Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

by Sweany, Brian;

  I had won Dumbo at the Magic Kingdom, although of course my gesture was overshadowed by Johnny Fitzpatrick Mathis brilliance. I pawned it off as a belated birthday gift—the typical gesture of a shit-for-brains teenage boy. I adore Laura for holding on to it. I think about the “It’s a Small World” ride. I think about Dad.

  “I miss him, Laura.”

  She puts her hand on my face. “He’s still here. I see him every time you smile, every time you laugh.”

  “I guess I see him, too, especially in that picture over there.” I point to a small four by six framed photograph on the nightstand. It’s a picture of Laura and me from our Disney World vacation. Jack is sitting between us in the crook of Laura’s arm, smiling up at her just as the camera flashes.

  “Oh yeah, that,” Laura says.

  I grab the picture. “I don’t even remember when this was taken.”

  “Jack had just met Pluto and was on cloud nine.”

  “Man, that kid fucking loved Pluto. But I’m still curious about one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Any particular reason you carry a framed picture of me and my brother around?”

  Laura stares at the picture, almost in a trance. She says nothing. “Uh, Laura?”

  She shakes her head, pokes me in the chest. “Hey now, you’re not the only sentimental fool on the planet. That was a great vacation.”

  “Really?” I say. “I just remember being sweaty and exhausted and having crazy break-up sex.”

  “Getting back to my point, Hank…” Laura takes the picture from me and places it face down on the nightstand. “You’re just like your father, and not just because you look like him. You wear your passion and emotion on your sleeve. You trust people. You surround yourself with a circle of friends who worship you. That’s all John Fitzpatrick right there.”

  “Worship me? That’s an overstatement. I’m just the injured, sad-eyed puppy right now. Everyone loves a puppy.”

  “That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Fine, Laura, let’s just assume everyone’s intentions are sincere and I have all these good friends who ‘worship’ me. Can we stop pretending I’m a good friend in return?”

  “You’re a great friend, Hank.” She squeezes my nose and shakes it. “Just a shitty boyfriend.”

  “Speak for yourself.” I turn and face the wall, feigning long-term insult in the hopes of short-term gratification. I assume Laura sees right through me, but she wouldn’t have brought me back here if she didn’t want to do this.

  The bed sits in a corner of the room. I’m curled up between Laura and the wall. The room is pitch-black. I can still identify Hatch and Mack by the sounds of their inebriated snore-off on the opposite side of the room.

  I hear the rustling of blankets, of clothes being removed. A hand snakes around my belly, undoes the button on my jeans, and slides inside my boxers. I reach back with my hand. Starting at the knee, I run my hand up the inside of Laura’s thigh. I press up against her, feeling her bare breasts flattening against my back. She kisses the back of my neck and slithers down the bed. With both hands, she pulls my pants and boxers down to my ankles all at once. She climbs over me. Like a puzzle piece, she positions herself just so in front of me, our bodies spooning, finding just the right fit. She takes me in her hand, guiding me toward her. She arches her back and props her hand against the wall. I enter Laura from behind.

  We made love three times. It seemed, if I’m being honest, more desperate than passionate. If love were easy, then everyone would jump into the deep end of the pool and touch the drain like Jodi Foster in Stealing Home. But no one does that. The whole idea of drowning in the idea of someone, and what’s worse, not knowing you’re drowning until you’re underwater and you open your mouth to take a breath and realize, hey, something isn’t quite right here—well, it doesn’t just sound fucking stupid. It is fucking stupid.

  Or is it?

  Some love can be idiotic, bumbling even, and still endure. But Laura and I lost the right to be stupid years ago. The saddest of human journeys is taken by shattered hearts dusting off old love. There is no eternal innocence for me and Laura to cling to. John Keats can take his Grecian urn and shove it straight up his ass. Truth is not beauty. Truth comes at the expense of beauty.

  It’s been ten minutes since Laura fell asleep. I get dressed. I walk out of the apartment.

