by John O'Brien
“Nice talk,” she says, and there is no sarcasm. “Keep drinking, Ben. It makes some interesting words fall from your mouth.” Then, with a smile, “They must slip out between the one-hundred-and-one-proof breath and the occasional drool. Now try this one.” She hands him the remaining gift and sits back to gauge his reaction.
“Well,” he says simply, after opening the flask, “It looks like I’m with the right girl.” Turning it in his hands, he pauses to assemble his words. “I must say I’m rather impressed that you would buy this for me. I know it wasn’t done without some deliberation. Funny—how you did what I would have done.” He tries the flask in his pocket and, satisfied with the fit, goes into the kitchen to fill it.
“Do you want to do some gambling tonight?” she calls after him. “We could go out and play for a few hours.”
Returning to the room, he pulls his new flask out of his suit pocket and takes a drink, demonstrating its usefulness to her. He replaces it and smacks his lips, pats his chest with his open palm.
“I hadn’t planned to do much gambling, but if you’ll keep the bulk of my money here for me, I guess I can safely blow a couple of hundred bucks.” He reaches for his folded stack of bills and peels off two hundreds, then a third. Returning the three bills to his pocket, he hands the balance to Sera. “Giving you money makes me want to come,” he says.
Not sure how to take that, she takes it. “Then come. I’m going to change. Watch TV. I’ll be ready in half an hour.” She disappears into her bedroom.
He laughs to himself, thinking that she sounded ever-so-slightly offended by his stupid remark. Or perhaps the edge to her voice was an invitation to her bed, a frightening thought indeed, for in the back of his head is the nagging suspicion that his capacity for passionate lovemaking has been washed away in a tide of liquor and decline. Too much time spent looking in the mirror on the other side of the bar has revealed an image of a smelly, bloated, exhaustible, sick, self-indulgent man—not the sort of man who incites concupiscence in a woman, certainly not the sort of man who satisfies it. He listens to Sera’s movements in the bedroom and thinks about his myriad deficiencies. They will become graffiti on her wall, ever larger and more intrusive as their lovemaking becomes habitual. The more he drinks, the worse it will get. He’ll probably be dead long before she realizes that the evening’s sex is over.
Ironically, though, he does want to come. His own quip has reminded him that it has been a while since he ejaculated; staying with Sera, he hasn’t been jerking off lately. He had planned to do it when he was alone at the motel but ended up forgetting. Suddenly he is preoccupied with it; he wants to come right now. The sound of running water indicates that she is busy in the bathroom, so he takes out his handkerchief and undoes his pants. Slowly, silently, he masturbates in her living room. He fantasizes about picking up a hooker tomorrow night when she is out working and, on that thought, comes painfully into his own hand.
“I’m ready,” she says, emerging from the bedroom fifteen minutes later. She wears a pale green summer dress: tasteful. Her hair falls freely, frames two mismatched earrings that nonetheless complement each other.
“I like your earrings,” he says. He has had time to put on his new shirt, which he wears under his suit. Were he harsher in the face he might look like a retired drug dealer, if there is such a thing. As it is, he looks good but slightly off balance. In fact he is off balance, having polished off the initial filling of his flask in order to embark on the evening’s activities armed with a fully loaded vessel. “I like women who wear mismatched earrings.”
“Well then, let’s hope that we don’t run into any tonight. I do expect some sort of loyalty here. Just because I fuck for money doesn’t give you cause to start picking up women and leaving me looking silly.” She holds her eyes firmly, and they seem to veto the smile that sits beneath them. A technical jest that is an actual law, this is true communication, a woman at her finest.
“I only have eyes for you,… and we both know that you would never become romantically involved with a trick,” he says as he stands up.
She follows him into the kitchen, where he refills his flask and she phones for a cab. Turning out the light, they go out to the street and wait for the cab, which only takes a minute to arrive and collect them.
