The World Played Chess (66)

I walked with them, and I thought, All this time I’ve been looking for Charlie.

All this time.

And Charlie has been right here, all around me, all this time.





Chapter 18


July 24, 1979

William and I returned to Behan’s after a tile job one afternoon; William said his girlfriend, Monica, was again working late. Seemed she was always working late. Sipping a pint of Guinness while we awaited our food, I brought up the incident of the guy challenging me and my friends to a fight. I’m not sure why I brought it up. Maybe I just wanted to hear how William would have kicked the guy’s ass and taught him and his girlfriend a lesson, like the lesson he had taught the woman driving the BMW.

Instead, William sipped his drink and asked, “What did you do?”

I contemplated making up a story, but only briefly. I got a sense William knew what I had done and that he would see right through any bullshit. After nearly two months working together daily, he knew who I was and who I was not. William, on the other hand, was difficult to know and difficult to predict, as were the things he would say. So, although embarrassed, I shrugged and told the truth. “I apologized.”

William gave this some thought, but I couldn’t read his expression.

“There were four of you?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, starting to feel small.

“How big was he?”

Still shrinking. I had no doubt what William would have done. “Not much bigger than me. Probably weighed more, but not a lot.”

More contemplation. Then William asked, “Did you say anything?”

“No.”

“Did your friends?”

“They said they didn’t.”

“So why did you apologize?”

I let out a sigh. “To let the guy save face. I figured the girl put him in a corner.”

“Of course she did.” William laughed. Then he said, “Either that, or one of your friends said something.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe we should have taught him a lesson. I mean, two of my friends are big. Really big. They would have killed the guy on their own.”

William nodded. “But nobody did.”

“No.”

“And nobody admitted they said anything.”

“No.”

“Shitty situation to put you in, if one of them did say something.”

I shrugged and swiped at the condensation on the outside of my glass. “I didn’t care.”

“Yeah, you did,” William said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have brought it up, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

I nodded. “Maybe.”

“You might need new friends,” William said.

And there it was. The reaction I could never predict. “They’re good guys,” I said, backpedaling. “Like I said, I think this guy was just looking for a fight to impress his girlfriend. I think she put him up to it.”

William nodded. “But the question is why? I think you already figured that out. Someone said something.”

“Maybe,” I said again. “But I wasn’t going to fight the guy just so he could save face . . .” I paused. William waited. I shook my head. Why was I bullshitting? “The truth,” I said, “is I’ve never been in a real fight.” I shrugged and left unsaid the obvious.

William let almost a minute pass, staring at the people in the bar before he reengaged me. “You know the definition of a hero?”

I figured I could make up one on the fly. “Someone who acts without considering his own safety?”

“Someone too stupid not to consider his own safety and gets himself and other people killed,” William said, sounding adamant.

Again, not the answer I’d been expecting. I let William’s statement sit a moment, not quite certain what it meant. Finally, I just asked, “You think I did the right thing?”

“Never get in a fight if your heart isn’t in it. You’ll lose. Especially if the other guy has something to fight for. This guy did. His honor. You didn’t. You’ll get yourself and others killed.”

I nodded. Made sense.

“It’s like Vietnam,” he said, although I had already deduced it. “None of us had our hearts in the fight. What was the point? Why was I supposed to care about a war in a country halfway around the world? How did it impact me? The government couldn’t give us an intelligent reason why we were dying over there. They kept saying we were stopping the spread of communism.” He frowned. “What does an eighteen-year-old care about the spread of communism?”

He doesn’t, I thought, but didn’t say.

William stared at me, as if looking straight through me. Then he asked, “Why’d you tell me that story?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I just wanted to hear what you’d say.”

He nodded. “Was it what you expected?”

My turn to chuckle. “No.”

“What did you expect?”

“I figured you would have beat the crap out of the guy.”

William smiled, but it was pensive. Then he said, “Like that hulk at the softball game?”

“Yeah,” I said, still chuckling.