51
I’m on my tenth beer or so and am the only soul still at Jimmy’s. Two a.m. I haven’t checked the clock for hours. Poor Saul is behind the bar and going drink-for-drink with me because, I imagine, he didn’t have it in his heart to send me home. The neon is spilling strong behind my shoulders as the hungry shadows grow more encompassing, but I don’t mind at all. There is no other universe than this. I haven’t been so roaring drunk in a year. I’m red eyed, philosophizing and asking.
“Did you know, Saul?”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“You ain’t even know what I’m talkin about—”
“C’mon, Cash. I know. You been bouncin ’round it all night.”
“Yeah, well”—I squint him up and down and swallow the last of my Bud—“admit it.”
“Cash, I ain’t seen him. Nobody ’round here’s seen him. Only one who’s seen him is you, and I promise you that.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“I couldn’t tell ya. I don’t get it none either.”
“Five fucking years, Saul. Five.”
And Saul slides me the next round without judgement. He pours another for himself. Bubbling and ice cold and healing. Springsteen’.
“The River” is playing on the jukebox. He’s going on about the valley and following our fathers. One of the best.
“Saul, this is one of my favorites.”
“Yeah. You put it on, pal.”
“I know. But I’m just sayin.”
And I stand up and sing along about everything vanishing into the air.
I’m looking around the bar like a newborn with wide eyes. Everything radiates, undiscovered and mysterious. Everything has changed except the green felt on the pool table always like a sprawled-out field of Wisconsin summer grass, and the lamp above with the perfect amount of dying yellow light. The off-black tiled floor looks brand new, covered with discarded peanut shells.
“What a fuckin place,” I say to myself.
“Yeah, what a place.”
Saul replies, his voice seems a million miles away. And I’m closing my eyes and spinning more. I have a pool stick in my hands that I don’t remember grabbing.
“Take it easy, man, take it easy, why don’t you come have a seat?” I hear Saul murmur, but I don’t pay him any mind. I sit on the pool table edge. I point the stick at Saul’s head like a gun. Like a long wooden rifle, skinny and bruised.
“How you think we woulda fared in ’Nam, Saul?”
“Not well.”
“Speak for yourself.” I set the weapon down.
“Fuckin Saul. Fuckin good poor Saul. What are you still doin here, man?”
“Could ask you the same.”
“No, no no no no. I got reasons. So many reasons, Saul, so many—”
“You and me both, pal.”
“We are pals, aren’t we, Saul?”
“I guess so.”
“You could be anywhere man, don’t you understand? Anywhere Saul! How about the Rockies? Or California? Or Arizona? Or Texas man. Texas! You should hear the stories about the land out there Saul, I swear.”
“Yeah, suppose it’s nice.”
“It’s wide open Saul. Wide. Open.”
And I’m weaving my hand through the air like a painter of visions on an imaginary canvas, like I’m conducting an orchestra. I want him so desperately to understand.
“How often do you think about your dad?”
And he doesn’t answer at first. He takes a drink and wipes his face slowly in perhaps his greatest contemplation to date, like it’s his own drama unfolding.
“Sometimes, yeah. I do sometimes.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Not like you do, though.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean you’re romantic about it somehow.”
“Romantic?”
“Romantic, yeah.”
“I’m not fuckin romantic about nothin, Saul. Especially that.”
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit?”
“Always bringin it up, always talkin ’bout it like it was this great thing in our past. Like it has purpose or whatever. You know, it ain’t always that.”
“It ain’t always that.”
“No. It ain’t always.”
“You’re talkin romantic yourself, Saul. You see—”
“What I’m tellin ya, Cash, is that it was all around bad. Nothin romantic ’bout bad.”
“Mmmmm.”
“It’s fuckin true, man. And I don’t hold onto it like you do.”
“Oh yes you do, yes you do. You just don’t know it.”
“No, I know it, I don’t do it.”
“You do. You do, man. How don’t you see that?”
“I don’t talk about it none, Cash. Never. That’s the difference. I don’t need to, that’s it. That’s that.”
“Don’t you get it, poor Saul?”
“Stop callin me that—”
“Saul, they fucked it all up. They fucked it all up. They were drunks—”
“So are we—”
“No, Saul. I’m sayin. Saul, we didn’t have fathers. Not like we shoulda. No fathers.”
“We did.”
“We did not—”
“We did. They just weren’t any good at what they did, Cash, that’s all. And neither were their fathers. And that’s, that’s where that ends. It’s as simple as that. And ya have to leave it there—”
“But it doesn’t end there, Saul—”
“If you let it, it does—”
“Saul, fuckin look where you are!”
“I’m in the same place as you pal—”
“I KNOW, SAUL, I KNOW, THAT’S THE POINT.”
I’m all worked up and I lean a bit too far forward off the table and fall. The bar’s floor is much colder than the air and a bit wet.
“Fuck.”
“You alright?”
“Yeah, yeah.” I pull my body up slowly, walk to the bar, and sit back down again. All torn up and dirty and done.
Saul looks at me now with an empathy so real it hurts. And maybe he’s the blood brother I never had. Castaways, truly, the both of us. And I’m about to say something like that, all poetic as hell, but from behind me the door to the bar swings wide open, and in through the gates walks Rose.
She glides in and out of my vision, all the way up to us and I’m convinced I’ve officially died and moved on. I must have hit my fucking head so hard on the tile that I died. Surely not now, in the pit of drunkenness, has Rose wandered into Jimmy’s so unabashedly unfazed. So beautiful and deadly like a snake. I close my eyes and take a breath, but when I open them, she’s still there, standing to my right, looking at me with this sorry expression, as in, she feels sorry for me. The audacity.
