Sideways (19 page)

“Miles, where’ve you been, brother?” Jack boomed.

“Played some golf, hung out,” I muttered, not bothering to conceal the disgruntlement in my voice.

“Hi, Miles,” Terra cheerfully called out, insensitive to the fact she was wrecking our little vacation.

“Hi, Terra,” I said, mustering a reserve of politeness.

“Maya missed you last night,” she said.

“Yeah, I spoke to her briefly.”

“You should have come with.”

I forced a swift smile, then turned back to my glass, salvation and sanctuary viniferously bundled into one. When I looked up, Jack and Terra were clutching each other feverishly, their mouths crushed together like reunited lovers on a rain-swept tarmac. Jesus! For a moment I was afraid they were going to go at it right in the bar.

I heard Terra say, “Okay, baby, I’ll see you later.” She gave Jack one last throat-probing kiss, then turned jauntily to me and waved. “Bye, Miles.”

I tossed Terra a halfhearted little wave. Jack wolfishly followed her sashaying exit with his bloodshot eyes.

Then he plopped down next to me, fatigue and exhilaration competing in his sagging frame. He signaled to the bartender, who automatically brought over the Firestone Cab and poured him a glass. I pointed to mine and he freshened it to almost overflowing, no doubt remembering Jack’s generous tips and our inclination for multiple orders.

When he had drifted away, I turned to Jack and mimicked acidly, “
Baby
?” Jack shrugged and displayed a lopsided grin. “What the
fuck
are you doing, man?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Jack said, in between healthy sips, “She’s just fucking hot.”

I shook my head back and forth with my tongue pushed crossly against one cheek. “Are you going to blow off this wedding?”

Jack drank a third of his glass in one gulp, then clinked it down on the bar. “I might have to put it on hold,” he replied.

I flushed with anger and squared around on my stool to face him. “You think in one month, when this torrid sex peaks, that you’re going to want to drive up here, hang out

“This chick drives me crazy. She’s all over me. Smells different. Tastes different. Fucks different. Screws like an animal.” He was as animated and fervent as I had ever seen him, as though he had just witnessed the Second Coming. I stared at him until he met my gaze. He looked at me uncomprehendingly and asked, “What?”

“What? What do you mean,
What
?”

“Yeah,
what
?” Without waiting for the bartender, he reached for the bottle and refilled both our glasses. I didn’t touch mine.

“Yeah, I’m saying
what
. As in,
what
the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“What is your problem, Homes?” he replied, without looking at me.

“I’ll tell you my problem,” I started, gathering my thoughts. “I’m shanghaied off to a wedding where I’m not wanted. I’ve got a rep as an impecunious writer who’s prone to going off the deep end—a potential reception wrecker if ever there was one—and you’re about ready to blow the whole deal sky-high and you don’t think I’m going to be the guy everybody points the finger at?” I switched to a mocking tone: “Miles took Jack up to the wine country and got his brains fucked out and convinced him that getting married was tantamount to a stretch in Sing-Sing.”

“Oh, bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit, it’s how they’re going to interpret it,” I pleaded, reaching for the moral support of my wine.

An uneasy silence fell between us. Maudlin classic rock from the ’70’s saccharined the emptiness with its plangent strains, further sickening me.

“So, what are you going to do?” I said, the edge in my voice gone. My whole being, with three nights of little sleep and emotional strain, surrendered to weariness. “Piss on it? Shock a nice, respectable family down to their pantaloons?”

Jack wheeled on me. “I need some understanding from you, brother. And I’m not getting it.” He almost sounded like he was going to cry.

I stared at him in astonishment. This was no time for weak-kneed blubbering and male-bonding empathy. “What’s there to understand?”

“Like I’m telling you I might be in love with another woman.”

“Oh, man.” I raked a hand through my hair. “Twenty-four hours and you’re in
love
?” I scoffed. “Well, hotdiggity.”

“Don’t fucking condescend to me, Homes. You’ve been there.”

“Yeah, I’ve been there. It’s like being in a sewer main without a flashlight.” I tapped my temple. “I was so fucking messed up in the head once over this woman I used to cruise past her apartment just to see if I could get a glimpse of her, while meanwhile I had a beautiful, loving wife pacing around in a fucking frenzy wondering where her sex-crazed, soon-to-be ex-husband was!” I waited until he leveled his eyes at me. “You don’t think you’re going to regret this?” He didn’t say anything, but I could tell I wasn’t getting through. “You’re just playing out some propagate-the-species-the-grass-is-greener-genetic-imperative, and you have the temerity to call it
love.
You’re fucking apeshit, man.”

