All's Well(13)

The middling one is looking at me like I’m a mirage he’s been waiting for all night. He must have been the one who spoke. Gray face. Red, alcoholic eyes. Hand cupped around a squat glass full of golden liquid.

“Excuse me?” I say.

He smiles sadly at me. Beside him sits the fat man hunched over his Scotch with his head down and his hands over his face as though he can’t bear to see. Long, stringy silver hair that is yellowed in places. What I can see of his face through his stubby fingers is terrible—pockmarks, burst veins, a blotchy redness—but familiar. Like a politician I’ve seen in the news. No way. No way could he be at this bar on a random Monday.

To my right, I feel the third man. Slender. Tall. Handsome, even though I see him only out of the corner of my eye. I don’t so much see him as sense him in the back of my neck, the hairs there pricked up. Something tells me not to look directly at him.

The middling man is still smiling at me as though we are both in a tragic dream.

“Where were you?” he asks me.

“Where was I?” I repeat.

He’s looking at me hunched over my glass, how I’m gripping the bar with both hands like it’s the railing of a ship.

“You look like you went somewhere far, far away. In your mind.”

I look at him. How the fuck do you know anything about my mind? But I nod slowly. Yes. “I guess I did.”

Why am I telling him this? This stranger with his alcoholic’s eyes boring into my soul like he thinks he sees it right there under my skin.

“Not the best trip, I take it?” he says.

I don’t know what to say.

“No,” I say before I can even think.

“Too bad.” He makes a sort of sad face. Sympathetic.

Who the hell are you? I want to ask him. Instead tears fill my eyes. Stupidly. He becomes a suited, smiling blur.

“Let me guess. I used to be good at this.” He looks at me with his head cocked to one side.

I gaze at him gazing at me. I should just leave. Tell this man to mind his own business. But I’m pinned there by his watery stare. I take a drink from my glass. Feel him taking me in deeply with his red-rimmed eyes. My hunched frame. My hand gripping the glass. My flushed face, my gaze cloudy with crying and drugs.

“L-four L-five,” he says at last. “On the right. On the left, L-two L-three.”

I burst into fresh tears.

“Prednisone,” he says tenderly, as if it is a word of comfort. “Then steroid shots, am I right? More surgeons than you can count. They have conflicting views about your MRI. Shaking their doctor heads. Playing God. Some say, Let’s cut her open. Others say, Cut what? Nothing to cut. Nothing here. Then what? Physiatrists and their pill solutions. Probably a dozen physical therapists. Some say stretch. Some say don’t dare stretch. Some say to bend forward. Some say to bend backward. Some say, Rest, just rest, sometimes you need to rest. Some say, Keep moving, just keep moving. Movement heals. Movement is king. Some tell you heat. Some tell you ice. Some tell you heat and ice. Some tell you, Oh, whatever feels good. But nothing feels good, does it?”

I shake my head. Nothing, nothing.

“Some tell you, Let pain be your guide.” He smiles. “Some guide, am I right?”

I nod.

“Then what? Let me guess. You’ve pursued all the alternative therapies. Acupuncture. Biofeedback. Had hope swell in your heart again and again. There was that Japanese acupuncturist who left the needle tips in you. You almost walked out with a long needle right between your eyes once that you didn’t even see. Massage? Probably just makes it worse, am I right?”

“He means well,” I whisper.

“Oh, they always mean well, Ms. Fitch. And you like that you can go to him. Talk to him. That someone touches you every Sunday with kindness. You have so few actual friends these days.”

Did he just call me Ms. Fitch? “Do I know you, sir?”

He smiles sadly. “So down you are.”

“Down, down, down,” the man to my right mumbles. Behind his hands, the fat man whines.

“So dead inside.”

“Dead, dead, dead.”

“So lost and drifting in the benzo sea.”

“In the black waves.”

“How do you know all this?” I ask. “Are you… do you have issues too… are you in the field?”

“The field,” repeats the fat man.

The third man snickers.

Behind his hands, the fat man begins to laugh hysterically. His huge body shakes with it.

The middling man stares at me, dead serious. “I’m a fellow sufferer, Ms. Fitch. I’m just like you.” He pulls a handkerchief from the inside of his suit. Dark red. Silky-looking. I didn’t even think people had handkerchiefs like that anymore.

He hands it to me. “There, there,” he says.

I shake my head, but he insists. Waving it in my face. Surrender, surrender. Under his gaze, I take the handkerchief, dab politely at the corners of my eyes. The silk feels cool and watery on my skin.

“Thank you,” I say. I look at the fat man sitting beside him. He’s now completely slumped over onto the bar. His red, pained face is buried in the crook of his arm, his other hand gripping a drink. “Is he all right?”

“Him? He’s wonderful. He’s in the prime of his life.”