“Cool it,” the bartender said to the couple. “You guys wanna make out, take it somewhere else. And not the bathroom.”
One of them giggled, waved her hand in the air. “Got carried away,” she said.
Her girlfriend took her fingers, and they left together. The heavy door sealed in the smoke and noise.
I watched the bartender pour drinks, fetch baskets of deep-fried corn dogs, and coerce the jukebox into giving back somebody’s quarters. I wouldn’t ordinarily focus so much attention on one girl—usually I waited until they came to me. But I needed a break from my own bullshit tonight. I promised myself: no more bi girls and no more weirdness.
I ordered another beer, this time with a shot. When she came with the glasses, I pushed a new napkin toward her.
You’re pretty.
She read it, blushed. She folded it in half and slipped it into her shorts.
“You drunk?” she asked.
“Ha!” I tipped back the shot while she watched, wanting her to see me grimace from the cheap, stinging whiskey. She took the shot glass from me. Then she put her tattooed arms on the bar and whispered in my ear. Her breath smelled like cinnamon.
“Brisa.”
“I would never have gotten that.”
She winked, lifted the Old Crow bottle again. “This one’s on the house.”
She poured for me, and I passed her notes until closing. Is it time to go yet? I wrote. I want to kiss you. I paid from a messy handful of ones and fives, too much. I stuffed the change back into my pants, trying to seem only tipsy. At closing time, she shut down the jukebox and pulled the plug on the pinball machines. She switched off the TV, put the key in the cash register, and shooed out the last handful of drunks.
I bent down to pick up my bag. My head felt too full, but her hand was on mine; the mermaid tattoo filled my field of vision.
“You. Wait outside.”
I nodded, lit a cigarette. My shadow wavered on the sidewalk. I found that if I looked up, I felt too dizzy and had to lean against a parked car. If I looked down, my stomach heaved, and my shoes looked too far away. I picked a midpoint on the bar’s scabbed wall, covered in torn concert posters and old rusted staples. The wood was ugly, rough in a way that would always reject a coat of fresh paint. I loved everything about it, and I hope it never fucking changed.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” Brisa said as she locked the door.
I dropped the filter into the gutter. “Look at that. I quit.”
“Funny.” She crossed her arms, looked me over. “So? What’s your name?”
“Jamie. Jay,” I said. A light in the Clinton Street marquee sputtered, went out.
“Walk me home,” she said. She was much smaller than I’d thought. The bar must have a platform behind it. Her body was thick, with gorgeous calves that stretched her leggings to transparency. She stayed in front of me, leading me, and I was sure that she was strutting a little, just to show what she had. The early summer night was still warm enough that she didn’t wear a coat. I imagined licking the mermaid’s tail, tracing its inky breasts with the pinpoint of my tongue, gripping her hand while she cried out, asked for more.
When we were almost to Hawthorne, she stepped into the doorway of a white apartment building. The handrail was bumpy with moss. My buzz faded. Alcohol didn’t work the way it used to with me. Six shots, but an hour later, I’d be clearheaded again, sick, aching for another drink.
“This is it,” she said.
I put my hand on her elbow, cupped it. I realized that I was touching a stranger.
“Could I have a glass of water?” I asked. My mouth was suddenly dry as cotton.
Her apartment was on the first floor. We walked past a mirror framed in sterling leaves. A strip of old velvet wallpaper had been left to curl where it hung.
“Glasses in the kitchen,” she said, tossing her purse onto the floor. “I’m taking a shower, so help yourself.”
When the bathroom door closed, leaving me in the dark hallway, I put my hand on the wall and slowly felt my way toward the light switch. A pile of dishes crusted with spaghetti sauce cluttered the sink. On the counter, there were several mason jars half-full of old iced tea, some still with sprigs of mint and withered lemon slices floating in them like organs in formaldehyde. I shifted the plates aside so I could slip a glass under the running tap.
