“She’s a clown, so what,” I say, finishing off my Lagunitas and motioning to my friendly bartender that I’d like another. He slams it down in front of me, leans against the bar, stares me in the eyes, swipes my money from the bar, and slowly turns to deposit it into the clanging cash register.
“I know. I know it’s her job,” Sanchez says, sipping his gin and tonic, conceding that this is a fact and calming because of that concession. “But, shit, I didn’t expect to find two balloons where her tits should be that say BLOW ME on them when I finally got her top off. She’s a carpenter’s dream, man—flat as a fucking board.”
An earth-shattering cackle erupts throughout the pub followed by a series of hands slapping and pounding the bar.
“Luke, why the fuck is Old Man Bill here with you?” Sanchez asks, sighing.
I look over at Old Man Bill who has suddenly grown a long grey beard. He still convulses with laughter and I slap him good-naturedly on the shoulder. After a double-take, I reach over and tug on the beard to make sure it’s real and laugh and slap him on the back once more.
“Old Man Bill here saved my life, Sanchez. I couldn’t leave him all alone tonight after showing such bravery when staring down the Grim Reaper, face to face,” I say, grinning like I can’t help it.
“And what’d the Grim Reaper look like, exactly, you fucking crazy motherfuckers?” Sanchez asks as Old Man Bill’s chuckles finally stifle behind his thickening, spittle-dewed beard.
“Actually, a lot like Abigail,” I say.
“Abi-who?” Sanchez says, looking bored and definitely regretting inviting me to the Tower for a drink. Around us, the bar buzzes with gossip and the flittering tongues of zombies lapping at thighs slick with the afterbirth of the stillborn.
“You remember—Abigail. The redhead? You danced with her that one time you, me, Gem, and that model you were dating crashed the Great American after hours and got shitfaced and danced to Janet Jackson and I stabbed the redhead and her boyfriend to death backstage,” I say, taking big gulps of my beer while my eyes shift between Sanchez and the black TV screen.
“I seriously don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about,” he says and doesn’t look at me.
I try to make eye contact but he refuses. I feel sick and sad. Like getting kicked in the gut. I just want confirmation that Sanchez remembers Abigail, too, and that she’s not just a figment of imagination or cancerous memory. But then I smell Old Man Bill’s breath on my shoulder and push it back and decide not to be so scared or care so much.
Sanchez goes on to tell me how he hung out with some band at this fancy hotel down near Union Square and when I ask he tells me it was Clap Your Hands Say Yeah—how he bumped into them at the liquor store beneath his apartment and they invited him up to their hotel room to hang and that it was completely boring because there wasn’t a single lady there and, while there was free coke that he’s still in the midst of appreciating, that it was a complete waste of time. “They were nerds,” he says. “Boring,” he says. “Geeks,” he says. I tell him it’s better than trying to fuck clowns and he says I’m probably right and stops complaining.
He’s never heard of their band, however, and doesn’t seem interested that I was at their show tonight with Kevin and his girlfriend and that I threw up a lot. I think to ask if he and Kevin are still friends since Kevin kicked him out of the apartment because Carol—the girlfriend—was moving in and didn’t like him, but I decide to keep it to myself. He doesn’t ask anything about them, either, and just tells me that he’s still mad about me sleeping with that girl that looks like Cleopatra even though he wasn’t interested in her because he was pursuing Anita, the clown. I tell him that while I slept with Cleopatra I didn’t really, or that even if I did, I didn’t, but that I don’t think I did even if I had, and he doesn’t get it and I’m not interested in explaining because I don’t either and then he and I and Old Man Bill just sit there in silence for a while and sip our drinks and stare at the black TV.
“Ginger, ginger broke a winder, hit the winda—crack!” Old Man Bill says a little too loudly in the nameless divey shotgun bar a few blocks from Aberdeen Tower. We’re here because it stays open after hours and doesn’t enforce the no-smoking law.
“The baker came out to give him a clout…” he prattles on, “and landed on his back!” He cackles some more and slams his increasingly hairy hands against the bar, disturbing the fat, one-eyed lady ‘tender who was actually very nice to us when we came in, offering us a free shot on the house as well as a wet kiss on each cheek, despite the fact that Old Man Bill’s face is completely covered in hair now.