  Chapter forty-six

  Mack, Hatch, and I are living together for the summer. Hatch and I are working as student painters, while Mack has a sports marketing internship downtown. We’re sharing a duplex on the east side of Indianapolis, just off Pendleton Pike. We’ve nicknamed it “Sanford & Son.” It’s in a bad neighborhood, surrounded by refrigerator- and couch-laden porches. We blend in by purchasing a beat-up powerboat with an inoperative outboard we can’t afford to fix. We park the boat in our driveway. The boat is a nice accessory to my new vehicle. Mom sold my new Chevy pickup back to the dealership, so I bought a late-seventies black El Camino to haul paint supplies. It cost me more to title it than to purchase it. We named it “The Hoopty.” It has a bad alternator, which requires us to extract the battery at the end of every day and recharge it overnight. It isn’t running as of Memorial Day weekend.

  It was Hatch’s idea to throw the Indy 500 party. The party was denoted by the ten-feet-by-three-feet number “500” I carved into the front lawn with the push mower and spray-painted in alternating black-and-white checkers. After Emerson Fittipaldi took the checkered flag, we decided to have a front lawn demolition derby with the Hoopty and the neighbor’s rusted-out van. The Hoopty laughed off its injuries in typical Hoopty fashion, prompting Mack’s new girlfriend from Butler to sing a sorority anthem about the El Camino that went like this:

  El Camino, El-El Camino. El Camino, El-El Camino.

  The front is like a car, the back is like a truck. The front is where you drive, and the back is where you…

  El Camino, El-El Camino!

  Sanford & Son’s location affords it two advantages. One, when a southwest wind blows just right, the smells of fresh-baked bread and snack cakes waft over from the Wonder Bread Factory on Shadeland Avenue. And two, it’s less than a mile from one of the best strip joints in the city, P.T.’s Showclub. I have gone to P.T.’s eight times in the last three weeks, blowing at least two hundred dollars a pop. All I have to show for my efforts are a shoebox full of free passes into the club, a small Hanes T-shirt with two blotches of fluorescent green paint, for which I paid fifty bucks after watching a stripper paint the shirt using just her bare breasts, and a stripper’s phone number.

  The stripper’s stage name is Divine. Her real name is Amanda, although I haven’t got her last name yet. Her breasts are smaller than the one who painted my fifty-dollar Hanes T-shirt, but still a decent handful. She took me to a dark corner of the club and gave me a private dance for twenty dollars. We made out and dry-humped to a Stone Temple Pilots medley, and she wrote her phone number on the back of my bar tab.

  Mack told us he was playing in a softball tournament down at the Ridge all weekend. He bribed us to come down to the game with a half-gallon of his uncle’s dandelion wine. We drank the entire half-gallon on the drive down. We pull into the Ridge, just beyond left field of the softball diamond.

  “You’re not dating a fucking stripper, Fitzy.”

  I step out of Hatch’s truck and stash the empty wine bottle behind the front seat. “I’m telling you, she wants to go out with me.”

  “Let me guess…” Hatch slams his truck door shut. “She’s just stripping to pay her way through med school.”

  “Shut up.” I slam my door in kind. “Matter of fact, she is in school. Takes night classes at Marian College.”

  “Isn’t that the Catholic school run by Franciscan nuns over
by Butler?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “To blave?”

  Hatch and I assume almost everything the other says is total bullshit. The percentages tend to be in our favor. We refer to this character flaw as “blaving,” after Billy Crystal’s Miracle Max bit in The Princess Bride. “Sonny, true love is the greatest thing in the world. Except for a nice MLT, a mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe. They’re so perky, I love that. But that’s not what he said. He distinctly said ‘to blave.’ And, as we all know, ‘to blave’ means ‘to bluff.’” Either Hatch or I will say something dubious, implausible, or just fabricated, to which the other responds, “Are you blaving?” Or the shortened version, “To blave?”

  “Believe whatever the hell you want, Hatch.”

