Lester sat in the backyard, smoking a joint. He had a set of golf clubs back there. He handed me the joint. I took a hit and handed him a beer. Let the weekend begin.
“So Swoboda and Sally and all of them are in the family room, having a fucking twist contest and I’m sitting back here, trying to get some peace and quiet,” Lester said. “And what should I see but the next door neighbor’s underpants flying out his back door. What kinda crap is that?”
I took another hit off the joint and shrugged my shoulders. I handed the joint back to Lester. I opened a beer for myself.
“So I start trying to reason things out for myself. I think, well, maybe Sophie is kicking Danny out, right? But what I can’t figure out is, when did Sophie move in?”
“She didn’t,” I said.
“So, again, what kinda crap?”
I ran my hand along the fake leather golf bag. “What’s up with the clubs?”
“Swoboda says he stole them,” Lester said. “But Sally says that he bought them at a garage sale for ten bucks.”
“Does he golf?”
“No.”
“Do you have balls?”
“The biggest pair you’ve ever seen.”
I looked at Lester. He was all grin. I reached for the joint. He passed it. I asked, “Golf balls?”
“There’s a whole shitload of them in that side pocket.”
“So what you’re telling me,” I said, “is that we can stand back here and drink beer and launch golf balls into downtown.”
Lester stood. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” he said.
And that’s exactly what we did. I reached for the biggest club I could find. It had a wooden head. Lester took it out of my hands and gave me an iron club. He showed me how to stand and how to swing. He shot a few balls first. We lived behind a nightclub called Sandals. His first few balls landed on the roof of Sandals. I took some swings. My first ball shot in a line drive into the fence and came screaming back at us. Lester shook his head and gave me more pointers. I hit the side fence one time, but the rest of my chip shots landed on the Sandals roof. In my head, I pictured the happy hour crowd at Sandals hearing the thumps on the roof and coming up with conspiracy theories. Hail. Martians. Terrorists. Errant mints from airplane toilets. Two stoned guys golfing.
Lester pulled me out of my head and said, “I know it’s none of my business, but you seem like a normal guy, Danny. Why don’t you breakup with that crazy chick?”
“See, that’s the problem,” I said. I handed him the club and stepped away from the ball. My beer sat on the air conditioning unit. I picked the beer up and took a sip. “Whenever I leave her, she chases me. I always give in and take her back.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
“No,” I said. “No, it doesn’t.”
Lester held the club in his hand. A golf ball sat on the ground between us. Teed up. Lester didn’t take a swing. He said, “So, what? You’re waiting for her to leave you?”
“Exactly.”
“How’s that plan working?”
“Good,” I said. “Maybe today’s the day she’ll leave.”
Lester kinda sang that last line. “Maybe today’s the day she’ll leave.” He stood in front of the ball, adjusted his feet, took a phantom swing, stepped closer, and whacked the ball deep into downtown.
I couldn’t hear the ball land. Lester smiled. I thought, maybe today’s the day she’ll leave.
About an hour later, I ran into Bart in front of Miguel’s. He was in a bad way. Glowing red sunburnt, feet coated in beach sand, and so drunk that his left eyelid sagged down like he was trying to sleep, one half of his body at a time. “What’s the rumpus, Danny?” he said to me. “Where’s your girl?”
“Possessed,” I said. “I’m ready to call the priest and exorcise those demons.”
Bart put a hand on my shoulder, either to comfort me or to keep himself from falling. Probably a little of both. “Let’s get a beer, then.”
I wanted to do just this, or really do anything but be back at my apartment when Sophie got back. Lester had split earlier to have dinner with his dad on Merritt Island. I needed a partner in crime. Bart was a good one. I knew he wanted to go to the Casablanca. Helen was working there at the time, and Bart spent a lot of hours sitting at her bar, making an ass of himself. He was too smitten. I couldn’t stand to watch it. I said, “I’m not going there.”
Bart stood up straight. “Then we’re at an impasse.”