Unfortunately, I started this nonsense. I told Old Man Bill that he’s an idiot for not loving baseball and Old Man Bill’s going on about the things he loves: boxing, wrestling, tops, and knock down ginger. When I ask if that’s all he loves, he looks at me with those blue eyes nearly hidden behind a face full of fur and tears up but doesn’t say a thing. I pet his head and tell him he’s a good boy and he seems to like that. I put a Sinatra song on the smoke-stained compact-disc jukebox because he’s old and figure he’d like Sinatra. Hell, I like Sinatra. I play “My Way” and grab the furry bastard, who’s all of five-foot-four, and dance him around the narrow place while the one-eyed, wart-faced bartender claps and laughs and wipes tears of joy from her eyes with the backs of her long-nailed pinkies. The other patrons, all of whom are missing limbs or parts of limbs or have grown extra limbs, seem less amused, but when I tell them he saved my life they thank him and congratulate him and feed him Milk Bones and shots of Old Crow. He laps at each and then offers to clean all empty glasses with his tongue, which is now hairy, too. His offer’s declined, and he tells them it’s an open invitation and lets rip an excited howl.
I put on another Sinatra song and some Springsteen tunes and some Cash ballads and me, furry Old Man Bill, and the amputees while away the hours talking about nothing more important than the difference between a massage and a hand job, which has a lot of the regulars scratching their heads and demanding more clarity. Meanwhile, I avert my eyes from the TV because I’m always depressed by televisions in bars that play anything other than sports and on this TV is an old episode of The Cosby Show where the Cosbys catch Nancy Reagan doing coke and she cries and begs for their forgiveness and tells them how Ronald has a dick like a cat’s penis—that it’s barbed and every time he makes love to her she has to get restorative surgery performed on her pussy. I’m also pretty sure that’s the episode where Rudy is upset because she hasn’t learned to whistle yet. That’s the part most people remember, I think.
They don’t have the sound all the way off, however, so I hear Cash droning and mumbling and strumming while Nancy laughs wicked laughs every time Cosby yells at one of the kids for leaving the refrigerator door open. I want to get out right then but Old Man Bill’s now on all fours, covered from head to toe in fur, playing and padding around the blackened, sticky floor of the place, which is only a small swatch between the yellowed walls and bar that leads back to the yellowed bathrooms with doors that don’t lock. The patrons have all gotten Old Man Bill into a game of fetch and not a one of them seems to want to stop it.
At four a.m., Old Man Bill sprints off on all fours and mauls a young man in a Matchbox 20 shirt at the corner of Stockton and Market, ripping out the guy’s throat, so I have to put him on a leash. We move on from there and leave the kid bleeding out in the gutter and walk back toward Union Square, Old Man Bill furry as a sheepdog and panting like one, stopping here and there so he can lift his leg and mark his territory. He’s grey, though, and his snout’s longer than a sheepdog’s. His teeth are like a shark’s. Also, his paws look more like people hands, or maybe monkey or rat hands, and not dog paws. It doesn’t matter, though, because he tells me I remind him of his son and I thank him and ask him about his son but doesn’t want to say anything else. I take a seat on a bench at the square before the big glass-front of Macy’s glistening in the light of the setting full mo
on. I pat Old Man Bill’s dog-head and he pants and wags his tail, which is forked like a snake’s tongue, but furry.
“What do you want for Christmas?” he asks, guttural and panting through a fat furry tongue.
“Don’t even worry about it,” I say. “It’s not even close to Christmastime yet.”
The early morning breeze passes through us, carrying a light scent of saltwater from the bay, and it’s fresh and damp and new and covers the usual smell of blood and death and decay that weighs down the San Francisco fog, which is nowhere to be seen.
