I wanted to never open them. I wanted to always have them, in case I needed them, unopened and waiting. I wanted to read them at ninety on my death bed, so I could drink in Emily’s thoughts, one last time, before pneumonia took me to meet her in heaven.
I decided on an in-between. I’d keep following the letters, but I wasn’t going to open the next one right away. I’d give it some time.
Leave it to Emily to come up with such an incredibly perfect way to give me something to look forward to, such an incredibly perfect way to get me out of bed in the morning. I wasn’t better, not by a long shot, but getting out of bed is a good first step to getting anything done.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Well look at you,” John Lawson said, as I walked up to the bar. I was whistling. Felt alright. The spring air was perfect and I could smell the trees coming into bloom.
“Hey John Lawson,” I said. “I just want to say...”
“You don’t got to say it,” he said. “You just got to mean it.”
I meant it. I was sorry. I reached out, and he clapped me on the shoulder, and it was done. I was forgiven. Would have been different if I’d hurt him, but a man like John Lawson doesn’t bruise easy, nor does his ego.
I was about twenty minutes early for my shift, but I got up to the bar, grabbed a rag, started wiping it down, bussing some dishes.
“Damn, Luke,” Jake said, watching me work. “You win the lotto or something? Royals win the pennant last night and I forgot to watch?”
“I’m just in a good mood, that’s all,” I said.
I thought about it a moment longer, decided I should tell him more. Impart some wisdom learned from my not-particularly-advanced years.
“When everything’s dark for so damn long and your eyes get used to it,” I said, “just a little glimmer of sunshine lights up the whole world.”
He nodded, then grabbed a bus bin and headed back into the kitchen.
Warren though, Warren wasn’t impressed. He was sitting by one of the daytime barflies, but he’d stopped talking and was just watching me. I was on thin ice, and I knew it. I couldn’t afford to lose my job. A heartbroken, drunk, angry widower is probably as unemployable as the average ex-con.
I came on at the end of the day shift. Warren liked tending bar during the day, because it meant just shooting the shit with the regulars. That day I had a smile for every customer, sparse words of wisdom like day drunks want to hear. Tending bar wasn’t my dream. But to hell with letting that make me lazy. I kept the place clean, I poured drinks like I cared.
I was getting into the swing of it when happy hour kicked in and a few more people filtered through the door. Couple of middle-aged bikers, a retired couple that parked their RV out front. And Maggie. Of course Maggie came in.
Maggie’s got two kinds of outfits. Tank top and jeans, and tight short dress. She tends to work in jeans, and believe me it’s enough to get anyone staring, when you can see the hint of those tattoos that just draw your eye towards the spots her clothes are hiding. But that night, she was wearing her tight black dress. It was all I could do not to stare. Some of the regulars, for their part, didn’t bother with such courtesy.
“You’re not on today,” Warren said. He must have been in a bad mood to say anything mean to Maggie.
“Just here to drink,” she said. She walked up to me, rested her forearm on the bar to lean in a bit. “Just got lonely, all cooped up alone. Figured I could use some human in my life.”
Maggie could have gone home with anyone in the bar, had she set her mind to it. Anyone but me. The only thing worse than telling a girl off is being so rude as to go back and forth about it. It’s not fair to her, and honestly, you quit someone as hot as Maggie, you’ve got to quit cold turkey.
“What’re you drinking?” I asked, keeping my voice level without a hint of flirting in it.
“Coors Lite,” she said breezily, like we hadn’t had words last time we spoke.
I knew she preferred microbrews. She was saying what I wanted to hear. I poured her a pint. She turned around, beer in hand, her back to me. One elbow resting on the bar. Too-casual. Trying to play hard to get.
“You want to come over, after you get off?” she tossed back over her shoulder.
“No thanks,” I said. I’m glad her back was turned. Easier not to have to meet her eyes. “I’m fine.”
Maggie laughed, but I could hear the hurt under it. “You know I didn’t just want to fuck you, Luke,” she said.
