Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

by Sweany, Brian;

The guys at work decided this morning to take me out for “lingerie lunch” at Legzz, a seedy strip club down on Meridian Street. A mini-bachelor party, they called it. We left the office at noon. It’s now three o’clock. All of us—me, Aaron, Chuck, and Hector—are anywhere from slightly tipsy (Aaron, he’s Jewish, and a lightweight) to quite nearly tanked (that would be yours truly, the bachelor).

  Aaron Rosner is the publisher of College Avenue Press. An import from West Bloomfield, Michigan, with eyes too small for his face and a head of tight curls, he’s the only Jew I know in Indianapolis. His close relationship with the Borders corporate office up in Ann Arbor—I think he’s sleeping with the fiction buyer—has almost singlehandedly kept us in the black. Aaron’s real claim to fame is that he was the high school classmate (confirmed) and childhood friend (alleged) of Elizabeth Berkley from Saved by the Bell. He reminds me of this incessantly, to the point where I’ve started calling him “Jessie” or “Spano” as the mood suits me. Rounding out the trio are College Avenue’s sales and marketing director, Chuck Gill, and Chuck’s dark-haired, vaguely George Clooney–looking roommate, Hector Rush.

  “A toast to Jimmy Chitwood,” Hector says. That’s his nickname for me. It’s an ironic reference to my lack of basketball skills. Hector never fucking shuts up. He’s the media relations director at the US Hardcourt Championships in downtown Indianapolis, and over the last half hour I’ve learned more than I have ever wanted to know about professional men’s tennis. In no particular order: Jim Courier generally keeps to himself, Bud Collins drinks beer during rain delays, Goran Ivanisevic loves to go clubbing, and Stefan Edberg is a nice guy who practices perpetually with his shirt off in front of the ladies.

  “How about just a toast to bachelors?” Chuck says.

  We hold our beers up. “To bachelors!” we shout.

  Hector slaps a ten-dollar bill on the table. I eye it skeptically. I’ve avoided the customary lap dance up until now. “I thought you said you didn’t have any bucks to tuck?”

  Hector smiles. “I saved one for you, Chitwood.” He signals a dancer to approach.

  The lunch crowd at Legzz is comprised of escapist truckers and second-shift factory workers getting a buzz on before they clock in. The clientele is reflected in the dancers, a cast of toothless, stringy-haired drug addicts with bad skin. The one who approaches me has no breasts, no ass, and even worse, no calves. She’s wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots along with G-string panties, all of which suit the song, Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive.”

  “A dance for the bachelor?” she asks, straddling me.

  “If you’d be so kind,” Hector says. He reaches over, stuffs the ten-dollar bill down the front of her panties.

  Aaron, Chuck, and Hector are laughing their asses off. I can honestly say this is one of those rare times I’m not enjoying a mostly naked woman writhing on top of me. She’s ugly, but not as ugly as we are. I miss Beth, but I don’t miss being this guy.

  Chapter sixty-one

  I pull into my driveway. It’s six o’clock, and I’m mostly sobered up. Beth is standing on the front porch smoking a cigarette. She smells of cheap wine and belligerence.

  “How was work?”

  “Work,” I say. “Work was good.”

  “What’d you do today?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, if I happened to run into one of your coworkers at Target earlier today, and if she happened to tell me, ‘I can’t believe you’re letting those guys take Hank to a strip club,’ you’d deny that, too?”

  “Shit,” I say.

  “Yeah, shit is right. You’re a shit.”

  Beth hates strip clubs. Hates them. I think it all goes back to my “I fooled around with a stripper last night” comment right before we started dating, which thereafter planted this notion in Beth’s head that (a) all strippers fool around with their customers and (b) I possess some kind of preternatural attraction to strippers, neither of which is remotely true. Last month, when Mack orchestrated a weekend rafting trip in West Virginia for my bachelor party, Beth told me the wedding was off if she heard there were strippers. Mack had wanted to get a couple of West Virginia’s finest to show up at our campsite, but that fell through—thankfully—at the last second.

