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"It stinks! The
whole rotten world stinks to high heaven."
"Tell
me about it!" said the sweet young thing.
She meant it as a simple acknowledgment, a kindred spirit commiserating
with a lost soul, but snockered as I was, I took it as a request for details,
and was more than willing to oblige.
I started talking about Gina, how for those twenty-five years
all I ever wanted to do was please her but how I never went about it right.
"We were's differ'nt 's night and day, me and
Gina," I slurred to her across the three-stool-wide, smoky expanse
separating us. The conversation was all one sided and came in spurts.
"Dunno how she put up with me all those years...
Never could give her what she deserved... She was a queen... Shooda
hadda palace... stedda bouncin'
round fum one 'partment to the next... married
t'a bum like me...
"Never stayed with a job long enough to get anywhere... Always a golden opportunity knockin' at the end of the
rainbow... Just around the bend on
the other side of the fence... where
the grass is greener."
When inebriated, I tend somewhat to mix my metaphors. She was a good listener, though.
There was just once, there, when I got the feeling she was trying to get
out of the conversation. The vibes
she was sending out seemed to be saying, "Tell it to the chaplain."
I was ready to give it up anyway. By
that time I had developed a serious case of hiccups.
"Sorry... Didn't
mean to dump on ya," I managed to get out between hics.
"No problem."
She smiled just a little and it seemed like the room got brighter as she
did. "Sometimes you just need to unload," she said.
Oh did I ever need to unload.
I'd been carrying that burden long enough.
The weight was becoming more than I could handle.
I was wanting to tell her the whole story. All of it- about Gina, about her love- How she stuck by me all those years when nothing was going
right. Like when the recession hit
and left me without a job, and she went out and got a waitressing gig to keep
the money coming in while I bounced around from one get-rich-scheme to the next,
chasing rainbows that always petered out before leading me to the pot of gold...
Like the heavy drinking that never solved anything, and came close to
destroying everything we had... Like
the middle-age-crazies that got the better of me when I suddenly realized I was
forty and a nobody. God, what she
had to put up with. The woman was a
saint.
But we had survived all that.
I finally managed to kick the booze, and with the rebirth of my
self-esteem our relationship had grown stronger than ever.
I
wanted to tell this gal about North Carolina.
About how we'd answered an ad in the Fort Lauderdale News and bought a
piece of property on the side of a mountain overlooking a wide spot in the road
called Byrdville... About our dream
of cutting down trees and building a log cabin, so we'd have to a place to run
to and rusticate whenever the rat race became unbearable.
Oh yeah, I wanted to tell her, but it just seemed like it
wasn't any of her damn business. It
was a dream that belonged to me and Gina and I sure wasn't about to share
something as sacred as that with somebody I didn't even know.
Waving my empty glass to get the attention of the balding,
fiftyish saloon keeper, I yelled, "Hey George," for all the world to
hear. "Another one of these
and whatev' my fren is havin'."
That's what I did, all right, and she never saw it coming. Such an innocent little gesture, but it was enough to
obligate her under that unwritten code of the neighborhood tavern.
Her acceptance of that libation made her an officially deputized Mother
Confessor, totally bound and committed to treat anything I tell her from that
point on as sacrosanct.
Well that was the way I saw it anyway in my scotch soaked
mental state, and apparently she didn't have anything better to do for the next
couple of hours, so, what the hell? Why
not?
I blurredly saw her through the smoke filled air as she
raised her vodka/tonic in my direction, moved two stools closer, and said,
"So- you from around here?"
It got smokier and blurrier from then on.
I guess I must have pretty much talked her ear off before passing out.
I have a vague recollection of her waking me up and helping me into a
car.
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