“What are you getting all worked up about? You don’t even
like
Babs.”

This was a curare dart designed to skewer my argument. I turned away. “That’s horseshit.”

“When I met her you told me she was a shallow, bubble-titted costume designer.”

“I did not. Besides, I have long since reversed my opinion. And you know that. You’re just lamely trying to get me to fall into the conga line. But, fuck that. The $64,000 question is: Are you willing to risk everything you’re about to bring down on yourself over this Buellton wine pourer?”

“There you go again with your fucking elitism,” he said, flinging an arm into the air.

I bobbed my head up and down. “Okay, fine. She’s stimulating. Knows her wines. Points for that. In fact, knows a lot more about wine than you do, which is why
I
should be with her instead of you. But do you really think she’s worth destroying a long-term relationship over? One that I promise you, from experience, you’re going to rue until your cock shrivels into dust.”

Jack stared intensely into his glass of wine. “I’m just seeing things in a different light right now.”

“Duh. That’s because you’re getting hosed. But, after a while she’s going to seem as commonplace as all the other pussy you’ve diddled, and you’re not going to be able to serial monogamize the rest of your life. Look at me. Okay, George Clooney maybe, some others, but not you. Not me. We need to find an oasis of womanhood. Otherwise we will wither on the vine. You’ve found it. And now you’re about to abandon it,” I finished in a grave tone.

“I didn’t realize you were so fucking puritanical,” Jack responded.

“You made a commitment to Babs when you asked her to marry you!”

“The rest of my fucking life.”

“Yeah, I think that’s the definition, Jackson.”

“It’s not normal.” He attacked his wine with a childish vengeance. We had both arrived at that moment I called The Switch. When it snapped on, we would soon find ourselves free-falling together into that rollercoastering void of alcohol’s blissful nepenthe. I could already feel it lifting me out of my weariness.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” he asked.

“Yeah, she’s a doll,” I conceded, having shot my wad on Babs’s behalf.

“Kisses like you wouldn’t believe.”

“She recently got dumped by some guy. What do you expect? She’s lonely. Hungry for affection.”

“Whatever the reason,” Jack said blithely, unable to shake the memory. “Feels awful damn sweet.”

“And worse. She may have already fallen for you. And that’s going to be a problem. You know why?” Jack turned and looked at me. “Because down the serpentine road of sex and more sex, of heavenly cock sucking and marathon pussy licking … she’s going to want the same things Babs wants.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Jack interrupted. “We move up here, you and me, get a groove going with Terra and Maya, maybe buy a vineyard, establish a winery …”

“Jack,” I said, chopping him off, “you’re fucking nuts. You’ve flipped. You have
got
to dry out and see this for what it really is.”

“Raymond Cole Estate. We’ll make awesome Pinot. Think about it,” he said, as though I were calling out to him from deep underwater.

“I don’t want to think about it. It depresses me.” I turned away, scowling.

“There’s just like, this thing …” Jack balled up his fist and shook it to himself. “I can’t describe it.”

“Are you going to come to your senses?”

He was getting drunk now and his face took on the sad look of a basset hound. “I’m coming into a whole new realization of who I am.”

“Oh, don’t give me this sententious alcoholic hogwash,” I shot back.

“What?”

I didn’t feel like defining
sententious
. “Look, call Babs before she has a fucking cow.”

“No,” Jack said defiantly.

“She called
me
, for Christ’s sake!”

“I don’t think I’m ready for marriage,” he said, petulant.

“Oh, fuck me with a hot poker.” I drained my wine, pivoted off my stool, and blazed a trail to the bathroom.

When I returned, Jack had vanished. I reclaimed my stool, my brain throbbing indignantly. Across the sea of pool and lounge tables, near a pinball machine, I could make out Jack on his cell. I inhaled deeply and then let it all go in a weary sigh, wondering what my next move was going to be. I sipped my wine, casting for answers, but I kept drawing a blank.

