Always Happy Hour: Stories(4)

When I finish my beer, they’re still at it. There is nothing more disgusting, really, than people enjoying themselves so thoroughly when you’re miserable.

I toss my bottle cap, which I’ve been clutching so tightly there’s a ring in the center of my palm, out the window and take the last beer from the refrigerator. The blond guy will have to leave soon to go to church, and this makes me feel a little better. I know he’ll hate himself, and he’ll hate her for making him hate himself. In half an hour he’ll be staring at the back of the pretty church girl he likes who is dating someone else, someone stronger than he is, stronger than he could ever be. He’ll look down at his wrinkled khakis and know he’ll never have her.

I remove the bottle from the window and turn on the air conditioner. Then I call Ben, wake him from a nap. Ben does whatever I say because he’s in love with me and sometimes I sleep with him. He always lets me initiate things, and I do it whenever I feel like what I owe him is more than I want to owe.

“Let’s go drinking,” I say. “I’m out of beer.”

He says he’s tired and hungover and then sighs and tells me to give him an hour. An hour is a reasonable amount of time so I agree. I’ll have to shower and find something to wear. I’ll have to put on some eyeliner and smudge concealer under my eyes. I know where we’ll go, where we always go: the karaoke bar where people drink at every hour of the day. It’s a dive but there’s a jukebox with plenty of Johnny Cash and the toilets always flush and they don’t care how drunk you get. Some places will kick you out if they see you fall off a barstool or fold your arms on the bar to have a catnap but not Shenanigan’s.

The blond guy mumbles something, undershirt going over his head. Maybe he’ll run home and make himself presentable before church. Maybe he’ll punch himself in the chest and tell God how sorry he is for having sex with an atheist from New York City, once again, how he will stop, how he has already stopped because it was the very last time.

Instead of showering, I lie in bed staring at the tops of trees.

Our apartment takes up the entire second floor of an old colonial. We each have two large rooms and our own bathroom. We share a kitchen, a dining area, and a small alcove where our washer and dryer are stacked. A man and his dead lover’s son live in the renovated space below—they don’t like each other, but they each own half and it’s a bad time to sell (according to Melinda). I listen for their raised voices, for any voices at all, but it’s always so quiet down there. I imagine them eating and watching television in their house slippers, completely separate, as if the other does not exist.

Ben calls me from his car. I put on my favorite pair of jeans and a clean shirt, check my face in the mirror, and then stand on the toilet to check my body. I need new clothes and shoes. I have no idea how I’m managing to live off my graduate student assistantship—it is so little money—but I am. My peers take out loans so they can go to fancy dinners, buy dresses and high heels.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” I say, settling myself into the passenger seat of his gray four-door sedan.

“No problem. Where do you want to go?”

“We’re not going to play that game, are we?” I ask, flipping the ashtray closed.

“Well,” he says.

Shenanigan’s is less than three miles away but in a town this small that’s far. I keep moving to smaller and smaller towns and the distances grow accordingly. Five miles used to be nothing. Now three seems excessive, ridiculous. And if it’s cold or rainy out, forget it. My most recent ex-boyfriend grew up in Los Angeles and thought nothing of driving fifteen miles to eat sushi, which was one of the reasons it didn’t work out between us. Not the distance, exactly, but the way distances framed our worlds.

“You sleep all day?” I ask.

“I stayed up last night.”

“You were playing that video game again.”

He opens the ashtray and lights a cigarette.

I’ve watched him play his game before; it’s just a bunch of code, an indecipherable collection of numbers and signs that made me feel dumb so I made fun of it. And of course there’s a girl on there he likes, a girl who lives a thousand miles away so he can imagine her beautiful and accommodating, so he can imagine they might fall in love.

We sit at the bar, the side closest to the bathroom and jukebox. Ben hands Michelle his debit card and she brings us two Miller Lites. I know he won’t let me split the bill when it comes, but I don’t feel too bad about it because even if we take shots it won’t be more than thirty dollars.

“You want to play pool?” he asks.

“No way.”

He goes to the bathroom while I drink my beer and try not to make eye contact with anyone. The other grad students only come on Thursdays because it’s steak night: a slab of meat, a baked potato, and a salad for seven dollars.

When he returns, I tell him that I listened to Melinda have sex for an hour earlier, that I thought it would go on forever.

“Were you just standing outside her door?” he asks.

“Pretty much.”

“How would you feel if she did that to you?”

“You don’t like her, what do you care?”

“I just think it’s rude,” he says.

“People in New York share everything—they hang a curtain in the middle of a room and pretend they’re alone.”