“Cash,” she says.
Just my name. And she says it, just like that. Like that’s the full sentence. I’m staring right back, and I kid you not, I laugh. I let out a genuine, pent up laugh worth about two months. I look at Saul as if to confirm I’m alive, to confirm what I’m seeing is real. He shrugs his shoulders and I know now, it is. Everything’s real, unfortunately.
“You called her?”
He nods.
“Sorry.”
And I laugh a bit more.
“Oh Saul, what the fuck? You idiot. You fuckin moron, Saul.”
I’m shaking my head and looking down at the wood, unwilling to meet her eyes. I’m trying to find some sort of ground to stop moving. To the perpetually unpolished bar I utter.
“What are you doing here?”
“Thought maybe I would take you home,” she says.
And with that, Saul sets his towel down and leaves us. He walks right out from the bar and says.
“I’ll be in my office.”
And I know that he’s had a conference with Rose behind my back. When did he call her?
I have no recollection of it, but somehow they’ve hatched a plan while my mind was off in the distance or wherever the fuck I was. Things settle down just long enough for me to hold her gaze.
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Take me home?”
“Yes, I want to take you home.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I want to help you get home, Cash.”
All I can do is sit there and drunkenly blink at her, utterly convinced that at any second the truth will be revealed, or the show will conclude. Nothing comes. Nothing but all the memories and thoughts of the past two months. They become fumes in my body. I stand up and shove myself from the bar. I stumble a couple steps before regaining composure. I’m growing disgusted by the fact that she’s found me in this stupor. I head straight for the exit, demented and determined to go. I am at odds with my life all over again. I am unbelieved. I am faithless. I shove the door open and am released into the freezing cold evening.
Up top, the stars shake their heads and mutter things amongst themselves like, dear boy, he has done it again .
“Are you really going to drive?”
“Fuck this,” I mutter.
Yes, I’m going to drive. I need to leave. I have to go as far away as possible. My car is one of three, all the way down near the edge of the gravel. The world spins in inebriation. I walk straight for it, furious. I can’t believe it. She shows herself here. Now. Here and now. God, I’m nauseous. I should just fucking walk home. I should just keep walking until I can’t anymore.
Behind me I hear.
“Cash!”
So, I turn.
There she is, stranding near the entrance.
“You don’t even have your keys, man.”
Huh? I check my flannel coat pockets and my pants, she’s right. I do not.
Fuck. FUCK it all. FUCK. I must have left them on the bartop. I massage the brim of my nose near my eyes. When are you gonna get it together? That’s what she said to me all those days ago. Now, I can hardly see straight. My mind is muddled with alcohol and the return of my father.
When am I gonna get it together? Not tonight. Rose showing up has ruined it all. Absolutely exasperated, pissed, and helpless, I look up to the black heavens.
Rose walks toward me like a slow-moving arrow. I can no longer look at her. This woman who burnt me, who I had wanted so badly. Who had touched me then left me to rot. Like everything else. She’s ten feet from me now and I can’t help but say.
“What the hell do you want, Rose?”
“I told you. I want to take you home.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re drunk.”
“So?”
“I don’t want you to drive.”
“I’ll walk.”
“C’mon.”
“I’ve done it before.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Oh, give me a fuckin break.”
“I am, Cash.”
“Worried about me?”
“Yeah.”
“You haven’t seen me in months. You—you—” and I’m nearly laughing again, what the hell?
Her voice, the way she said it. Worried about you . Like every other sentence that had floated from her lips since I’d known her, it was honest. She meant what she said, but it doesn’t make any sense. I’m barely standing straight, on the last rope of any hope for clarity.
“I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“You left.”
“I know.”
“You just left.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t call. You didn’t leave a fuckin, I don’t know, a note. Nothin.”
“I’m sorry, Cash.”
“I thought it meant something.”
“It did.”
“I thought, you know, I just. I thought I’d see you again.”
“I had to go, Cash. I tried to call.”
“C’mon.”
“It’s true, ya know. And I did call.”
“When?”
“A few weeks ago, I should have sooner.”
“Right.”
“I had to go.”
“And now you show up, out of nowhere. Tonight. I’m drunk and—”
“It’s okay.”
“You don’t know.”
“What don’t I know?”
“Where did you go?”
“I went home.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Cash, I had to, you know. I was all turned around. I was fucking confused. We had that night, and that was—I don’t know. I don’t have nights like that.”
“Neither do I.”
“I had to go, okay? I didn’t think I was ready.”
“Ready?”
“For Johnston, for everything. I just settled. I don’t know. So, I went. I left. It’s what I do. I’ve done it a million times. But I called, I did. But you weren’t there. And Saul didn’t know where you were, nobody did, and so that was that. I even checked your place.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Where did you go?” She asks.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I thought you left for good too, ya know.”
“Yeah, well.”
“So. Where?”
“Cambridge.”
“Okay. Cambridge.”
“My grandparents’ have a spot there. I always said I’d fix it up.”
“Oh, I see—”
“Why are you back?”
“I’m just back. I’m sorry, Cash.”
“Right.”
“I heard about your dad. Saul mentioned it.”
“Yeah, I fuckin bet he did.”
Without another word, Rose walks the remaining ten feet between us and wraps her arms around my body. The gesture shocks me, but I don’t ask any questions. I don’t care for questions anymore. I don’t know why she’s here, or if she’ll leave me again. I don’t care. I only reach out and hold her as close as I can.
She’s my last bit of light in the dark.