Y Is for Fidelity

by Logan Ryan Smith

  “Whoa, Ian,” she laughs, “calm down. It’s not Ben.”

  “Oh. It’s just that he’s been gone for nearly two weeks. I thought maybe since you two slept together that maybe he moved in with you.”

  “That’s not usually how it works.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, you don’t want to get a drink with me? Just one drink? Where’s the harm?”

  Sternly: “Ian, I said no.”

  “But why not?” I whine. This is the part of me I saw in Ben that I didn’t like seeing and I’m trying to stop myself but I can’t. “Katharine, why not? You can sleep with my scary-ass, scarred-up roommate with some unplaceable accent but you can’t get one lousy drink with me?”

  “I’m going now, Ian. Please, just leave me alone.”

  “I don’t understand!” I shout as she exits and some guy in a blue suit walks in. He gives me a dirty look. I start to weep. I put my head on the table and cry. I bang my head on the table until the guy asks me what my problem is. I chuck my egg salad sandwich at him and leap from my chair and spit and scream FUCK YOU and charge at him, my limbs all floppy and elastic. He runs out of the breakroom yelling “You’re crazy!” over and over again. I walk back to my table and kick it, overturning it. I yank open the fridge and sweep all the food out of it onto the linoleum of the breakroom floor. Apples thud, jars of pickles crash, Tupperware tumbles, lunch bags split, leftover Thai noodles squirm. I kick over three more plastic tables and topple a half-dozen chairs. When I can’t get the soda machine to tip over I decide I’ve had enough and storm out of the breakroom to the elevators. I’m about to go home but decide to get out on the twelfth floor where the bar is. I take a stool at the oak wood bar and wipe the last few tears away with the heels of my palms and ask the bartender for a triple Johnny Walker Black on the rocks.

  “You just get canned or somethin’?” the bartender asks. He’s got a thick Chicago accent, but with those grey curls and kind eyes he looks a lot like Jon Pertwee, my favorite Doctor. This perks me up a bit, though my heart still bangs its tin cup against the bars of my ribcage like an anxious prisoner.

  “No. I didn’t get canned, thank you very much. My, um, brother just died, and I, um… need a drink. Like, pronto, Mr. Pertwee,” I tell him in my sternest voice.

  “Jesus, I’m sorry, kid. I’ll get that drink. My name’s Jones, by the way,” he says, pouring a healthy dollop of gold over a couple crystal clear ice cubes.

  Expelled breath flaps my lips as I say, “Jones. Sure it is.”

  The twelfth floor windows of this bar face north, affording views across the river of the Magnificent Mile and the jutting towers of the neo-gothic Tribune and modern NBC buildings, as well as the dark obelisk of the Hancock beyond. As I squint at the sunburnt view of endless Chicago, I sense someone’s presence. Slowly, I turn my gaze to the stool next to me and recognize the well-dressed, silver-haired man sitting there. It’s the CEO of Inmerica—the boss of my boss’s boss, Mr. Hollander. We’d met only once before, five years ago at the company Christmas party. The company rented out this fancy mansion in Logan Square. Everyone dressed up, including myself. I spent three-hundred on a tux rental—very snazzy. A brass band played Christmas classics from the gallery lined with disturbing torture paintings by Leon Golub, distorted, ghostly figures by Nancy Spero, and the manic, horror-hued portraits of Ed Paschke—all artists from Chicago’s 60s scene (I’ll take Kinkade and Neiman over that crazy stuff any day!). Mistletoe was everywhere and I attempted to kiss random coworkers I’d never spoken to, women and men, thinking myself quite the cad. There was even a Santa Clause there and I made him stop drinking glass after glass of champagne so I could sit on his lap and tell him what I really wanted for Christmas (hint: it rhymed with barge binheritance). I got drunk and giddy and extra-chatty with everyone in earshot, but only for the first two hours. I spent the rest of the party on the balcony of the mansion hurling long strings of purple vomit over the side. Upon returning to work I avoided everyone completely, and have pretty much continued avoiding them since.

  Or, maybe they’ve been avoiding me. I like to think otherwise.