The water tasted like an old gum wrapper. I shook a few tablets from the bottle of aspirin by the dish soap, hoping to ward off the inevitable hangover. I couldn’t remember if tomorrow was a workday, couldn’t remember what time Ted said to be home.
“Jay,” Brisa said. I turned too quickly to look at her, and my water spilled, splashing the linoleum.
She wore nothing but a pair of small black panties. As I looked at her, she sucked in her belly. Tattoos crisscrossed her legs and shoulders, and even wiggled out of her waistband.
“Still think I’m pretty?” she asked.
When I kissed her, she wrapped her arms around my chest so tightly that I could barely breathe. I felt her tremble—not from excitement, but from an imbalance that made us lurch sideways, then down the hall into her room and onto the rumpled sheets. Up close, I saw that the panties were well-worn; the elastic pilled around her thighs. I traced the polyester lace, and she arched her back. It was as though we were learning to dance, each partner performing the correct movements too stiffly and out of time. Our kisses, even, were dry and polite. How do you do? Simply marvelous.
She reached for my belt buckle, popped open my fly buttons. I closed my eyes.
“Wait,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
She sat up, tucked her knees against her chest. “Is it me?”
“When was the last time you did this?” I touched her hair.
“A while. Jesus.” She put her knuckles against her lips. “I’m not going to cry.”
I pulled her down to lie close to me. Her leg touched mine—she flinched. I put my arm under her head and lay back looking at the ceiling. She sniffled into my shirt.
“This is so embarrassing,” she said. “I thought—you know.”
I turned my head and felt her cinnamon breath on my ear. Even in the dark, I could see the pictures on her, and I thought about the hours of pain and the astronomical price of having them drilled into her skin. On her chest, a snake coiled around a cactus; the eagle dropped down from her shoulder with its claws outstretched.
“Mexico,” I said, touching the cactus thorns.
“I was born there.”
I rubbed the snake’s flat head and traced it down her ribcage. Her mermaid swam out of the covers, and I pressed my cheek to it, and her lips found mine;, we were a pair of hot magnets clicking in the dark.
I left in the morning while she still slept, her hair tangled, one arm thrown across her face to block out the sunshine. I considered leaving a note, but the pleasure of walking away for good felt much better. Brisa was someone I didn’t have to take care of. I never had to see her again.
I didn’t drink for weeks after that. The misery that had been driving me just lifted out of my body. I woke up clearheaded, went to work on time, and quit worrying whether I stank. I felt balanced. Maybe this is what adulthood was like: Instead of doing the same dumb shit over and over and waiting for something to change, you changed yourself and the rest fell into place.
Instead of running around with Ted, I taught myself the basic mechanics of derailleurs, brakes, and cranksets. I tuned up my bike and considered putting on fenders and my seasonal gear. Being out of the bars helped me feel less displaced somehow. I didn’t mind new people, because I rarely saw them. I drank a lot of coffee. I slept in on the weekends and never read the newspaper.
“You’re boring now,” Ted teased. “It’s nice. Look at us, a pair of old bachelors.”
I nudged him with my toes. “I found a place, by the way. It�
��s close.”
Ted squeezed my foot and, although I didn’t look up from my book, I knew he was smiling at me. “I love you, dirtbag,” he said.
Sober, I had no trouble finding the money for my security deposit. Funny how that works. My new apartment was in a converted warehouse deep in the industrial district. The hall closet was lined in thick lead sheets nailed to the wood by a former tenant.
“I think it was supposed to be a bomb shelter.” The landlord swiped a hand over the gray metal.
“On the fourth floor?”
The landlord shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Nice view, don’t you think?”
On moving day, Ted helped me haul a secondhand futon into the service elevator. We wrestled it down the hall, past the general-use phone bolted to the wall, and into my apartment. We were both grimy, sweating. We dropped the mattress in a corner.
“Does Ada know you’re coming over?” he asked.