They are whisked to the Strip and in no time find themselves walking through the crowd and clamor of a hotel casino. Smoke fills the room and diminishes Ben’s depth perception so that he sees compressed montages of green felt littered with mottled chips, of ice filled glasses on glass filled trays, of ass-filled panties and tit-filled bras, and more cleavage than would seem probable in a species at this advanced stage of its evolution. Cocktail waitresses and keno girls wear costumes that flirt at inadequacy and lick his eyes with the promise of a stray pubic hair or a poorly concealed nipple. Country boys on vacation wear athletic tee shirts and fine gold chains around their necks. Trying to look intimidating despite their intimidation, they glare from behind their moustaches and hope that their bright-eyed, busty girlfriends don’t wonder too much what it would be like to bear a bit of unfamiliar semen back home, packed up somewhere between those milky midwestern thighs. The floormen wear suits and expressions of feigned usefulness. The place pops with quick detonations of elation and anguish, money won and lost. The ceiling spits light and pretends not to know about the cameras that it not-so-secretly dangles. Security men crawl like cockroaches on catwalks hidden behind one-way mirrors. Chrome hemispheres eye the room tirelessly, showing it back to itself again, ever-so-briefly after it first happens: a light jump away. The outcome of each bet is decided before the evidence reaches anybody’s eyes, a quantum of radiant energy.
Ben absorbs what he can from the abundance of energy that surrounds him and uses it like a stimulant, now as a body charge and later, hopefully, to cheat himself into more liquor. Pushing Sera roughly against a slot machine, he kisses her deeply. Her first instinct is to resist, then to succumb as a means of self-preservation, and finally, after he eases up in reaction to the sound of change knocked over by her hip, she remembers that she has nothing to fear from this man, and succumbs as a natural segment of passion. He licks her cheek and pulls away. With the occasional, surprising dexterity of the always drunk, he stoops and collects the spilled quarters in one motion, stands and returns them to the entertained slot-machine player, who then goes back to his previous diversion. Ben grabs Sera’s arm and, with a healthy trot, leads her towards the bar. She keeps pace, happy in her heart with this quick upswing, admitting to herself the theatrical appeal of this alcoholic. Her life has had so little entertainment, and she digs the drama as well as the drunk. Anyway, he needs her, and for that, she loves him.
The sonic boom of an Air Force jet passing in the desert serves as the reference point at which Ben’s memory resumes its record. From his vantage point on Sera’s living room floor he can see, through the top of the window, that it is still dark outside but won’t be for long. Since he feels all right physically he knows that he has only been down for a few hours. Nonetheless, his first move is to a vodka bottle which he senses on the kitchen table. Starting on all fours and gradually rising to a slouch, he makes his way to the kitchen, where he pours eight ounces of vodka and two ounces of orange soda into a dirty tumbler. He downs the warm mixture in less than a minute and waits over the sink, ready should his stomach reject the elixir. Satisfied that he’ll be able to hold it down, and instantly feeling on his way up, he steps quietly into Sera’s bedroom and eases next to her, on top of the sheet that covers her.
She turns her head, opens her eyes, and looks at him. “How are you doing?” she asks.
“Very well.… Umm, I never expected anyone to have to do this for me again, but could you tell me how our evening went? I blacked out about the time we got to the casino. I can’t remember any of it.” Despite the severe independence that he has gained by planning his own demise, he can’t help but feel the same old guilt that he used to know when he would
pose similar requests to his wife. Back then he was truly interested in her answer, but he has long since become bored with these recaps. Now, it’s not so much that he cares about what he did last night, but more that he needs to find out how Sera feels about what he did, how Sera feels about him.
“It wasn’t so bad. I guess I would have been prepared for worse. We were sitting at the bar talking about blackjack. You seemed just fine—a little drunker than usual, but nothing really strange. Then I noticed your head start to droop, so I put my hand on your shoulder. Wham! You swung your arm at me and jumped back, falling off the bar stool and crashing into a cocktail waitress. Her tray was full when you hit her, so there was a terrible mess. You were yelling Fuck! over and over again, very loudly. I tried to shut you up and help you to your feet, but you kept swinging at me—not so much like you wanted to hit me, but more just waving me away. Security was there by then and you stopped yelling when you saw them. They weren’t sure what to do. They said they were going to carry you out and dump you on the street, but they didn’t move. It’s probably a standard bluff. Things started to settle down, and I talked them into letting me walk you out.”
