For What it's Worth

I had thrown back a couple of beers and found myself pacing back and forth through the crowd and gallery. I had donated a painting for auction. In front of all of the donations sheets of paper were taped to a counter and people wrote their names and bids. Eighty dollars seemed to be the average and I didn't want to know I had pulled any less than that. I hadn't worked hard on my painting and I wasn't particularly proud of it, but I was as self conscious and selfish as anyone else. I would drink a beer. Pace through the gallery. Head back to the bar and get another beer. It took less for me to propose to Marie. I stood in the doorway and smiled and nodded as people passed me. I decided I'd try again in an hour or so and headed outside for air.

William was outside. His band was playing later in the evening and he was smoking and talking to a girl we both knew. He looked a mess in a way girls love and employers hate and I didn't think it was an act. He leaned in a brick doorway and saw me and nodded. I nodded back and walked over. 

"Hey man, how are you?" he asked.

"All right. Holly, how are you?" I asked the girl.

"Not bad. I saw you have a painting up for auction."

"Yeah," William said. "Looks good man."

"Let's not talk about that," I said. "I've never done this before."

"Done what?" Holly asked.

"Displayed my shit."

"Oh, you're nervous?" William asked.

"No, I just, I don't want to know how much it's worth to people, you know?"

"Oh, I get it," William said. "But you know, it doesn't matter. You didn't paint it to pay the rent, you know?"

"Yeah."

"Have you looked at the bid sheet?" Holly asked.

"No. I've been avoiding it."

"Oh," she said. "I'll be right back." She turned and left and went into the gallery.

"She's going to go see," William said.

"I know."

"You want a smoke, man?" 

"Please."

He pulled one out and handed it to me. "Need a light?"

"Yeah."

He patted his pockets. "Oh yeah. Holly lit mine." He looked over my shoulder. "Here she comes."

I turned. "You have a light?" I asked her.

"I thought you didn't smoke." 

"Tonight I do."

"Okay." she pulled a lighter from her purse and handed it to me. I lit my cigarette and I almost immediately regretted it. I tried to wash the taste out with the last of my beer.

"So, you want to know?" she asked.

"Not really."

"I know," she said. "I'd be happy."

I took another drag. 

"Is it over a hundred?"

She laughed. "No. Nothing in there is. Not even the huge Xena portrait."

"I saw that," William said. "I was going to bid on it."

"Were you going to bid on mine?" I asked. 

"Unfair."

"Sorry."

"It's near a hundred," Holly said.

"That's good enough for me. Don't tell me details."

"Okay."

William finished his cigarette and threw it to the ground. "I have to set up. See you inside?"

"Of course."

"All right. See you Holly." 

She waved and William walked inside. "I'd bid on it, but I don't have any money."

"Fair enough."

"It's better than I expected."

"Thanks Holly."

"High five?" she asked.

I gave her a high five and later paintings were selling for two hundred or more and my painting sold for less than a hundred and even though I pretended to not care, I did. I hadn't worked hard on my painting and I wasn't particularly proud of it, but I was as self-conscious and selfish as anyone else. I mumbled to myself all the way to the car.

Things are All Right.

I kept thinking about how nice it would be to have been wealthy in the 1960's. A film star or a singer, or some sort of royalty. I could lay on the deck of my yacht in the Mediterranean and the sun would graze over me and into me and the sky would be the bluest of all the blues and further than ever and all I would see. The sound of the water lapping up against the sides of the yacht and the birds in the distance and my friends on the yacht speaking quietly to each other and laughing and smiling and that moment in time in 1966, at the height of my freedom, would be the moment that could sustain me for the rest of my life, or lives if I believed that sort of thing. Before the war. Before the moon. Before Woodstock and AIDS and Reagan and three button suits and the internet. Only me and the sun and the water. And the Beach Boys on a small radio nearby.

The Beach Boys are on the jukebox behind me. Marie is cleaning glasses behind the bar and I'm staring into my Tiki Tango. It has a lot of rum in it and is a sunset of colors. It's fine. A little sweet for my tastes, but it is fine. It's raining pretty solid outside and even though it is the early afternoon it is dark. A man sits a few seats from me and keeps checking his phone. He's older. Maybe retired. I think about how I'll be older soon and possibly retired and how it isn't really far from now. The idea depresses me but I think that it isn't a great problem because I'll only regret wasting my life for a few decades and then I'll die and won't care. I try to be optimistic.

I throw back the Tiki Tango. It's more than a shot or even a double but I'm drinking for free and have nothing to do. I set the empty cup on the inside edge of the bar for Marie and go back to looking at the short story I was writing and hating. I knew there had to be a way to finish it. I just needed the right drink and the right song on the jukebox and it would come. Until then I figured I'd struggle and suffer and cross shit out and rewrite sentences I'd cross out and rewrite later. 

