Sideways (9 page)

Jack reached for his wine and took a sip. “She didn’t answer. Voice mail.”

“Did you leave a message?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t apologize. I told her I was getting drunk and was going to go have sex with the first woman I met.”

“That’s lovely.”

“She’s pissing me off.”

“You did
not
say that, I hope.”

“No, of course not. I told her I loved her and was looking forward to next week.”

“So what’d she say that pissed you off so much you hung up on her?”

“She asked me to cut the trip short and join her up in Paso Robles with the relatives.” He mimicked a woman’s falsetto. “And sit around and watch women crochet and titter about weddings.”

“What’d you say?”

“Fuck that.
No
is what I said,” Jack spat. “And that’s why she’s all bent out of shape now and won’t”—Jack broke into a high-pitched voice again—“answer the phone.” Jack motioned to the bartender. “Hit us again, big guy.”

The bartender refreshed our glasses. I took a sip, but realized I wasn’t really tasting the wine anymore. The colored lights had begun to grow fuzzy, and with all the karaoke nonsense it was becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish what Jack was saying. I was sinking into myself and losing ground. I needed a pill or a bed or something.

I think Jack was complaining about Babs cramping his style when suddenly he chopped off his rant, jabbed me hard in the shoulder, and whispered: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, nine o’clock sharp.”

I rotated my head in the direction he was staring and there was Maya, changed into a black cashmere sweater

“It’s on us this time,” Jack shouted over the epigone Mick Jagger now mangling “Satisfaction.”

Maya raised her glass chest-high in a thank you.

“And thanks for the bottle of Pinot,” Jack added.

“My pleasure,” she said, taking a sip.

“My name’s Jack. And you know Miles, right?” Maya knitted her brow and narrowed her eyes and pretended not to remember me for a moment, suppressing a smile. “Yeah, I know Miles.”

Jack folded his arms across his chest and leaned back on his stool to afford me a more luxurious view. I lifted a hand in a timid wave, but didn’t say anything, fearful that I would slur my words.

Maya languorously lit an American Spirit cigarette and spewed smoke gently through pursed lips. She turned to us and recited: “The moment two people fall in love there is already sown the seed of tragedy.” She flicked an ash off her cigarette. “Yeah, I remember Miles.”

I dropped my head and stared down at the bar, vaguely recalling our wine-soaked philosophical exploration of love and relationships a year ago. When I looked up, Jack’s face was etched in a disapproving frown. He shook his head reprovingly at me, then turned back to Maya. “He’s got a whole new outlook on life,” he reported.

“Oh, yeah,” she replied, inhaling her cigarette. “Does he believe there’s hope for men and women now?”

“I think he does,” Jack said with mock sincerity.

Maya pushed her lips out and nodded thoughtfully.

The Jagger impersonator stumbled off the stage into the

The Clubhouse quieted briefly and the reception on Maya’s voice came through a little clearer. She was saying, “Yeah, he must have been really drunk that night, because …” when I impetuously rose from my bar stool and weaved crookedly in the direction of the stage. I could hear Jack expostulating until the noise of the crowd, primed for a fresh lamb to the slaughter, swallowed it whole.

I blinked at the song list on the monitor and selected the first one that came into focus, an oldie called “Crystal Blue Persuasion.” I punched the START button, took the microphone in my hand, and brought it to my mouth. It hit my teeth with a shrill reverb. The crowd immediately started jeering, impatient to crucify me.

The music started and I sang the words as they scrolled down the monitor. I have a distinct memory of trying to inject some feeling into my phrasing, but I’m guessing I sounded more like an anguished parrot. There was something liberating in the spontaneity of the whole thing at the time—the colored lights raying off the rotating mirror ball on the ceiling, people I had never seen before contorting their faces in reaction to my performance—but, in time, it would become only an embarrassing memory.

When the song was over, I leapt jauntily off the stage, waved to the heckling locals, and returned to my bar stool, blood throbbing hot in my face. When I finally looked over to Jack and Maya for a reaction, Jack fixed me with an expression of disgust. Then he just started slowly shaking his head back and forth.

“I didn’t know you could sing, Miles,” Maya finally said.

“Me either.” I drained my glass and signaled the bartender with an elaborate circling of my finger for an emergency refill. The bartender hurried over with the bottle and topped off my glass.

