Soren sits down next to me at Hatter’s one night, although I don’t know his name at that point, orders a pitcher of Rickard’s Dark, offers me a glass, and starts to talk.
“I wanna tell you something, Anthony,” he begins, punctuating his sentence with a deft pouring of another glass. The head on his beer is the perfect size, and we scrutinize it for a while in silence as the rest of the bar shrieks and chuckles around us. I don’t tell him that he’s mistaken me for someone else - I’m not entirely sober, and it’s quite clear that the beer he’s gulping with a speed that makes my stomach turn is not his first of the night, and mistaken identity seems such a pointless accusation for two people who probably won’t remember too many details of this night.
I poke him a little, right beneath his rib cage, at the intersection of two lines of his plaid, and he starts from his contemplation, takes a long pull, licks the foam from the corner of his mouth, and begins again.
“Something I wanna tell you, Anthony. About life.” I’m only half listening, the remainder of my functioning brain scanning for a waitress to bring me a tequila shot, but I nod for him to continue all the same. “Life is a flirt, a tease – life isn’t a bitch, she’s a whore.”
I’ve found the waitress and am gesticulating with what my inebriated self considers to be subtle grace, and his words don’t alter my determination to perpetuate the pleasant slowness of everything I’m doing and thinking. He’s insistent, though.
“Have you ever had that, a woman who you thought was gonna go for you – or at least go down on you – and it turns out that she already has a boyfriend or she thinks of you like a brother or she’s into your best friend? Life is exactly like that. Kisses you with her hands in your hair then turns around and makes you make a list of all the assholes she’d have a chance with.”
The waitress finally sees my pointed stare and mad waving and saunters over. Soren takes the rest of his beer in an extended gulp and pours himself another, spilling a bit on the table. He stares at the puddle mournfully as I order two tequilas and watch her walk away.
“I know the feeling,” I say to him. Someone crashes into us, apologizes with flushed, teenage cheeks – I don’t understand how anyone could mistake her for eighteen – and pulls herself back onto what passes for a dance floor here. We stare at her as she inserts herself into the middle of a group of equally drunk, equally young boys; they fumble awkwardly to find the beat as the song changes.
We turn back to each other when my tequila arrives, and though I offer him one, Soren declines. He does buy another pitcher while I’m searching through my change for a tip, and when our waitress leaves again, he claps my shoulder in a conspiratorial way and leans into me.
“The chick who cuddles up next to you and dances with you and always calls you the next day – the one who doesn’t seem to care that you told your best friend he couldn’t go for her? Who singlehandedly takes away everything you care about? You know her?”
“I know her,” I say. “I know her all too well.”
“Fuck. She gets around more than I thought,” he mutters as he raises his glass to his lips again, and I nod in miserable agreement before tossing back a shot and shoving the lemon wedge between my teeth.
I’m getting into his argument, and as he pays the waitress for his beer with a crumpled twenty, waiting for his change and almost forgetting to tip until she stares at him pointedly and clear her throat, I pick up where he left off. “She lulls you into a sense of security, doesn’t she? But she’s doing it to everyone at the same time, and she screws everyone eventually. Right, yeah! Definitely a whore. Looks really good when she’s treating you right, but she’s never actually giving you anything, not really – definitely not anything she’s not already giving to everyone else.”
The music kicks up to a screeching volume, and I can only see his lips move for a minute, until the DJ manages to turn the music down, and I have the chance to ask him to repeat himself. By then, he’s forgotten what he wanted to say, and we lapse into a comfortable silence.
A new crowd surges in around midnight, packing the place so tight that it’s hard to move. I’m glad I’m not the people on the pitifully small dance floor, who look like they’re trying to pick each other up, but aren’t succeeding very well: dance with one girl, you also dance with three others, your best friend, and a random guy you don’t even know. It’s like a lame sort of mosh pit, everyone jostling and bumping and getting into the music as best they can. I point this out to Soren and he laughs into his beer, scrutinizing the crowd to see if I’m right.
