The Dirty Ditty was quiet, empty in the hot mid-afternoon; Kay was the only drinker. The tall, skinny bartender slid over. His t-shirt read Lemmy Lives! “What kin I git you, hon?”
The bourbon came. She drank it slowly. She made it last half an hour. She ordered another, then got up to walk to the ladies’ room. The light was dim. She squinted at the graffiti in the stall, the tepid obscenities. More intriguing was the sign by the sink:
If you are in here for more than 15 minutes, we will call the cops.
She washed her hands, peeling away what was left of Ben’s dressing. The plastic wrap came off in soggy strips. Leprosy, she thought, and rinsed the pink flayed skin under cold water.
Back at the bar, she ordered another Wild Turkey while vaguely aware of a couple of drinkers positioning themselves south of her: men, anonymous in t-shirts and ball caps, one red, one blue. The Wild Turkey coated her mouth, bristly little burn on the way down. She felt marvellously free. She felt daring and in need of a cigarette and a dancing partner. She and Sam, that time in Juba at the Russian Club with the jukebox, Elvis songs in Russian. She and Gina, she and Marco, those times in Kinshasa, in Kigali, in Khartoum.
When the bartender placed another drink in front of her, she was sure she hadn’t ordered. Jägermeister. He gestured to the two men. So, these boys were not fooling around. Kay raised the glass to them, and tossed it back. Almost instantly, the gluey feeling in her skull thickened, so she finished drinking, it would sharpen her a bit.
“Hey, Slim,” red hat hailed the bartender. “Another for the lady.”
“Thanks, but I’m good,” she said to Slim. Slim. What else would he be called? Why were fat people never called Fat? Hey Fat, hey Big, another for the lady.
Time slackened, time was already slack. Great pillowy hours to fill. And the memory of the tyrant it had been: the reduction of each day to a timeline, a schedule, the pettiness of minutes. The time it took Freya to eat her kale. The time it took Tom to brush his teeth. She was always counting or looking at the clock. Where are your shoes? Where is your coat? Have you made your bed? She was always late. Come on, hurry up, we’re late. She used to feel—considering it now—that her children were eating her time, nibbling it like little rats, so there was never the time she’d thought. And they didn’t understand; they had no concept of time. What is ten minutes to a five-year-old? How do you describe a minute? Kay had had to concoct reference points: as long as it takes to reach the corner, from here to school, from here to Pete’s house and back again. She counted in days, never weeks or months, because a day could be comprehended—24 days until Daddy gets back, 61 days until your birthday, three days until the weekend.
What day is today?
Wednesday.
So when will it be the weekend?
You count the days, you know them now.
Everything had to be de-constructed. Everything had to be repeated.
What day is it today?
When will it be the weekend?
Why does water have no color?
Do octopuses pee?
Can we have a hamster?
Why do we have toes?
And she would be on her knees before the child tying shoelaces like an acolyte. Please, please, Oh God come on, we’re late, we’re late.
There was another glass in front of her, and she was very unclear whether she or the men up the bar had ordered it. Kay gave a good impression of a woman who could hold her liquor. She gave a good impression of a woman who could drink a man under the table. Before, before, before, in Addis, in Tabora, in Goma, before the nibbling, not just time nibbled, but her self, so that she was smaller than she was once, her edges marked by the many serrations of little white teeth, children’s teeth.
“You wanna party?”
It was the one in the red hat.
“No.” Kay didn’t bother to look over.
Blue hat: “We got some nice weed, some E.”
Red hat: “Where’re you from, pretty lady?”
She kept her eyes straight ahead, drank. Slim cleaned the bar, dragging his cloth along the far end of the bar. He was aware of her, of the situation; she had the feeling he’d intervene if it got serious.
Sliding off her stool, she was walking elegantly across the room, she must not wobble or stumble. In the ladies’ room, she knelt in front of the toilet and vomited. From this perspective, she could smell the cleaning solvent, and just below it, like layers in a stagnant pond, the urine, feces, and another layer down, the rusty stench of menstrual blood. She tried to stand, but slammed against the stall. Obviously, she could not drive. She would call a cab, but her phone was in her bag, where she left it, over the back of the bar stool, as if she trusted these people, red hat, blue hat.
