Rage Against the Dying

Thirty-seven





I had ordered a third, or maybe a fourth, vodka. Emery didn’t pour it immediately, stood looking at me with a question he was used to asking. I spoke to show him I wasn’t hammered, could still reasonably operate my tongue and lips. “What happened first, Cheri come to work in a cop bar or Cheri studying criminal justice? Or is it just a coincidence?”

“There is a reason for everything. Cheri lost her older sister in an act of violence. You would understand how victims of violence are drawn to it.”

“Was it a long time ago?”

Emery’s eyes grew large with sadness. “What do you consider a long time?”

“I’d like to talk to her about it sometime.”

“If you continue to be a customer, someday you will. Just not right away. Are you sure you want another drink?”

Seeing the way he cared about Cheri’s feelings made me more depressed. I canceled the vodka and asked for my burrito to go. Cheri brought it in a Styrofoam container and tucked it with a plastic fork and extra napkins into a brown paper bag.

The Quinn family was also used to having designated enablers. Emery told me he’d have Cheri take me home if I’d be able to show her where I lived. I was ashamed for anyone to know I couldn’t go home, that I was staying within a short drive at the Sheraton, and suggested they call me a cab instead. The cab took about twenty minutes to get there so I reordered my vodka while I waited. By this time the place was empty except for me. The three of us talked a little, that inane bar talk that seems like scintillating conversation when you’re half-snockered.

Jokes are good at a time like that, especially if you’ve told them several times before, because you’ve practiced the words and can get them out with less stumbling. I told the old one about the guy who’s afraid to fly because of the possibility of a bomb on the plane. “His therapist says, ‘The odds of flying on a plane with a bomb are a million to one.’ The guy says that’s not good enough. ‘Well,’ the therapist says, ‘the odds of being on a plane where there are two bombs is a billion to one. So carry a bomb with you.’”

Thirty years ago that joke was funny, but Cheri and Emery looked at me without laughing. “I don’t know, maybe bombs on planes are not so funny anymore,” Emery said soothingly, placating me as only a bartender could who has avoided attacks by mean drunks on countless occasions. Cheri sat on the bar stool next to me and lightly rubbed my back. I didn’t like her for it.

“Everything is funny,” I said. “It has to be or we’re all f*cked.”

I don’t know if I said something witty or if he was just surprised to hear that kind of talk come from a woman who looks like me. This time he belly-laughed, and he had the belly to do it with. “Now that, that I can agree with.”

The taxi finally arrived before I could make an even bigger fool of myself and they all helped me in and the driver took me to the hotel. I was sobered slightly on the way there by marking the passage of each block, hoping the taxi driver was not an assassin and I had just done something really stupid. I tested the door handle so I could jump out in case he didn’t make the right turn on Speedway.

But the taxi driver dropped me off without trying to kill me and I made it into the room without any help. I got a couple of towels from the bathroom and hung them over the pictures over the bed so I could stop imagining what I saw. I nearly fell off the bed, then fell onto it and stayed there while the room spun around me.