Chapter 23 #2
“It’s all good, Mac,” he said, after a moment, desperately scrambling for a semblance of normalcy. His old friend frowned at his using the nickname that was an old one they’d stopped using years ago.
“I’m happy for you.” Aberlour worked up a quick smile that certainly wasn’t his best effort, but he didn’t think Marcus could tell the difference.
It had been a while since his smile had felt genuine. He wasn’t sure he remembered what it felt like. Worse yet, he didn’t know if he’d ever produce a real smile ever again.
“Thanks,” Marcus replied, sounding relieved. He sat back in his seat, sighing deeply. “To new beginnings, yeah?” he proposed after a moment, holding out his beer for a toast.
Aberlour swallowed against the bile in his throat and knocked his beer against Marcus’ in a show of camaraderie.
Then he drained it. Keep ‘em coming ran around his brain like a toy train around a track.
“He won’t talk,” the officer told Marcus, as they were walking towards Aberlour’s cell.
“Of course not,” Marcus replied, annoyed and not at all surprised to see Abe standing behind bars.
Marcus’ manner was vastly different than it had been three hours ago when Aberlour was heading out the door.
They’d hugged on the porch, Marcus looking pleased and smiling because he’d confessed his innermost thoughts to Aberlour, who was happy for him.
Now Marcus was royally pissed, which was exactly what Aberlour had hoped to avoid by refusing to give the officers his emergency contact number.
Clearly, they’d found a way to get around that little bump in the road and did some digging in Aberlour’s records.
“Aberlour,” the officer said, as he pushed a key into the lock and opened the cell door. The only other occupant of the cell was an old man in the corner, sleeping off his night at the local watering hole. He stirred briefly and then went back to sleep.
“You’re free to go, son,” the officer told him, one hand on his weapons belt.
Son. Abe estimated the guy was about five years older than him. Where’d he get off calling him son?
He didn’t argue, since that was a waste of precious time. Marcus was waiting impatiently, obviously pissed off, and fully prepared to chew Abe a new one over this little stunt.
He stepped out of the cell slowly, hands fisted by his sides, feeling like a punished child, though he’d done nothing wrong to speak of.
“So, no charges?” Marcus asked the cop, as he closed the cell door and re-locked it.
“No. Walking ain’t a crime,” he said, sounding mildly disappointed.
Aberlour had to counsel himself not to bait the officer and let his smartassery kick in. It was hard to hold back.
Instead, he walked right out of the police station onto the public sidewalk and stopped. They’d confiscated nothing since he’d had nothing but the clothes on his back. No phone, no wallet, which was part of the reason they’d taken him in, that and—
“You couldn’t have just fucking talked to them?” Marcus growled as he stopped next to Aberlour. He shoved Aberlour’s head forward and cursed under his breath.
Totally understandable, since it was 2:00 a.m., and he’d been pulled out of bed by a call from the police intake officer asking him if he could please come down to the station to bail out Aberlour.
Except when Marcus got there, he was told there was no bail posted because there had been no crime committed.
The cops refused to release him from custody on his own recognizance because they’d been worried he might be a danger to himself. The fucking nerve of them.
America. Won’t let you kill yourself but will watch as you march yourself into a war zone.
“Had nothing to say,” he replied, like the stubborn fucker that he was.
There was a light, cool breeze that night. Not at all suffocating like July days usually were in South Carolina.
He’d gotten home from Marcus’ and been incapable of relaxing in his boring apartment.
He’d pulled out every bottle of booze he owned—not nearly enough, as it turns out—and drank every drop.
His tolerance for alcohol was at an all-time-high, so his efforts left him teetering on the edge of being drunk, which fell short of killing his pain.
He felt as if he was suffocating. The stale air in his apartment merely served to remind him that he was on his own.
That this retched place was what he now had to call home.
All he had to call home. So, he’d taken a stroll.
He’d left everything behind, even his keys, and had begun walking.
He wasn’t sure how far he’d walked, just that by the time the cops had stopped ahead of him on the dark road, his shoes with the holes in the soles were soaked from the rain-soaked pavement, and he’d been dangerously sober as they’d begun to question him.
Sober enough to know better, and tipsy enough not to care as they’d asked him to turn around and cuffed him against the side of their cruiser.
