Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker Page A

when they didn’t want to give offense—but didn’t want to be too close, either.
    At first he was afraid he had been recognized, but when he looked into the yellowed, mottled mirror behind the bar, he saw what the truth was. He hadn’t looked in a glass since Galveston, had no idea just what he was like now. His tar’s clothes filthy from the ground out back. Rough patches of whiskers sprouting along his cheeks and chin, choppy stubs of hair sticking straight up and turning a steely, grey color. His face still lined and jaundiced from the case of the yellow jack he’d picked up in Panama. That had delayed him another three months, even the whites of his eyes turning a jaundiced, yellow shade.
    He smiled back at himself in the mirror. Barely human. It was just what he wanted. All but unrecognizable, yet fierce and frightening. This way no one will interfere with me.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    The bar was a rough, dilapidated place. There was an old stove, a few tables and chairs with more men slumped over them. The usual yellowing illustrations of George Washington, and Emmet on the gallows, and Will the Pirate tacked along the walls. He put a coin down, and pointed to one of the barrels stacked up behind the bar and labeled simply “WHISKEY,” hoping to hide his ignorance of just what he should order, or how much it might cost.
    The bartender picked up the coin, nodded, told him, “Thirty seconds.”
    Dolan had no idea what he meant. All he could do was grunt back at him, making a barely human sound of assent. He was still off, he knew, from all those years in the prison. It was fine that his looks would frighten away the curious, but he was still sunk into himself, still moving and talking almost like an idiot, or a dumb beast. He had to rouse himself, had to match the pace of the bustling, treacherous town all around him—
    The barman grabbed a grey rubber hose that hung down from a barrel behind him, just as one hung down from each of the other barrels on the wall, like so many rat tails. He pulled away at it, priming the hose with a steady, masturbatory tug. Until at the precise moment when he felt the whiskey begin to flow he pulled out his pocket watch and handed the end of the hose over to Dolan.
    â€œAll right. Thirty seconds.”
    Dolan wrapped his lips obediently tight around the hose end—tasting the thick, acrid residue of onions and sausage, all the tastes from the hundreds of other men who had already sucked from the same hose that day.
    Then the whiskey hit—wiping out every other sensation in his mouth and throughout his body. It was the harshest thing he had ever tasted, like pure iodine burning out the back of the throat. More camphene than whiskey, over some little time it would strip off a man’s insides like paint thinner. Burn right through his gut, wipe his mind blank as a slate. That would do it, that would stop the thinking.
    He hung on, not even pausing for breath, determined to get every last second of his time. It would do for now. He kept sucking it down, letting it stir the last flakes of salt cod in his stomach to a boil, wantingit to churn up his head as well. When at last the barman ripped it out of his mouth, he nearly reached for the knife in his boot, wishing nothing more than to be reconnected to that hose.
    Instead, he stood there for another moment, with both hands on the bar while he collected himself, making sure that his legs would still carry him.
    â€œAnother?” the bartender offered a little warily, having caught the look in his eyes when he pulled the hose away. But Dolan shook his head.
    It was time. After fourteen years it is time. It is goddamned well past it. He swung his sailor’s bag over his shoulder, and stretched himself like an animal, flexing every part of his body. Then he strode deliberately out of the bar and into the great City, his head glowing beautifully as it swelled and opened before