9 Letters (19 page)

Dave did a double-take when I
walked through that door and headed over to the booth.

“Well how about that,”
he said. “Luke mother-fucking Cawley.”

“You kiss your mother with
that mouth?” Holger asked, in his thick accent. He liked
American phrases, because when he said them, everyone laughed.

But Dave stood up out of the
booth, pounded me on the back. I gave Damon a fistbump, then nodded
to Holger and Lance.

It’s the weirdest thing,
when you change but the world you left doesn’t.

“I haven’t seen you
in here since the day after the funeral,” Damon said.

“I’ve been busy,”
I said.

“Busy doing what? I seen
you working down the street at that high-class joint.” Sure he
was giving me shit, but that was how we’d always talked to each
other. It’s a guy thing.

“I’ve just been busy,
that’s all,” I said, dodging the friendly insult to my
current place of employment.

“Damn, dude,” Lance
said to Damon. “Give the man room to mourn, you know? I bet a
year ain’t nothing.”

I went to the bar, left them
arguing. Lou was working. He’d told me to my face he wouldn’t
hire me, when I’d asked about a job a year back. Said he
wouldn’t do it because he wouldn’t see me waste my life
tending bar in some shit hole.

“Hey, Lou,” I said.

“What’re you
drinking?” he asked.

“Whiskey.”

“Straight up?”

“Just give it to me neat,”
I said. I wasn’t going to make him shake it up with ice, I just
wanted to feel whiskey on my tongue.

He poured me a glass, and I shot
it, let it burn down my throat, sit warm and pretty in my gullet.

“Another,” I said.

He side-eyed me, but he poured,
and I left my card on the bar and rejoined my friends. Knocked back
that second shot while sitting at the end of the booth.

“Hell yeah,” Dave
said. “Luke’s back, man.”

“What’ve you been
doing?” Damon asked. “Hell,
how’ve
you been doing? You holding up?”

“I’m holding up,”
I told them. “Got a job at Warren’s, yeah. And it’s
kept me busy, which I guess is all I needed, right? Stay busy, don’t
starve. But I don’t know, when you work in a bar and your life
is a goddamned mess and you don’t want to see people, well,
after three or four shifts a week you’re all tapped out. I’ve
missed you guys, I just couldn’t hang.”

The guys nodded. The pitcher was
empty, so Lance went to the bar to refill it and grab another glass.

“That’s real,”
Damon said.

“I’m sorry I ain’t
come to see you guys.”

“Or answer your phone
ever,” Dave added.

“Or answer my phone ever,”
I said.

Lance set a glass down in front
of me, poured it full of something pale. I took a long swallow.

“How come none of you all
ever came to see me at Warren’s?” I finally asked.

Everyone shuffled in their seats.

“It’s just hard, is
all,” Dave said.

I didn’t push it. I got it.
There were four of them. They didn’t really need me. And maybe
they thought I was too good for them over there at Warren’s, or
maybe they were afraid that sadness is contagious. I’ve run
across that one a lot. For everyone I’ve had to shut out
because they reached out too much after the funeral, there were three
or four people who just started avoiding me like I had the Spanish
Flu or something.

I started into my drinking pretty
heavily, pretty quickly. The whiskey made a nice base, and I just
poured beer down to follow. When they’re sober, people will
tell you that they drink to forget, or they drink to numb the pain.
But that’s not true at all and no one really thinks that. You
drink because you want to tease out the pain, drive away the
numbness. You drink because you want to feel
something
intensely, whether it’s happy or sad or pissed or anything like
that.

Done right, it’s like
drawing out an infection. Done wrong—and let’s be real,
it’s almost always done wrong and I was definitely doing it
wrong that night—it’s just sticking your damn finger into
a wound and keeping it from healing up.

Which is to say, I got myself
piss drunk and it didn’t do me or anyone else a lick of good.

I rolled with it, being drunk,
for awhile. I just kinda sloppily laughed at what everyone was
saying, tried a couple times to be funny. But then I just started in
on myself.

“You know I got a dog?”
I said.

“Yeah?” Eric asked.

“Even he’s smarter
than me,” I said.

“What?”

