’ll make the beer taste bad. Maybe not as bad as if the bartender stuck his dick in it, but still bad.’
‘You’re overreacting.’
‘He recognizes me. I’m sure that he does. He did that deliberately because he thinks I’m a homophobe.’
‘You are a homophobe.’
‘That’s not the point. I should be able to express my opinions without fear of queer bartenders sticking their fingers, or anything else, in my beer. He could have a disease.’
‘You told me he sucked his finger after you drank from the bottle, not before. If anyone’s going to catch anything, it’s him.’
‘What are you, an epidemiologist? And what’s that supposed to mean anyway? You implying that I have something he could catch?’
‘Paranoia, maybe.’
‘I’m telling you, he knows who I am.’
‘It would be great if he did,’ said Becky, and the sarcasm distracted him from fingers and bottles. ‘If every bartender in New York recognized you it would mean that you were a national figure, and all of your problems would be solved.’
‘You mean “our” problems, right?’
Becky sipped her drink. ‘Of course. I misspoke.’
Tate folded his arms huffily and turned away from her, then quickly reconsidered as he found himself catching the bartender’s eye again. Becky swore softly. It was up to her to make some conciliatory gesture. It always was. Sometimes she wished Barbara Kelly had never asked her to take Tate under her wing. He had seemed to be on the verge of breaking through in a big way, at least until recently, but he was a miserable, whiny sonofabitch. It came with the territory. You couldn’t spend hours every day spitting out that kind of bile, then more hours working up more bile to spit out the next day, and the day after, and the day after that, and not pollute your spirit. Although she’d never told Tate this, there were times when she muted the volume in the producer’s booth to give her a break from his poisonous rants, and she agreed with most of what he said. She couldn’t have done the job otherwise. At least Tate represented only part of her responsibilities. In a way, being his producer was little more than a cover story for her.
‘You smell smoke?’ asked Tate. He was sniffing the air like a rat, his head slightly raised. He had even lifted his hands from the bar, and they hung in front of his chest like paws.
‘What, like fire?’ she said.
‘No, tobacco smoke.’ He peered over the top of the booth, but there was no one nearby. They’d chosen the table for precisely that reason. ‘Stinks like cleaning out time at the lung cancer ward.’
For someone who was ostensibly a libertarian, Tate had his peculiarities and inconsistencies. Like so many of those who described themselves as pro-life, Tate was only pro the kind of life that was curled up in someone’s womb. If it emerged from that same womb and committed a crime, then it was fair game for the needle. Similarly he was inordinately fond of war, as long as that war involved kicking someone’s ass in a place