  Anyway, I hadn’t even remembered I had spoken to Mr. Hollander (gasp!) until a faceless coworker pulled me aside a few weeks after the party and told me it looked like me and the Big Man were really hitting it off. I turned away from the faceless coworker and never spoke to him again, unwilling to put up with such sarcasm in the workplace.

  “Tellman, is it?” Mr. Hollander asks. He motions to the bartender and orders a Glenlivet twenty-one-year-old single malt scotch. “Ian Tellman?”

  “Um… yes… sir?” I offer, staring into my half-empty glass of Johnny Walker.

  Barman Jones sets the drink before Mr. Hollander. He lifts the glass to his nose, relishes the floral aroma, and downs the whole glass in one go.

  “Another,” he tells the barman. “And one for Mr. Tellman, here.”

  “Oh, no, sir. That’s quite alright. I really shouldn’t.”

  “Why? Because it’s the middle of a workday?”

  “Well, no… but because it’s such an expensive drink, sir.”

  “So you don’t think there’s a problem with drinking in the middle of a workday?”

  “I, uh, didn’t… no, that’s not…”

  A large hand slams against my spine and I cough and worry I’m about to upchuck the scotch I’d just drunk, but thankfully the air returns to my lungs and eases my stomach.

  “I’m just kidding ya, Tellman! Shit, every hardworking man deserves a midday drink or two. And as I hear it, you’ve been putting in quite the share of hours lately, son.”

  “Just, uh, trying to get ahead, sir,” I say, sipping from my glass of Johnny Walker as the bartender puts the fifty-dollar glass of Glenlivet before me.

  “That’s what I like to hear, son. You know, I remember you. Of course I remember you. I remember you from some long-ago Christmas party. I liked the cut of your jib. I expected to hear more about you since then. I thought you were going places, Tellman. But your name’s hardly come up in the years since we last spoke. Until recently. I was glad to hear it. There’s good things ahead for you, son. Just keep your nose to the grindstone.” He slaps me on the back and I let out a pathetic cough again.

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll do my best to make you proud.”

  “You do that,” he says, drinking his second scotch down and standing from his stool. “Enjoy that scotch now. Relish it. Take your time with it. But not too much time! You have to get back to work soon, don’t you, Mr. Tellman?”

  “Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir. Thank you again, sir.”

  “Take care, son,” Mr. Hollander says then exits the bar.

  “You’re going back to work?” Barman Jones asks, removing Mr. Hollander’s whiskey glasses and wiping the bar down.

  “Yeah. After this,” I tell him, smiling big, holding up the glass of expensive scotch.

  “Really?”

  “Well, why wouldn’t I?” The scotch is exquisite. It slips down the back of my throat like gilded silk and settles in my tummy with the warmth of liquid love.

  “You really think that’s wise?” Barman Jones leans toward me, elbows on the bar, his kind eyes searching my soul.

  “Of course it is. I’ve clearly impressed the boss. And not just the boss, but the boss.” Relishing the drink is difficult and I realize I’ve taken two large gulps of the honey-rich ambrosia, leaving only a sparkle of amber sticking to the ice. Damn.

  “But your brother just died.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “You really probably should go home and be amongst family in a time like this.”

  I try to suck as much of the scotch off the ice as possible, then spit the ice back into the glass. I lean forward, elbows on the bar, only a half foot between us now, a warm gold aura oozing out of every pore of my skin.

  “Let me tell you something,” I tell Barman Jones as the late July sun cooks the high-rise window
s and all of the Midwest spread out below.

  “What’s that?”

  “If my brother hadn’t have died…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’d have killed him myself.”

  Barman Jones pushes away from the bar, offended and confused.

  “Never did like that gimpy fucker,” I tell him, scooching away from the bar, gnawing on ice. I smile and wave on my way out as I head back to work.

  CHAPTER 19.

  “Where’ve you been?” I ask Ben, who sits on the stool next to me in Joe’s on Broadway, Hall and Oates’ “Maneater” booming from the internet jukebox because I got here early enough to crown myself King of the Hill. I loaded up forty-dollars-worth of nothing but the best tunes this stupid bar has ever heard. And if anyone tries to use the cut-in-line option on that thing I swear I’ll bash his head through that wall-mounted jukebox and gnaw off his ball-sack with his own false teeth (I’m so assertive these days!).