Another man came into the bar and sat down. He was also older. he seemed healthy for his age, but I thought that that was only if he was as old as I thought. If he was twenty or so he'd be in a terrible state. I thought that I was nearly thirty and wondered why I used twenty as an example of youth and felt a sting of sadness again and knew I was ridiculous. 

"Another?" Marie asked. She leaned over the bar at me and smiled. She wasn't making much money today but no one had been a prick to her and that was enough sometimes. 

"Maybe just a beer honey," I said. 

"You don't like them?"

"No, they're fine, they're good, but I just think maybe I shouldn't have so much rum this early."

"They're too sweet for you aren't they?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe."

"Men drink sweet drinks too."

"No they don't."

"Okay," she said. "What kind of beer?"

"Longboard."

"Oh, men drink Hawaiian beers?"

"Beer from the land of volcanoes and fucking hurricanes and belly dancers? Don't give me your shit."

"Oh, I'll give you my shit," she said. "I'll give you my shit and you'll like it." She leaned over the bar and pursed her lips at me and I kissed her. She took my beer out of the cooler, popped the cap off and handed it to me. "There' you go you big tough man you."

"Thanks baby."

"What can I get you?" she asked the man who had sat down.

I went back to my story. I was having trouble with a sentence that said everything I wanted it to but didn't seem to reflect the tone or urgency I was looking for. I assumed I would eventually not give a shit but decided to give it a few more minutes before I moved on. I read and tapped my pen against the notebook and sipped my beer and stared at it.

The two older men had begun to speak to each other and one laughed at the other. I looked at them and they were smiling. I smiled at this tiny and priceless moment of life and the two men spoke a while longer as friends and Marie would serve me beers and kiss me sometimes and I was doing okay with my story. I would grow old and tired and die and never be wealthy on the Mediterranean, but this life right then wasn't a thing to forget. Things were all right.

Now What?

I kept finding less to do. My index finger on my right hand was swollen and I did not know why. I thought I might have jammed it in a door or hit it with a hammer earlier and both were possible but I'd never know. I had been near both doors and hammers and I thought that I must not have been paying attention. I stood at the window of the bedroom and it was night and winter. I could see the orange streetlight glow and my reflection but only black otherwise. My reflection was ugly and I thought that meant I was. I was young and high and this wasn't my bedroom. It belonged to a girl I had met and been around lately. Her mattress was on the floor and the room was small and lit with one un-shaded lamp. The light was harsh so we never looked in that corner of the room. It was 1997 and her mother was somewhere else and her sister was somewhere else and she was in the bathroom. Her CD player, silver and small on the floor, was playing something I had never heard before loudly and I liked it. The loneliest sounding woman I had ever heard sang shrill over ghostly and orchestral drum beats and a guitar came in, distant and thin, and my reflection was ugly, so maybe I was ugly, but I stared into that black and she opened the bathroom door and came back into the bedroom and I heard her lay down on the bed.

"You want to do something?"

"Like what?" I asked.

"I don't know. Take off your clothes."

"Okay."

"You want me to take off mine?"

"Sure."

"Not yet."

"All right."

I pulled my shirt off and the hard yellow light of the lamp made my stomach seem to glow and I unbuckled my belt and kicked my shoes off and dropped my pants to the floor and pulled my socks off and looked at her.

"Let's get high," she said.

"I think I am high."

"You ever snort pills?"

"Like Tylenol?"

She laughed. "No, you fucking idiot. Like Ritalin, or you know, whatever's in orange bottles."

"No."

"Okay. Well, you are now." She got up and she was shorter than me. Her hair was long and brown and fell in front of her face and she tucked it behind one ear and left the room. 

I followed her.

She was in her mothers room, in the nightstand, sitting on the edge of the bed bent. Only the light from the hall lit the room. She was rifling through the drawers and I watched from the doorway as she would throw different things onto the floor and sometimes an orange bottle onto the bed.

"She keeps all her old prescriptions and re-fills them as long as she can. It's a fucking pharmacy in here. Come over here."

I stepped onto and walked across the bed to her and laid down on my back next to her and next to the small but growing pile of bottles. 

"God she keeps the stupidest fucking shit," she said, throwing a jewelry box out the bedroom door and down the hallway. "Here," she turned to me and picked one of the bottles and looked at the label. "Take this one. Procardia."

"What is it?"

She looked at the label. "Blood something. Here." She handed me a large book and a candlestick holder by the bed. "Just crush it and snort it."