Arguing with her about anything where Warren might hear was scary. But what she was saying was scary too.
“You could take me out sometime,” she said. “It doesn’t have to only be…what it is.”
I just kind of shook my head and avoided eye contact. Maggie was wrong about what we had and we both knew it. Outside of bed or the bar, we couldn’t stand each other—we’d tried a few times, and the truth is that we didn’t have much to talk about. But there was more to it than that. What I’d learned over several years with Emily wasn’t something Maggie was yet privy to—and that was that physical chemistry wasn’t everything. Compared to being in love with the person who sleeps in your arms at night, all by itself the physical stuff wasn’t much at all.
Maggie let out a short, harsh laugh, I guess finally realizing I wasn’t going to bite.
“Suit yourself, jerk.” She strode over to her favorite booth, in the back corner, and got out her laptop. We had some regulars who came in sometimes and read books, nursing their beer. Maggie was the only person I’d ever met who dragged a computer out to the bar, though, and got drunk and did whatever it is she did with those things.
I went back to wiping down the bar, though it was clean enough already. Just needed something to do with my hands.
That’s what I needed. I needed something to do with my hands. Tending bar wasn’t enough.
“Which stage of mourning is idiocy?” Jake asked, suddenly next to me.
“What?”
“There’s like, denial, anger, uh, being sad. After that there’s got to be idiocy. Because you’re being an idiot.”
I thought maybe he was just trying to get at me, make me angry. But I looked at him, followed his gaze over to Maggie in the corner booth, and realized he was jealous. Even John Lawson, happily married to the sweetest gal I’d ever met, was a little bit jealous.
Maybe I was being an idiot. But dammit, if I was going to be an idiot, at least I’d be a stubborn one. That’s better than a wishy-washy idiot, right? I gave Jake a shrug.
The door swung open, letting in a little bit of that early-evening cold, and I glanced up to see a crowd of three women, with two men. One of the women was a reddish blonde, radiant. Sort of stole the light out of the room. It was Rae. Our eyes met and her smile gave the room back its light.
She’d been in jeans at the shelter, but she was in a blue dress now and she looked damn fine in either. Took my mind right off Maggie, faster than I thought it would be possible. I met her eyes, and she gave out a little gasp and giggle. I was probably smiling in surprise myself.
The crowd came over to the bar. I’d thought the other four were two couples, but I realized pretty quick that the black girl with the afro was dating the quiet white guy in a beard and glasses and tattoos, and that the other guy was trying to impress Rae. He had a John Deere hat, but his clothes were way too clean for me to buy it that he worked on a farm. I hated him, right off. I probably would have hated him if he was the best guy in the world, though. The other girl, she was tall, latina, and for some indiscernible reason was interested in the poser farmer.
Most of the time, I’m awful at reading people. But for some reason, at work I can tell you everything about everyone who walks in the door. About who’s into who, about who had a bad day at work. Who wants to get drunk and miserable, who wants to get drunk and happy, who wants to get drunk and start trouble. Maybe it’s some magic of the job, maybe it’s just how people carry themselves at a bar. Helps with tips, that’s for certai
n. You wingman right, and the money flows in.
Warren, he likes to upsell them drinks when he’s doing that. Get them excited about the top shelf. Not me.
“Hey, Rae,” I said.
“Luke,” she said.
John Deere looked at me like I was the scum of the earth. And maybe I was, but if I was the scum then he was... I don’t know, something worse than scum. Wannabe scum.
She introduced me to her friends. Nicole had the afro, her boyfriend was Eric. The girl with bad taste was Irina, and John Deere had some name but honestly it went in one ear and out the other. He was John Deere to me. Yeah, maybe I’m an asshole.
“So, how do you know this guy?” Deere asked, tossing me a look that said I clearly wasn’t good enough to be friend with someone like Rae.
“Oh, he came in just the other day. Adopted the sweetest dog, a bloodhound.” She turned to me, flashing that dimple high on her cheek. “How is he? You guys call a truce yet?”