“You know how many times I
almost got myself fired from Warren’s? That guy likes me, and
he’s still always about to fire me. And then today I went and
did
get myself fired from a job I didn’t even have. I got fired
from
volunteering
,
man. After I told the one girl I was sleeping with I didn’t
want to see her, and right before I pissed off the next girl I was
starting to like.”

“You doing alright?”
Dave asked.

“
When have I ever been
doing alright?
”
I was shouting a little bit. Maybe a lot of bit, because some huge
lumberjack-looking guy from the next booth stood up and walked our
way.

I don’t even know why it
happens but I swear I’m always getting myself into fights with
guys who could bench press me. At least I’ve never hit no one
smaller. Not without them coming at me first, anyway.

The guy was glaring down at me,
so I stood up, one hand on the table for balance.

“You’ve had enough to
drink,” he said.

I brought my glass to my lips,
just to spite him. He knocked it from my hands.

I spit on him. Well, I tried to
spit on him. I wanted to spit on him. Instead, the spit didn’t
even make it the two feet to his chest, just kind of fell out of my
mouth and onto the floor between us.

He turned on his heel, went back
to sit at the booth with his friends.

“He’s right,”
Dave said.

“Yeah, I know he’s
right,” I said. “He’s still lucky I didn’t
knock his teeth loose. Just because someone’s right doesn’t
mean they get a say in what I fucking do to myself.”

I threw on my coat and went for
the door.

“Where you going?”

“Just getting some air.”

Another guy was out there
smoking. One of the lumberjack’s friends. Damn I wanted a
smoke. I wanted a smoke almost as bad as I wanted a car to swerve off
the road and run me over.

Stuck my hand in my back pocket,
like I still carried Skoal, and found my phone. That would do. Plenty
of bad habits I could pick back up, didn’t have to be smoking.

I scrolled through my contacts
till I found Maggie. “Maggie Missouri,” was her name in
my phone, as if everyone worth knowing wasn’t from Missouri.
Jabbed at her name with my forefinger, and it started ringing. Ain’t
technology great?

“Luke?”

“Hey girl,” I said.
Trying to be smooth. Trying not to sound as drunk as I was. “What’re
you up to?”

“Nothing I can’t put
down,” she said. Which meant she was on her computer. The only
nerd I’d ever met who was always smart enough to drop her
keyboard for social interaction. Or a booty call.

“I’m hanging out at
Lou’s, with some of my old friends. They’ve been getting
on me to tell them what I’ve been up to, and that made me think
about you, and I don’t know, I’m just feeling kind of
lonesome.”

There was a pause, long enough
for me to think she mighta hung up. “You want company?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’ll be there in
half an hour or something,” she said, then hung up.

I let the cold air sober me up as
much as it was going to, which wasn’t all that much, then I
went back inside.

“Listen, Luke,” Dave
said. “It’s good to see you, it really is. But damn, man,
you’ve gotta chill out.”

“I know,” I said.

“You’re cool?”

“I’m cool.”

“For real?”

“No.” But I said it
so quiet, I might not have said it aloud. Hard to really know.

“We’re going to take
off,” Dave said. “It’s getting late. You want a
ride home?”

“Nah, I’m good here,”
I said.

“Alright,” he said.
They filed up to the bar, closed out their tabs, and took off into
the night. I was alone, again. And barely drunk enough to feel it.

I moved to the bar.

“Just some water,” I
said.

“Damn right,” Lou
said.

“Aren’t you supposed
to have some kind of good advice? Isn’t that why the world’s
got bartenders?”

“You’re a bartender,”
Lou said. “What would you tell yourself?”

“Drink more because the
only good thing about life is that it’s short.”

“Jesus, you’re a
shitty bartender. What would you tell yourself when it’s sober
you talking to drunk you?”

“Get your act together.
You’re pitying yourself. Doesn’t do anyone a lick of
good. Yeah, life’s tough. Be tougher.”

“Then that, then. That’s
my advice.”

“You’re a smart man,
Lou.”

“Sure I am.”

I nursed the water and I fell
down from piss-drunk to just-drunk-enough-to-be-unhappy, and that’s
when Maggie walked in. Her lips were deep red, her eyeliner thick and
black, her hair thick and black and tumbling down her shoulders. She
took off her jacket, had on a tank top that told me she was wearing
that lacy black bra I loved her in.