On my right flank I heard a vaguely familiar voice and I turned to see who it was. It was the pimple-faced boar hunter from Saturday night, though with all that was happening, it seemed like ages ago. He had another big, frothy pitcher of straw-colored beer in front of him.

“Hey, what’s happening?” he said when he caught my eye.

“Not much,” I said, the understatement of the year. “No karaoke tonight?”

“Nope,” he said.

“What was your name again?”

“Brad.”

“Brad, right,” I said.

“You’re the writer?” he recalled.

“Miles. Yeah.”

“Right,” he said, his face vacant. He was one of those beer drunks who grew dully introspective as they got wasted.

“Going boar hunting tonight, Brad?”

He took a drink of his beer and turned to me. “Thinking about it. Want to come?”

I was intrigued. “Maybe. I have to see what my friend’s up to when he gets off the phone.”

He nodded once. “You’d dig it.” He refilled his mug from the pitcher in a slow deliberate pour, as if measuring precious potions.

“What do you shoot em with?” I asked distractedly, the wine having sharpened my low-common-denominator conversation skills.

“Thirty-ought-six. Some guys I know hunt ’em with .45 magnums. Wait till they charge right up to them, and then,
POW
. Right between the eyes.” He touched his index finger to the top of his nose.

“No shit?” I said, genuinely impressed, trying to picture a bearded pipe fitter standing in the dark undergrowth of a canyon in the middle of nowhere aiming a high-caliber handgun at a charging boar.

“They’re insane,” Brad said.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Yep,” Brad repeated, as if speaking to a Doppelgänger. “They’re insane.”

“Now, do you haul ’em out, skin ’em, and eat ’em?” I asked, not really wanting to know.

The boar hunter turned his head slowly and stared at me for a moment with dark thumbtack eyes. “Yeah, I
fucking
eat ’em.”

“How do they taste?”

“Like pig.”

“Makes sense.”

Jack returned and sat down on my left, sandwiching me between Brad and him. He was beaming.

“Did you call Babs?”

“Yeah.”

“How is she?”

“Fine.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing. What do you mean
nothing
? What does she think’s happening?”

“I don’t know what she thinks. I don’t care,” Jack said defensively. “So, we’re invited to dinner over at Terra’s.”

I turned away. “Not interested.”

“Come on, Homes. They’re going to bust open some high-end Pinots. You saw that cellar. Don’t be a killjoy.”

“I don’t care. I’m not going to be a part of it.”

“Part of what?” Jack asked, defying me to moralize.

“Your disaffection from Babs’s family.”

“
Disaffection
? Jesus. I’m trying to get you lined up here,” he said.

“I don’t need any help,” I said.

“Bullshit. If it wasn’t for me, you would never have gotten to know Maya.”

I didn’t say anything. He was right, of course. I wouldn’t have gotten to know her, and though I had no

“So, what do you think?” Brad blared in my other ear.

I had forgotten all about him. “Think about what?”

“Goin’ hunting.”

I leaned back on my bar stool, opened my left hand, and gestured toward Jack. “This is my friend, Jack. Jack, meet Brad. He hunts wild boar. At night. They’re nocturnal creatures, right, Brad?”

Brad nodded with the beer glass tipped to his mouth, then turned. From underneath a moustache of foam I heard a simple “Yep” emerge.

I turned to Jack. He was taking in an eyeful of Brad in his white T-shirt, faded jean jacket, stippled complexion, and half empty pitcher of Budweiser, and didn’t like what he saw.

“So, do you want to go boar hunting?” I asked an incredulous Jack.

“What?”

“Into the wild,” I replied, raising my glass, suddenly giddy.

“We’re supposed to be over at Terra’s at eight.”

“Let’s bring some boar to the barbecue!” I exclaimed.

“You’ve lost it, Homes.” Jack raised his head to Brad and shouted over the racket, “Some other time there, Davy Crockett.”

I slammed my fist histrionically on the bar. “I want to go boar hunting!”

“Oh, come on,” Jack moaned. “What the fuck do you want to do that for?”

“Everything’s fucking nutty. Might as well traipse off here with Brad. Make it a real bachelor’s week.”

“Just come with me,” Jack said. He clutched my shoulder pleadingly. “I need you.”

“I don’t want to have dinner with those women,” I said, raising my hands in a gesture of surrender.