by Jeff Somers
“A toast to what?” Bickerman Alpha said, salivating visibly at the prospect of real booze. “Just to Luis?”
“Boring,” I decided. “Although certainly,” I added, catching disapproval all around, “it should involve Luis in some fundamental way.”
Fucking proles. So literal.
“How about we toast Luis’s continuing toleration of our middlebrow company?” Henry suggested.
“Yes,” Luis said, nodding seriously.
The shot glasses arrived. The Others glanced our way jealously, but fuck them. They had money, buy their own shots. I made sure everyone had one and held mine up. Looking at Bickerman Beta, an opportunity for some fun bloomed in my mind—private fun that no one else would enjoy, of course—and I looked at Beta and held her bubblegummed gaze.
“Luis’s loyalty to his undeserving friends, then,” I said, holding up my glass. “To faithfulness!”
Beta’s look soured a little, and it was worth it. Everyone shouted, “Faithfulness!” incoherently, unsure what I meant but used to that and amused by my bizarreness. Beta could have shriveled my balls with one look, I thought. She looked like she’d swallowed a pit.
I was cheered and thought I might be able to survive the evening without killing someone. I also figured I’d still be able to jolly Beta around in the end, so it would be a perfect evening.
• • •
Walking to the bar, Henry fell in beside me. “Quit it,” he said.
I affected innocence, but that never seems to translate correctly for me. It’s like I’m speaking Esperanto; I think I’m saying “innocent,” but what seems to bubble up is “smug disdain for normal rules.” It’s a flaw I keep working on. “What do you mean?”
Henry snorted. “You’re plotting. I can smell the Glee.”
Henry had an annoying habit of talking in capital letters, which he’d gotten from me. “The glee? Hank, I think you’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons on the sly again.”
“What are you up to?” he said, trying to sound bored. Truth was, Henry was fascinated by me.
“Just sowing the seeds of love as usual, my friend. Getting Luis crocked as he should be on his birthday, throwing some manly vibes to all the ladies, keeping everyone entertained, informed, and fortifying everyone for the trials ahead.”
“What trials?”
“What I’m up to, obviously. It’ll be quite a test of our friendships.”
“Quit that, then.”
“Can’t do it, chum. Like to help, but it’s impossible. Tell you what: I’ll buy you a drink and give you the high sign when it comes down so you can get out of the way.”
Henry shook his head, I could see from the corner of my eye. “C’mon, Tom, let Luis have his night.”
“Lighten up, Henry. Luis won’t even know what’s going on, y’know?”
I glanced around. Denise had fallen in with Kelly, the two of them a mildly glammed up pair. Women always glammed up to go out drinking. The men were a crapshoot: Henry had a sports jacket on, me and Bick jeans and old T-shirts, Luis in a European mix of nice shirt and crappy jeans—but the chicks all hotted up as much as they could. Women glammed up when they went out in case better men came along, even if they were married or spoken for.
I was always amused by the way women pretended that once they mated they reprogrammed all their libidinous ways to focus on the man of their choice. The fucking whores spent their lives looking for a husband and then spent the rest of their lives wondering if they’d shortchanged themselves. And they kept their tails in the air just in case something better wandered by, no doubt.
I didn’t mind. It kept the sights interesting. And my own ambitions realistic.
Bickerman Beta was hanging onto her hubby for dear life, listing heavily under so much booze so early in the evening. Flo and Luis appeared to be talking soberly, much to my irritation. And we were three blocks from the bar of choice.
• • •
“You’re staring at my breasts.”
I lifted my eyes to Kelly’s face. “No, I’m not.”
She laughed, her hearty-big-girl laugh, jiggling the globes in question. “Sure you were. Tommy, it’s okay. If I gave a shit about you, I’d be offended. But you’re such an ass, I’m not even going to pretend to be surprised.”
“Let me buy you a drink, then, to make up for my shocking lack of manners.”
“You’re just trying to get me drunk.”