He could have answered them. Told them he’d needed to clear his head, but he probably smelled like spilled whiskey, and looked like roadkill. A combination that pointed towards lunatic on a suicide mission, rather than a gentleman simply taking a stroll.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Dumber!” Marcus snapped, reminding Aberlour that he had yet to provide a suitable answer. “I thought you’d killed someone or gotten a DUI! I was worried sick!”
“I’d never drive drunk,” Aberlour replied calmly. He couldn’t promise the other thing.
“Yeah, not comforting!” Marcus snarled. “What the fuck were you doing walking around at this goddamned time of the night anyway?”
“Needed to think,” Abe shrugged.
“And you couldn’t go for a drive instead? Like a normal fucking person?”
Aberlour had rarely seen Marcus so angry. He wasn’t sure what had angered his friend more. The rescue mission at such an ungodly hour, or the fact that he’d needed to rescue Aberlour for no apparent reason in the first place.
“I’d never drive drunk,” he repeated.
“You’re not drunk.”
“Anymore,” Aberlour corrected.
It was a bit of a lie. He’d intended on getting drunk, but his liver had gotten too good at it.
He’d never gotten to the point where things got hazy and fun.
He’d just gotten to the point where he’d been suffocating in his own house, run out of beer, and needed to get as far from base as he could.
But he drew the line at getting behind the wheel.
If the cops hadn’t picked him up, he’d probably be halfway to Canada by now.
He turned and walked up to the passenger side of Marcus’ car. The little blue sedan was a sensible choice. Low mileage, fuel efficient, cost effective. It was a boring car. An ugly car. Aberlour fucking hated this car.
He pulled the handle, pissed off when it refused to budge.
“The hell is up with you?” Marcus asked.
Obviously, refusing to unlock the car was a tactic to get Aberlour to look at him.
He was tempted to start walking again, but there was a hole in one of his shoes, and the ground was still wet from the evening rain.
His socks had only begun to dry out some as he’d stretched out on the cot in the cell.
He didn’t want to get his feet wet again.
“I just took a walk.” That was all he’d done. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn’t his fault that Officer Cuntface had arrested him.
Aberlour pulled at the handle again and again, knowing it would irritate Marcus.
Marcus growled and cursed to himself as he reluctantly unlocked the car.
“I didn’t ask them to call,” Aberlour defended himself as the anemic-sounding 4-cylinder engine turned over. The lights of the parking lot were faint, and Abe could just barely see the silhouette of his friend in the driver’s seat.
“The night duty secretary recognized me from the base and found my file,” he explained, staring blankly out the window as Marcus pulled out of the parking lot.
“I know,” Marcus sighed. “You pissed off the cops, refusing to talk like that. They wanted to drive you to the ER. They thought you were a headcase.”
Who said he wasn’t?
Aberlour had thought about driving himself to the nuthouse a few times. He was pretty sure that’s where he’d end up anyway.
One-way ticket, please.
“I was taking a walk,” he repeated for the umpteenth time that night. It was almost calming after he’d said it the first hundred times.
Marcus shook his head like he did when he refused to get angry.
Always so even keeled. Their compass, pointing due north.
Aberlour had lost all sense of direction a long time ago.
He wanted anger. Rage. Frustration. He wanted to see it ravage Marcus the same way it was killing him.
Just for a second, he wished the man would let himself lose it.
Two one-way tickets, please, he’d tell the nut-train conductor.
“Where am I taking you?” Marcus asked.
Aberlour shrugged. For all he fucking cared, Marcus could let him off right here, on the side of the highway. He’d walk, shoes wet, until he found somewhere that didn’t feel like it was swallowing him whole. Or until he found more alcohol to drink so he could pass out. Whichever came first.
“Where were you going, anyway?”
“Nowhere. I was wandering aimlessly,” Aberlour replied with dramatic flair.
Marcus snorted. “Can you hear the irony?”
Of course, Aberlour could hear it. It’s how he’d intended it sound.
“I always hit dead center, but it’s never the thing I need,” Aberlour said, and maybe he was still a little drunk because the words didn’t sound like something he’d ever say. Not like sober Abe would say at any rate.
“What do you need?” Marcus asked, sounding confused.
“Don’t know. That’s the real problem, now ain’t it?”
A madman. Yes, perhaps, most likely for fucking sure. He could see why the cops had thought he was a mental case. That assessment wasn’t terribly far from the truth, now was it?
They sat in silence for a moment, the road stretching out before them, streetlights intermittently lighting the interior of the car.