Hard Landing

The cab dropped me at the corner of Delancey and 9th at 9:40 on a Wednesday night. Three days of cargo runs. Frankfurt, then Reykjavik, then a fuel stop in God knows where. My back felt like I'd slept on a baggage cart, which, honestly, wasn't far off.

I figured the Rusty Nail would be dead. Wednesday. Slowest night of the week. I figured I'd walk in, kiss my wife, maybe steal twenty minutes in the back office before her shift ended.

The neon beer sign out front was flickering like it always does. Half the letters burned out. It says RU TY N IL if you read it literally, and nobody's ever fixed it.

I pushed the door open and stopped dead.

Packed. The place was packed. Every stool taken. Guys three deep at the rail. The pool table had a crowd around it and somebody was losing his mind about a bad bounce. The floor was stickier than usual, which is saying something, and the freight train rattled past right as I came in, rattling the bottles behind the bar like they were applauding.

And Margie was drowning back there. Two guys yelling for beer, a woman waving an empty glass like she was flagging a plane, the register drawer half open, and Margie, 28 years old, hair stuck to her forehead, pulling taps with both hands.

She saw me. She did not stop. She did not smile either.

"You," she said, pointing a bottle opener at me across the whole bar. "You're three days late."

"I texted you. Weather in Reykjavik. I told you."

"You texted me Tuesday. It's Wednesday. I've had exactly zero help and one bartender all night because Nico quit."

"Nico quit?"

"Nico quit. Tuesday. Note on the cooler. Real professional."

The woman with the glass started rattling it against the bar edge. Margie swore under her breath and pulled two more pints.

I stood there for maybe four seconds feeling sorry for myself, tired, wanting a shower, wanting my wife, and then I got over it. I walked behind the bar like I belonged there, because in a way I did. I'd met her at the Rusty Nail three years ago, when I was a dead-eyed first officer drinking bad whiskey at midnight and she cut me off at one and made me drink water and told me I talked in my sleep already, before I was even asleep.

She shoved an apron at my chest without looking.

"Tie it. Buss tables. The corner booth is a disaster and the pool table needs a wipe."

"Yes ma'am."

"Anders. I'm not being cute. I'm drowning."

"I know. I got it."

I tied the apron. Rolled my sleeves. Went to work.

* * *

For the next hour and a half I bussed tables, ran glasses, hauled the trash, and got hit on by a very drunk woman who thought I was new staff. I told her I was married. She asked to who. I pointed at the bar. She said lucky girl and then fell off her stool, mostly sideways, and I caught her by the elbow and set her back up like a bowling pin.

The freight train came through four more times. I stopped noticing after the second.

Around 11:15 the crowd thinned. The pool crowd drained out the door in one loud lump, arguing about some game. The rail guys paid up and drifted. All at once the Nail was just the Nail again, half empty, sticky, humming, the ceiling fan doing that slow lopsided thing it does.

Margie sagged against the back bar and closed her eyes.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. That's better."

"You handled it."

"Barely. Don't be nice to me right now, I might cry and I've got an hour left on this shift."

"I'm always nice to you."

"You're always gone is what you are." She opened one eye. "Sorry. That came out mean. I'm tired."

"It came out true, though."

She looked at me then, really looked, and her face did that thing where the anger drains out of it and something softer takes its place, and I remembered why I married her.

"Come here," she said.

I came around the bar. She grabbed a fistful of my shirt and pushed me back against the walk-in cooler door, flat, and kissed me. Hard. No buildup. Her mouth tasted like salt and cheap whiskey, sweat and work, and I didn't care, I put my hands on her hips and pulled her into me.

She broke off for a second, breathing fast.

"Missed you," she said. "Don't say anything smart."

"I wasn't going to."

"You were. You get that face."

"I missed you too. There. Said it."

She kissed me again, slower this time, and the cooler hummed against my back and somewhere across the room the jukebox cycled over and nobody in the bar was watching us, or if they were, I didn't notice and didn't care.

When she pulled back she kept her fist in my shirt.

"You look like hell," she said.

"Three days. Cargo. The bunk in that plane is built for a man with no shoulders."

"You've got shoulders."

"You noticed."

"I'm married to them." She let go of my shirt and patted my chest twice, brisk, like closing a tab. "Hour left. You're staying, right? Not sneaking off to shower first?"

"I'll shower after. I'm staying."

"Good. Because I want a drink, and I want to sit on this bar, and I want you to tell me something about Reykjavik that isn't the weather."