“What did you tell them?”
She looks at him flatly. “That you were an alcoholic and I would take you home. I also promised that you would never walk in there again.”
He nods and smiles for lack of a better reaction. “What happened next?” he asks.
“You were acting okay, so we walked for about a block. Then you said that you wanted to go home and fuck, but I think that even you knew that that wasn’t going to happen. We got a cab for home. You made us stop at a liquor store, though I tried to tell you that there was still plenty here. Oh yeah! I almost forgot. At the liquor store you got two bottles of vodka. It came to just over twenty bucks, and you gave the kid a hundred and told him to keep the change. I asked you if you knew it was a hundred dollar bill. You said you did, so I let you do it. Anyway, we got home, you made us some drinks, and ten minutes later you were asleep on the floor. I covered you up and came to bed.”
“I warned you. I’m sorry,” he says sincerely.
“Here’s my speech. I know that this shouldn’t be acceptable to me, but it is. Don’t ask me to explain. Maybe I’m not doing what I should be, but I think I’m doing what you need me to do. I sense that your trouble is very big, and I’m scared for you. But falling down in a casino is little stuff. It doesn’t bother me. It has nothing to do with us.”
“That’s amazing,” he says, truly impressed. “What are you, some sort of angel visiting me from one of my drunk fantasies? How can you be so old?”
She turns away on the pillow and says to the wall, “I don’t know what you’re saying. I’m just using you. I need you. Can we not talk about it anymore. Please, not another word, okay?”
He strokes her back absently, reviewing this, lost in his own thoughts and feeling the gathering calm as the alcohol enters his blood in force. “Why don’t you go back to sleep. I’ll go out and buy you some breakfast.”
“Be careful,” she says.
“Don’t worry.” Standing, he walks to the door.
She calls after him, “Ben, I’m working tonight.”
“I know,” he says, and goes to the kitchen, where he splashes water on his face and drinks another tumbler of vodka.
The first stop on the way to the grocery store, which is nearby but not yet open, is a small casino-restaurant-bar, which is not so nearby but always open. He pays the cab and enters the building, passing through a glass door and a tattered red velvet curtain which lies behind it. The bar, dirty, dark, and instantly familiar, is just what he had in mind; this place has outlived more than a few of its regulars. A man sleeps at one end, his face in a puddle of spilled beer. A middle-aged woman in hot pants dances alone at the jukebox. Ben takes his place on a chrome-legged stool with a black vinyl top. Behind him eight slot machines wait to be handled; two blackjack tables wait to be uncovered; the morning cook waits for any orders that may be forthcoming. The bartender bids Ben good morning and slaps a cocktail napkin down in front of him. He asks for a beer and a double kamikaze; the bartender nods. Sitting at a table in the back of the room, a biker couple argues with slurred words and non sequiturs. Get Up, Las Vegas! is airing live on a silent television which hangs over the liquor bottles.
His plan, his reason for being here, is to make Sera feel a little bit better about him. He’ll first drink himself sober at the bar, starting with kamikazes and moving into bloody marys. Next, he’ll try to eat some saltine crackers, and if that goes well, he can try to get down an egg and some toast as a way to prepare his stomach for the impending unpleasantness. Then he’ll go home with a sack of groceries and make them both breakfast. A perfect balance gets more difficult to strike with each new day, but if he handles all these preliminaries properly, he should be able to eat an actual breakfast, his second, in front of her. This is a trick that she hasn’t yet seen, in fact, she hasn’t seen him eat a single meal since they’ve been together, and it should allay some of her fears about his condition.
Still wearing his suit and the shirt that she bought him, he is fifteen minutes into his kamikazes when the better half of the motorcycle couple comes and presses up to him.
“Why are you all dressed up, honey? Don’t you look fine,” she says, with her cheek on his arm. She looks up to him and outlines her mouth with her tongue. “I am very bored with my date. Would you like to buy me a drink?”
