Mack is too impatient to wait in any bar lines, and Hatch and I are too drunk to stand in one place without falling over. We walk down the street to Big Red Liquors, convinced a couple more six-packs “will clear our heads.”
I approach the ATM outside the liquor store knowing I have less than three dollars in my account. I type in my password. The screen gives me several options, including asking whether I want to take money from checking, savings, or do a “Fast $50” transaction.
Mack reaches over my shoulder and pushes the button. “Fast fifty, Hank!”
“You fuckhead. I don’t have five dollars to my name, let alone fif—”
I am interrupted by the sound of the ATM spitting out two twenties and a ten. I grab the money. I’m thirsty, and what’s one more overdraft notice?
We walk into Big Red Liquors and make our selection. I somehow get roped into paying for all of it. Two six-packs somehow becomes two cases. I’m not even out the door when I have second thoughts about my spending spree.
“No ice, no cooler, and we leave the goddamn liquor store with forty-eight cold beers. You tell me, Mack, how in the hell are we going to drink all these tonight?”
“Relax. We’re going to a party.”
“A party?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“Sheila’s place. I even hear Laura’s going to be there.”
“Fuck you.” I sit the beers down on the ground, fold my arms.
“Come on, Hank. It’ll be fun.”
I go Bender on him. “No, Mack, fuck you!”
Hatch steps in. “Fitzy has a point, Mack. It’s his birthday, and you’re taking him to see Laura Elliot?”
“Come on, guys, it’ll be fun,” Mack says. “The whole gang is there.”
“Where’s Ian?”
Mack cocks his head. “Who?”
“Laura’s boyfriend.”
Hatch mimics Mack, monkey-like. “Her what?”
I reach down and pick up the two cases of beer. “Fuck it, never mind. Let’s just do this.”
In the grand tradition of fate not even giving me a chance to catch my breath, Laura answers the door to Sheila’s apartment. She’s wearing a pair of form-fitting jeans and a Bucknell University sweatshirt capped by a smile that either looks shit-faced or happy to see me.
“Hey, fellas!” Laura hugs Mack. Hatch grabs the cases of beer out of my hands, walks right by her. She stops me, leaning in to kiss me on the cheek.
“Hope you don’t mind us crashing your party,” I say.
Laura shuts the door behind me. “I heard you and Mack were hanging out this weekend. I was hoping he’d talk you into it.”
“You were?”
Laura smiles and gives me another kiss on the cheek. “Happy birthday, Hank.”
I was barely in the apartment and already working on a solid trifecta: the drunk ex-girlfriend hitting on me, the drunk ex-boyfriend not doing a whole lot to dissuade the overtures, and the alcoholic-in-training best friend handing me a beer with a hole cut out of the bottom yelling…
“Shotgun!”
“Goddamnit, Hatch.”
“Come on, Fitzy.”
“Go into the kitchen with that mess!” Laura pushes us both out of the family room.
The sink is already piled high with at least a dozen holed-out aluminum cans. We both shotgun a beer.
And then a second beer.
And then a third.
Laura leads a round of Thumper in the dining room. It’s a simple drinking game. The emcee—in this case, Laura—starts the round by asking, “What’s the name of the game?” To which the group shouts back in unison while drumming their hands on the table, “Thumper!” Laura asks, “How do we play it?” The group responds, “Down and dirty!” Laura asks, “Why do we play it?” And then the group smacks their hands on the table three times in synch with the last three words, “To get fucked up!” Laura gives her hand signal—in this case, a head-bobbing imitation of going down on someone—then flashes a hand signal of another person in the group, after which that person responds with his or her hand signal, then flashes another person in the group his or her signal, and so on and so on until someone messes up. The first person to mess up drinks and gets to start the next round.
I play two quick rounds before realizing I have no business playing drinking games. My hand signal is simulating double-handed masturbation, a move tinged with both irony, given my average penis size, and revelation, given my above-average penchant for masturbation. Hatch calls me a “lightweight pussy.” He tells me to “take off my skirt and strap on a pair.”
“Southern Cross” by Crosby, Stills & Nash transitions into Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” on the stereo.
Hatch jumps up. “Ohhh shit, Fitzy!”
The game of Thumper is suspended. The room divides in accordance with proper Meatloaf etiquette—boys on one side, girls on the other. Boys go first, remembering once again every little thing as if it happened only yesterday, followed by the girls leaving no doubt in the discussion about their respective ages and general lack of clothing.
The boys and girls go back and forth with two long solos, pausing at the bridge—an indiscernible radio broadcast of a baseball game no one knows the words to that allows for drink refills, a few drags off your cigarette, and sneaking your tongue into your ex-girlfriend’s mouth.
We trade two more long solos. This segues into the guys wanting to sleep on it rather than just tell the girls they love them—you know, that polyphonic bit in which the dueling genders are tasked with singing at the same time but to different lyrics, resulting in a block of drunken noise. Enthusiasm trumps vocal ineptitude on a grand scale, rising to a testosterone-and estrogen-fueled crescendo of everyone swearing eternal love to their God on their mother’s grave.
It’s going on three in the morning now. Hatch and Mack are passed out on the floor in Sheila’s bedroom. I’ve found my way to Sheila’s queen bed. With Laura.
“Some party,” I say.
“Sure was,” Laura says.
We’re both still clothed, albeit face-to-face with our arms and legs wrapped around one another. We’d been making out for about a half hour when Laura decided to take off her bra. That was about the same time I decided I was having sex with her.
“Confession time, Hank.”
“Go for it.”
“I have missed your soft, cushy lips.”
Let the record show these two adjectives have been explicitly directed at my lips by at least three different women. Next to maybe my hair, my lips are my best feature.
“And they’ve missed you.” I kiss her again for good measure.