“So,” Maya said, “your friend informs me you’re getting published?”

My stomach lurched as if a trapdoor had just swung open beneath me. “What?” I looked to Jack for help.

Jack shot me one of his don’t-fuck-it-up-brother glowers that he was fond of.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, an excess of wine having unleashed the liar in me.

“That’s great,” Maya said. “Congratulations.”

“And I’m optioning the film rights,” Jack boasted.

Maya ignored his embellishing of the lie and directed her attention to me. “You’re a big Pinot fan, aren’t you, Miles?”

“Absolutely. Nectar of the gods.”

“I hear you’re going to the festival Friday?”

“That’s the reason we’re up here.” I raised my glass in a toast to future intemperance. “Are you going to be there?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” She inhaled her cigarette until the end burned bright orange. Her eyes reflected the hot light. “So, what are you two guys up to tonight?”

“We’ll probably go back to our room and crash,” I said without thinking.

“Oh.” Maya frowned and stubbed out her cigarette in an apparent show of disappointment. I couldn’t tell if she was insulted or not. She finished her drink and then got up from her stool. “Have a good one,” she said, brushing by us. She vanished as quickly as she had appeared, as if she were an apparition.

Jack stared at the entrance with the defeated expression
crash
? What is up with that shit?” He tapped his finger against my head and I flicked it away.

“I’m tired, and that’s probably what we
are
going to do, isn’t it?” I said, bone weary.

“The girl was looking to have some fun, the two of you have a little history, and you tell her we’re going to go back to our motel room on a Saturday night and
crash
. Jesus, Miles!” Jack slapped his forehead so hard it left a red imprint of his hand. “The woman digs you.”

“Bullshit.”

“She lit up like a pinball machine when I told her your book was getting published.”

“Great! Now, I’ve got another fucking lie to live down. Thank you, Jack.” I took a soul-searching slug of wine.

“Oh, bullshit. There are a million ways out of
that
. The point is, she wanted to party.”

“What difference does it make? The woman’s married.”

“The woman’s definitely
not
married!”

“What? You asked her?”

“Miles.” Jack grabbed my shoulder and steadied me on my stool. “She wasn’t wearing the rock.”

“What?”

“She wasn’t wearing the rock,” he said, enunciating each word.

At this point in my memory, time breaks up into fragments. There was a segue that revealed itself as one of those inebriated ellipses where segments of the night’s events mysteriously disappear. All I remember is the two of

“She wasn’t wearing the rock?”

“She wasn’t wearing the rock!” Jack yelled back.

Suddenly, a disembodied male voice erupted from one of the rooms. “Hey, would you two assholes shut up about that fucking rock so we can get some sleep!”

Jack and I bent toward each other and simultaneously put our index fingers to our lips, shushing each other until we were wheezing with laughter. Then we tiptoed back to our room, high-stepping like cat burglars in a dinner theater farce.

The red light was blinking on the phone when we clamored into our unit. Jack turned and pointed a finger at me, “Do not answer the phone under any circumstances,
comprende
?”

“
Sí
,
amigo.
”

As if on cue, the phone began ringing. Eight annoyingly loud rings later, I said to Jack, “Answer it, man. Talk to her. She’s probably worried about you.”

“Good.”

“What is up with you two, anyway?” I said, turning toward the bathroom, not waiting for a reply.

I slumped onto the toilet, my head in my hands, too enervated and worried about my aim to pee standing up. I wanted the drama with Jack and Babs to be over so I could get some sleep.

When I hauled myself back into the main room, Jack was holding his cell to one ear. He raised an index finger to his lips.

I struggled out of my clothes and climbed into my queen. The mattress felt firm and the springs moaned in response

After a moment, I overheard Jack say, “It’s me. I’m back in the room. Call me tomorrow. Love you.”

I heard Jack undress and crawl into bed. Then, sweet darkness as he switched off the lights. The air conditioner hummed a monotone in the background. Outside, crickets revved up their chirring. “Voice mail,” Jack said.

“Oh,” I replied.

“She probably turned her ringer off.”

“Maybe she’s getting pounded by some guy she picked up in a bar in retaliation.”

