by Mike Wehner
“I’ll bet you do,” Charlie said and then made what he thought was a party noise with his mouth but it came off like a strange howl that made the people near us uncomfortable.
“Charlie, focus, so we know these girls and they own a restaurant and the chef of this restaurant smeared them online.”
“Anonymously too,” Mike said, “this cat has no fucking honor.”
“We aren’t paying for this meal,” I said in a low voice, “but don’t make it obvious, stick to blended scotch.”
The dining room was busy, servers bustling from table to table. The walls were lined with hatched cedar wine bottle holders. Some with narrow slats and single bottles, others with wide baskets that held cases in each scoop.
“How are you feeling Charlie?” Mike’s boring friend whose name I’d already forgotten said. Charlie nodded and held his rocks glass up to his nose.
“Can I tell you guys a secret,” Charlie said, “I don’t think it is possible that I’ll ever be able to stand up ever again.” The fear was taking hold.
Our waiter had a mechanical nature, like he read books on how to get people to like him. He did everything right but it seemed wrong, scripted.
“How do you want to play this?” Mike said.
“I was thinking about yanking out a nest of pubic hair in the bathroom and putting it on the plate, but now that I say it out loud it sounds stupid.”
“I can do it,” Charlie whispered with his ear to the table. “Carry me to the potty and I’ll get you pubies. Carry me Alex, carry me.”
“I’m shaved,” Mike said, “You?”
“I’ll rip a fistful out, you want I do it here,” Charlie said, barely audible. He grabbed the bottom of his chair and raised his brows all the way up. He looked like he was in the back seat of a fighter jet pulling maximum g-force.
“Pretty much, I need that optical illusion,” I said.
“Who’s your girl Alex, can I meet her, how many pubies you want?”
“Jesus Christ Charlie, get your hand out of your pants!”
“Whatever you do to the food you need to make a scene,” Mike said.
We ordered a nice Italian blend and Mike gave a lesson to the uninitiated on how the wine snobs smell all the berries and moss and shit in the wine. He tilted a glass perpendicular to the floor with tablespoon of red in the bottom and had both guys smell the strong scent of alcohol at the top and then work their way around to the heavy sniff of fruit at the bottom.
This was arcane trickery to Charlie who left his steak untouched as he scraped his nose up and down the glass, making the same discovery each time for the first time. His eyes glassed over and he couldn’t sit up straight or talk.
“I can’t think of anything better, we have to send him,” Mike said and motioned to Charlie. He bugged his eyes when we looked at him, not knowing why.
I escorted Charlie to the restroom because he slapped things out of stranger’s hands when he was stoned. At least he did when he was younger. Guys tend not to age outside of their friendships, the moment you come back together with a true friend you revert to the age when you were last together.
Or maybe not, maybe Charlie was an adult now and didn’t do that, but I didn’t want to get thrown out until we had a story. Something we could photograph and talk about. Jamie’s claims were unverifiable, we needed this to be ironclad.
In the back hallway were three unisex bathrooms. Each had a series of three cutouts blazed across the door in polished steel. The silhouette on the left was a woman in a dress, a man on the right and in the middle was a hybrid of the two. It annoyed me, I wasn’t sure why. I gave Charlie a gentle push into an open room and waited in the hallway. He was instructed to hand me a folded piece of toilet paper with some pubic hair but instead he burst forth with his hands shoved way down in his pockets and wouldn’t look at me while he sped back to our table. I couldn’t believe he knew where it was.
Charlie’s plate was still untouched when he sat down. I shrugged at the group, Charlie slapped his hands up on the table and donned a sadistic grin. He picked up his steak knife and split the fatty ribeye in half. Then he dug a hole in the center of one side and took something from his lap and squished it in the bloody channel.
Mike looked at me, his friend looked at me, we all looked at Charlie. He sucked up some air, took a pensive look towards the sky and let out a flutter of aching wails, his fists pounding both sides of his plate. It was genius on his part not to tell us what he was going to do, because the three of us were in legit shock when the nearest waitress came to help us with whatever the hell was wrong. All of us stared at her, helpless.