  “The wedding’s off,” Beth says.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “It was the guys’ idea. I didn’t know about it until today.”

  “And I assume they knocked you unconscious and dragged you to the strip club?”

  “No.”

  “That’s the only acceptable excuse.”

  “It was no big deal.”

  “You know how I feel about those places.”

  “It was a joke. The women are grotesque there.”

  “I bet they are.”

  “No, really. The place is called Legzz. It’s a dump. I’ll take you there. If you can find me one attractive girl in the place, I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Then what is the point?”

  “For one, you think tucking dollar bills in ugly women’s G-strings is funny. What’s that say about your respect for women overall?”

  “Oh, come on, Beth.”

  Beth starts to cry. “But more importantly, you just stood in front of me, five days before our fucking wedding day, and lied straight to my face.”

  Beth grabs her keys and makes like she’s leaving.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I ask.

  “Out.”

  “Out where?”

  “To get drunk maybe. Maybe I’ll even hook up with The Tool.”

  “Beth, please.” I grab her hand, take her keys away from her. “I messed up, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I went there. I’m sorry I lied to you about it.”

  “Why now, Hank? Why today? You know what I did today? I started packing for our wedding and our honeymoon. There isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not messing with some detail about this wedding. It’s all I think about. You are all I think about.”

  “And you’re all I think about, too,” I say, but it comes across as reactive rather than heartfelt.

  “Evidently not,” Beth says. She grabs the door with her free hand, opens it.

  “Where are you going to go without your car keys?” I ask.

  “I’ll fucking walk.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “Watch me.”

  I slam the door shut with my forearm, squeeze Beth’s hand hard. Maybe a little too hard. “Beth, this is what couples who’ve been together for a while do. They fuck things up sometimes. And they don’t leave to avoid confrontation, or go crying to mommy, or kick their significant other in the shin. They work it out. I didn’t want to be there. Yes, I could’ve said no, but I didn’t, and that’s all on me. But the whole time I was there, I was…”

  “You were what?” Beth says.

  “I don’t know…sad, I guess.”

  “How much of a fool do you think I am, Hank?”

  “I’m being dead serious. I was sad for me, sad for the girls on stage, sad for letting you down.”

  “But you didn’t know I had found out yet.”

  “Just me knowing was enough.” I point back and forth between us. “I signed up for the long haul with us.”

  Beth’s arm goes noticeably slack. “So these girls were grotesque?”

  “Hideous.”

  Beth lets go of the doorknob, turns around. “I still would really like to kick you in the shin right now.”

  I reach down, raise my pants leg. “Go ahead. One free shot.”

  “I have a better idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I got a list of follow-up calls to make for the wed
ding.” Beth reaches down to the veneer desk just to the right of the door. She picks up a piece of paper, hands it to me. “Why don’t you make the calls?”

  I grab the list. I bite my lip, wincing. “Sure you don’t want to just kick me or have some angry makeup sex?”

  “You and your libido.”

  “I’d like to think I’m pretty normal.”

  “Normal?” Beth says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Since when is a compulsively masturbating sex addict who lies to his fiancée about going to strip clubs classified as ‘normal?’”

  I raise my hand. “I’ll take hyperbole for eight hundred dollars, Alex.”

  “What did you say to me the very first time I told you I wasn’t in the mood?”

  “You remember that?”

  “Well, you’ve said it a few times since then.”

  “Well, you’ve not been in the mood a few times since—”

  “Just answer the question, Hank.”

  “I said, ‘I’m going to have an orgasm every day with or without you, so you might as well be along for the ride.’”

  “Okay then, if you could have only one superpower, what would it be?”

  “That’s not fair, Beth. The last time we had this discussion, we weren’t even dating yet.”

  “What superpower?”

  “Invisibility,” I say, sighing. “I would want to be invisible.”