“I told her. It shouldn’t take too long.”
He shook his head and handed me his car keys. “Good luck,” he said.
I was good, though. I felt like myself. Ada didn’t scare me, because she never changed.
Collection
I could have forced Ada to move out, got part of my deposit from her, or tried to make her take over the lease. But fighting would have prolonged our relationship, which was the last thing I wanted. It was easier to just let the old place go and start over—I hoped with no hard feelings, though I knew that was wishful thinking.
I pulled up to the curb of my old building and set the brake. As I got out of the car, I glanced up. Ada was sitting in our window.
“I came for my stuff,” I said. She shook her head. A cigarette appeared in her hand. She lit it and waved at the smoke as though shooing a mosquito.
“On the sidewalk,” she said. She pointed down to a row of black garbage bags that crowded the narrow median of grass.
I choked. She’d done it all herself. Probably torn my posters off the walls, crammed them in with my clothes. Who knows what she’d done with the rest.
“I’m coming up,” I said.
“No, you’re not.” She tapped the cigarette, and we both watched the ashes flutter to the pavement. “I did you a favor. Are you hungover?”
“No,” I said, and it felt good to tell the truth. Fuck you, I thought. All she’d ever done was criticize me. I hadn’t had a drink in seventeen days and I felt like a completely new person. She didn’t fucking know me.
“Can I have one of those?” I asked. They were my cigarettes.
She let the pack fall. I picked it up, shook one out, lit it.
“Where are you going?” she said.
I wasn’t going to answer that. The last thing I wanted was to see her again. I shrugged, tried to look like I didn’t know. “Not sure yet. You?”
“I’m moving in with Arthur,” she said, triumphantly.
I hated her because I knew she’d done it on purpose.
What was it about me that made my girlfriends run off with their male friends? The next one, I promised myself, would be different. I wouldn’t have to worry if she missed dating men or if I lacked something that she needed. She would be someone I never wanted to cheat on. She’d be more than just a carbon copy of somebody I used to know.
I sat on the curb next to the bags with my feet in the gutter. A yellow daisy poked through the seams in the concrete, and I counted the petals without touching them. I deserve this; I don’t deserve this. On any other day, I’d be riding my bike on the waterfront, taking a picnic up to Mount Tabor. Instead, the bags. And not even allowed to go inside, to see if anything was left behind.
What wouldn’t fit into the car went into the dumpster. I tossed the bags in, trying not to guess what I was throwing away. I slammed the trunk, leaning hard to pop the latch closed. When I looked up again, the window was closed, and the blinds lowered. It was such a simple ending, so different from what I was used to. Probably better that way.
I muscled the black garbage bags out of Ted’s car and through the door of my new place. I had no furniture, not even a table: I’d decided to walk away and let Ada deal with it. I sat on the futon and started unpacking.
Opening the bags, I found that Ada had folded my clothes before stuffing them in. The creases in my shirts pricked my conscience. I could always count on Ada to do something spiteful like that, to remind me that I was the bad guy. She’d even taped brown paper sacks over my books to protect them from the move. I wadded the wrapping and threw it onto the floor. Self-righteous bitch.
I squeezed my hands into fists. I had nothing and, in that moment, I didn’t feel good about it. I had some clothes, my bike, a plain sheet for the bed. A truck went by in the street, and the empty apartment amplified its filthy rumble. This was where I lived now. I punched the mattress, stood up, paced, kicked at nothing. This was bullshit.
I stomped down the hall to the ancient, black rotary phone. I should have called Ted, or maybe even my parents, though I’d quit doing that when I dropped out of school. Instead my fingers, with a will of their own, dialed Alison’s number. She answered on the first ring.
“I thought I told you not to call me,” she said.
“That was ages ago. Am I off probation yet?” I laughed, but she didn’t join in.
“What do you want? I told you that we can’t be friends.”
“Then why did you answer?”
