Nancy Whiskey
NANCY WHISKEY 1 LISPENARD ST. (BETW. B'WAY & CHURCH ST.), 212-226-9943
HE'S A STOOL away, drinking a condensation-wet pint of two-buck Yuengling, when the question comes. "Are you writing about me?" asks Bob, a genteel cross between Santa Claus and Jerry Garcia after a chicken- wing bender.
I look up. Gulp Tetley's English Ale. Watch Aqueduct horses gallop across the tv. And lie.
"No, no, I'm just, uhh, jotting down ideas.
"You're being creative?"
"Something like that."
"That's good. But if you want good stories, you should write about this bar."
"What you got?"
"Well, about 20 years ago " Bob trails off, dispatching a quarter-pint of Pennsylvania's finest down his gullet. "Twenty years ago there were lots of bachelor parties, lots of craziness."
"Did you go to any?"
"No," Bob says, gazing out open doors that form a dive-bar veranda. "I worked across the street at the AT&T headquarters for 34 years until I retired. We used to come here after work to tie a couple on."
"Why do you still come?"
"Oh, I'm a union officer with AT&T, and we have offices at 401 Broadway. I come down to sign checks."
"Wait401 Broadway?"
"Yeah, there are lots of Orientals in the building."
"I know. I worked there!"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, I edited really bad porn. On the third floor.
"Huh," Bob says, appraising me with new, slanted eyes. Businessmen bustle through Tribeca, 70-degree weather causing them to shed ties and jackets.
"It's a good day for drinking beer," he says, changing subjects.
I agree. We nip beers in pregnant silence, the only kind of silence after one divulges a porn career. Several sips down, the jukebox gives life to the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby."
Bob responds by tapping thick fingers on the grime-lacquered bar. "All the lonely people, where do they all come from?" he hum-mumbles, low and deep.
I sample Nancy Whiskey's calling cardone of Manhattan's few bank shuffleboard tables.
The game: slide weighted, hockey puck-sized discs down a sawdust-strewn surface. The rule: bank disc once, and only once. The goal: the player closest to the edge totals up his discs, which, depending on position, net one to five points each. The viciousness: permission to blast opponents' discs off the board.
I scrounge up an opponent and deposit four quarters into the machine. Its flaming–Earth–and–Saturn display reveals a bygone era, a time when communism and little green men were equal threats, and a three-martini lunch cured all.
We position ourselves beside one another and, like thousands before us, start sliding.