I nodded. Why not? Only idiots pretended that the people around them didn’t see right through them when they obviously did. Lies were powerful weapons, but when they’re perceived, it’s best to go with the truth.
“Standard operating procedure,” I said.
“You’re staring at them again.”
I looked back up at her face. “They’re nice.”
“Thanks. But stop, okay?”
• • •
“To being the smartest men in the room, Tommy Boy.”
I clinked my shot glass with Bick’s and drank, gagged, and sucked beer to survive. He was half-right, anyway. Knocking back beer, I let my eyes find Bickerman Beta, who was talking, glassy-eyed, to Henry, one hand on his arm. What was it with the Harrows chicks and Henry? Her kid sister practically wet her pants every time he entered the room, and now Mary was giving him the old covert-touching thing.
Oh well, a little professional competition was healthy, I guessed, and Henry wasn’t really competition, with Denise lurking on the edges like a dark cloud.
“How’s married life?”
“I’m living with a monster,” he belched, looking red-faced. “But I’ll tell you this much: Since we got hitched, she’s been a fucking groupie in bed.”
“Really?” I lifted a professional eyebrow.
He nodded. “The biggest turn-on in her life, apparently, was putting that white dress on. She’s been a wet dream since then,” he grinned. “I’m a little dehydrated as we speak, actually.”
“I wonder if that white-dress thing works without the wedding ceremony and all that. Maybe I should just give them away as gifts.”
He shrugged. Bick had no imagination. “Sure. All I know is, it works like a charm with Mare.” He winked. “I’m thinking of loaning it to Miriam.”
Bick’s sexual fantasies about the Harrows sisters bored me because I’d had them myself many times. We were both unimaginative when it came to that: tan legs, anklets, cheerleader uniforms, and the accidental interruption of one sister by another leading to a mutual shagging. If you overlaid Bick’s fantasy on top of mine, the only difference would be the color of the cheerleader uniforms.
I was familiar and unconcerned with Bick’s reptilian designs on Mary’s younger sister. I just hoped there would be videos.
• • •
She smelled like peppermint, I thought, and bar, mint, and nicotine, and tasted like lip gloss and cinnamon liqueur. I pushed her up against the wall next to the pay phone by the women’s room and she grunted, firm and yielding at the same time. I pushed myself into her, as people flowed around us to the tunes of Jimmy Buffet.
• • •
“What is it with you and the Harrows sisters, chum?”
Henry pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about, making faces at me and sipping his martini, very grownup.
“Come on,” I spat, “there must be some sort of genetic link between you and the Harrows women. Harrows Minor has to change her underwear every time you walk in a room, and now Harrows Major is giving you the googly eye, too. What gives?”
“Tom, man, I don’t know what you mean. Mir has a little crush on me, maybe, but she’s got a little crush on a lot of guys.”
“I don’t know. I was there with you last week. Sounded like little Mir is mighty sweet on you.”
He shrugged, uncomfortable about the whole episode. “Doesn’t mean anything. Besides, I’m not shopping for Harrows love, like some of us.”
I winced. “I’m not being subtle enough, eh?”
Henry
gave me his twinkly eye, always amusing. “Why not dry hump her while we stand around and clap? It’d be more ‘subtle.’”
Henry did have a way with words, sometimes.
Henry seemed vaguely embarrassed, as if he knew what I was thinking and didn’t like it. Henry had an active imagination, though, and probably did know what I was thinking, the prude.
“Does Denise have a similarly approving attitude toward your flirtation with a Harrows-a-trois?” I asked, giving him a boyish grin.
He scowled back at me. “She’s getting drunk on purpose and throwing attitude, of course,” he said darkly. “I didn’t do anything.”
I shrugged. “That’s like saying you were just vollowing erders, ja? You know by now that excuse doesn’t cut much with the ladies, right? My advice? Quit speaking to either of the Frau Harrowses. Save you lots of headache on the home front, and you might even escape with your sanity.”
He sipped his martini and winced. “Great advice, Tommy. Of course you’re just trying to get the talent off the field so you can plow Frau Mrs. Harrows yourself, right?”