My words hung in the silence. Then, Jack finally said: “Just before I’m about to go to sleep, you perversely put that image in my imagination.”

“You have no imagination; only a dick.”

“You’re a twisted fuck, Miles.”

I pulled the covers over my head and laughed uncontrollably.

In the middle of the night I surfaced from a dreamless slumber, roused by the muffled sounds of someone talking. I propped myself up on my elbows and blinked the room into focus. A band of white light leaked from the space at the bottom of the bathroom door. I could make out Jack’s voice saying something in low, earnest tones. My bladder was ballooned from all the wine and I leapt out of bed, practically hopping about in agony. In desperation, I found a plastic cup on the nightstand and urinated lustily into it. I replaced the cup on the dresser and quickly lapsed back into sleep.

Halfway to morning, I heard a banshee wail and bolted upright. The nightstand light illuminated Jack, hunched

“What?”

“That’s not La Rinconada.”

“I had to go. You were on the phone in the bathroom.”

“You motherfucking clown,” he bellowed, hurling the cup at the wall.

W
e woke midmorning. I felt ragged from lack of sleep. Jack had been sawing logs all night, and I had been besieged with doomful dreams that left me feeling empty.

We hauled ourselves out of bed and cleaned up in a grouchy silence. With wine-numbed brains and rubbery legs we trekked as if wading through hip-deep water to Ellen’s Pancake House, a popular breakfast spot in the center of Buellton. We were both weighed down with man-sized hangovers and anorexics’ appetites as we commandeered a red-checked table near the window. Around us, a grotesque diorama peopled by obese tourists and locals jackknifed over their eight-egg omelets, pork-chop-and-fried-egg combos, and tall stacks drenched in imitation maple syrup assaulted our bleary, bloodshot eyes.

A smiling, pregnant waitress, whose otherwise pleasant face was disfigured by a cleft palate, appeared with a glass beaker of steaming coffee and a pair of laminated menus. Her compulsory cheerfulness sounded psychopharmacologically

“Please,” Jack said in a downcast voice.

She filled our mugs, then minced her way to another table.

As I fumbled with a miniature plastic half-and-half container that stubbornly refused to open, Jack decided we were finally awake enough to do a postmortem on the night before. “I cannot believe you got up and sang ‘Crystal Blue Persuasion.’”

“What was that?” I said, pretending not to remember.

“Karaoke, man. You don’t remember?” Jack said, unconvinced.

“Vaguely. I’m not sure I want a recapitulation. I’ve got enough bad memories competing with one another this fine morning.” I emptied two dairy creamers into my coffee and sipped the weak, flavorless brew.

Jack continued to shake his head in incomprehension while going over his menu. “What’d you do that for? In front of that girl?”

“I was trying to impress her.”

“Why didn’t you just jump up on the bar and take a dump?”

I made a face.

“And what’d you pick ‘Crystal Blue Persuasion’ for? That song’s so fucking retro. Maya probably thinks we’re older than we really are.”

“What would you have suggested?”

Jack sat back in his chair. “Oh, I don’t know. What about Merle Haggard’s ‘I Got So Drunk, The Gal Left Town’?” He stared at me in silent fury. “Jesus fucking Christ, Miles.”

“All right, let’s not rehash the evening.” I lifted a hand in protest.

Playing the thespian, Jack projected the soul of a human into the bottle of ketchup sitting on the table and addressed it: “I guess Miles realizes the errors of his ways.”

“Obviously, I’d had a little too much vino.”

“Obviously.” Jack picked up his menu and hid behind it.

I transfered my gaze out the window and took in the sun-drenched morning. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

Jack lowered his menu to appraise me for sarcasm, then glanced out the window. “Beautiful,” he concurred, not really caring.

The waitress approached with her bright manufactured smile. Jack ordered a Denver omelet and I, stomach still pitching about, decided on the oatmeal. Coffee cups were refreshed.

The food came quickly, as if it had been precooked. Jack ate ravenously while I toyed with my glop of instant oats.

Breakfasts pushed to the side, Jack lingered over the newspaper while I got out my Santa Barbara County wine guide and gave it my undivided attention. It was nearing eleven already: our stomachs were on the mend, the coffee was helping us make more sense of the world, and our frayed nerves were in need of a soothing libation.