“King’s great,” I said. “I mean, he’s probably at home right now, eating everything I’ve ever owned, but I figure I was due for a purge anyway, right?”
It was a lame attempt at humor, but Rae laughed.
“What can I get you all? Friend of Rae’s is a friend of mine.”
I won’t lie, it felt good to be nice to John Deere, because the scowl on his face when I handed him a free pint was worth any trouble I might get in with Warren.
“I’ve never seen you in here,” I said, keeping the conversation going.
“We’re celebrating,” Rae said.
“Yeah?”
“Eric here just got a new job,” Nicole said. “‘Assistant production engineer’ at this studio that just opened up down the street.” Her hand was on her boyfriend’s back, and she’d never been prouder.
Emily had been proud of me like that, sometimes. She’d put her hand on my back like that, too.
But as sad as it made me, I was happy for Eric and Nicole both. That caught me by surprise. It had been a long time since I’d been anything but bitter about happy couples in love.
“What’s an assistant production engineer do?” I asked.
“It’s the shit end of the stick at the recording studio,” Eric said. He had a really low voice for someone so thin. Low and gravely, a good songwriter’s voice. “I do all the work no one else wants to. I’ll be hitting the record button in the booth for all the commercial voice-overs, shit like that.”
“Sounds like a good deal,” I said. “You get to work in a studio. Bet you’ll work your way up pretty fast, anyway.”
“Yeah,” Eric said, and a smile cracked across his beard.
“What about you, what do you do?” I asked John Deere. I was hitting below the belt and he knew it. Whatever he did, it didn’t match what he was wearing. The only time that boy had seen a tractor was when he was honking at it on some side highway, pissed it was going ten miles an hour. Not that I’d driven a tractor. But I didn’t wear a John Deere hat, either.
He didn’t answer, and the five of them went for the biggest table.
Other customers came in, and I got too busy to pay much attention to anyone who wasn’t ordering.
Rae kept looking over at me, though. Like she wanted me to come over and join the conversation. Like she wanted me next to her. But who was I to know what she was thinking. She kept looking over at me, though.
Her being there, Maggie sitting in the corner. Half of me just wanted to be at home, nursing a beer. Instead of standing behind a bar, trying not to drink.
Jake, I swear that boy saw everything that happened in that bar. I swear he saw everything that happened before it even happened.
“So that’s why you’re ditching Maggie,” he said, while he was cutting limes.
“Naw,” I said. “It’s not like that.”
“I take it back, you’re not being an idiot, you’re being too clever for your own good.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going to lose them both, man. You’re playing hard-to-get with Maggie, and that’s not going to work much longer. It worked tonight, because she’s proud as hell. You say she can’t have you, she just wants you more. But that’s not going to last another week, man. Next guy she wants, she’ll get. I bet she’s on her phone right now, looking at dudes who’d bang her.”
Maggie was, indeed, on her phone, starting absentmindedly and tapping at the screen. But what she did was her own business.
“And this girl, the redheaded girl,” he went on.
“Rae,” I said.
“Yeah, Rae. You’re going to fuck it up if you don’t go for it. She’s into you, that’s clear as shit, but a girl like her you’ve gotta actually try for. You can’t just take her into the backroom on your break, if you know what I’m saying.”
“I’m not trying to fuck her,” I said.
“You should be,” Jake said. “You should be trying to fuck her and you should be trying to marry her. In whatever order. That’s what you should be doing.”
He put down the knife, rested his hands on the bar, looked up at me. I’d never realized he’d put so much thought into my life, or that this nineteen year old had such an old soul.
“That’s what’s wrong with you, man. You’ve had some shit go down, I’m not saying you haven’t. But like, what you lost? Most of us never even get that. What you’ve got staring you right in the face? I’d cut off my left nut just to get a shot at one of them. You’re the luckiest motherfucker in Kansas City and you don’t even know it.”