“Every time you call, it’s an emergency. I keep expecting to talk you down off a bridge.”
“I’ll jump if you don’t have coffee with me,” I said. “Come on. Please?”
We met at Acorn. One wall was covered in framed doodles of pastel whales, pelicans, and seals. A skinny kid in a plaid shirt pulled a double shot for me and slid the white cup onto its saucer with a flourish. Alison wanted chamomile tea.
“But this is the place for espresso,” I said as we carried our drinks outside.
She jabbed the plastic ashtray with her finger. “This thing stinks. And please don’t smoke around me. My stomach’s upset.”
I moved it to another table, then watched her swirl the soggy tea bag aimlessly in her glass. The pale-yellow tea was the same shade as her highlights. Her roots were growing in, golden brown. It aggravated me, the way she kept me at arm’s length. I just wanted some company, someone to fucking talk to. Was that so much to ask?
“So, what’s new?” I tried to get her to open up. “You look healthy. Life is good?”
“It is. Lots of changes.”
“How’s good old Stanley?”
She pushed her sunglasses up on her head. “Be nice,” she said, with the faintest sharpness in her voice. I raised my hands: Don’t shoot. “Besides, you’d like him if you gave him a chance.”
“Sorry, missy. I don’t make friends with the competition.”
She sighed. “Seriously? Competition?”
Fighting with her made me feel better. I sipped the coffee, winced at the bitterness. “I should have put sugar in this.”
“Stanley is not your competition.”
“Funny, that’s what you said before you dumped me too.” Watching the black liquid coat the lip of the cup, I swirled the espresso. “Needs milk.”
“I can’t believe you,” she snapped. “You agree to be platonic, then act like a jealous girlfriend. You invite me to coffee and spend the whole time picking on me. You’re impossible. I don’t know why I keep thinking this will work.”
I sat back in my chair. She was angry now and defensive.
“You’re so two-faced,” she continued, getting louder. “It drives me crazy. You never knew what you wanted and got mean when I didn’t magically know how to make you happy. I don’t know why I stayed with you so long.”
“Whatever it was, you keep coming back.” I smiled, knowing it would infuriate her. She couldn’t deny that I
’d made her happy, that she’d been attracted to me. No matter what she told her husband, I was proof that she wasn’t totally straight. She wanted me then. She might, still.
“This is the last time,” she said. She caught my eye, held it.
I tried to joke. “You sure?”
“I’m positive,” she said, her voice cold and flat. “After this, I will never see you again. I don’t care if you live right next door. We’re through.”
I laughed, trying to shake off her seriousness. “You say that every time.”
“I’m pregnant.” She cupped her hands around her tea. “Over the first trimester now. I’m due in early February. We’ll know the sex in a couple weeks. You don’t have to congratulate us.”
That took the wind out of me. We, us. It grated on my heart. When she pushed back in her chair, I saw how her belly had grown under her shirt, starting to show. That was Stanley’s baby. Alison covered the bump with her hand, guarding it.
“Goodbye,” she said. “I don’t think I have to tell you—don’t call me again.”
I watched her cross the street. A produce van passed her, and she waited at the corner for it to turn. My last glimpse of her was of her back as she turned up Glisan and disappeared. She’d walked out of my life before, but knowing this was final made me ache all over.
I staggered back to my apartment as though I was drunk. My eyes blistered with tears. Whether I liked it or not, Alison was out of my system. My throat clenched. I lay on the bed for a long time, waiting for my body to stop shaking.
Fixed
Fuck yes, I went back to the bar. What else was I supposed to do? Within two days, I was right back where I’d started.
“I’ve got to stop drinking.” I tapped my empty glass. The bartender refilled with a shot of tequila that I knew I’d regret later. But Wimpy’s was closing next week, and the horse-faced bartender was playing my favorite Clash album on the stereo, turned up high.
Ted raised his eyebrows at me. “Solve your other problems first.”
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