Jesus, why do I do this to
myself?

“Can I get you a drink?”
I asked.

She smiled, then. She hadn’t
smiled when she saw me. She’d been wary.

“Whiskey, straight up,”
she told Lou. Then she turned back to me. “You don’t look
like you’re doing your best.”

“I’m alright.”

“You sure?”

“Jesus, everyone’s on
my case tonight.”

“Alright,” she said.
Lou set the tumbler down in front of her, and she took the shot. Her
smile deepened. She had such good teeth. Just that little bit crooked
where it’s not gross, just all that much better to kiss. And
those lips, she had the thickest, nicest lips I’d ever kissed.
I didn’t like to admit that, but it was true.

I was staring at her so hard I
didn’t notice her staring at me.

“What’s up with your
hands?” she asked.

I looked down at them. They were
looking pretty rough. A few blisters just starting to heal, a few
scratches that were still raw.

“I’ve been working,”
I said.

“You contracting again?”

“No, it’s not like
that,” I said. “Been building houses for people who’ve
lost everything, up north. Heartland Habitat.”

“You get paid for that?”

“No, I don’t get
paid. It’s volunteer.”

“You’re good at what
you do. You should get paid.”

“Nah,” I said. “It’s
fine. Keeps me in practice.”

They never wanted me back again,
actually. But I wasn’t going to tell her that.

“How about you?”

“Same shit,” she
said. “Been trying to get some work, computer stuff.”

I cared about as much about
computers as she did about building things.

“Well,” I said. “Do
you want to, uh,”

“Yeah. Fuck yeah.”

“Where?”

“Luke Cawley I want you so
bad I’ll fuck you in the alley outside like I’m some 19
^th
century whore. Let’s get you out of here.”

I closed out my tab.

She pushed me up against the
brick, started kissing me, and I reached behind her and closed my
fingers together at the back of her head and pulled her up against
me. Her knee went up my legs, her thigh pressing against my dick.

And just like that, I realized
what I was doing. Shit.

She could tell. I must have froze
up, or stopped kissing her like I meant it, because she backed off,
looked at me questioning.

“I’m sorry,” I
said. “I don’t think this is going to work out.”

“It’s not going to
work out?
”
she asked. “It’s not going to
work
out?
Are you my
fucking boyfriend or something? Are you breaking up with me? Did you
start caring enough about me in the first place that we started
dating? Jesus, Luke, you’re the one who called me. You’re
the one who dragged me down here...I had to take a cab, you know...to
hang out with you and yeah maybe get my clit licked, but no it’s
not going to
work out
.
Don’t you think you could have told me that over the phone? Oh,
wait. You did. You basically did, the last time I called you.”

“I’m sorry,” I
repeated.

“No.” Maggie shook
her head in disgust. “
I’m
sorry. I’m the sorry loser who for some goddamned reason
answered the phone in the middle of the night when you were drunk and
horny. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“I’ll pay for your
cab,” I said.

“You’re a disaster
area, Luke Cawley. Hell you’re practically a crime scene. I
should wrap you up in police-line-do-not-cross tape and start scaring
away reporters. You need to pull yourself together.”

“Well,” I said.
“You’re right.”

I pulled out my wallet, to pay
for her cab. She knocked it to the ground and strode off, her hips
swinging with every step.

Yeah, she was right.

Back in the bed of my truck, too
drunk to drive for the second night in a row. I should start drinking
at home. That was the solution.

I fell asleep like that, my head
at a funny angle, drunk with my shoes on in the uncovered bed of my
truck. Woke up some hours later, with the streetlight pouring down
over me like it was the morning sun, but it was still the middle of
the night. I sat up on the corner of the tailgate and looked out over
the city like it was mine.

A pack of dogs ran out of the
alley I’d been in, looked both ways and then darted across the
street. Pack of dogs that thought they were coyotes. I know I was
supposed to hate ‘em, because they attack people sometimes. But
I envied them. They were free, they were with their friends, and if I
had their lifespan I’d be dead probably twice over.