All my life, I’ve never liked talking about girls with my friends. Because guys don’t talk honest about women with each other, they just front. I do it too. It doesn’t do anyone any good. It’s never done anyone any good. And it’s plain disrespectful, is what it is. But behind what Jake was saying, there was something true to all of that. So, maybe, it was worth it to talk to him.
“You should ask Maggie out,” I said.
“Yeah right.”
Jake wasn’t too much shorter than me, but I had 40lbs on him, easy. He was in alright shape, but he wasn’t the most classically handsome man and it’s hard when you’re younger and less experienced than a woman to think you’ve got much of a shot with her.
“Or don’t,” I said. “But she might say yes.”
“Bad idea to date your co-workers,” Jake said.
“Damn right,” I said.
At Rae’s table, they’d graduated from beer to shots. I couldn’t get them top shelf for free, but I got them well drinks. And damn if Rae didn’t knock it back, no chaser, no mixer. She was a happy drunk, too. Alcohol strips away inhibition, leaves your soul out and bare. A happy drunk, they’re the best people. An angry drunk is hiding something from themselves, has too much darkness. Rae was a happy drunk. Not that I would admit to myself I was watching. As she got drunker, she graduated from shooting me glances to holding eye contact.
For some reason, I stayed more sober on my shift than I did most nights.
John Deere came up for drinks a couple times by himself, and as the evening settled in he got pretty drunk.
I don’t like to turn a man down for a drink, even a man I don’t like, but policy is policy and I cut him off after he tripped on a chair on the way to the bar.
He didn’t say nothing to me about me not letting him order, just scowled again. His scowl was carved deep on his face. I hated him for it.
People say you hate people the worst when they reflect the things you hate about yourself. Maybe. Maybe I hated John Deere because he was bitter and angry all the time and I didn’t want to stay that way myself. Maybe I hated him because he dressed like he worked outside, but he didn’t. And, well, so did I.
But when he got back to the table, he started saying shit to his friends. I couldn’t make it out, but he was gesturing wildly. Slammed his fist on the table, startling Irina.
I hadn’t realized until just then, but Irina was pretty drunk herself. Eyes a little glazed over, a little quick to laugh.
And John Deere was yelling at her. Just standing at the end of the table, staring at her while he yelled God knows what awful stuff.
I caught John Lawson’s eye. I swear everyone who works for Warren had the magical power to know exactly what was going on in that bar at all times. John Lawson nodded, and we both looked back at the table, and John Deere was yelling. Irina was pulling back in on herself...not hiding in fear, just retreating from the situation. The rest of the table was looking around nervously as their celebratory evening slid into chaos.
John Lawson nodded at me again, and I nodded to Jake, who probably nodded to Warren who probably nodded to Maggie—who wasn’t even on shift, but she was one of us anyway.
It was a team effort. Maggie went to the front door, held it open and kept it clear. Jake held down the bar, while Warren and John Lawson held a respectful distance just behind me as I walked up to the table. Unlikely I’d need the back-up, but a little extra threat never hurt anyone in situations like these. Better to scare a man out of the bar than have to do the same with force.
“Hey, buddy, it looks like you’ve had enough to drink,” I said, going for friendly.
“You told me that at the bar, motherfucker.” He spun around to face me, knocking Rae’s empty glass onto her lap. In the same gesture, he threw maybe the worst punch I’ve ever seen. I had half the inkling to just let it connect, because it was so weak it didn’t seem worth dodging. But it was aimed at my face, and you just can’t take a punch to the face for granted. I pulled my head back and he missed.
Then he followed up, which caught me by surprise. He stepped forward and threw a jab—a decent jab. The haymaker had just been to get the measure of me. I stepped to the side, got his arm, put him in an armbar.
“You’re leaving now,” I said.
He scowled that scowl, but I had him in a joint lock and he was too drunk to do anything about it. I’d handled worse. I marched him outside. His friends followed.
If he’d been there with anyone but Rae, I would have thrown him down on the pavement, give him some scrapes to remember me by. Instead, I got him to the sidewalk and let him go with just a shove.
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