Like Grownups Do (23 page)

“Please make another appointment on your way out,” Babe croaked.

“No earlier than a week from today, please.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Babelton, I—”

“Just…go. Please,” Babe said, weakly.

“Miss Vandermeer will—”

“Get…
OUT
!”

Babe bolted to his feet again. His knees weakened and he sank back into his chair with his face in his hands.

Gabriel stood and walked to the door. He placed his hand on the door handle, turned his head to the side and spoke over his shoulder.

“She will wait for you.”

The door hissed shut as these last words found Babe’s ears. The words echoed in the middle of his brain and sent a torrent of pain toward his frontal lobe. Everything in his vision turned a blinding red and suddenly nothing was more important to Babe than not letting this creepy bastard have the last word. He pulled his hands away from his face, shot to his feet, and ran toward the reception area. MG was just coming out of the ladies’ room. The room was empty. Babe jerked the front door open and looked both ways.

Nothing.

Twenty-Four

“
M
r. Babe,” Lewis yelled from behind the bar.

Babe waved from near the entrance before he removed his coat. It was another chilly evening in the seemingly never ending string of chilly evenings that began to get
very
old by late March. Relief would be here soon though, along with longer days and, of course, baseball.

“Thank God for satellite, huh, Mr. Babe?” Lewis motioned toward a television screen and continued polishing Boston Harbor Ice Tea glasses by hand.

“We never used to be able to get spring training games.

Babe slapped a high five with Lewis and then his brother Leo.

“Lewis, you’re not old enough to use the phrase ‘We never used to’,” Babe said.

“Now me, that’s another story. Like, ‘we never used to play polo on dinosaurs because those fuckers bite.’”

Leo laughed.

“Come on, Mr. Babe, you’re hardly older than we are. You’re barely out of short pants.”

Lewis chimed in.

“When Mr. Babe started coming here he was still shitting
yellow.”

“If you boys think I’m going to stand here and be insulted like this,” Babe said, “I’m not. I’ll be sitting. Right over there.”

The night’s crowd was light. It was a Wednesday night with preseason baseball. It was a good crowd, though—Babe’s kind of crowd.

If one hundred sixty two games plus the post-season was not enough baseball for you, then you, my friend, are a baseball fan.
But even he couldn’t concentrate on the game for long. He had too much on his mind. He had every intention of drinking himself silly. Maybe even stupid. So, every time he returned from the bathroom he moved a little closer to a familiar corner booth; a little dark, a little more isolated but still close to the bar; and the bathroom.

Babe started to wave off the bottle of Samuel Adams that Lewis brought him, but instead he took it. He then surprised Lewis by ordering a Boston Harbor Iced Tea. He downed the beer in two swallows.

He ordered a ‘B-HIT’, the popular acronym for Lewis’s drink. Cries of ‘B-HIT me!’ were heard at the bar during any evening, although the later the evening got the cry usually degenerated first to “B-He Me’, on its way to ‘B-Me’.

Babe took dead aim on a night of degenerating acronyms for himself. By the seventh inning stretch he was singing along with some of his inebriated bar mates who were singing along with the televisions,

“God Bless America. My Home…Sweeeeeeet. Hooooooooooome!”

“Mr. Babe, you’re still not driving, right?” Lewis asked as he sat down a fresh B-HIT.

“Nope. Just point me toward home at two o’clock and if you don’t hear from me then I’ve missed my house and I have to walk all the way around the world through China, and I’ll be ver…very, very late.”

“You might want to slow down a little, Mr. Babe,” Lewis said.

“I might stop by Hong Kong on my way. They have some
beautiful
girls in Hong Kong. Do you know Abeccica? Uh…Reebok?…Rebecca! She’s
beautiful.
I have to pee.” Babe said, getting to his feet.

Lewis watched Babe to make sure he could make it to the bathroom. He hadn’t seen Babe drink like this before. He was a good time guy and funny as hell. But tonight he was alone and he was wasted. Lewis hoped that Babe wasn’t completely miserable over the loss of his wife. The drink he had just given Babe had hardly any alcohol in it at all and he hadn’t added it to Babe’s tab.

Babe sat down and soon the baseball game ended in a lopsided loss for the home team. Lewis and Leo took the opportunity to kick off the new season’s tradition, one they started the previous year.

A local young aspiring singer had recorded a song that became a minor hit. This came on the heels of the young man’s brief appearance on American Idol which ended with his being removed from the competition due some kind of controversy that was never explained. Leo knew the young man from high school.

In a brilliant move, Lewis and Leo played the song at the conclusion of big Red Sox losses and it never failed to lift the spirits at the bar. On nights that the bar might have emptied out with dejected fans, the song brought back the party.

A cheer greeted Leo as his voice boomed out of the speakers in his mock DJ voice.

“Ladies and gentlemen—please welcome to our invisible stage, country and western sensation Wylie Westerhouse and the hit single, ‘So This is what it’s Like to be a Cubs Fan.’ “

The catchy tune worked like a charm and the chorus
always
turned into a sing-a-long.

*So this is what it’s like to be a Cubs fan,*

*It’s only May, but there’s no way we’re climbing out of this cellar, man!*

*The season’s just beginning, but it’s the bottom of the ninth inning.*

*It’s just a game and we’re doing the best we can!*

*So this is what it’s like to be a Cubs fan.*

Cheers, high fives, smiles, and laughter erupted at the conclusion of the song. It was good, cheap fun, even if it was just a spring training game that nobody really cared much about.