Maneuvering herself carefully to the sink, she splashed her face with cold water. For an instant, she grasped clarity, but then saw her image in the mirror, greenish and unfocused, and the lines across her forehead, around her eyes, the end of beauty, the end of allure, what made men look, made men notice, shriveling. Who was she now, who the hell—
Ben, she thought. She would call Ben. She would be with Ben. They would talk. She could help him, whatever the problem, she was sure of it, and he would tell her, they would lie down together, talking, sharing, lying across his big brass bed, whatever colors she had in her mind, whatever scars, whatever he was doing with drugs, whatever she said to her children, she and Ben would absolve, and fuck tender, hard.
Her arms and legs moved as if directed by a drunken puppeteer. She opened the bathroom door and glanced out. Slim’s back was to her as he conferred with the hats. It now occurred to Kay that he knew them, they were acquainted. She retreated to the bathroom, slumped on the floor, to wait until she sobered up.
At what point did she become foolish—the third Wild Turkey, the second Jäger? Or the moment she walked in the door, imagining she was someone else—the tough, independent, sexy woman journalist of before?
Oh, The Mighty Before.
The ladies’ room door opened, one hat two hat, red hat blue hat.
“No,” she said, mumbled, dribbled. “No, no, no, no.”
Their arms around her, firm and possessive, they chatted to each other, “You got her?” “Yeah.” And “It’s okay, babydoll, we’re just gonna have a party.”
She swatted at them, they laughed. “Crazy ho is super tanked!”
“No, no, no, no, no.” She was a basketball gradually losing its bounce. “No, no, no.”
A door opened. Light blasted in so she shut her eyes, and she thought, okay, whatever, really, I don’t care, I deserve this, these men with their stupid penises, why does it always come down to this?
“My bag,” she said.
“Your bag? You want your bag?”
“Money,” she mumbled.
Blue hat chuckled. “We already got that.”
They were somewhere in the middle of a parking lot. The sky was faded blue, denim blue, and around were tall red-brick buildings, the smell of hot tar, and a yellow butterfly dancing. Red hat kept his arm around her, familiar as a lover.
“Why do men wanna put their dicks in women all the time?”
“What? What?” Blue hat leaned in so Kay could see the hair in his ears, the patches on his neck he’d missed shaving.
“Why rape?”
“Rape? Honey, we’re just going to party.”
“I don’t, no, please. I want to go home now.”
“Whaddya say, honey? I can’t hear you.”
Kay was certain she was speaking, she was speaking clearly. “Leave me.”
But they laughed, giggled. “Cat got your tongue?”
Kay could not find her feet, and very far away, a little thought on the most distant cloud, was the idea that it’s not the booze, it’s a roofie or whatever spike in her drink, and in some ways this was worse because they meant this to happen and so it will happen and she was beginning to become afraid. She was thinking about her body at the bottom of an embankment, on the railroad tracks somewhere. She wondered not about rape but how they would kill her.
“No,” she said.
Red hat punched her in the ribs.
“Hel—” she started to say but the word stuck. Her mouth couldn’t form the whole word, just heard: “Hel—” and then again “Hel hel hel hel.”
Help will not come but hell.
She felt warmth on her inner thigh, wetness, something had been loosened.
“She’s pissed herself. She’s fuckin’ pissed herself!”
Blue hat propelled Kay away from him and for a moment she was suspended in space before slamming into the pavement, the pavement slamming into her, Sam would say The Cosmic Frying Pan.
She started to crawl, inching toward the sound of the street, over there, she was certain, cars, people, children, her children. Her ribs exploded with pain again, then her back. She had this idea they were kicking her and she couldn’t quite believe it as if there must be some other reason for the sharp electric stabs of pain. She couldn’t quite breathe and yet she was aware of the grit in her knees as she kept crawling, the salty taste in her mouth.