Charlie pounded harder, his face bright red and spitting. Two waitresses and a waiter were now at the table. One trying to calm Charlie and the others asking if he had a medical condition.
Once he had the audience’s attention Charlie settled himself. He took his fork from beside his plate, dug and tugged the edge of his steak and out popped a used tampon. The cotton was caked with dark, dried blood and then glossed with the fresh blood from the inside of the meat. I gagged.
He shot his eyes towards me to let me know he was still there, he was hyper-inebriated but he wasn’t gone yet. The waitress peered over his shoulder and ran away shrieking with the plate held out as far as she could from her body. Soon our table was being cleared by black aprons and apologies were coming from every direction. Nearby diners got up and walked out.
Charlie excused himself to the restroom and I stood up, hoping to draw the attention of whatever manager was going to come try and explain what had happened.
I heard the purposeful click of her heels behind me before she got to the table. The manager’s name was Audrey and she looked like one. I heard her legs sharply crossing in front of one another the closer she got, a panicked strut. The table next to us was now empty, I set my hand on top of one of the chairs and aligned my posture with my outrage. She sputtered apologies at me.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” I said, “but I’d like to speak with the chef. We need an explanation.”
“Of course, of course, of course,” she said.
A few minutes later Audrey’s heels clacked behind me again. Jamie followed in a double-breasted white jacket and checkered pants. The instant he saw me a rage line formed across his forehead.
Before I could get the corners of my lips up in a smile I was on my back, Jamie was on top of me flailing. Mike flipped Jamie onto his back with a single handed shove and held him to the ground with a pointed finger. I shimmed over towards Audrey to catch her, she looked like she was about to faint. Far behind her was Charlie, standing behind a potted plant and peering at us through the leaves. His hands were covering his ears and his knees were bent like an explosion was about to go off.
Twenty-seven
I was outraged. Appalled. Confused, then offended. The man in the funny pants might have injured me, I can’t tell I might be over served. Call the police, no an ambulance, no, the governor I said to Audrey.
She took me seriously, even when I laid it on extra-thick and held my arm to my head in a dramatic swoon. The kitchen staffers peeled Jamie back into the restaurant’s bowels while he threw out wild accusations of sabotage. The diners that hadn’t left held their phones up or down or whichever way they needed to disseminate texts and sounds and video. Audrey yammered an endless loop of apologies. Mike suggested we not get the law involved, that this evening had been unpleasant enough. We agreed to leave peacefully if Audrey promised to get to the bottom of this so that it never happened to anyone else, and for fuck’s sake Audrey, you have to fire that chef.
“I hate the taste of blood,” I said wiping my face.
“I let him hit you once,” Mike said.
Charlie was pulling on his tongue with both hands like it was a paper towel holder. He hadn’t said anything in over an hour. “Why?” I said.
“I felt bad for the guy.”
Erin buzzed in my pocket while we celebrated with more drinks. I knew her cadence, a
few sparse words that built into fervor when I didn’t reply. The rhythm of an angry woman transcends all mediums. A phone call, a text message, their face across the room. You know. A man lunges and swings. A woman pokes, then at the perfect moment, she explodes.
“Get turnt, gettin’ turnt, gettin’ turnt,” Charlie rambled, the edible fear loosening its grip.
“Chuck, slow down man, it’s a long ride back.” Mike took the bottle from his paws.
Erin continued to peck at my pocket but I ignored her. I asked the driver to take us to a bar down the street from Essen. A friendly place that wouldn’t refuse to serve us as long as we could hold up our heads. Getting drunk after work was as much a part of a shift in the kitchen as dicing an onion.
Erin would be right down the street, I had to be careful. Carry half a beer everywhere, spit shots into a bottle and maintain something like sobriety. I opened another beer.
