Chapter 78: Nino The Wino

Chapter 78

Nino The Wino

“You’re a fucking moron, Tom Atari, and what’s worse is that you’re too dumb to know how stupid you are.”

Tom didn’t understand.

“You think you’re a hero? You think you’re Superman? You’re ground beef in a bad suit.”

This was Nino the Wino, homeless, most voluminous boozebag in town- drunk- preaching from his stool at the bar, which might have been a throne the way he talked, hat tipped back to show the greasy strands, grinning like a cheetah, putting his finger in the air and announcing: “You couldn’t find shit in an outhouse!”

Benny and Asa- two of the regulars- sat beside him at the bar, laughing into hacking cough, enjoying Tom’s public humiliation. Nino raised his glass: “Salud, you horse’s ass!”

Nino had been a grocer once, Tom was pretty sure. Or something. Maybe not. It was a Monday night in the Wonder Bar, and Atari was only there for information- the abuse was on the house.

“You don’t act like a detective, you don’t think like a detective...” Nino looked to his left and right, boozy gleam in his eye, signaling his subjects before delivering the blast: “You don’t even DRINK like a detective!”

Benny and Asa- de facto round table- roared in hysterical laughter as Tom sipped his ginger ale. Nino stuck his face in his sour glass, soaking up the whiskey sweet through alcoholic osmosis. He emerged and swallowed, somehow in mid-laugh, looking side to side for appreciation.

“Don’t you see they’re using that little girl to lead you around by the nose? The cock and heart, too!”

Another round of laughter. Tom couldn’t find the punchline.

“You're a sucker.  Everyone knows that.”

Nino, little and Italian, wrinkled, pruny, could’ve been something if not for the bottle, or so goes the skipping record. He was sixty-something if not seventy, older than Tom, and unrelenting. His words were like a brick to the temple, but Tom knew that with enough sour mash the truth would come out. He signaled the bartender.

“Let me tell you a story,” Nino took off, and Tom settled back, “One night a man wake up- middle of the night. He’s in bed, alone except for his wife. And his kids is in the other bedroom down the hall. And you know what he wants? More than anything? Benny?”

Nope.

“Asa?”

Ditto.

“Tommy?”

Tom Atari- stillframe.

“It was cling peaches!”

Benny and Asa nodded, deep, this was understood, elemental and eternal- at least among men in this stage of intoxication.

“The man's got to have cling peaches! No matter what- don’t matter when, that’s part of what’s inside of him. So what do you think he do? He gets out of bed, goes downstairs in the middle of the night, in his kitchen, writes a note to his beloved wife!”

A tall man walked into the bar with an underage blonde on his arm, beaming, her mascara lashing Tom’s cheek.

Nino: “The note says ‘Dear Meredith, I love you more than life itself but I had to go out tonight for cling peaches. I hope you understand I needed cling peaches. I love you. And I love the kids too. Yours forever, Carmen’ He wrote this! He knows he’s gonna die but he goes anyway! What makes a man leave his wife and kids for a can of cling peaches?!?”

Tom thought about answering but didn’t. It was a rhetorical.

“He gets to the all-night market. He makes it! Can of cling peaches in his car! And he’s on the road back home! But God’s in the mood for a good laugh! So he puts an old man on the road- some drunk who can’t find the drive pedal- speeding away- and around the corner comes Carmen, driving home with his cling peaches and his head full of Heaven.”

Nino turned to Atari, smiling wide, “Am I going too fast for you, Tommy?”

Tom, sober, lost, shook his head.

“What do you think happens at the corner?  Carmen comes round the bend, the old man too, they hit- WHAM!- cars collapse like accordions, old man drunk is dead before he knows it, Carmen killed and the can of cling peaches busted open, side of the road, leaking syrup on the pavement- was it worth it? Was it worth it?”

And suddenly, somehow, in that timeless minute, Tom Atari transcended the drunk's meaningless babble, traveled back through his own timeline: back to medical school and his days at St. Vincent’s hospital, warm and cold in his scrubs, sitting in on his first autopsy with the other med students, his friend Charlie Scrabble vomiting in the trash can and Tom ignoring him out of respect, focusing on the body, as the rib cage was lifted away, the lungs removed and stored, the heart disassembled...

It was supposed to become easier the more you saw it. Maybe it did.

It was a hobo on the table, being torn apart out of curiosity... and the sight of the human being at this subatomic level was something you never forgot. Couldn’t forget. Not even Tom. He was handling it, blinking when he had to blink, fighting the head rush, the dizziness...

But the brain.

Cling peaches.

The brain: sawing through the skull cap was bad enough but seeing the brain naked, bald, still full of thoughts and notions, bad ideas and romantic fantasy. It was too raw. It needed protection.

Cling peaches.

And then Dr. Ecker poked and that liquid fell.

Heavy syrup.

No gush. No gravity. Just a watery sigh.

Heavy syrup.

And then-

Tom was back in the bar, heart pumping angry blood. He stood up, kicked the stool out from under Nino the Wino, spilling him to the floor. The stumblebum took a good moment before he realized he'd been downed. The bartender, a good man, saw nothing, and Benny and Asa got mute.

“Are you gonna answer my questions or bore us all to death with cling peaches?”

Nino, from the ground, looked up at Tom, sorry.

Atari bent to help the old man get back on his feet. He handed Nino his hat. “I don’t need mythology and I don’t need symbolism... I need facts. I need help.”

Nino, blinked, clear-headed or as close as he got.

“Run 'cross the street to the package store and get me a bottle of Ten High...” Nino swallowed, “and I’ll tell you what I know about Project Geronimo.”

.