Come Out Tonight (12 page)

“Uh, no.
 
Really my name’s...”

“I knew you’d call! I knew you would!
 
I was just going out, but screw him, where do you want to meet?”

“Um, well...”

“There’s this little bar on 61
^st
and 2
^nd
, called Barry’s.
 
How about I meet you there in an hour?”

I took a good look at myself before answering.
 
Sweats, holding a bag of chicken.
 
Was I really ready for this?
 
“Uh, sure.
 
An hour.
 
61
^st
and 2
^nd
.”

“Terrif!” she shouted into the phone.
  
See ya,
Edward
!”
 

“I told you my name isn’t...” I said, but the line clicked off.

I decided to eat my dinner anyway.
 
My mother was always reminding me not to drink on an empty stomach, so I wolfed down most of the bread and the chicken, throwing what was left in the garbage.
  
I took a shower and blew dry my hair, trying to get it to look like I hadn’t done it at all.
 
Then I spent twenty minutes trying to find exactly the right thing to wear that looked like I had just thrown it on.
 
I was going to take a cross town bus and then the
Lexington
line to 59
^th
, but I only had twenty minutes, so I flagged down a cab and told the cabbie to get me to 61
^st
and 2
^nd
ASAP.
 
He gave me this look like, I’m a
New York
cabbie, you don’t have to tell me ASAP, stepped on the gas and took off.
 
We were there in fifteen minutes, $9.25 on the dial, me plastered to the back of the seat.
 
I gave him a ten and told him to keep the change.

He looked up at me from the bill.
 
“Gimme a break, willya?”

I stepped out onto the curb.
 
The fluorescent sign spelled “Barry’s” in cutesy cursive, with “BAR” in caps.
 
There were a couple of people hanging out in front, dragging on cigarettes they weren’t allowed to smoke inside.
 
Voices and laughter spilled out of the dark doorway.
 
Inside was pitch-black except for the bar, which was all lit up, the mirror in back of a wall of bottles reflecting back the glare and ruckus.
 
I stepped inside, and was waiting till my eyes adjusted, when suddenly someone reached up, pulled my head down and kissed me smack on the lips.
 
I looked up to see Heather, in an outfit that pretty much bared everything.

“Edward,” she shrieked.

“It’s Henry,” I said.

“Okay.
 
Whatever makes you happy, honey,” she said and laughed, pulling me deeper into the dark, to a table with a guy and a girl.
 
“Hey,” they said.

I was still just standing there, not knowing what to do with myself.
 
“Sit,” Heather said, pushing me down in the chair.
 
“This is the guy I was telling you about,” Heather said to her friends.

“Him?” said the girl, spitting up her drink.

Heather sat down on my lap.
 
“Want to get us some drinks, honey?” she said, deciding, I guess, to call me honey and avoid the whole name thing.

“Sure,” I said.
 
“What can I get you?”

I think she said an apple martini, but I couldn’t be sure with all that din.
 
It was either apple martini or absinthe martini.
 
I had heard of an absinthe martini, but it wasn’t exactly mainstream, and this place looked mainstream - almost stereotypical
New York
hot spot - so dark, crowded, and happening that I figured my chances were better with apple.
 
In any case, I wasn’t going to ask again; it was way too uncool, so I just nodded, slid out of from under her and threaded my way to the bar.
 

“Two apple martinis,” I said to the bald guy in back of the bar.

“Apple or absinthe?” he shouted.

“Apple,” I shouted back.

“Vodka or gin?”

“What?”

“Vodka or gin?”

“Vodka,” I yelled.

“Absolut, Ketel One, Grey Goose?”

I leaned over the cool, polished bar.
 
Now I could see, lined up in front of the mirror, at least ten different vodkas.
 
“What do you recommend?”

“Ketel One has a good clean taste,” the bartender shouted.
 
“Goes great with apple.”

“Great, then.
 
Ketel One.”
  

I watched him mix apple juice and schnapps in with half a bottle of vodka, and shake it up.
 
Then he poured it out into two basins on stems. “Twenty-five,” the bartender said.

In the din I decided I must have heard him wrong.

“How much?” I yelled.

“Twenty-five.”

“Dollars?”

The bartender was getting testy.
 
“What else d’ya think? Rubles?”

I peeled off a twenty and a five.
 
“Keep the change,” I said, taking off with the martinis.

“Hey, what change?” the bartender yelled after me.

I threaded my way back, a basin in each hand, to the table where Heather and her friends were sitting.
 
“Two apple martinis,” I said, setting them down.

“I wanted an absinthe martini,” Heather said, but took it anyway, taking a long slurp.

Heather’s girlfriend stared at the martini lustfully.
 
“I want one of those,” she told her date.

“What are they?” he asked me.

“Apple martinis.”

“Yeah,” the girl said.
 
“Go get me one.”

“Okay, okay,” said her date, pushing his chair out.

“They’re twelve-fifty a drink,” I shouted after him.

Meanwhile, Heather was guzzling hers.
 
Her friend pushed her empty glass away and leaned over the table to me.
 
“You seem like a nice guy,” she said.

“Hey Kimberly,” Heather said, plunking down her glass, splashing the drink.

“Hey yourself,” she said to Heather.
 