  Sure, Bossman Hollander told me to get back to work earlier today after I finished my expensive scotch. And I did. But after about ninety-minutes of checking server temperatures (anally is always the best way (ha!)) and rebooting idiot coworkers’ computers for them, I felt my thirst grow overbearing. I had a few more fancy whiskeys in the twelfth-floor bar before heading home. But before I could walk that one extra block down Addison and turn onto Pine Grove, I found myself here at Joe’s. I told Joe (who isn’t Joe) that I wound up here because of the lake effect. He didn’t get it. He didn’t laugh. I laughed enough for us both, though.

  Anyway, it wasn’t long before I got a text from Ben asking where I was.

  “Vision quest,” he tells me now, eyes forward, sipping on his glass of Old Crow. His freshly shaved head appears haloed.

  “Vision quest? You were on a vision quest? Really?” I stare at the side of his face, but he won’t look at me. The bar is quiet around us, about half full as it’s a Wednesday. Because the drinks here at Joe’s warmed up my cockles, I had contemplated getting my MacBook Air from the apartment and heading to Latte A Lot to see if I would be allowed a nice chat with my friends Captain Stephen Peacock, Vyvyan Basterd, Captain Jack Harkness, and Dave Lister. Thankfully Ben here rescued me from the potential embarrassment of being rejected by them yet again.

  “Yeah. I spent the last two weeks in the desert, drinking peyote water and fasting, trying to find myself.”

  “Jesus, Ben. Really?”

  “No, dipshit. Desert? What desert? Where is there a goddamned desert within fifteen-hundred miles of here?”

  “Um, New Mexico?”

  “Lucky guess. I wasn’t in the desert. Christ, man, how drunk are you?”

  “I’ve had… five,” I tell him, holding up five fingers.

  “Yeah, but how many before you got here? And you’re only holding up four fingers.”

  I laugh so hard spittle flies from my flapping lips.

  “Anyway,” Ben continues.

  “So, you… you weren’t in the desert? You didn’t have a… a vision to help you through this, um, amnesia predicament?”

  “No. I wasn’t in the desert.” Ben leans over the bar and says, “Chris. Hey, Chris! Can we get this guy a big glass of water?”

  Chris (aka not-Joe) sets a pint of ice water in front of me. I nearly cry.

  “You’re so good to me!” I yell, holding the dewy glass in both hands, staring at it as if it’s the greatest thing anyone has ever gotten me.

  “Christ, shut up.” Ben pulls out a cigarette from his tracksuit jacket pocket, puts it in his mouth, then shakes his head and puts the cigarette away.

  Toto’s “Rosanna” comes on the jukebox and my tears subside.

  “You killed your wife and kids,” I say, my voice monotonous, my eyes still on my glass of water.

  “Drink your water.”

  “You murdered your own wife and kids. With your own hands.”

  “You know… I’m not… I just don’t know about that. I mean…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know I could hurt someone. I know it. I know I could really, really hurt someone…”

  “But?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know who I was before. Like I said, most of the time, I feel… off. Like how I act and act out isn’t… isn’t really me. But the not-knowing makes me act out even more—makes me say things I don’t think I really should be saying. I’m fucking frustrated and worn out as shit, Ian. I barely know who I am at this very moment. But I don’t think I could kill anyone. Or, shit… maybe I could. But I really don’t think I could murder my own children—that is, if I really even have kids! Goddammit.”

  He swivels off the stool and walks to the internet jukebox and before I know it my ambrosial Toto turns into some low-fi electronic beat backed by demonic screaming.

  “Pigface,” he says, situating himself back on the stool and ordering himself another Old Crow.

  “No need for continued insults, Ben. I’m drunk, not an idiot. Or… a pigface.”

  “No, stupid. The song. This is Pigface. They’re a Chicago band. Or, were. This is from the nineties. You don’t like it?”