I sat up and set the pill on the book and with the base of the candlestick holder, crushed it. It had a casing around it that I imagined was made of sugar but looked like plastic. Inside was a white powder. I tossed the remnants of the casing across the room and got ready to snort the powder.

"Wait," she said. "Like this." She used her finger to make small long piles and said "It's better if you use something small and flat, like a razor, or a credit card, but whatever. This way, it's like, nose sized." She laughed.

I began to snort and it stung and I could taste it and I sneezed and blew most of it all across the bed and my legs.

She laughed. "Oh, Jesus! You really are a fucking rookie! Let me show you." She took the book and candlestick holder and crushed a pill, made lines and plugging one nostril, bent over and the line was gone. She lifted her head and inhaled deep and brushed her hair behind her ear and looked at me. She smiled.

"You want me to take my clothes off too?" she asked.

"Sure."

"You have to do one though, and not blow it all over the fucking place."

"Okay," I said. I could still hear the haunting, simple, and wonderful band playing in the other room. I crushed a pill, stared it down, and plugged a nostril.

"Now, just sort of breathe it in, but, forcefully, I guess," she said. "Smooth, but, you know, like you mean it."

I didn't blow any anywhere but I could still taste it and it felt like it was all still in my nostril and I wanted to sneeze and choke but I breathed deep another few times and was fine then. 

"Fuck yeah man," she said. "Let's do more!"

"Take your clothes off."

She laughed. "Yeah. I'll get right on that," she said. "Jesus." She crushed another pill and then it was gone. "I don't feel shit with these," she said.

"Try something else."

"That's the fucking spirit." She pulled another bottle out of the pile. "Well, wouldn't you fuckin' know it," she said. "Ritalin. Must be my sisters. Well, poor mans coke, down the hatch!"

One, two gone, then it was my turn. The CD in the other room ended.

"Shit, I'll be right back. What do you want to listen to?"

"Something I've never heard," I said.

"All right," she laughed. "I have no fucking idea what that means." She jumped off the bed and I crushed two Ritalin because she had and I snorted both of them and the taste in the back of my throat was now worse and I coughed to not choke and then the light in the hall dimmed. New music was playing. Loud and fast. Heavy. 

"You like Life of Agony?" she asked. I looked up and she was in the doorway.

"Never heard of them."

"Only this record is good."

She crawled up onto the bed and up my legs and pulled the book and candlestick holder from my hands and threw them across the room and her shirt was off and her hair fell into my face and she kissed me. Her tongue against mine, her skin against mine.

"You wanna fuck?" she asked.

"Sure," I said. 

"Tough shit." She sat up and moved her hair back behind her ear. 

"Okay." I laid back on the bed. "Now what?" I stared up at her. She pressed her hands into my stomach.

"How should I know?" She laid her head on my stomach and that was wonderful and good enough.

You Ain't Nothin'

Marie was working at the hotel tiki bar again. Her first night was the first night of an Elvis festival and no one had expected the turnout. I sat at the bar and drank cheap beer as a line formed behind me out of the bar, down the hall way, and outside. People wanted food for the show and apparently, you could only order food in the bar. Everyone in the line bitched about the lack of staff and it should have been foreseen but it wasn't.

The line behind me bored away and I understood how forest animals feel when a new highway tears through their homes and silence. Elvis, Elvis, cheeseburgers, bitch bitch bitch. Everyone was rude under their breath and most bothersome was that no one was rude to anyone's face. No one knew I was the bartenders husband and they told me all they thought and I sipped at my beer and Marie worked hard to make up for the mismanagement. 

The hotel kitchen was out of chicken fingers. Everyone wanted chicken fingers. They were out of fries. Fries came with everything. The line backed up so much that people ordered their drinks and would need another by the time they ordered their food. It should have been foreseen but it wasn't.

A year earlier I had watched the hotel owner watch a man die and show complete indifference and tonight it was the same. In some corner of my mind I wondered and worried about him.

The Ventures played loud on the jukebox and that made the whole chaos better.

Food orders came up from the kitchen and in a frenzy Marie tried to keep up, taking orders and calling done orders out and sometimes no one came for them and I thought about just eating them but I wasn't hungry and I was getting fat.

Elvis impersonators were everywhere. In line. Mingling. In the hall. Behind me. Next to me. All of their women were sad and the same. Not depressed, but overweight and dead eyed and when I could hear them, speaking slowly. I thought it must take a certain type of woman to love an Elvis. I was glad I wasn't an Elvis and I couldn't understand what made someone want to be an Elvis. Who am I to judge the pursuit of happiness, I thought. Who am I anyway?

I kept drinking.