“I CAN’T COUNT the number of times I have calculated money that I haven’t earned yet!” said Artie. “You, too, right, Lou?” He pointed at Lou and said to the rest of us, “Of course, my buddy Hamlet usually ends up actually making the money, isn’t that right, Lou?”
“Yeah,” said Lou. He shrugged as if he were sorry about it, as if he couldn’t help it, as if it weren’t his fault. “I’ve got the knack, I guess,” he said, and he went back to wiping the bar.
“I wish I had it,” said Al. “Peter and I used to anticipate the profits from this hotel, but we weren’t very good at it. It was supposed to have paid for itself a couple of times over by now. I have all our calculations in cartons down in the basement somewhere, but they’re probably sodden lumps.”
“That’s what becomes of our dreams when they don’t work out,” I said. “They turn into wet cardboard.” I looked down at my drink, a Baldy. How many had I had?
“It’s part of the folly of trying to design a life, I guess,” said Alice. “We can collect the data from the past, but it’s rarely a good predictor of the future.”
“Maybe that’s why I’m a memoirist,” I said. “I roam my past and pick things up because I’m no good at designing a future. I’m like that fucking dredge. My past is spread out all over the whole damned bay, but I suck up what I can find of it — anything — everything — the collapse of a hotel, the failure of a set of dreams. Suck it up. Sand for the dredge. I’ve got an island to build — an artificial fucking island that I call the past, but it’s really just the recovered past, an artificial version of the past.”
“How many of those Baldies have you had?” asked Albertine.
“Damned if I know,” I said, picking the glass up and examining it as if the answer might be written on it.
Albertine looked at Lou, but he pretended not to have heard her question and said, changing the subject according to the code of bartenders, which requires them not to divulge to the spouse of a customer how many drinks the customer has consumed, “You know, I’ve been wondering — why don’t you have your saucer detector here on display somewhere, or do you?”
“No,” I said. “Gone. Long gone.”
“But you did make one?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s build another one, then. Put it on the bar. Maybe it will bring in some business.”
“Sure,” I said. “It would look great on the bar.”
“Good for conversation, too,” said Elaine. “Might even bring in a few curiosity seekers.”
“It would lend a note of uncertainty to the evening,” suggested Lou.
“Will flying saucers attack while I’m downing this drink?” Artie wondered aloud, looking into his drink.
“Hey, you’re on to something,” said Nancy.
“If the saucer detector goes off while you’re at the bar, your drink is on the house,” said Al.
“Your money back if saucers attack,” I said. It came back to me, just like that.
[to be continued]
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