  “Um, no,” I say as if it was the dumbest question I ever heard.

  “Hmm… I don’t know. I don’t get the feeling this was the stuff I was listening to before the attack… but I like it now. This is music made in Chicago. And, hey, I’m a Chicagoan now.”

  “For the moment.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Who knows where the heck you’re from, Ben. Come on. What’s up with that accent? That very very very very slight accent? I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t know.” He stares forward, glass at his lips. “But what I am now is all I am. The past doesn’t exist. And I’m a Chicagoan now. It’s all I’ve ever known at this point.”

  “You’re a murderer.”

  “Shit, Ian! Come on. Lay off it. I don’t know that. You sure as fuck don’t know that. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “You’re a murderer.”

  “Ian, just because I said I don’t think I can actually kill someone doesn’t mean I can’t. Watch what you fucking say.”

  “No…”

  “No?”

  “No… I mean… it’s… OK.”

  “It’s OK? It’s OK if I’m a murderer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you, man?”

  “I’m a bad man, Ben.”

  He chortles into his glass of Old Crow, takes a gulp and crunches ice between his yellow teeth.

  “I am,” I tell him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I firebombed my ex-girlfriend’s house.”

  “Well, yeah. Sort of. I mean, not really. I threw the flaming cocktail at the place. But, seriously, who cares? Fuck those goddamned richies and their precious little houses.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, you didn’t firebomb my ex’s house.”

  “I’m pretty sure I did, Ian.”

  “No. I don’t know whose house that was.”

  “What?” he asks, actual alarm yanking at his vocal cords.

  “I don’t know whose house that was.”

  “No… no no no. You said that was your ex-girlfriend’s house. Taylor. Taylor… Taylor something.”

  “Townsend.”

  “Right. Taylor Townsend. She dumped you for reading one damned email. Now she’s being featured on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

  “I’m surprised that show somehow stuck in your memory.”

  “Yeah, me too. Anyway… Taylor Townsend?”

  “She’s fictional.”

  “Huh?”

  “She’s a character from the Fox hit teen drama, The O.C. I kind of fell in love with her… even though the show was crap by the time she arrived.”

  “Ian?”

  “Yeah?” I ask as his demon music is exorcised from the jukebox by Hall and Oates’ “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do).”<
br />
  “You said your ex lived there.” He leans toward me and continues in a hushed, angry tone. “You said that she fucked you over. I only burned that fucking place down because you’re my friend! And… I was shitfaced, man. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I was doing it… for you, you fucking asshole!”

  I turn toward him and grin big. “I know. And I appreciate it!”

  “So, wait… if that wasn’t your ex’s—wait. Wait, you said you firebombed your ex-girlfriend’s house? You said that.”

  “Yeah. You’re a murderer and I’m an arsonist.”

  “But, when, Ian, goddammit? If not that house in Oak Park, when?”

  “High school.”

  “High school? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Yeah. My girlfriend, she stood me up on Prom Night.”

  “Your girlfriend? Prom Night?” he asks, as if he’s never heard anything so ludicrous.

  “Well, she stood me up. And after I had spent all week learning all the new popular dances just to impress her.”

  “Ian…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you kill anyone?”

  “No. Well, their dog, Piddlesticks, was left in the house when they all ran out. Then the place burned down and I turned vegetarian straight away as penance.”

  I look at Ben. Ben looks at me. He looks… scared?

  “This was high school?” he asks, downing the last of his drink and asking for another. I motion to Joe that I want another, too. When he gets near I whisper under my breath that his barsmanship pales in comparison to Mr. Pertwee’s and he’s lucky I don’t burn his house down. He doesn’t hear.

  “Yep.” I grab my fresh glass of whiskey and take a healthy swallow.

  “Ian…”

  “Yep?”

  “How many girlfriends have you had since then?”

  “Um…”

  “Ian.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Was that girl, in high school, who stood you up… was she actually your girlfriend? Or was she just a cheerleader who laughed in your face when a nerd like you thought he had a shot at going to Prom with her?”

  I give him the meanest look I can offer but I think I mostly look like I just sucked on a lemon.