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Show 84 Twenty-six The continuing conversation between Roderick and Evan, moved from one city to another and then another, as circumstances have required, is fixed now: it takes place in the shabby adolescent beer-parlour which is situated in the nearest corner of the town where John and Annis live. The brothers sit, for the dozenth time since they have both been here, facing each other over an uneven table topped in plastic made to look like genuine wood; they watch the ways in which the kids drape themselves across the bar's one pinball machine, or flip darts into the wall. Rod loathes this place, but it is close enough to the house to go without his car, and Evan does not care much where they meet; their conversation would be hard in any place. But Rod is unusually impatient today. The service in the tavern is almost always slow, if in fact there is anybody on duty at all; it appears to be run largely by the local students, just barely old enough to drink what they sell; even Luel's kid, they have discovered, sometimes works here. Rod will not wait to be served; he barks his drink to the man behind the bar. "Double Manhattan." It is a beer parlour, not the kind of elaborate cocktail lounge in which Rod is at home, but the bartender here is prepared for him: these two strange men, who look so much alike and yet are dressed so differently, who talk so frequently over matters of such apparent urgency, have become regulars in the bar. The bartender upends the bottle of sweet vermouth, which has been drunk bit by bit over the last month by these two men alone, into a glass of whiskey, and places it on the bar. |