The boys turned over the speaker system to the jukebox. Babe swayed with his eyes closed to the intro and first verse of the classic Bad Company song, Feel like Makin’ Love. Then he banged his head, slapped his table and sang along to the chorus as well as the signature guitar riff.

Du du DUH

Du du DUH

Du du DUH

Lewis appeared again, setting yet another Boston Harbor Iced Tea in front of him. Babe looked at Lewis.

“I didn’t—”

Lewis pointed.

“From the gentleman at the bar.”

Babe looked toward the bar and squinted. The movement of people blurred his vision. His eyes came to rest on the only still figure in sight.

Shit. The. Bed. Suck me off with a breast pump and fuck me a-running.

Gabriel Athas.

Babe let his head drop.

No, no, no, no
. He couldn’t deal with this. But what was he going to do? Stare at the table until closing time? He couldn’t just ignore him. That was just damned impolite. That was what ugly people did. But this guy had freaked him the fuck out when he was
sober.
Babe raised his head. He looked at Athas, raised the glass and nodded. Gabriel Athas returned the nod. Babe looked back down at the table.
Jesus.
He thought.
My hands are shaking. I’m going to tell him I’m drunk, that I don’t feel well, and I’m going home.

Babe turned in his seat and looked toward the bar, but Gabriel Athas was gone. Babe waited a few minutes to see if he would return, but he didn’t.

Babe moved to a seat at the bar and waited for Lewis to notice him.

“The guy that sent the drink over, did you see him leave?” Babe asked.

“Yeah, I did. He wasn’t, you know,
bothering
you, was he? ‘Cause we’ll keep his ass out of here if—”

“No, no. Nothing like that.”

“That’s good, Mr. Babe.; real good. ‘Cause he paid cash, and if I could get a few more tippers like that in here, I could retire at thirty.”

“I’m going to call it a night, Lewis. Where’s Leo?” Babe asked.

“Throwing trash, I think.”

“Tell him I said good night and thanks for everything. Love ya, man.”

“Love ya, Mr. Babe. Take care of yourself.”

Babe left the bar and walked to the taxi stand. There wasn’t one in sight so he sat down. Ten minutes passed. He pulled his phone out and saw that his battery was almost dead. He called the taxi number that was advertised on the bench and was told that there were two major conventions in town and consequently, taxis were booked solid.

Just great,
Babe thought.

He stood up and shoved his hands into his coat pockets. He started walking toward his office. The thought of another night sleeping on the hard mattress of the apartment left him depressed, and on cue his lower back seized in protest. The only alternative was his bicycle, and he considered it briefly until a sharply cold gust of wind blew past him, penetrating every layer of clothing he had on. Winter was leaving New England, but not without a fight, and tonight the winds were the winter’s weapon as it fought for survival.

Babe walked for three blocks and left behind the lights of the neon signs and the fading shouts of a few other people leaving Momma’s. He walked quickly with his hands deep in his pockets and his shoulders raised against the cold wind. He felt the first few drops of light rain hit his freezing ears.

Just fucking great
.
How about some locusts, a few thousand tiny frogs, some running sores, rivers of blood, maybe.

He raised his head at the sound of an approaching voice. Someone, looked like just a kid, was loping toward him on the sidewalk; starting, stopping, walking in a crooked line.

The kid was wearing jeans, a black hooded sweatshirt, and sneakers that were untied. His head snapped to one side and then the other, like he was…he was.

Talking to himself. Just fucking even more great.

The kid appeared to be teleporting from one side of the sidewalk to the other with a motion blur between the two bodies.

“Shit,” Babe said to
him
self.

Fucking druggies. Just keep walking—don’t look at him, get past him, keep walking…

Babe looked up just in time to see the boy lurch backward as if someone had picked him up by his collar and the back of his jeans and then launched him. The boy crashed into Babe’s chest, knocking him backward and nearly to the ground.

Babe grabbed hold of the kid’s sweatshirt and flung him sideways where he hit solidly against a brick wall with a thud. He slid slowly and silently to a seated position. He started to whimper and then began to cry.

Babe was breathing hard and his head began to throb, His vision was blurred by the rain and the alcohol fog. He slowly knelt in front of the boy. The boy’s hooded head was still down.

“Aw, shit, kid, I’m sor—”

The boy wasn’t crying. He was giggling.

What the fu…

The kid spoke without looking up, the voice of a child, yet deep.

“They know who you are.”

Babe backed away.

“Who knows who I am?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“The ones that hate
everybody.”

The kid began giggling again.

Babe scrambled backward in shock as the kid whipped up his head—his jet-black eyes were full of hate—his eye sockets deep and dark.

He bared his sharp, yellow teeth.

“And they
REALLY
hate YOU
!”

Babe took another few awkward steps backward before he turned and walked quickly away. A few more steps and he heard the voice behind him.

“They really hate
you, Mister Babe.
”

Babe spun around and…there was no one there.

“Oh, God.” Babe croaked. “Too f…I’ve lost it. I’m losing my mucking…mind.”

His knees were quaking. He stumbled to a retaining wall and sat down—in the rain; rain that he no longer felt. He made himself stop chewing on his finger and felt good about having that much self-control. He stood, still shaking, and looked all around several times before continuing toward his office.

Babe approached the corner that was his last turn before he reached the office. A taxi stopped at the intersection. His sign said ‘off duty’, but Babe was desperate. He ran to the intersection and rapped on the passenger window. The driver lowered the glass a couple of inches and pointed up at the roof.