GIN RICKEYS
VILE SELF PORTRAITS, CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Bill picked me up around four. Drove like a blind dunce. I clung to the door panel while he rambled to the windshield about the weather and the latest Patriots game. Parked his dented Camry crooked out front of the pub. Murphy’s. Townies lurked on their personal stools, the pleather cushions imprinted with their bony asses and unquenchable sorrows. The middle-aged wench who lived behind the bar wore clown makeup and spoke in a brusque New England accent. Sucked menthols, announced her breaks with a fiberglass rasp: "I’m havin’ a smoke, yas bettah not touch anythin’!"
He walked in as if it were historic, grinning wide, waving in recognition at the battered patrons who responded with austere, smoky frowns and the obligatory "Hi, Bill.” The drunks regarded me with a sympathy I couldn’t comprehend. Crumpled bills were pinned under their slick bottles of domestic beer, stamping soggy rings over the embellished portraits of founding fathers.
This is what they fought for, I thought.
We sat at the bar and the wench flung a menu at us.
"Hi, Bill. How ya doin’? Who’s this?"
She didn’t give a fuck who I was.
"Hey, Kerri! This is my grandson, Joseph! I’m gettin’ him whatevah he wants! My grandson!" he said, spinning his head to see if anyone else had heard.
They hadn’t.
"That’s great, Bill. What’ll it be, hun?" Her flabby tits jiggled with her labored, aggravated movements. She clenched a filthy rag between her claws.
I picked the first cocktail on the menu. "A gin rickey, please."
"Yup. Bill, the usual soda water with lime?"
"You got it!" he chirped, oblivious. He was an alcoholic. "Sobah fa twenty yeeahs." And yet he still frequented this bar, apparently just to inspire homicidal urges in its suicidal regulars.
"You come here a lot?" I said softly.
"Huh? Ya gutta speak up, Joe! I’m gettin’ old!" He slapped my arm with his varicose hand.
"Do you come here a lot?" I screamed.
"Oh yeah, this is my old haunt. I used ta hang here back in the day, back when it was Mickey’s!"
"Right, Mickey’s…"
"Yup. Now I just come in ta piss Kerri off!"
She was free-pouring gin into a highball glass. Bill’s comment went unacknowledged. She finished building the drink and slammed it down in front of me without a coaster. "There ya go, hun. You guys eatin’?"
"I’m good, but Joey’s gunna get somethin’. Go ‘head, Joe, take a look at the menu!" He slapped my arm again.
"Uh… I’ll take the turkey BLT."
"Fries or a salad, hun?"
"Fries, please."
"Yup."
She turned away and punched the order in, repulsed.
"And don’t fahget my soda, I’m thirsty!”
◆◆◆
I had five gin rickeys. The sandwich was sloppy, but the fries were hot, crisp, and salty. Bill babbled passionately about the town, how long he’d lived there, how he knew everybody and everybody knew him. Kerri scowled whenever her name was mentioned. There were periods of sustained silence, the kind that occurs between two people who should know each other, but don’t. He was from another era. My father had told me stories about him drunkenly beating my grandmother, chasing her around the kitchen with a knife while the kids watched helplessly, their minds forever scarred. He and my father were trying to reconcile, and my father told me it would "be good fa the old man if ya went out and had lunch with him, fa me, okay?"
I was two months off heroin.
Two months into booze.
Two months before my next relapse.
Bill never got his soda water with lime. After an hour of nonsense, he paid, Kerri sighed, and we waddled outside. I lit a cigarette, drunk.
We stopped on the sidewalk by his dented Camry.
"Ya know," he began, his eyes settling on the pavement, "I feel bad… I regret not bein’ there fa mosta ya life. Your Dad and I… we nevah… things wah different back then… we had it tough, ya know? I just… I just wanted ta tell ya that I love ya, and I’ve always loved ya, I just hadta do what I hadta do, ya know? Anyways, finish ya cigarette and I’ll drive ya back." He unlocked the Camry and got in. I took a final drag, dumbfounded, stubbed the butt on my shoe, and we drove off basking in a dissonant strain of silence reserved only for fractured families.
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THE BARMAN© AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
VILE SELF PORTRAITS© AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO TRIGGER WARNINGS