Nonculture

There are maybe three people in Lou’s besides myself this early on Easter Sunday.  I’m having a beer and watching golf on the 13 inch TV mounted above the bar.  You have to be pretty far gone to be in a bar at this time of day, on this particular day.  But I’m enjoying just sitting here with my beer and golf and Jeanne’s ass.  Jeanne is the bartender, bouncing up and down the length of the bar, cleaning this, shelving that.  I’m watching this show when Chevy seats himself at the bar next to me.

“Two Bloody Marys,” he says to Jeanne.

His usual smirk sticks out from below his baseball cap and sunglasses, but something subtle is different about him today.  I look him up and down; the usual cloud of smoke issues from a cigarette butt in his fingers, hanging around him like Pig Pen’s veil of dirt from the Charlie Brown comics.  His shorts are cut off khakis and ratty at the edges, his shoes are just as torn.  There is nothing overtly different that I can spot; he is as unkempt as usual.
The drinks arrive before us, and before I can even take the straw out of mine, Chevy has downed half of his.

“You remember Roberta Bennett?” He asks me, finally setting the remaining quarter of his drink on the bar top.

“Sure.  Brunette.  The crazy one.” 

Was it new shoes?  A winning lottery ticket?  What makes a man appear so…unburdened?
“Right,” he says.

“Sure, I remember her.”

“I burned her house down last night.”

“What?”

“I was trying to spell her name in the lawn with gasoline.  It just got a little out of control.  Burnt the shit right to the ground, I’m pretty sure.” 

I look over his shoulder expecting to see the cops come busting in to crack him one on the head and take him away, but the only thing coming through the door is a breeze that smells like Easter perfume and eggs benedict.  The breakfast place next door must be crowded with after church families.  The odor of sweets and food almost turns my stomach.

“But you haven’t seen that crazy bitch for five years.”

“I thought it would be a nice gesture.  Y’know, romantic.  After such a long time, you need to do something big.  Something to say, hey, I’ve really been thinking about you.”

“That is kind of romantic,” I agree.

“Well, it probably would have been, except she went and got married.”

“Whoops,” I say.  “So how’d that go over?”

“I got chased down the street by her man who was waving a shotgun at me, completely naked,” he says.

“Wait.  You were naked when you fried her lawn with gasoline?”

“No, he was naked.  For a second I thought he might catch me, but then I just turned on the juice.  I knew he couldn’t hit me with those pellets once I got a good block ahead, all zig-zagging and shit.”

“So they got a good look at you?”

“Sure they did.  I stood there grinning like a retard when she came to the door, all proud and shit, until I realized the fire was creeping a little closer to the house than I’d thought it would.  Then her man showed up with the gun and I just ran.”  He sticks his hand out in front of him when he says this.  “Ran for a full mile before I realized he wasn’t chasing me any more.  Thought I was going to lose a lung.”

“You are definitely a retard,” I say.

“Maybe,” he says.

Jeanne comes up to refill our drinks and gives Chevy a shake of the head; she’s obviously been listening in on our conversation.  “Don’t be bringing any trouble in here with you, I don’t need it today.  I’m closing up at two; gotta see my son and his bastard father for Easter dinner.” 

As she says this, I get a short whiff of pancakes from next door as someone enters the bar, letting in unwelcome sunlight and the scent of syrup.  I finish my drink off quickly before it starts to taste like a short stack.

“I’m opening back up at six.  Bring all the trouble you want then, I’ll probably welcome it,” Jeanne says as she leaves the drinks in front of us and sashays away, boing boing boing.  I can’t take my eyes off of that ass, until I see at the far end of the bar Linda has just sat down.  Jeanne begins pouring her one.

“Hey, Linda just came in,” I nod in her direction.  Chevy and I both look over and she raises her glass a few inches to us.

“All dressed up like she just came from church even,” he says. 

“I have to admit she looks pretty good.  Why haven’t either of us hit that?”

“Because she’s a nut job,” Chevy matter-of-facts.  “Neither of us need that kind of headache.”

“I don’t know what’s worse; fucking a nut job or keeping company with a pyromaniac retard.”

“Hit it then, and you’ll find out.”

“Maybe I will.  I’ve got nothing else to do today.”

“You got it all figured out, man,” Chevy says, downing half of his next drink in one gulp.

At about one-thirty I’m leaving with Linda and Jeanne is getting ready to close up.  Chevy is putting the moves on Jeanne but she looks like she’s having none of it. 

“What, I should invite you over so you can try to burn my place down too?” She yells at him.

“It was a beautiful fire,” he tells her.

 Linda and I push through the door and walk out into the blinding day. I have to shield my eyes.  We walk through a couple of minivans parked on the street, past a couple of kids in suits and dresses, and two blocks over to my apartment.  It’s an old converted house, termite eaten and falling apart in places, but somehow it maintains a quaint Je-ne-sais-quoi.  In the kitchen, Linda is already being flirty; she’s standing behind me with her hand down my pants as I pour us drinks.  The cats scamper about as we toast to Easter then start making out.  We take it into the bedroom.