I looked up at the sign for Miguel’s. Bart did the same. We decided to go in for dinner.
Miguel’s was a Cuban diner. A hell of a greasy spoon. We ate there all the time. And there was a server at Miguel’s who Bart had been drooling over. At the time, Bart had a sad little schoolboy crush on just about any woman who’d serve him beer. He made me wait until he figured out which section was his favorite waitress’s, and we sat in her section.
The waitress came over. She was a pretty woman. Shiny black hair. All hip sway when she walked. A lot of cleavage and a gold cross right in the middle of it. Probably every drunk guy on the beach had a little crush on her.
Bart stared directly at her cleavage and ordered a soda. I looked her in the eyes and ordered the same. She walked away.
Bart picked at a tear in the black vinyl booth. He said, “So the drugs ain’t doing Sophie any good?”
I assumed Bart meant the Prozac and not the crystal meth. “They were,” I said. But the truth was, I wasn’t sure about it. Sophie had been on so many drugs over the years, it was hard to tell. I took a lot of them with her. And when you’re fucked up yourself, it’s difficult to gauge how the other person is doing. Some shit seemed to do okay for Sophie. She was good on Ritalin. I think only because it saved her the trouble of having to go out and buy speed. And I’m sure Ritalin was better for her than your garden variety crank. Sophie on Prozac was a nightmare. It would blank her out completely. She’d be calm and peaceful, sure, but not pleasantly calm. Zombie calm. She was like a Stepford wife on that shit. I preferred the insanity. But Sophie had a lot of control over her vices. She’d have an appointment with a shrink and say, “I think I’d like some Xanax today.” And she’d think up a story for the shrink that would get her Xanax. She got so bad—or good, depending on your perspective—at this that she bought a copy of the DSM III and learned how to fake symptoms of various mental disorders just for the drugs she could get out of it. I hate to admit this, but I actually helped her. I know that I should’ve encouraged her to actually get healthy with all the therapy her dad was paying for. I know I should’ve been supportive. I tried to be. But I liked the drugs, too. And I doubt she would’ve listened to me, anyway.
I didn’t want to tell Bart all this, so I just said, “She fine when she doesn’t drink. But the last few nights.” I paused.
“What did she do this time?”
“She tried to kick me out of my apartment.”
“Out of your apartment?”
I nodded.
“That makes no sense,” Bart said.
The waitress brought our drinks. Bart and I ordered dinner. We watched her walk away again. I said, “She told me she’d quit it all and straighten up if I could tell her what the meaning of life is,” I said.
“The waitress did?”
“No, dumbass. Sophie.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“I told her I’d ask you and get back to her.”
Bart grabbed a piece of Cuban bread out of the black wicker basket on the table. He slathered butter on it and put the whole piece in his mouth. He chewed for what seemed like forever. He gulped down most of his soda in one trip to the lips. The waitress came back with a pitcher and refilled his drink. I glanced at a map of Cuba on the wall. I waited for Bart to answer, because, if there was one thing I knew about Bart, it was that he’d thought about this question. He had probably written a paper on it when he was in college. He probably had his “meaning of life” essay sitting in a box in his mo
m’s attic. He probably hung out with other philosophy majors at the University of Tennessee and debated the issue. He probably sat in bars, staring at the condensation on his mug of beer and letting the question drift like a yellow fog through his brain. And he probably ran through a million visions and revisions in his theory. But what did Bart say when I asked him? He said, “How the fuck would I know?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But Sophie likes you. She told me that you’re the smartest guy she knows.”
“If all the people you know in the world are idiots, and one person is just a little less of an idiot, he’d seem like a genius, wouldn’t he?”
“What are you saying?” I asked. “That we’re all idiots?”
“No,” Bart said. “Just me and Sophie.”
And me, too. Let’s face it. Bart didn’t want to say it, but I was an idiot, too. I gave Bart time to wolf down another piece of bread and said, “So what is it, Bart? If pressed to come up with an answer, what would you say the meaning of life is?”
“I don’t know,” Bart said. “Carbon?”