The Union was a college bar, we’d go there on weeknights to drink two dollar beers and eat salty popcorn from a filthy machine. Big John, the door guy, slouched on a stool outside the patio gate. He motioned Mike and me in with a flick of his chin. Charlie held me back as the others went inside.
“I want to show you something,” Charlie said. He held his phone held out like a compass and spun around three times. He walked to the end of the street and looked east, took a few steps and walked back to the curb, then looked west.
“Come over here,” he said.
Charlie put his arm around me and I thought he might need a gutter to puke in so I steadied us on the curb above a sewer grate.
“You see that building down there?”
He faced the long brick and steel row of storefronts, one of which was Essen. Some of them open, others closed, I had no idea what he was asking me to look at.
“She’s right there.”
Now I knew exactly what he meant, “Who?”
“Alex, I found that stupid cunt, she’s in your fucking backyard and you didn’t even know it.”
“Found who Charlie?”
“That horrible bitch that killed John.”
He concentrated what sobriety was left in his body to be lucid in this moment. The big reveal. I thought I might have to stop him right then, that he’d go bombing down the street with a broken beer bottle to try and slash her throat. He was pure sodium in water, a violent reaction that didn’t make any sense.
“I’ll do it right now if you want,” he said with his arm around me.
“I don’t. We are too fucked up to try and talk about this now,” I grabbed his wrist, “let’s go and try to have some fun. We’ll deal with this tomorrow.”
◆◆◆
An hour later the table was full of empty glasses, even though I’d abandoned sobriety I could still see the smudges on the rims. The legs underneath us were uneven, the table knocked and clanked every time somebody moved. I bought round after round to try and kill the night. It swerved away from me and I was trying to beat everyone’s memory of it to death.
Once we got right in the morning I’d talk sense into Charlie. I could give him a speech about growing up. Moving on. Send him back into the forest with the rest of the beasts to think about heavier things.
“Hey, Mike, hey, Mike,” Charlie pinched his fingers and tried to grasp his attention with his hands.
“Yeah man?”
“You think what we did back there was right, did that chef guy get what he had coming?” Charlie said. He swayed left and right. I stared at the reflection of my nose in the red light bulb above the table.
“I wasn’t sure we went far enough until he attacked Alex, we have a history with that guy.”
“Charlie is trying to ask if you believe in revenge,” I said to everyone, to moderate the discussion Charlie started.
“I believe in revenge when the target hasn’t paid for what they’ve done,” Justin said.
“That’s subjective,” Mike said.
Charlie’s eyes got darker, he hunched himself up on the table and the glasses slid towards him. “Alex and I had a conversation about this a long time ago,” Charlie paused. I mashed his foot four times to make him think before speaking. “I said revenge is an obligation if the crime goes unpunished, Alex agreed.”
“I don’t think the same way anymore,” I said.
“How can you say that after tonight?” Mike asked.
“Vengeance isn’t worth it if doesn’t change anything, tonight that asshole might get fired because he blabber-mouthed a bunch of lies. He learned he shouldn’t do that. There’s change so it’s worth it.”
“Charlie,” Mike said, “I think I know what you’re getting at.”
“Me too,” said Justin.
I kicked Charlie in the shin with the back of my heel, his knees bounced into the table and two pint glasses shattered on the floor.
“You got two servicemen here, if you want to talk war let’s do it,” Mike said.
I ran off to the bar and ordered four shots of Irish whiskey with beef broth back, hot from the French dip sandwich station.
“No, not, wait,” Charlie said. One or two more drinks and he’d be gone.
“War is a type of revenge, someone usually starts it by doing something they shouldn’t,” Mike said.
“Justified war maybe, what percentage of wars are justified?” Justin said. They bantered back and forth while Charlie gulped vowels at them and nodded when they hit on something he agreed with. By the time the lights came up and the bartender rang the bell for last call Charlie was passed out in the corner of the booth, slid down so his chin was even with the table.