She pulls away. “Hank, what are we doing here?”
“I think that’s kind of obvious.”
“Don’t start getting all riled up.” She pulls my hand out from under her shirt just as I squeeze her right breast. “You’re not getting any tonight.”
Laura is pretending she doesn’t want this to happen. Fine, I’ll play along. “How’s Ian doing these days?” I say.
Laura puts her right index finger on my lips. “Can we please spend a night together without fighting?”
“Who’s fighting? I think I’m entitled to know whether I’m about to be a home wrecker.”
“I see you’re still overconfident in your pick-up skills.” She again pulls my right hand out from under her shirt. This time I manage to squeeze her left breast. “Nobody’s wrecking any home tonight, Hank.”
“So you’re not dating Ian?”
“I didn’t say that. The short story is he proposed, I got scared.”
“How scared?”
“Scared enough to take a semester off from grad school at Bucknell.”
“Then that’s it for you two?”
“Hardly. We’re just spending some time apart. I need some space, some time back with old friends and family to sort out some things. I still very much love Ian.”
“No offense, but you have an interesting way of showing it.”
“Let’s be honest here.” Laura smiles. She’s drunk, very drunk. “Will anything I say stop you from trying to get in my pants?”
“Probably not…” My words dissolve into a small kiss on her throat, just under her chin. Laura takes a breath, a deep inhalation that renders her transparent. A brazen move on my part, but she responds.
Laura runs her fingers along my face, brushing my hair behind my ears. “Remember when your dad serenaded me on my birthday?”
“How could I forget?” I say. “Hard to believe it’s been four years since then. You’re what, twenty-three now?”
“Almost.”
“You’re practically my sugar mama.”
“Hilarious, Hank.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Anyway, that serenade was the best birthday present of my almost twenty-three-year-old life.”
“Next to this you mean?” I grab the plush, long-eared elephant from the foot of the bed. “What’s this doing here?”
Laura wrests the elephant away from me. “I take Dumbo pretty much wherever I go.”
I had won Dumbo at the Magic Kingdom, although of course my gesture was overshadowed by Johnny Fitzpatrick Mathis brilliance. I pawned it off as a belated birthday gift—the typical gesture of a shit-for-brains teenage boy. I adore Laura for holding on to it. I think about the “It’s a Small World” ride. I think about Dad.
“I miss him, Laura.”
She puts her hand on my face. “He’s still here. I see him every time you smile, every time you laugh.”
“I guess I see him, too, especially in that picture over there.” I point to a small four by six framed photograph on the nightstand. It’s a picture of Laura and me from our Disney World vacation. Jack is sitting between us in the crook of Laura’s arm, smiling up at her just as the camera flashes.
“Oh yeah, that,” Laura says.
I grab the picture. “I don’t even remember when this was taken.”
“Jack had just met Pluto and was on cloud nine.”
“Man, that kid fucking loved Pluto. But I’m still curious about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Any particular reason you carry a framed picture of me and my brother around?”
Laura stares at the picture, almost in a trance. She says nothing. “Uh, Laura?”
She shakes her head, pokes me in the chest. “Hey now, you’re not the only sentimental fool on the planet. That was a great vacation.”
“Really?” I say. “I just remember being sweaty and exhausted and having crazy break-up sex.”
“Getting back to my point, Hank…” Laura takes the picture from me and places it face down on the nightstand. “You’re just like your father, and not just because you look like him. You wear your passion and emotion on your sleeve. You trust people. You surround yourself with a circle of friends who worship you. That’s all John Fitzpatrick right there.”
“Worship me? That’s an overstatement. I’m just the injured, sad-eyed puppy right now. Everyone loves a puppy.”
“That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Fine, Laura, let’s just assume everyone’s intentions are sincere and I have all these good friends who ‘worship’ me. Can we stop pretending I’m a good friend in return?”
“You’re a great friend, Hank.” She squeezes my nose and shakes it. “Just a shitty boyfriend.”
“Speak for yourself.” I turn and face the wall, feigning long-term insult in the hopes of short-term gratification. I assume Laura sees right through me, but she wouldn’t have brought me back here if she didn’t want to do this.
The bed sits in a corner of the room. I’m curled up between Laura and the wall. The room is pitch-black. I can still identify Hatch and Mack by the sounds of their inebriated snore-off on the opposite side of the room.
I hear the rustling of blankets, of clothes being removed. A hand snakes around my belly, undoes the button on my jeans, and slides inside my boxers. I reach back with my hand. Starting at the knee, I run my hand up the inside of Laura’s thigh. I press up against her, feeling her bare breasts flattening against my back. She kisses the back of my neck and slithers down the bed. With both hands, she pulls my pants and boxers down to my ankles all at once. She climbs over me. Like a puzzle piece, she positions herself just so in front of me, our bodies spooning, finding just the right fit. She takes me in her hand, guiding me toward her. She arches her back and props her hand against the wall. I enter Laura from behind.
We made love three times. It seemed, if I’m being honest, more desperate than passionate. If love were easy, then everyone would jump into the deep end of the pool and touch the drain like Jodi Foster in Stealing Home. But no one does that. The whole idea of drowning in the idea of someone, and what’s worse, not knowing you’re drowning until you’re underwater and you open your mouth to take a breath and realize, hey, something isn’t quite right here—well, it doesn’t just sound fucking stupid. It is fucking stupid.
Or is it?
Some love can be idiotic, bumbling even, and still endure. But Laura and I lost the right to be stupid years ago. The saddest of human journeys is taken by shattered hearts dusting off old love. There is no eternal innocence for me and Laura to cling to. John Keats can take his Grecian urn and shove it straight up his ass. Truth is not beauty. Truth comes at the expense of beauty.
It’s been ten minutes since Laura fell asleep. I get dressed. I walk out of the apartment.