Was he trying to fuck with me? Did he think I was a college professor looking for a cute answer? I’d asked for meaning and he gave me a definition.
Luckily, our food came before I could get too mad. Pork chops and black beans and rice and plantains. A little heaven on a plate. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I started eating, but I chowed down. I was sopping up the last of the black bean juice with flat bread when Bart was still working through his first chop.
I watched Bart eat. He was so dehydrated from the booze and from hanging out at the beach that he could hardly finish a bite of food without drinking half of his soda. The waitress had to keep coming back to our table to refill his drink. And the more Bart ate, the higher his left eyelid lifted. I could see the guy coming back to life with all the sugar and caffeine and grub. This could end up dangerous. If he hadn’t eaten, he probably would’ve just passed out early and not hurt himself too badly. As it stood, though, he’d get his second wind and blow himself into a night of wasted money and bad decisions.
As he finished up his food, he started talking again. He said, “If you think about it, Danny, carbon isn’t a stupid answer. Because if you take the whole universe and break it down to atoms—which you can do. All the world is is a random collection of atoms. They come together and break apart. Making things. Destroying things. And the only collection of atoms that all life has in common is carbon. So if all we are is a random collection, then that’s what we mean. That’s all life is. It’s random. Chaos.”
So there it was. Bart really had gone through all his decisions and revisions and come up with his meaning of life. It wasn’t carbon at all. It was random events and chaos. “I can’t tell Sophie that,” I said. “Her life is too random and chaotic as it is.”
“Well, hey, man,” Bart said. “So’s mine, and that’s the belief that keeps it going. I’m doing fine.”
“Doing fine, huh?” I asked. I didn’t bring up the point that he lived out of a duffel bag and slept either on my couch or in the backseat of my Galaxie most nights. I did say, “How much money do you have, Mr. Doing Fine?”
Bart pulled a wad of crumpled bills out of his pocket. He flattened the bills and counted them. “Almost two hundred bucks.”
“How much do you have to your name?”
Bart smiled. “Almost two hundred bucks.”
I nodded. “You’re doing great,” I said. “Dinner’s on me.” I picked up the tab and walked over to the cash register to pay it.
When I got back, Bart told me he’d gotten a date with the waitress. That made me feel even more sorry for Bart. I knew that the waitress was a Jesus freak. She’d tried to sell me on her church one day when I was in Miguel’s, eating alone. Mixing a meaning-of-life-seeking Bart with the god squad in the middle of a bender weekend could be a recipe for disaster. Maybe it was all chaos.
My roommate, Rick, had a party going back at my place. People were everywhere. Someone brought a keg and set it up in the carport. I planted myself in a lawn chair beside the keg and commenced to drinking and chatting with whoever got a refill. Someone brought a spiked watermelon. People flowed in and out. I knew most of them. I hadn’t seen some of them since the last summer’s party. Some folks went to bars and others came back from bars. Some set up a game of quarters on the white plastic lawn furniture. Some smoked joints in the backyard. A few golf balls flew over the house and into the front lawn. One drunk girl walked into a closed screen door and fell back down the front steps. One really sunburnt guy passed out in the driveway. Two girls took a permanent marker and drew all over him. For a while, a game of hoops took over this section of Woodland Ave. The party started to get too big, so I decided to leave. Half of me hoped my apartment would still be there when I got back. Half of me hoped it would all burn down.
I cut through the backyard and across the Sandals parking lot. Someone screamed out, “Heads up!”
I ducked. Lester walked up behind me, laughing. Nothing fell out of the sky.
“Where are you going?” Lester asked.
“I’m not sure. What about you?”
“The Bungalow.”
“The Bungalow?” I have to say, this surprised me. The Bungalow was a strictly tourist joint. The kind of place that had wet t-shirt contests and classic rock cover bands. It was three blocks from where I lived and I hadn’t been there since back when I was way underage and it was the only place that would honor my fake ID. “Why are you going there?”