Then, back to me, “From what Heather told me about you, I thought you were going to be Russell Crowe on steroids.”

“Russell Crowe?” I asked, not quite getting her gist.

“You know, Gladiator?
 
Master and Commander?
 
Macho, hot dude?

I didn’t know whether it was the gallon of martini I had been drinking or whether she meant me.
 
“You mean you thought I was some macho, hot dude?”

“Well, yeah, Heather was going on about you like...”

“Shut up, Kimberly,” Heather said.
 
“You’ve got a big mouth.”

“Okay,” Kimberly shrugged.
 
“I only...”

“Just shut up.”

Just then Kimberly’s date came back with a couple of basins for the two of them.
 
“Twelve-fifty apiece,” he grumbled, setting them down.

“I warned you,” I told him.

So there we were, sipping bottomless martinis.
 
There was hardly any point in talking against a background of Metallica, laughter, voices and general din.
  
I mean, you go on a first date to these places because they’re so cool, and the music’s cool, and the people are cool, but then the noise is so loud that you can’t talk without screaming.
 
Sherry used to hate these places.

“So what do you think about that babe who got knocked off in her
West Side
apartment?” Kimberly’s date shouted.
 

“Knocked off?” I yelled.

“Yeah.
 
Two days ago,” Heather said.
 
“She was strangled.”

“Strangled?”
 
Kimberly shouted.
 
“That’s terrible.”

“Where on the
West Side
?”
 
I yelled.

“Nineties,” her date said.

“Any clues as to who it was?” I yelled.

“Not really.
 
Except that the lock wasn’t forced.”

“So she knew the murderer...”

“Well, maybe, but...”

“The police said that the window was open over the fire escape,” Heather yelled.

At that, I took one long drink of my martini.
  
“Is it hot in here?” I asked.

“You’re not looking so good, honey,” Heather said, putting a hand to my brow.
  
“Too much martini?”

“I’m okay,” I said, but the truth was, I felt like I was going to throw up all that martini, and I better get outside if I was going to do it.
 

Heather gave me a nudge and a wink and said maybe she could use some air herself.
 

“Sure,” I said, pushing my chair out, holding onto the table as I tried to stand up.

Heather laughed.
 
“She stood up, weaved, and laughed again.
  
The two of us staggered out.
  
The moment I hit the air, I felt better.

“You okay now?” she asked.

I wasn’t.
 
I was still obsessing over the guy who knocked off the babe on the
West Side
.
 
So, I told Heather the whole sad story of Sherry and the open window, whether she wanted to hear it or not.
 
How I was there, but never heard a thing.
 
How I could have fought off the guy - how I
should
have fought off the guy - but I was a jerk, sleeping through the whole thing.
 
How she was alive, but in a vegetative state.
 
Still in a vegetative state all these months.
  
Poor Sherry.

“Wow,” Heather said.
 
“That why you didn’t call me?”

Meanwhile, I was wondering out loud whether maybe, maybe, the guy who strangled this girl was the same guy who attacked Sherry.
 
Well, by now, Heather was hanging all over me, trying, I think, to get me to stop talking about my old girl friend and to focus on my new one.
 
But it wasn’t working.
 
I kept talking, talking till the effects of all the regrets, the martini, and the fumes from all the evicted smokers got to me, and I had to lean up against a lamp post.

“C’mon, honey,” Heather said.
 
“My place is one...two...hell I don’t know how many blocks it is, but it’s right over there,” she said, pointing somewhere across town.
   
We stumbled down 2
^nd
for a block, then west on 63
^rd
for another two.

She stopped at a brownstone. Drunk as we still were, we managed to climb the steps to the front door.
 
She fumbled in her bag for a long time before coming up with four keys on a Mickey Mouse chain.
 
“Big one with the red thingee on it,” she said. You open it, Sweetie.”

I stuck the key in the lock and opened it.
 
“Which floor?” I asked.

“You know,” she said.

“I don’t.”

“Third,” she said.
 

“Is there an elevator?” I asked.

“That’s what you said last time,” she answered.

There wasn’t.
 
We staggered up one floor, then another.
 
Heather pointed at the door, and we made our way down the hall.
 
I tried two keys, before the third one fit.
 

We were barely inside before Heather started loosening my belt.
 
“You don’t know how long I’ve been dreaming about you,” she said, undoing the buckle.
 

Her tongue was in my ear, and suddenly, I didn’t care what the hell she called me.
 
I was busy trying to unbutton her blouse, but the buttons were too big for the holes.
 
By now she’d dragged my pants off.

For a half minute she watched me wrestle with a button.
 
“Jesus fucking Christ!” she shouted finally. “Just rip it off like you did last time!”

I really didn’t want to rip her blouse, whatever she said.
 
I kept working on the third button down, but by now Heather was crazed.
 
She wanted it now and she wanted it rough.
 
Shove her to the floor, like last time.
 
Bang it in.
  
No, not wimpy like that.
  
Bang her.
 
No, like this! Doggy style.
 
Good.
 
More! Yes!
  

I protested, withdrawing.
 
I didn’t want to hurt her.
 
I only wanted to please her.

Suddenly, she was red in the face, crying.
 
“Why are you...why are you doing this?”