My buzz is slipping. I take my second shot.
As I bite into the lemon, wincing at the taste of the god-awful tequila they serve at this place, he sinks further into his chair, looking for all the world as if he’s hiding behind his empty pitcher. “She’s here,” he informs me, and my mind, swimming in an unpleasantly bitter tequila bath, wonders why I don’t see a towering goddess holding the threads of fate or something equally ridiculous.
“Who, life?” I wonder, looking up owlishly from my contemplation of my empty shot glasses.
“Life?” he responds, looking a little confused. “I was talking about Amy.”
3 comments:
I have to say - the first time I read this I was convinced that it was by Tabia. Or more, I couldn't decide if it was you or Tabia, simply because it was a Wednesday that it was posted on - but there were some serious non-Jess qualities in this that I found surprising and refreshing in a good way! You're really working outside your style lately which is awesome and I really approve! :D (not to say that I don't love the way you normally write, but it's always fantastic to see writers trying out new things!) I don't know why I thought it was Tabia who wrote this. I think because it was so bitter maybe. Serious heart-rape angst misery depression.
So I really loved the setting of this. It worked really well. You got the bar scene excellently with nice details in it, but it still had that sort of dreamy-romantic quality that made it distinct from, say, how Jordano or Charles or Max would write a bar scene. It sounds obvious to say, but I thought the idea of having a story where someone drunk mistakes someone else and talks to them was a great idea. I mean, it's been done, but usually it's done terribly and I think you pulled it off excellently.
I really liked the conversation. I think especially since you tend to use narrative to get the story across, it was interesting how the dialogue was the medium pushing the story forward. And it wasn't too expository for me - it worked nicely through natural-sounding ranting. It rounded out the characters quite well. I must say, I thought it was great how the protagonist just went along with it and kept doing his own thing while the guy complained, ordering tequila shots and whatnot. Gave a nice separation from the story so it didn't get too intense and dark. There was a definite schism that allowed for readers to look at this with a grain of salt and not get overly emotionally involved - which sounds like a bad thing, but I enjoyed it and thought it added a lot of character to the piece.
One thing that I have been ruminating over the past few days since I've read this is the ending. And I'm just...not sure if I'm too fond of it. Somehow it seems unfinished or like a cop out or too open. I don't even know how to put it exactly :S just something bothered me. Like, I loved the metaphor you were building of life being a bitch, and then you turned it around and made it literal and I found that it shattered the imagery and concept you were building in my mind so that I was left with nothing at the end. It was a bit dissatisfying.
But in general that was my only qualm. Granted, it's a big important one, but in general I really enjoyed this piece. I thought it was particularly well written. Nothing was superfluous, and everything served a purpose. Great details. I loved the interactions the two characters had with one another and the mention of a super young teenager that bumped into him that he didn't understand how anyone could have mistaken for 18. I thought that was a great touch, considering you were talking about Hatter's :P And I really liked the narrator. He was great. Very fleshed out as a character.
MSMC. I thought it was Tabia at first. I really liked this.
I enjoyed the premise of mistaken identity. Who hasn't been there, right?
I have to say, though, that I saw the end coming, but I thought you were going to be cheesy and make Soren refer to the girl as Life, like "Life is Amy! blahblahblah"
But you didn't. That made me happy.
The teens on the "dance floor" was a great contrast to the characters. I automatically assumed they were 16 and the few years between the narrator and the teens make it seem like there's a lot that goes on in between, but also that the narrator believes to have amassed ALL the wisdom in the world at this point, much like teens do at 16.
I thought that was great.
All in all, I like you adventuring out of your comfort zone. Kudos.
"Serious heart-rape angst misery depression." Ha ha Marta!
Yeah, good job on moving out of your comforting zone and still writing something thoughtful, skillfully written, and entertaining. The twist at the end was nice, and as Mike pointed perfectly and concisely, no bullshit.
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