by Zach Wyner
Even nuked, the chicken piccata was delicious, like all your mom’s cooking. You had to be mindful not to scarf, to chew every bite, answer their questions, ask some of your own; you didn’t want them getting the impression that you weren’t eating enough. One hint at deprivation and they’d start showing up at your apartment with enough cold cuts and and potato salad to feed the entire complex.
After you finished, your dad suggested that you stick around for a while, watch some Sox highlights, but you didn’t want to keep Harrison waiting any longer. You said your goodbyes and your mom accompanied you to the gate. As you backed out of a hug, a gentle but firm hand grasped your arm.
“What’s the plan tonight?” she said.
“No real plans. Just a bar.”
She let go and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve never really understood that—how people can drive to a bar, drink for a while and then drive home. You don’t drive drunk, do you?”
You shook your head emphatically. “We just talk and have a few rounds. We don’t drink to excess.”
“It would take me hours to sober up from a few rounds.”
You smiled. “Just two or three beers. We’re big boys. We can handle it.”
She frowned.
“Don’t you trust me to make good decisions?”
She looked you right in the eyes and half smiled.
“Everything okay, Mom?”
She rubbed her arms as though she were cold, breathed in and out. “I just want you to know that you can talk to me. That’s all. If there’s anything at all that you’re struggling with.”
That falling sensation triggered by a close brush with the truth raced through your belly. You hugged her—the best way to hide what whatever story your face might betray. “I know that, Mom.” You held on for an extra beat. Years of acting workshops were useless against her compassion. “Everything’s good.” You stepped back and held her by the shoulders. You let her see your eyes. “I’m just tired. Those kids take a lot out of me.”
She half smiled and half winced, perhaps sensing the deceit lurking behind your platitudes.
“I’ll come back soon. I promise. I’ll bring the boys.”
“When is soon?”
“I’ll call tomorrow when I’ve got my calendar in front of me.”
That seemed to satisfy her. She nodded and kissed your cheek. She stood by the gate and watched as you pulled out of the driveway.
*
Nighttime had fallen by the time you arrived at the bar, but the sun had set on the The Burrow years ago. The feeble light that seeped through the stained glass windows betrayed no hint as to the time of day; its provenance could just as easily be in a streetlight or noonday sunshine. Half a dozen moribund regulars huddled over their drinks, rooting through the remnants of ravaged popcorn bags and gazing at the Dodgers game on the muted television set. You happily took your seat amongst them. The door hinge squeaked behind you and before you knew it, Harrison was standing at your side, squinting at the television. He smelled strongly of cigarettes.
“Jesus, man,” you said. “You look like hell.”
He unbuttoned the collar of his wrinkled white shirt. His sunken cheeks had grown a sparse layer of facial hair—he never really could grow a full beard, but his scruff lent him the appearance of a pseudo-intellectual movie star, trying to look like he wasn’t trying.
“Yeah,” he said, scratching his neck. “I don’t know what to tell ya. I was expecting I’d want to celebrate, blow off some steam as soon as it was over. Then…I don’t know.”
“How about I buy you a shot and a beer and you tell me about it?” You raised your hand, trying to get Leanne’s attention. Entranced by the game, she didn’t see you.
Harrison sat down as you leaned forward, trying to insert yourself into Leanne’s peripheral vision. He said, “When I was in elementary school, I was the best basketball player in my class.”
“I’ve heard the stories,” you said. “Leanne?”
“But by sixth grade, my run was almost over. There was this other kid, Mikai. He was always shorter than I was, but that year, he grew like five inches and his game kept improving too. One day he’d show up with a crossover, the next he’d have a finger-roll, and all the while his muscles were developing so that he metamorphosed from a chubby kid into this young Adonis. Finally, he decided he’d heard enough of my talk and, at lunchtime, he challenged me to a game of one-on-one.”
Behind the cloudiness of his eyes, something glimmered with the vitality of a fresh idea.
“I could shoot, but in a game of one-on-one, I knew Mikai would just blow by me every time. And we were playing buckets, so there was a chance I might never see the ball. But it had been drizzling all morning. The court was wet. I figured the slick surface would negate some of his quickness. Plus, a bunch of kids heard the challenge and they were all razzing me, and I had my rep to protect. Conditions being what they were, I figured I wasn’t going to get a better shot, so I agreed.”
“And you got slaughtered and learned an important lesson in humility?”
“No.”
“I was kidding.”
Harrison’s gaze landed on the mirror and his lips turned up in a perceptibly private grin, as though he’d discovered, in his pallid reflection, the punch line to an inside joke.
“I caught fire. Beat him eleven-to-one. All the kids were chanting my name.”
“How many kids are we talking about?”
“I don’t know. In my mind, it’s at least fifty, and they were yelling and high-fiving, and I might be conflating this bit with Rudy, but I’m pretty sure I got carried off the blacktop on their shoulders.”
You laughed. “You learned an important lesson in your own greatness.”