"There's nothing in Reykjavik but weather."

"Liar. You always come back with one good story. It's why I put up with you."

I laughed. First real laugh in three days. It came out rusty, like the sign.

I poured her a shot of the well whiskey she pretends is fine, and a beer for myself, and I hopped up on the back counter where the glassware doesn't go, which she yells at me about, and she didn't yell. She knocked the shot back, made the face, then leaned her elbows on the bar across from me.

"Okay," she said. "Story. Go."

So I told her about the ground crew guy in Reykjavik, the one who de-iced our wings in a howling wind and then stood there in it in just a hoodie like the cold was a rumor he refused to confirm. She laughed. The real laugh, the loud one, the one that made two guys at the far end look over.

The train came through again. The bottles rattled. The fan turned its slow broken circle.

She reached across and put her hand flat on my knee.

"Hour left," she said. "Then you're coming home with me and I'm not letting you out of my sight for a solid twelve hours. That's a rule now. New rule."

"I'll sign whatever you put in front of me."

"You will." She squeezed my knee once and took her hand back, because a regular had come in and slid onto a stool at the far end, and she was a bartender first and a wife second when the door was open. That was the deal we made. I knew it when I married her.

But she looked back over her shoulder at me while she poured his beer, and the look said the rest of it plain.

I wiped down the last table. I restocked the cooler she'd shoved me against, cold bottles, my back still warm from the door. The clock over the register crawled. Wednesday nights crawl even when they're packed, and they crawl worse when they're empty and your wife keeps glancing at the clock too.

Nico's note was still taped to the cooler. Family emergency, it said. I peeled it off and read it twice. Didn't look like his handwriting. I didn't say anything. Not my circus, and the night had been long enough already.

At twenty to twelve the regulars started shuffling out. First the two guys at the end of the bar who'd been splitting a pitcher and arguing about the Mets since nine. Then the old guy with the newsboy cap who puts quarters in the jukebox and never plays anything recorded after 1971. He left a dollar tip even though I'd never served him a drink in my life. I said thanks, Gus says hi, and he said Gus owes me twenty bucks, and that was the deepest conversation I had all night. Then the Nail was empty. Margie flipped the sign on the door without even checking the room. Locked the deadbolt. Turned around and leaned back against the door and looked at me across all that sticky empty floor.

"Last hour's on you," she said. "Wipe the rails, count nothing, I'll do the drawer tomorrow."

"Bossy."

"Extremely. It's my bar."

"It's Gus's bar."

"Gus is in Florida. It's my bar till he gets back." She pushed off the door and walked toward me, slow, peeling the apron off over her head as she came. "Twenty minutes till close, and I've been on my feet ten hours, and my husband is finally standing in my bar looking like something the airline dragged in."

"So you keep saying."

"Shut up and hold still."

She grabbed a fistful of my collar and pulled, and I let her, and her mouth was an inch from mine when somebody hammered on the door.

Three hard knocks. Then a voice.

"Margie. Margie, come on. I know you're in there."

She closed her eyes. Kept her fist in my collar.

"That's Ray," she said. "Don't."

"Ray the regular?"

"Ray the regular who's had too many and thinks Gus's rules mean his rules."

The knocking came again. Slower this time. Slightly off rhythm, which is how you know a drunk is knocking.

"I'm closed," she called, without moving off me.

"Five minutes. One beer. Come on, Margie, I'll sit at the end, I won't be any trouble."

She looked at me. I shrugged.

"You're the one who said it's your bar," I said.

"It is my bar. That's why I should know better." She let go of my shirt and smoothed it down where she'd wadded it, which did nothing, I'd slept in it. "Stay here. Pour yourself nothing. If he's any trouble I want you at the end of the bar, not in the middle of it."

"And if he's trouble anyway?"

"Then it's my trouble."

"It's our trouble. I'm married to you. That's in the paperwork."

"God. Fine. Stay within arm's reach and keep your mouth shut."

She unlocked the deadbolt and Ray came in on a lean, like the door owed him money. Fifties, maybe. Work boots, gray stubble, a windbreaker that had been through some wars. He saw me and squinted.

"Who's this?"

"My husband," Margie said. Flat. Not apologizing for it.

"The pilot." He said it like a diagnosis. "Heard about you. Guy who flies boxes." He dropped onto a stool halfway down the bar, not the end, and banged the rail with his heel. "Whiskey. Well's fine."

"He's had enough," Margie said to me, quiet, already reaching for the