Mike and Justin came back from the bathroom together, hugging it out. I tried to pull Charlie out of his seat.
“Girls are coming to get us,” Mike said to me. I dropped Charlie face first onto the floor, his hips and legs balanced up on the booth.
“Erin is coming here?”
“Yeah, bus went home. They are meeting us out front to pick us up.”
“I live too far out of the way, Charlie and I can catch the last train in twenty minutes.”
“How?”
“We’ll run.”
“He can’t fucking walk.”
Don’t wake up, don’t wake up.
◆◆◆
Charlie clung to me like a pet monkey in front of the bar with the rest of the tangled mob in need of something or someone to get home. He had an oval of drool puddled on his shirt. Erin pulled up first then Emily right behind her. Justin trotted off with some other friends while Mike and I loaded Charlie into the back of the car like a gutted deer. He kicked and shuffled until his hands were a pillow under his ear and he was comfy.
Mike yelled a thanks to Erin and I slid into the front seat. Erin’s knuckles were white and the leather on the wheel creaked as she squeezed.
“Erin this is Charlie, Charlie this is Erin,” I said.
“Nice to meet you Erin,” I said in a high falsetto. Charlie wouldn’t know me right now let alone the girl.
“Why the fuck haven’t you answered my texts all night?”
“Guy’s night. No bitches.”
She slapped her palm into my chest and I caught it, then kissed the top of her hand.
“One to ten, how drunk are you?”
“Two,” I lied, “times four.” We passed the last streetlight on the way out of town and the clear sky exploded with stars.
“That sounds about right, tell me what happened with Jamie.”
“Charlie went to the bathroom to pull out some crotch hair, but they were unisex, so he got back to his steak, exceptional knife work...”
“What. The fuck. Happened,” she said. Erin slammed on the breaks and I chuckled when I heard Charlie’s body roll off the back seat and hit the floor. The stern look on her face snapped a bit of sobriety into me.
“We put a used tampon in Charlie’s steak then Jamie punched me in the face.” I rolled my lower lip down at her so she could see the fat part where it was split. “He tackled me in the
middle of the dining room, Mike got a picture for you.”
Charlie tried to claw his way up from the floor behind us, he grunted and scratched.
“How drunk is he?”
“Thirty-four.”
“Did you talk to anyone, say who you were, or why you were there?”
“Of course not, I gave the manager a fake name and she comped our meal if we agreed to not call the police.”
Erin’s face transformed into one of relief and she moved the car off the shoulder. The dashboard made a bing then a bong like a seatbelt wasn’t latched. Charlie was silent again. All I had to do was kiss Erin goodnight, yank him out of the back seat and drag him into the house. Sure, the stairwell to the basement was steep but Charlie was compact, like a bald piece of luggage. I could roll him down and blame his bruises on the booze.
“Oh shit,” Erin said, “my gas light. I don’t know if that station near you leaves the pumps on, so I’ll just stay with you and get gas in the morning. That way I can meet Charlie.”
“Fantastic.”
Twenty-eight
I couldn’t sleep. My head next to Erin’s next to Charlie’s. Save for the wall between us, we were six inches from each other. I left Charlie face up on the couch, knowing if he choked on his own vomit while sleeping my problems would be solved. I listened through the wall all night for labored breaths.
A shoe was wedged under the bedroom door so he couldn’t wander in and smash Erin to death while I was asleep. My dresser was old and heavy, Charlie could do an awful lot of damage with one of the drawers before it splintered apart.
The morning light crept up on the bed and meandered over Erin’s toes. The nails had mushroom polish and there was a big freckle on her right ankle. I laid there paralyzed as it wiggled and climbed over every wrinkle of the blanket all the way to her beaked chin. The tangerine light and shadow battled beneath her neck for minutes before the sun conquered and moved on to turn her last wild strands of hair into glowing embers. I twirled at the bits flared out at funny angles thinking this was the last time I’d ever get to be near her.