“You’re wrong.” He held up his index finger. “That one point that Mikai scored, I don’t know how he got traction on that court, but he did, and he blew by me like I was nailed to the fucking ground. The next play, he slipped in a puddle, lost the handle and the ball went of bounds. I stood there at the top of the key, holding the ball in my hands, knowing that I had to make every shot or it was over. I was toast. It’s crazy. A year before, it wouldn’t have been a contest. I would’ve trounced him. But those days were over. He was better than me. And yeah, I won that day, I played the best I possibly could, but I refused to ever play one-on-one with Mikai again.”
“But you were a better shooter.”
“Not for long, I wasn’t. Look, I wasn’t Magic Johnson; I didn’t have a single-minded obsession; I didn’t shoot baskets for hours after school every day, rain or shine. I knew that in order to keep on beating Mikai, I’d have to work as tirelessly on my weaknesses as he worked on his. That day was one of my greatest individual sports moments, but in that moment I recognized that there’s a ceiling on natural ability, and that the people who ultimately succeed are the ones that aren’t scared to confront their weaknesses, they’re the ones who work on them every fucking day until they transform those weaknesses into strengths. These people aren’t paralyzed by the fear that they’re making the wrong choices and they’re not plagued by anxiety about all the other shit they’re missing out on.”
“What happened to you this week?”
He sighed. “I let go of my doubts.”
“Okay?”
His misty eyes roamed the scenery as if he were examining each detail of the room, trying to match things up with a mental image fixed in his memory.
“I was in the zone. I stopped questioning whether being a lawyer was something I really wanted. After the test was over, I assessed my weaknesses and kept on working.”
“In your motel room?”
“Yep.”
“Hunkered down, twenty-four-seven.”
“I left to resupply a couple times. You know, pick up coffee, Captain Crunch, bananas, milk, cigarettes. The esse
ntials.”
You put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure that qualifies as a some kind of breakdown.”
He laughed. “I know I need a real meal,” he said, “but I’m not hungry. That’s why I agreed to meet you here. I figured a few drinks might improve my appetite.”
Something happened in the Dodgers game and the bar’s patrons started grumbling to one another.
You squeezed the back of his neck. “There’s more to an application than a test score.”
“Man, fuck that test!”
A few of the regulars turned their heads.
“I don’t get it.”
“Josh, listen to what I’m saying: the test is moot. If I can keep going like this, no fucking thing they can throw at me can slow me down.”
Leanne leaned on the bar, showing Harrison her cleavage. “I haven’t see you in a while,” she said. “What you like?”
“Bourbon,” he said. “Double.”
“I’m listening,” you said. “Please expound. I’ll start: this week, I found god in a law book.”
He chuckled. “Now we’re talkin.”
You sipped your beer. “Can I get a bourbon too please, Leanne?”
Leanne nodded without diverting her gaze from her task. She put a glass of bourbon in front of him. “Thank you, darling.” Harrison cupped it in his hands. “I fucked off a lot in school. You know, you were there. I took it just seriously enough to pull good grades. But I had no idea what I was going to do after it was over, so I didn’t feel like I was working toward anything meaningful. I wanted the grades because I wanted to graduate cum laude. I wanted to feed my ego.”
“There’s nothing wrong with letting vanity motivate you. As long as what it’s motivating you to do doesn’t hurt anybody.”
“That’s a very fucking Josh thing to say.” He sipped his bourbon and winced. “Jesus, this is awful. Leanne?” Leanne hustled over and leaned in, again proffering that rack of hers. Harrison was oblivious. “I want to know what this is so I never order it again.”
“Just in the well. It’s…” she bent over and read the label. “Kessler’s,” she said.
“Leanne, no more Kessler’s. We’re grown men. Time to drink from the grown man shelf.”
“Jim Beam?” you said.
“Not good enough,” said Harrison. “What’s a nice bourbon, Leanne?”
“We have Baker’s,” she said, retrieving it from the top shelf. “Very nice. Very expensive.”
“Two Baker’s,” said Harrison.
“What’s happening here?” you said. “What kind of drink is this?”
Harrison winked. Leanne placed the bourbons on the bar.
“Eighteen dollar,” she said.
Harrison put twenty-five dollars on the bar and told Leanne to keep the change. You marveled at her instincts. At first glance, the only difference in Harrison had been his level of dishevelment and emaciation, yet somehow Leanne had sensed a change more fundamental than his appearance from the moment he’d walked in the door, and it seemed she’d intuited that it was going to benefit her financially.
Harrison sipped the bourbon, reverently set the glass on the bar and sighed like he’d just slipped into a hot bath at the end of a long day. “That’s the stuff, Leanne,” he said. “From now on, when I walk in that door, I want a glass of Baker’s waiting for me on the bar.”
Leanne laughed and swept her hair off her shoulder.
“I feel like we’re celebrating your release from prison.”
“Prison?”
“Like you’ve emerged from some kind of cerebral vortex, a self-imposed punishment for not taking your life seriously enough.”
Harrison sang, “I’ve got freedom, freedom, freedom…freedom if nothing else. Nearly time to go, and I still don’t know, what freedom means myself.” He smiled hugely and swallowed the rest of his bourbon. “Drink that. It’s good for you.”
You swallowed the bourbon in one shot. Its warmth radiated from your belly to your chest.