“But a father should provide for his son,” Old Man Bill says at the end of his leash. I reach into my pocket and pull out a Milk Bone and give it to him and then light up a Winston Light and sit back and smoke it in silence for a long time until the sky behind the buildings surrounding us starts to glow violet. Old Man Bill pants and wags his tail and fixes his gaze on me, waiting for a response. I drop my cigarette and try to avert my gaze, choosing to stare at the sunrise reflected in the windows of Macy’s. I try to feel warmth, but I can’t. The metal ball bearings tumbling through my veins crystallize and crack and fill me only with a million small stabbing sensations just below the skin. Scratching helps some, but there’s no warmth to be found. I know sheets of fog are curling and unfurling along the bay, grey and blue and coming straight for me. I want to be able to love this furry, mangy, smelly old thing staring at me with expectation, wagging its tail and panting. I want to be able to connect with it and know it and relate to it. It saved my life, after all, which is not too dissimilar from giving me life in the first place.
And then Old Man Bill barks and walks a circle three times before lying on the concrete at my feet with his hairy, misshapen head resting over his crossed forepaws. He mumbles, sleepily, again, that I remind him of his son and closes his eyes and drifts to a seemingly contented sleep, his long tongue dangling out the side of his muzzle.
“Dog!” I shout excitedly and reach down to rub Old Man Bill’s furry head but the sun’s come up over the buildings to make everything grey and ugly and Old Man Bill is at my feet, ugly and wrinkled and reeking and old and the same as always—just curled up at my feet, quiet and cold and still and bald and toothless—no longer furry or able to play fetch with anything except pint glasses in dark bars, hoping to be rewarded with free drinks and the young’s placating amusement. And in bars I call my own. In spaces I go to be alone and hope to never return from.
“Dog!” I say again before kicking him in the toothless mouth as the sound of buses, cars, and zombies, rising with the sun, starts to churn on every side of Union Square. His mouth turns red and drips and I don’t care. Planes fly overhead and explode and I don’t care. People stumble below the wheels of buses and split in two, geysers of blood erupting from their unzippered skin and splashing organs, and I don’t care. He doesn’t move before or after the kick and I don’t care. So I kick him a couple more times, and anyone that sees simply averts their gaze and moves on, and Old Man Bill barely registers the blows, his eyes open, unblinking, distant and lost and I don’t care. I go home where I take a shower and dress and forget about yesterday so that I can start another day and I don’t care.
CLEOPATRA
Some for-shit’s-sake Oasis song plays overhead followed by a Christ-please-split-my-head-open Dave Matthews song, and my head already aches enough from the hangover and lack of sleep as Sanchez and me wait for his date to show up, standing on the mezzanine of Aberdeen Tower, a Scottish bar on Geary down the street from Bourbon Bandits where I usually waste my time.
The bar smells of stale dishwater pooled underneath rubber floor mats. It’s lit in a dim, hazy orange hue. Looking down from the mezzanine, past little flags of the Lion Rampant strung between the two upper levels, I see Kevin all gangly, with hair disheveled, chatting up a cute blonde named Christy that I work with at a café in Hayes Valley. He’s drunk and pretending he’s only accidentally touching her tits as she giggles. The Giants and Dodgers game plays on the bulky TV behind them but no one watches so no one sees the ballplayers, in unison, like synchronized swimmers, reach deep into their jockstraps and retrieve tiny pistols which they quickly slip between their lips. As they pull the triggers, their heads explode into tiny flakes of red confetti and their bodies collapse in unison as dozens of dancers and cheerleaders tumble and cartwheel onto the dirt diamond and perform a dramatic interpretive dance to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” while the umpires confer in front of home plate and chat calmly between sips of whiskey from a shared flask. Then the umpires agree to remove the headless figures and confetti, getting to the task of tugging bodies away and sweeping just before the song ends, the dancers depart, and the first car commercial graces the TV screen.
“What’s she look like again?” I ask Sanchez who often refers to his own looks as a cross between Johnny Depp and Gomez Addams. He’s in a grey three-piece suit, as usual, and fidgeting, as usual.
“She looks like fucking Cleopatra,” he says through pained exhaustion, searching his pockets and pulling out an inhaler and taking a quick hit before scanning the crowd. “Only, not quite as skinny.”
“Was Cleopatra skinny?” I ask.