  “And why is that?”

  “So I could spend my days hanging out in the showers of hot chicks.”

  “And when you board an airplane, what’s the one thing you look for?”

  “Now you’re just taking stuff out of context.”

  “It’s a simple question, dear fiancé. What’s the one thing you hope for when you get on a plane?”

  I shake my head, powerless. “I hope there’s an attractive woman sitting next to me.”

  “And why oh why would you do that?”

  “Because I want to know that if the plane starts to crash, there’s a chance I might have sex with her right before I die.”

  “That’s not normal, Hank.”

  I look at my watch, a beat-up digital Timex I’ve had since Playboy published those naked photos of Madonna as brunette with armpit hair. “Considering we’ll be husband and wife in less than one hundred and twenty hours, you don’t have whole lot of time to figure if you want to be abnormal with me.”

  Chapter sixty-two

  While Mom again felt there was a certain grandeur lacking in a thirty-year-old church that looked like a limestone IHOP, we nonetheless decided to have the wedding at St. Benjamin. St. Isadore downtown is where I buried my father, and I intend to give it that lone distinction. I will never again step inside that church.

  Our wedding photographer is a dead ringer for Kenny Rogers. He was Dad’s roommate at Notre Dame. At this precise moment, I think I hate him.

  “And we’re done, gentlemen,” Kenny says. “See you inside.”

  The pre-wedding photos are done roughly ninety minutes after they started. Even by Indiana standards, the humidity is withering. The heat index is pushing one hundred degrees. The groomsmen head into the air-conditioned confines of St. Benjamin. In need of a moment to myself, I decide to hang outside for a few minutes.

  “Hank, can I talk to you?”

  He approaches me from the bushes, lying in wait. He looks awful, a good twenty pounds lighter since I last saw him. His once salt and pepper hair has faded into a washed-out gray. He’s wearing blue jeans beneath an untucked short-sleeved plaid button-up shirt. Nervous sweat visibly blooming from his armpits. As always, he smells of cheap aftershave and cigarettes.

  “Mitch…” I spit his name more than I say it. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

  “Nervous?” he says, reaching for my arm.

  I take a step back. “Why would I be nervous? The people I can trust in my life are few and far between. Being able to give myself to one of these rare individuals is a gift.”

  “I suppose I deserved that.”

  “This isn’t about deserving anything, Uncle Mitch. Now is not the time for us to have this conversation. This is my wedding day. Are you really that delusional and self-absorbed to think you can presume to wash away your sins on today of all days?”

  “You just called me ‘uncle’ again. I like that, Hank. I like that a lot.” Uncle Mitch smiles, reaches to me again, but this time I don’t back away. I let him grab my arm. He squeezes, smiles even bigger. A part of me is afraid of him. A part of me feels sorry for him. A part of me hates him. A part of me loves him. I start to smile.

  Really? A smile? Fuck that! I tug my arm loose. I back away from him. “Again, why are you here?”

  “Ask me, Hank.”

  “Ask you what?”

  “Ask me why I did it.”

  “I don’t want to know why you did it.”

  “It’s my penance,” Uncle Mitch says, his eyes moistening with tears. “I have to tell you. I have to acknowledge my moral weakness to those whom I’ve aggrieved and accept your anger and hopefully your forgiveness.”

  My fist connects with his nose before I realize I’m even throwing it. Uncle Mitch falls to one knee. The years of repression and guilt channeled into the hardest punch I’ve ever thrown.

  “There’s my anger,” I say. “Your forgiveness is waiting for you in hell, you goddamn motherfucker. This is still about you and your satisfaction. You’re not looking for penance. You’re just looking for another fucking orgasm.”

  I turn. Uncle Mitch reaches out and grabs my hand. Just as I raise my opposing closed fist for another blow to his face, he places something in my palm. It’s a familiar gold Tissot watch with a brown alligator leather band. My father’s watch.