“Nurse!” he cried. “Medication please!” He slapped twenty-five more dollars on the bar.
You put your hand on his forearm. “How ’bout we put some food in our bellies before we go down this road?”
He grabbed your arm. The whites of his eyes were red and cloudy but his irises gleamed like sunlight passed through a magnifying glass. “Sometimes a man comes to a point where he says, ‘I’m doing this now, and nothing else matters because what I’m doing makes sense.’ “I know myself here. I look in the mirror and don’t feel like there’s a stranger is staring back at me.” He took a deep breath and let it out. His eyes brimmed with tears. The bar was quiet, as though each patron was discreetly listening, hanging on his every word. “My parents are good people. They raised me better than to spend so much energy hating myself.”
He stopped and stared into his refilled bourbon glass like he was looking over the edge of a tall building.
“Your parents live in this world too,” you said. “There’s nothing you’ve been feeling that they haven’t felt themselves. They just hid it from you is all. For the same reasons you’ll hide it from your kids.”
Harrison nodded. He held his bourbon up to the light and admired it. “To cutting ourselves a break.”
You clinked your glasses together and sipped your grown-man drinks.
Harrison didn’t have enough cash to buy a third round, but Leanne’s generous pours had more than done the trick. You left The Burrow and stumbled down Los Feliz Boulevard. A few smokers loitered outside Barfly, a soulless, trendy meat market, with watered down drinks, seven-dollar beers and a huge portrait of Mickey Rourke playing the role of Charles Bukowski.
Harrison stopped, squinted at the doorman wearing a grey tank top and said, “It’s a little breezy tonight, homie. That sucks that they don’t let you wear sleeves.”
The doorman looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
“You know…for warmth.”
The doorman scratched his chin. “Do I know you?”
Harrison threw up his arms. “I’m the ghost of Hank fucking Chinaski!”
“You’re a loser.”
“Says the doorman.” Harrison elbowed your ribs and cackled.
The doorman stood up from his stool. “The fuck did you just say, loser?”
“Nothing, man.” Harrison resumed his stumble down the sidewalk, but couldn’t resist a parting shot. “I just stated a fact. That you’re a doorman.”
“Just keep on walking, loser,” called the doorman.
But Harrison wasn’t listening. He was humming a Grateful Dead tune and fumbling with his cigarette lighter. As you passed a throng of smokers, a skinny brunette wearing a mini-skirt and platform sandals turned to her friend and said, “Who’s Hank Chinaski?”
Her friend crushed the butt of her cigarette with her high heels. “Who cares?”
You moaned. “Bukowski is rolling over in his grave.”
Harrison chuckled, looked back over his shoulder and ogled the girls. “No he ain’t.”
You bought a six-pack and half a dozen tacos and went back to Harrison’s motel. The air in his room was rancid with cigarette butts and sour milk. A flickering neon light trickled through diaphanous curtains, illuminating a half-eaten bowl of soggy, coagulated cereal; books blanketed the unmade bed. How he had gotten his hands on so many ashtrays you didn’t know, but they overflowed on every available surface.
While Harrison scarfed down tacos, you cracked a beer and called the apartment. It rang four times and the machine picked up. You hung up and dialed again. This time Amare picked up on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Hey man, it’s Josh.”
“Yo.”
“Everything okay over there?”
“What do you mean?”
“What a
re you guys up to?”
“Nothing. Bill got drunk and passed out.”
“He did?”
“And June left.”
“She what?”
“You should pick up some beer on the way home. Bill drank whatever was left in the fridge.”
You retreated to the bathroom and closed the door. “How long ago did she leave?”
“I don’t know. Half an hour. She took her bag.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“Nope. She was on the balcony for a while, talking on her phone. Then she got her giant bag and walked out without saying a word.”
“Fuck me.”
There was a knock on the door. “Gotta pee,” called Harrison.
“One sec,” you said.
“You comin’ home tonight?” said Amare.
“I don’t know.”
“Got. Ta. Pee.”
“Well, don’t forget the beer. I mean, if you want any.”
“Right.”
You hung up, flushed the toilet and splashed some water on your face. You opened the door to find Harrison, leaning against the wall beside the door, a burning cigarette between his lips.
“Fucking whatdoyoucallit.” He snapped his fingers a few times. “Lancet liver fluke!”
He didn’t make way so you lowered your shoulder and bumped past him. You pushed aside a mound of books and sat down on the bed.
“June left?” he said.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Glory hallelujah.”
“Sooner or later she’ll waltz back through the door like nothing ever happened.”
“Not if you don’t let her.”
You closed your phone, flipped it open and closed it again. “I can’t do that. Not now.”
Harrison stood there for a minute, staring right through you. He shook his head back and forth and clicked his tongue disapprovingly.
“You’re better than that, Josh.”
“She’s sleeping in my bed.”
“Man…you fucking fucked her!”
“I thought you had to piss.”
He kept staring for a few seconds, then turned and crashed into the unlit bathroom. You heard him struggle with his belt, then the torrential downpour of alcoholic piss. “You fucked yourself, homie,” he yelled. “Fucked yourself good.”