“The whole sick crew is there.” Lester reached into the pocket of his baggy, plaid shorts. He pulled out a can of beer and handed it to me. I would’ve turned it down, but Lester had a second beer in his other pocket. He raised his drink. “Maybe today’s the day she’ll leave,” he said. I drank to that.
We walked along the dark streets of downtown Cocoa Beach. A warm, nighttime breeze blew in off the ocean. A police cruiser drove by. Lester waved his beer in front of the cruiser, saying, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”
The cruiser kept driving.
“The force is strong with you,” I said. Even though Cocoa Beach cops never busted people for drinking in the streets. It didn’t matter whether the drunk was a Jedi or not.
The next door drunks had taken over the Bungalow. They’d pulled a bunch of tables together and looked like they were having a banquet next to the dance floor. The table was covered in empties. One of the crew was on stage, singing a karaoke version of “Soul Man.” A couple of guys in the crew had apparently been spending too much time at a topless bar, because they were shirtless on the dance floor, giving lap dances to a couple of tourist girls. The girls kept laughing and smacking the guys’ butts. One of the guys even had a bra on. Swoboda was out on the dance floor. His upper body didn’t move much, but his feet went non-stop. I had to watch him a while to figure out what he was doing. But I remembered him telling me that he used to play soccer, and I realized he was going on an imaginary dribbling spree through all the dancers. The rest of the crew sat at their banquet table, drinking, doing shots, pointing at one dancer. Laughing. Pointing at another. Applauding.
When Lester and I walked up, Sally poured us two beers from a pitcher. Sally was the next door drunk who actually lived and paid rent at the place next door. The glasses she handed us were not clean. I didn’t care. Sally said something to me. I couldn’t hear her. I shrugged. She gave me the thumbs up. What was there to say, really?
The song ended. The karaoke kid launched into a version of “Mustang Sally.” Sally jumped up and ran out onto the dance floor. One of the topless dancers gave up his tourist girl and led Sally in some ballroom dancing. Not to be outdone, Swoboda dropped to the floor and scooted on his butt as if he were rowing a boat. A few more dancers followed him. Lester got up and joined the crew team. Pretty soon, the whole lot of them were up and dancing. The goofiness was contagious. I joined in.
The karaoke kid didn’t give up the
stage. He ran through the complete soundtrack of The Commitments. Everyone in the joint was up and dancing. The floor was packed and hot. Smelling of smoke and suntan oil and booze sweating out and perfume melting away. Sally snuck behind one of the next door drunks and pulled his pants down. He was wearing a pink speedo. He grabbed Sally and did the lambada with her. Lester kept pointing and screaming, “That’s the forbidden dance,” until finally someone else pulled the guy’s pants back up and the pink speedo lambada ended.
I danced a few songs with a short, blond girl who was part of the whole sick crew. I knew she was married. Her husband sat at the banquet table and rooted for me. He even bought us shots. When the karaoke kid sang “Chain of Fools,” I let the guy dance with his wife and scooted over to Sally.
“Where are your speedos?” she asked.
“Next time,” I said. I didn’t do the lambada with her, either. But I did break out all my best Prince moves. About halfway through my jig, one of the other next door drunks came over to me. She said, “You’re Sophie’s boyfriend, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
She said, “She’s passed out in the bathroom stall. If I get her out, will you take her home?”
I nodded again. Fuck it, I thought. At least Sophie’s finally sleeping.
Sally went into the bathroom with her friend. They both came out a minute later. Sophie had an arm over each of their shoulders. She looked confused and tired. She had red hand prints on her face and red elbow prints on her knees. I put my arm around her.
“Can you walk?” I asked.
“A little.”
“Just lean on me,” I said, and I walked her home.
She apologized a dozen times on the way home. “I’m sorry, Danny,” she kept saying. “I’m sorry.”
It was exactly what I needed to hear. But it was also the last thing I needed to hear.
The next morning brought chaos. You could say Bart had predicted it. But Bart created a lot of the chaos, too, so it was more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than a prediction.
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