“Well, I still wish he’d be nicer to her,” Lynn says.
Chana rolls her eyes and crunches on ice cubes and disagrees. “You know what it is? Beck is full of herself. And Benji is full of himself. I don’t feel bad for either one of them. She’s got us here pretending she’s a writer and he’s got the world pretending he’s a freaking artisan. What a joke. They both just love themselves. We’re not talking about overly sensitive, tortured souls writing poems about the bleakness of it all or whatever.”
Lynn is bored and I am too. She tries to steer Chana away from her diatribe. “I feel so fat right now.”
Chana grunts. Girls are mean. “You see all this crap about his organic soda company?” she asks. “Brooklyn makes me want to move to LA and buy a case of Red Bull and rock out to Mariah Carey.”
“You should tweet that,” Lynn says. “But not in a mean way.”
You are hugging the other writers and this means you will come here next and Lynn is relentlessly kind. She simpers. “I feel bad for her.”
Chana sniffs. “I just feel bad for the cowboys. They deserve better.”
You are sauntering over to the table, which means they have to stop talking about you and I am so happy when you finally arrive and hug your two-faced friends. They make golf claps and sing false praise and you guzzle your whiskey as if you can drink yourself into a Pulitzer Prize.
“Ladies, please,” you say, and you’re tipsier than I realized. “A girl can only tolerate so many compliments and cocktails.”
Chana puts a hand on your arm. “Honey, maybe no more cocktails?”
You pull your arm away. This is you postpartum. You birthed a story, and now what? “I’m fine.”
Lynn motions to the waitress. “Can we snag three picklebacks? This girl needs her liquid courage.”
“I don’t need any courage, Lynn. I just got up there and read a fucking story.”
Chana kisses your forehead. “And you read the shit out of that fucking story.”
You don’t buy it and you push her away. “Fuck both of you.”
It’s good that I see this side of you, the nasty drunk. It’s good to know all sides if you’re gonna love someone and I hate your friends a little less now. They exchange a look and you glance at the bar. “Did Benji already leave?”
“Sweetie, was he supposed to come?”
You sigh like you’ve been here before, like you don’t have the patience now, and you pick up your cracked phone. Lynn grabs it.
“Beck, no.”
“Gimme my phone.”
“Beck,” says Chana. “You invited him and he didn’t show. Leave it alone. Leave him alone.”
“You guys hate Benji,” you say. “What if he got hurt?”
Lynn looks away and Chana snorts. “What if he’s . . . an asshole?”
You can tell Lynn never wants to talk about any of this ever again. Of the three girls, she is the one who will eventually leave New York for a smaller, more manageable city where there are no fiction readings, where girls drink wine, and Maroon 5 plays in the local jukebox on Saturday nights. She will photograph her eventual, inevitable babies with the same gusto with which she photographs the shot glasses, the empty goblets, her shoes.
But Chana’s a lifer, our third wheel for the long haul. “Beck, listen to me. Benji is an asshole. Okay?”
I want to scream YES but I sit. Still. Benji.
“Listen, Beck,” Chana rails on. “Some guys are assholes and you have to accept that. You can buy him all the books in the world and he’s still gonna be Benji. He’ll never be Benjamin or, God forbid, Ben because he doesn’t have to, because he’s a permanent man-baby, okay? He and his club soda can fuck off and so can his stupid ass name. I mean seriously, Benji? Is he kidding? And the way he says it. Like it’s Asian or French. Ben Geeee. Dude, just fuck off.”
Lynn sighs. “I never thought about it that much. Benji. Ben Gee. Gee, Ben.”
There’s a little laughter now and I am learning things about Benji. I don’t like it but I have to accept it. Benji is real and I get another vodka soda. Benji.
You cross your arms and the waitress returns with your picklebacks and the mood has shifted. “So, you guys really liked my story?”
Lynn is quick. “I never knew you knew so much about cowboys.”
“I don’t,” you say and you are in a dark place and you pick up your shot and you knock it back and the girls exchange another look.
“You need to never speak to that fucker ever again,” Chana says.
“Okay,” you agree.
Lynn picks up her shot. Chana picks up her shot. You pick up your empty shot glass.
Chana makes a toast: “To never speaking to that fucker and his bullshit club soda and his fucking haircut and his no-show ass ever again.”
You all clink glasses but those girls have something to drink and your cup runneth empty. I go outside so I’ll know when you leave. Some asshole emerges, vomits.
Pickle juice, I swear.
5
THERE are three of us waiting in the Greenpoint Avenue subway station at 2:45 in the morning and I want to tie your shoelaces. They’re undone. And you’re too drunk to be standing so close to the tracks. You’re leaning with your back against the green pole with your legs extended so that your feet are planted on the yellow warning zone, the edge of the platform. The pole has four sides but you have to stand on the side facing the tracks. Why?
You’ve got me to protect you and the only other person in this hellhole is a homeless dude and he’s on another planet, on a bench, singing: Engine, engine, number nine on the New York transit line, if my train runs off the tracks pick it up pick it up pick it up.
He sings that part of the song on a loop, loudly, and your head is buried in your phone and you can’t type and stand and listen to his musical assault all at the same time. You keep slipping—your shoes are old, no tread—and I keep flinching and it’s starting to get old. We don’t belong in this dump; it’s a minefield of empty cans, wrappers, things nobody wanted, not even the homeless singing dude. The kids you run with live to ride the G train, like it proves they’re down, “real,” but what your friends don’t realize is that this line was better off without them and their cans of Miller High Life and their pickle-scented vomit.
Your foot slips. Again.
You drop your phone and it lands in the yellow zone and you’re lucky it didn’t fall onto the tracks and I get goose bumps and I wish I could grab you by the arm and escort you to the other side of that pole. You’re too close to the tracks, Beck, and you’re lucky I’m here, because if you fell or if some sicko had followed you down, some derelict rapist, you wouldn’t be able to do anything. You’re too drunk. Your laces in your little sneakers are too long, too loose, and the attacker would press you down on the floor or against that pole and he’d tear those already torn tights off and slash those cotton panties from Victoria’s Secret and cover your pink mouth with his oily hand and there’d be nothing you could do and your life would never be the same. You would live in fear of subways, run back to Nantucket, avoid the “Casual Encounters” section of Craigslist, get tested for STDs on a monthly basis for a year, maybe two.
The homeless dude, meanwhile, doesn’t stop singing engine engine and he’s urinated twice and he hasn’t gotten up to do it, either. He’s sitting in his piss and if some sicko followed you down here to finish what you started with those torn stockings, this dude would just keep singing and pissing and pissing and singing.
You slip.
Again.
And you narrow your eyes at the homeless dude and growl but he’s on another planet, Beck. And it’s not his fault you’re wasted.
Did I mention that you’re lucky to have me? You are. I am a Bed-Stuy man by birth, sober, collected, and well aware of my whereabouts and yours. A protector.