It’s a nice, slow fuck.  The kind made for Sunday afternoons.  She wants it from behind so I give it to her, but at a snail’s rhythm, forward and back.  Through the window it is still blinding, but the sun looks good on her pale cheeks in my hands, boing boing boing.  Some birds are talking in the tree out there “Hey, look at those two monkeys,” “Yup, he’s doing her good,” “Let’s get it on too.”  The whole world is caught in a nice, slow fuck.

I finish on the small of her back and grab the kitchen towel, my fading hard-on flapping up and down with a boing of its own.  She waits patiently with her head in the pillow for me to clean it up.  Then we both lay there on our backs, staring up at the ceiling where the branches play in the light and little silhouettes of birds fuck.  It’s peaceful. It’s Easter Sunday, why shouldn’t it be?

“Did he really burn somebody’s house down?” Linda asks.  Her hands are folded on her stomach, and her chest heaves up and down with her breathing.

“I have little doubt that he did,” I say.

“I hope nobody got hurt,” she blurts. 

“Why’d you have to say that?”

“Why wouldn’t I wonder that?” 

We lay there for a minute.  I am trying to relax, but now instead I have to think of that crazy bitch Roberta going up like a match and her naked man flapping around with a shotgun like some screaming ape.  Maybe Roberta did get hurt, I think.  Then I think so what if she did.  Then I think that it was interesting that I didn’t even think to think whether she was hurt in the first place.  Was I this far gone?  Did I not care, or was I so detached that I didn’t even bother to think to care?  The silhouettes of the branches on the ceiling look like flames now as I stare up at the ceiling wondering this.

“Goddammit,” I say out loud.  “How am I supposed to relax now?”

I get up to grab my drink, flaccid and desensitized.  I’m already counting the hours until Jeanne opens back up.  Does the nightmare begin at home or does it begin outside and let itself in?  In this case I blame the outside; I was perfectly happy before concern fell out of Linda’s mouth like a chewed glob of those sickly sweet pancakes.  I begin to get dressed.  Linda joins me and there is that awkward air where the woman assumes she’s said something stupid to fuck up, and in this case the woman was right.

“I’m sorry,” she says. 

“For what,” I say, not really wanting to have a conversation.  Golf is on TV, or maybe I want to write a little, I’m not sure.

“It’s just what popped in my head. I just hoped everyone was alright.”

“Saying what pops in your head is your gender’s fatal flaw,” I say, taking my drink into the next room and flipping on the TV. 

In a minute, she walks in, dolled all back up with her shoulders hunched and her handbag in her hand.  Her hair is matted and slightly sweaty on one side from the pillow.  Still, she’s a decent looking woman.  I decide not to tell her about the hair.

“I guess I’ll just go,” she says in that half-dejected way women have of not really asking a question but expecting an answer anyway.  Well, I wasn’t going to answer an unasked question.  Maybe the hair was just an extra ploy for sympathy.

“Alright, bye,” I say.  Decent looking or not, I was not about to ask her to stay.

She stands there for a second, then says “You’re such an asshole,” as she turns and slinks out.

There is golf on the TV; he is making another late charge for a win.  Birdie, birdie, birdie.  The guy is amazing; pure grace under pressure.  A true champion.  Champions probably know how to answer the unasked questions without looking like assholes.  I guess that’s what separates him and me, and I drink to it.  I’ve got nothing else to do today.

At six, I walk back over to Lou’s.  Jeanne’s already opened up and Chevy is there, still looking loose and unburdened and unkempt.  There is a line of glasses in front of him as if he’d never left.

“Jeanne let you stay?” I ask, sitting next to him.  I nod to Jeanne for a beer.

“So how was it?” he asks, ignoring my question, which was apparently actually an answer.

“I’m glad to have a pyromaniac retard for a friend,” I concede to him.

“I won’t say I told you so,” he lies.  

Jeanne walks over and dust rags the area in front of us.  She flashes a pretty smile at Chevy for a second and replaces his ashtray with a fresh one.

“How was the broken family dinner?” I ask her.

She shoots me a head shake and the smile fades.  I knew it was a bad question before I even asked it; so why did I ask it?

“Fucking nightmare,” she says and walks away.  She moves slower and this time as I watch, her ass goes thump, thump, thump.

I scan the bar; we are the only ones in the joint.  Nobody else was a lost cause enough to have come back for Easter evening cocktails.  It was getting dark outside and a breeze was picking up; thankfully the breeze was free of syrup and perfume.  The church families were home, counting their eggs.  The birds were asleep in their branches.  Linda was probably lighting a candle at some church praying for crazy ass Roberta to regrow her imaginary burnt head of hair.  And here I was, with Jeanne and Chevy and a dead Jukebox.

And I realize that I don’t care, and along with that I am finally able to grasp the subtle difference in Chevy today; the looseness, the lack of burden.

“It’s better to be the one starting a fire than one jumping into one,” I say to him, nodding my head to myself.

“You got it all figured out, man,” he says, downing the rest of his drink in one gulp.

Retard or not, Chevy was a champion.