  “Your mom gave this to me when John died,” Uncle Mitch says. “But it belongs to you.”

  I take the watch in my hand. I walk away without acknowledging his gesture.

  Chapter sixty-three

  I’m petrified. The pre-ceremony pint of blackberry brandy that Mack made me drink served only to make me drunk and petrified. Two blackberry-smelling beads of sweat roll parallel down my body from each armpit. My stomach isn’t helping. I try to concentrate on bending my knees. If they lock up on me, I’m dropping hard.

  The groomsmen fan out behind Father Fish. With Beth being an only child and me only having one sibling, we struggled to fill out the wedding party. My groomsmen are Aaron Rosner and Mack, while Beth’s bridesmaids are Claire and my sister Jeanine. Mack is best man, serving as Hatch’s stand-in while he’s doing God-knows-what to a Thai prostitute. Claire is the maid of honor, and still uncomfortably attractive. The groomsmen and I stand at attention, hands clasped behind our backs, just like we practiced at rehearsal last night. True to form, Mack forgets and folds his hands in front. I elbow him, eyeing his hands.

  What? Mack mouths.

  “Your hands,” I say through gritted teeth and a half smile.

  “Oh,” Mack says, gritting his teeth and wincing. “I forgot.”

  Aaron meets Jeanine halfway down the aisle, escorting my sister to her seat. Kenny Rogers snaps a shot of both bridesmaids as they enter the church. The best man and maid of honor, Mack and Claire, are next. Mack meets Claire halfway down the aisle, escorting her all the way to the altar. Separating in front of Father, they both wink at me.

  Jack is up. He’s the ring bearer. We don’t have a flower girl, not that it seems to faze this six-year-old. “Walk slowly,” we all told him last night. “This isn’t a race.”

  He listens to our advice. I’m guessing he covers the length of the church in about twice the time it took the entire wedding party. Jack gets to me and smiles. I smile back. As I give him the thumbs up, I look at my father’s watch on my wrist. I’m proud of Jack and maybe even a little proud of myself.

&n
bsp; The trumpets go silent.

  The rustling of wedding programs. Someone coughs.

  Wagner explodes out of the pipe organ. Everyone stands.

  The double doors at the back of the church open wide. I see Beth on her father’s arm. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. But I’m not nervous. I don’t feel sick or even faint anymore.

  Usually when a moment is bigger than me, it involves someone getting hurt, someone dying, someone getting buried. But not today. This is living. This is me rising up, spitting the dirt out of my mouth, and telling my demons to kiss my ass. I’m not one for religious moments, but if this is what true grace feels like, sign me the fuck up.

  Beth looks radiant. Her dress is simple but elegant. The top of the dress is off the shoulders, slowly dipping to a V in the front with a hint of embroidery and beading. Her bouquet is made of white and peach roses to tie in to the color of the bridal party’s dresses.

  Did I mention she looks radiant?

  Father Fish steps forward into the aisle. I follow him. We meet Beth and her father just as the music stops. Mom stands in the pew next to us. I’m the only one who seems to notice her wobbling.

  Mom is intoxicated. She’s wearing an inappropriately white dress of course, accessorized by an oversized strand of pearls that gives her a flapper throwback look—and not in a good way. Beth caught her this morning chasing a couple Darvocet down with a pitcher of mimosas. Several people have asked me why Leon decided not to come to the wedding. My answer to all of them has been, “Because he’s a dick.”

  Father folds his arms, careful not to bump his cordless microphone. “Deborah,” he says to my mother, “you and…”

  The pause we all knew would come.

  “…your husband, John Fitzpatrick, gave life and love to your son Hank. You watched him grow into manhood. Today, he’s chosen to marry. I ask that you accept his choice of a bride into your own family, that you give your blessing to him as he continues life now in a very different way, that you give consent to this marriage.”

  Father extends his hand, palm up, and bows his head. Mom says, “We do.”