Trapped, he looks over to her friend, across the room. The man is big, drunk, and probably witless. Against his better judgment, but seeing no other way, he says loudly, “Do you mind if I buy her a drink?”
“Fuck her. I don’t care what the fuck you do with her,” he replies, glaring.
“Maybe I could buy you both a drink?” tries Ben.
“Fuck you. Don’t fuck with me, motherfucker. Fuck off. Leave me alone. Go to it, she’s waitin’ for her drink.” He stands, walks over to a slot machine, and drops in a quarter, never taking his eyes off of Ben and the girl.
“See what an asshole he is,” says the girl. “I’ll have a rum and coke.” And she smiles her best smile.
He orders the drink as the girl moves closer and puts her hand on his crotch.
“Can I come stay with you for a while?” she asks.
“You mean move in with me? Isn’t this rather sudden?” he says, going along.
But she thinks she is serious, at least she is for the moment. “Oh, I don’t have a lot of stuff.”
“I don’t think my wife would dig it too much,” he says, instantly pleased with the facile lie. He looks over to her friend, who is still watching them, and feels himself standing on the edge of a chasm.
“Well,” she says, nuzzling up to his ear and sucking on the lobe, “maybe we could just go find a room and fuck all day. You wouldn’t have to tell your wife about that, now would you?”
Ben looks down at her fuck-me eyes and evaluates her. Clearly, she is doing this for the benefit of her companion, still lurking behind them. But it doesn’t end there; he can see that this is the sort of thing she enjoys, that if he were to walk out with her she would be very happy to follow through with her part, perhaps looking forward to the beating that she would ultimately face when, later that night, she caught up with her friend.
He thinks about Sera and how good she has been to him. He simply cannot imagine a woman that he would rather be with.
Suddenly, the biker throws down his beer can and comes marching across the room. “Now listen, motherfucker,” he says loudly, grabbing Ben’s shoulder and turning him around on his stool. “I’m not gonna sit here and watch her suck on your ear. Now, I know that she came over to you—she does that a lot—so I’m gonna pretend that you’re innocent and give you one chance to walk out of this place. Right Now!” He looks at Ben, close and hard, with eyes full of alcohol, fury, and pain.
Behind his own eyes, Ben must admit that he is impressed by the man’s at
titude. He would not have guessed the man capable of this sort of rational self-control, such as it is.
He shakes his arm free of the man’s grip and says, “I’m sorry, but she and I have decided to spend a few hours together.”
Not being a fighter, Ben is amazed, not at the fact, but at the swiftness of the first punch, which, delivered to his jaw, sends him and his stool crashing to the dirty floor. No sooner does his head crack against the tile than he is lifted again and feels a fist skim across his face, crunching his nose and spraying blood into his eyes. He falls again to the floor, where he tries to hang on to consciousness, and listens to their footsteps as they vanish out the door.
Then the bartender is over him with a wet towel. He has seen this sort of thing many times before, so he is not without experience. “You’re quite a fighter,” he says, his voice laced with friendly sarcasm. He helps Ben back up and wipes his face, goes behind the bar, wets another towel, and makes another kamikaze. “Here’s a drink on me, but then I’m going to have to ask you to leave. It may sound silly in your case, but that’s what we do when there’s a fight here. Men’s room is in the back.” And he goes back to washing glasses.
After drinking and cleaning up, Ben takes a cab to the grocery store, and arrives home carrying a sack, still determined to eat what he can in front of Sera. He finds her reading on the couch.
“I’m back.” Putting the bag in the kitchen, he goes to kiss her.
“Oh no!” she says, seeing his face and dropping her book. “Oh fuck, Ben, look at your face. You got in a fight, I thought you didn’t fight. Goddammit. How do you feel?” Not waiting for his response, she disappears into the bathroom, returning with towels, tissues, and medicinal looking bottles. A little calmer, and reacting to his smile, she says, “What happened? Muggees normally don’t walk around so happy. Of course I knew that you would stop at a bar. Did you say something stupid to someone stupid?” She shifts into nurse mode and goes to work on his face.