By God the kid was entertaining. “I am simply an audience to that one’s little passion play. If the play becomes interactive, who am I to complain?”
“Bick won’t mind?”
I glanced over at Bickerman Alpha, who had a possessive arm around his wife and a roving eye out for everyone else in panties. I turned back to Henry with my serious look. “Hank, man,” I said carefully, “Bick and I have been through stranger things, with stranger people. I think he’d slap me on the back.” I considered again. “Maybe hit me, once or twice. But nothing serious.”
• • •
She reached down between us and grabbed hold, hard, her breath whistling through her nostrils. Peppermint and skin lotion, now, up close and personal, and the soft hairs on her upper lip tickling me. I could feel her bra, underwire and satin, and the hard pebble of nipple between my fingers. She mashed her lips against mine, grunting. Dry humping by the bathroom, and I thought to myself, Why would I ever want to be anyone but me?
• • •
“You’re shtaring at them again.”
Kelly was looped. I’d been plying the crowd with shots of hard liquor, which had sent Denise outside to get some air as a pre-emptive strike against heaving up the delicate contents of her stomach, and had everyone else surrounding the jukebox, singing “American Pie” with an off-key gusto I was horrified at and refused to take part in. Kelly was slowly sliding off her barstool, hitching herself back up a bit, and then sliding again. The whole process made her assets bounce encouragingly and I was frankly enjoying them. It secretly pleased her.
“You don’t mind, huh?”
She shook her head and leaned toward me, smelling of cinnamon liqueur, of which she was inexplicably fond. “I know you guys look at the Girls,” she confided. “It’s okay. I’m proud of ’em.”
I smiled. “That’s good, Kel, because they’re really spectacular. You should show them off more.”
She smirked. Not drunk enough yet, I figured. “You’re scummy, Tom, you know that?”
I blinked. Definitely not drunk enough. “What’s that now?”
“You’re a scumbag. I’ve known it since I met you. That’s okay, though, it’s actually charming when you’re kept at arm’s length.”
“As long as it’s charming, then.” Fucking whore thinks I’m a scumbag—I settled down. I was perverse, I knew this. It was often misunderstood.
“So why are you talking to me?” I asked with a grin.
She shrugged. “You’re an amusing scumbag, Tom. And I’m drunk. And you appreciate the Girls, so you can’t be all bad.”
I winked. “I do appreciate the Girls.”
She laughed. “Tommy, the thing about you is, you’re harmless, you know? The more you talk about being weird and nasty, the less I believe you actually are. I mean, I think you go home at night, pop open a beer, and watch bad horror movies on TV. You talk a good game is all.”
“Lady,” I grinned, picturing my fist knocking that knowing smile off her face. “You’re talking out your ass.”
• • •
Some sixth sense I guess, Spidey Sense, maybe, the doors of perception—I pulled away and turned. She’s so drunk she doesn’t see him at first, she’s just putting herself back together like nothing happened, red-cheeked and disheveled. Unhappy women are so fucking gorgeous.
He was giving me his hard-on stare, but I just spread my hands. It wasn’t me he should be pissed at, after all. I was a free agent.
I turned to follow his thousand-yard stare. She was still fixing her hair, like she was fooling anyone.
• • •
I thought I had a miserable piece of bar to myself, hunched over with a cigarette and bourbon, looking myself over in the mirror and feeling pretty sexy, but then there was a heavy hand squeezing my shoulder and the smell of a light dusting of aftershave. Luis grunted into a stool next to me, resplendent in skin-tight jeans and a bright red shirt. He leaned his head on his hand and smiled at me for far too long without saying anything.
“My friend,” he said seriously, a sure sign, usually, that Luis was very drunk. “We are getting older.”
I distrusted the simplicity of this statement and raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“But,” he said at last, and I relaxed, “how do we know this? I do not feel different than years ago. I do not feel older. I do not think I look older. Do you?”
I considered my suspect back, the sweaty, panting mess I arrived at work as every day, and then shook my head. “Not a bit.”