  “Hi, boys!” Mack raises his glove, yelling from his third base position. I tried to play in a summer softball league with Mack once, but he’s way too fucking serious about his sports. He’s almost a caricature now—the overweight former athlete with bad wheels intent on somehow reclaiming his glory years, raging against the dying of the light.

  “Let’s sit over there.” Hatch points to the bleachers along the first base line.

  I notice a familiar face sitting in the bleachers along the third base line. “I’m fine with these bleachers right here.”

  “I’m sure you are. See you at the end of the game, then.”

  I approach the bleachers. I put my hand above my eyes, shielding them from the sun. I see her sitting on the upper rung of the aluminum bleachers, casually smoking a cigarette. She’s wearing a tie-dyed tank top, cutoff jeans, and Birkenstocks. Her long, blonde hair, longer than I remember it being, is pulled back into a ponytail, except for her bangs, which still end just above her eyebrows.

  “Hey there. Got one of those for me?”

  She flashes a tanned smile and hands me a Marlboro Light. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the infamous Henry David Fitzpatrick.”

  “And if it isn’t the equally infamous Beth whatever-the-hell-your-middle-name-is Burke.”

  “You in town for the summer?”

  “Nope. Just came down for the weekend for Mack’s game. Maybe doing some canoeing on the Sycamore River tomorrow.”

  “Where you living? Indy?”

  “You bet. How about you?”

  “I’m in Empire Ridge until September.”

  “Working?”

  “Waitin’ tables.”

  “Where?”

  “Casa Columbo.”

  “The Mexican place in the mall?”

  “That’s the one. You working anywhere?”

  “Painting houses with Hatch.”

  “How’s school?”

  “Over for now, thank God.”

  “You graduate?”

  “I wish. What about you?”

  “I’m on the seven-year-plan.”

  “Seven?”

  “Yeah, I decided to change my major second semester of my junior year from secondary education to nursing.”

  “You’ll land on your feet. Of that I have no doubt.”

  Beth grabs my hand, holding it tight. She’s staring at me.

  “What? I got something on my face?” I wipe the corners of my mouth, look down at my jeans. “My fly open?”

  She points at me, tapping me on my chest. “You’re drunk.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “No. But your cheeks are flushed. It’s cute.”

  An unprompted flirtatious compliment. That’s my cue. “Soooo, Beth, how’s the love life?”

  “What love life?”

  “I heard you were dating somebody in town.”

  “Dating is a strong term.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Interesting, huh?” Beth flashes her dimples.

  “Yeah…” I flash my own dimples right back at her. “Interesting.”

  “Jordan is his name. He tends bar at Casa Columbo. My friends call him ‘The Tool,’ but I enjoy our time together. Jordan just wants to have fun, no strings attached. How about your love life?”

  “I fooled around with a stripper last night.”

  “A stripper?”

  This admission doesn’t carry with it the feel-good sentiment of my previous statement. She looks stunned. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Come on, Hank. A stripper?”

  “Isn’t this the type of shit we tell each other all the time? If there’s a bar to close down in Empire Ridge the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, chances are you and I are the last ones standing at two a.m.”

  “I have plenty of drinking buddies. None of them are banging a stripper, last I checked.”

  “I haven’t banged any stripper, Beth. She gave me her phone number. It’s probably nothing. Besides, you’re the one who banged my best friend, quite a bit if I remember. I also remember holding a wet rag on the back of your neck at one of Hatch’s parties that summer while you projectile-vomited into a toilet.”

  “And I also remember finding you the very next morning at that same party passed out in your own urine after you got drunk and pissed the couch.”

  “Was that before or after you had sex with Hatch?”

  “It was after I had sex with Hatch, which was after I had sex with you, which was before you led me on for six months and stayed with Laura.”

  Reunited with quite possibly my favorite girl on the planet, and I take the express train to standoffish asshole. Smooth fucking move, Hank.

  “I guess I deserved that,” I say, standing up to leave. “And on that note.”

  “Where the hell you going?”