“Yeah. She got fit building the goddamned pyramids,” Sanchez says.
He pulls out a cigarette then remembers there’s no smoking allowed in the bar. The jukebox quiets for a second and I hear Kevin yelling to Christy, “No, seriously, it’s my real fucking hair!” with a huge shit-eating grin on his face, and then the CD changes and New Order’s “Ceremony” plays and I quit listening to Sanchez complaining about how he would prefer to leave, how his hair is not quite right, and that he needs to take a shit anyway and should just go.
Instead, I listen to the song and sing along in my head and watch Kevin flirt with Christy, who’s all smiles, touching his arm from time to time, and I try to forget my relentless crush on her even though she’s kind of a hippie.
She’s sweet, though. She gave me a black candle and mixed CD for my twenty-seventh birthday, although I could not listen to the hippie drum-circle garbage she filled the CD with more than once. I only use it to set my drinks on or cut lines of coke now, but I think of her every time I see it and feel pretty good about it. The black candle has come in handy with late night drunken hookups, and each time I let a thick, black liquid bead spill onto an erect nipple or the inside of an already-reddened thigh, I think of her and wish she was with me instead.
She has a soft face, too—one that’s full of forgiveness for things that haven’t even been done yet. She has these bright blue eyes, and these flushed cheeks. She’s nice. She looks nice. When I think of her, I think: nice. I like thinking about her. I do it often.
For a second I think about going down the stairs, ditching Sanchez and decking Kevin, but then I hear Sanchez say, “Shit. There she is,” and I look back and down toward the front of the bar and there’s Cleopatra with picture-perfect bangs, draped in a short black dress, taking a table with a few other girls. She’s gorgeous and full of self-importance and completely in control of her surroundings. Her friends are on invisible leashes and they’re all bats and lashes toward her.
“Shit!” I hear Sanchez say again. He looks all around at the green bugs with big glowing asses and long sharp teeth that swarm around us at this moment. He swats at them, makes a face like he’s smelling something awful, and pulls out another cigarette before remembering again and putting it back. Then he finds his inhaler and takes another puff on that and adjusts his tie and asks how his hair looks. I say “fine” then turn around again to take another look at Cleopatra and when I turn back Sanchez is shimmying down the stairs and I figure he must be on his way to say hello but he keeps on down the stairs then toward the back of the bar where the restrooms are and, instead of going into the men’s room, he takes the backdoor out into the alleyway. That heavy metal door slams silently behind him amidst the cheers from the three or four at the bar cheering on the Giants game.
Sanchez does not, i
n fact, have a change of heart and bust back through that metal door to more canned applause. Instead, I can see him—in my head, only—waltzing down the alleyway in a Charlie Chaplin-esque strut, laughing to himself. Then he doubles over with that laughter before moving along, high-fiving the rats in the alleyway who all compliment his suit before scratching their balls and shoving their faces back into the dumpster or another rat’s ass.
He’s ditched out on so many hopeful and adoring women by now that it’s become a predictable yet constant source of amusement for most of his friends. Mostly it annoys me. The dismissal he shows women without a second’s thought is something I’m completely incapable of.
Suddenly abandoned and surrounded by gaseous bugs and odiferous hippies talking about Colonel Sanders’ unforgivable sins—while masturbating each other under the tables with one hairy-palmed hand and picking at their dreads with the other—I decide to walk down and interrupt Kevin and Christy’s coitus.
“What’s up, shitbag?” I say to Kevin, squeezing in between the two and ordering myself a vodka-soda from the aloof and mostly pissed-off Scottish bartender. He looks at me, wordless, makes no gesture, then gets to the work of laboring over my order.
“Hi, Luke!” Christy says, drinking her cosmo with a straw. I notice a daisy planted behind her right ear and I wonder what kind of soil she must have inside her skull that it would grow so brightly.
“Um, hey,” I say then turn my back to her. “Sanchez split. Pulled his usual out-the-back-door antics.”
“Eh, what are ya gonna do?” Kevin asks, trying to see around me but I masterfully block his view of Christy’s smallish frame.
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