He smiled. “See? We are told things, how things are. We are informed that we are born and will die. But we do not know. Perhaps we will not die. Perhaps we are being lied to. For what purpose? Perhaps so we will think death is inevitable, and thus will be willing to die, for causes.”
I blinked. This was my usual response when Luis got philosophical on me. “Maybe you and I are the only real people, and everyone else here are actors, humoring us.”
He nodded. “I have considered this, yes.”
I turned away to hide a smile and found Denise’s breasts, tightly contained within her green sweater. I lingered a bit and then looked up. “Hello, Neesie. Luis and I are getting paranoid. Want to join us?”
She oriented on me, red-eyed and upset. “Sure.”
I summoned my concerned face, stiff from disuse, but there were those breasts, wasted on Henry all this time. “Hey—what’s wrong?”
She got the bartender’s attention and ordered a vodka tonic. “Ask your shithead friend Henry, huh?”
“I’d rather ask you.” She drank her cocktail breathlessly. I hadn’t seen pretty girls drink like that since college, the memories of which warmed me on cold nights. “Here, I’ll get you another.”
I wondered if Luis had left but didn’t want to risk looking.
I resupplied her glass, paid the bartender, and tried to look soft and gloopy like her boyfriend. “C’mon, tell me about it.”
She took another gulp, but left some drink in the glass, much to my dismay. “No, Tom, I don’t think so.” She was apple-cheeked. I glanced around for Henry. He was being lectured by Kelly and Flo and looked miserable.
“C’mon. I promise I won’t take Hank’s side. I swear. I might have some insight, you know? I’ll buy you another drink.”
She drained her tonic recklessly and slammed the glass down. “Done!”
“That’s my girl. Unburden yourself.”
I could have, of course, dictated the entire conversation to someone, almost verbatim:
Her: I hate Henry. He’s always looking at other girls and acts like I’m an impediment to him.
Me: Uh-huh. I’m guessing the bra is pink, right? I’m right, aren’t I?
Her: Pig.
After a while, though, as she sank into the stool and began playing with her hair and flirting with me out of drunken, ancient habit more than anything else, we started to make some
progress. I played the friendly sympathetic man to the hilt, she told me some juicy stories demonstrating Henry’s shitheaddom that I would get to use against him someday. Nothing really strange, of course, Henry being Henry, just the usual bad boyfriend behavior, and it would have been boring if it weren’t for Denise’s red cheeks, heaving jubblies, and that hair-twirling finger that indicated she was enjoying, perhaps for the first time in recorded history, a conversation with me.
Things were going so well that when she suddenly puffed out her cheeks and swayed a little, I stood up immediately to steady her.
“Ugh,” she gasped, clinging to me in a wonderful way. “I think I need to yak.”
“Nonsense!” I said cheerfully. “Come on; I’ll walk you to the bathroom.”
I slipped an arm around her waist, and she hung off of me. “Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked miserably as I nodded to everyone as we passed.
I considered my reply. I gave her a companionable squeeze. “I’m a sucker for hot chicks, let’s say.”
She wasn’t so bombed she couldn’t giggle a little at that. We made it through the crowd, past the cigarette machine, and I held the women’s room door open for her. No line, miraculously.
I lit a cigarette and paced while she did whatever it was she had to do, vomit, belch, eat magic beans, whatever chicks did to themselves. The girl’s room was in a little grotto off the main bar, hidden until you turned the corner to approach it. Not much traffic—no line at the women’s room in this dick-heavy bar filled with Luis’s odiously male friends. It was strange that even though Luis was such an adorably confused Latin man, the girls never seemed to flock to him as I would have expected. The whole thing made me think that maybe my carefully considered understanding of the universe was faulty. Maybe it was the poofy shirts he favored.
I looked around. Around the fake-wood corner there was noise, smoke, and people. Where I was, it was me, a cigarette machine, and a bathroom door.
Denise emerged looking unsteady but smiling. “Yay for me, I seem to have settled.”
“Must have been the whiff of urine and ammonia. Always perks me up.”