  “I’m going to go see what your ex-boyfriend is up to.”

  “Tell him I said, ‘Hello.’”

  “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

  “Later,” Beth says.

  “Later,” I say. I make a move to leave, but not really.

  Beth and I have no reason to ever say goodbye like this. I have to throw out some sort of olive branch. “Hey Beth, you and what’s-his-name want to join us on the river sometime? Camping, canoeing, a few cocktails maybe.”

  “Sounds tempting, but I don’t know.”

  “What’s to know? You can even bring The Tool.”

  “His name is Jordan.”

  “Yeah, Jordan, that’s what I said.”

  “It’s not that, Hank.” Beth stands up, stretches. She kicks off her Birkenstocks, stretches her arms out from her body, head back. She stands on her tiptoes. They’re painted red. My eyes linger at her calves, the best set of calves I’ve ever seen on a woman. “I work weekends. Big tips. Jordan and I usually just rent a movie afterward.”

  “Suit yourself,” I say. “But the invitation still stands.”

  I turn to walk down the bleachers. Beth grabs me by the elbow. “Hey, Hank.”

  “Yeah,” I say, turning back.

  I’m one row down from Beth, so we’re seeing almost eye-to-eye. She leans into me, kisses me on the cheek. It’s a different kind of kiss on the cheek, one of those not-quite-on-the-cheek kisses that grazes the outer corner of your lips. “You really want to know my middle name?” she says.

  “It’s Alison, with one ‘L’, on top of which your first name is Elisabeth with an ‘S’. You hate the affectation of oddly spelled names, so you just go by Beth.”

  Beth smiles. “Why Mr. Fitzpatrick, are you stalking me?”

  “Do you want me to?” I ask. “Because I can.”

  The game went into extra innings. Beth left in the sixth to make her evening shift at Casa Columbo. My head is starting to make the transition from drunk to hungover. I stop by the snack bar and order a hot dog and a Diet Coke.
r />   The cashier rings me up. “A dollar seventy-five, please.”

  I reach into my jeans pockets. They’re the same jeans I wore last night, the front pockets still stuffed with one-dollar bills. I pull out my bar tab from last night, the one with Divine a.k.a. Amanda’s phone number scribbled on the back. I look over to where Beth had been sitting in the bleachers.

  I throw the phone number in the trash.

  Chapter forty-seven

  “Why is my mother in the hospital?”

  “It’s just a precaution, Mr. Fitzpatrick. She came in here complaining of an elevated heart rate. When we admitted her, her speech was noticeably slurred.”

  “Please, doctor, call me Hank.”

  “I’ll call you Hank if you call me Jeb.”

  “No can do, Dr. Pahl. You’re a doctor. You earned that title.”

  I haven’t seen Jeb since whipping his ass at the 1989 Taylor wrestling sectionals. He looks great, maybe even a little on the thin side. Turns out he’s some sort of genius. At age twenty-two, barely four years out of high school, he’s the youngest first-year intern in the history of Empire Ridge Memorial.

  “Have it your way.” Jeb flips through my mom’s chart. “Can we go over your mother’s meds one more time?”

  “Go for it.”

  “Miss Fitzpatrick, is—”

  “Missus Fitzpatrick.”

  “Yes, Hank.” Jeb recognizes my intent. “Mrs. Fitzpatrick is taking Lexapro for her depression, Urso for her liver disease, Ambien to put her to sleep, Elavil to keep her asleep, and Vicodin to counteract the migraines she gets from drinking alcohol with the Lexapro, Urso, Ambien, and Elavil. Does that about cover it?”

  “Just about. She also sometimes takes a double-dose of Darvocet instead of Vicodin, because Vicodin gives her nausea if she mixes it with Bass Ale instead of vodka gimlets.”

  “Good lord, Hank. Does that woman have a death wish?”

  “I think that would be fair to say. Can I see her now?”

  “Sure thing. All things considered, she’s fine. I’m just going to monitor her for a couple more hours. You can take her home this afternoon.”