All Aboard ___The Night Train!

by Wayne Cresser

(Author’s note: In the realm of publishing, I am happy to report that a new story called, “The Last Time Norm Took Acid,” was included in an anthology called 20, published by Carlow University Press in recognition of the 20th anniversary of their MFA Program. Lots of fine writers in these pages, and I’m pleased to be one of them. However, since I cannot share that particular story with Mischief Time readers, I give you this one)

Finding Buddy minutes after stepping into Raoul’s Tap was accidental, but in hindsight, I believe it can be added to the grievous missteps of that day. In fact, by  any measure, it was the moment that triggered the payoff, a spectacle for all the hipsters, dipsos and fun seekers in the house. For the poor unfortunates who worked there and had to manage the mess, it was not a new aggravation, a guy standing upright one minute, laid out like a plank the next, but it was no less a nuisance.

As for me, I was only slightly drunk when the lights blinked off. When they blinked back on, I was flat on my back, wet, cut and immobile.

Returning to Buddy though, I’m thinking if he had not been sitting on the barstool near the waitress station when I sidled up to order a pint, if it had been some other, more grounded individual, somebody who didn’t talk in circles and quote James Brown lyrics constantly, somebody who might have noticed my sudden paleness, my dilated pupils and independently wandering eyeballs, somebody who might have said, “Whoa there, buddy, you okay?” instead of him, then I might have had a shot.

After he greeted me, his attention never wandered from the Celtics game flickering on the TV above the bar. He nudged me a couple of times and spoke to the tiny image of Kevin Garnett like he had his ear, “That’s right KG, ‘papa don’t TAKE! no mess.”

I should have stayed in the car. There was room to stretch out in there, and tunes. Jan could have gone into Raoul’s without me. Once inside, he was just going to cut me loose anyway since he knew a lot of girls. He’d be on the prowl before I had a drink in my hand.

Also, it was mild for a January night, couldn’t have been below 40 degrees. And since I was bundled up for winter, I would have been fine in the Volvo. There I might have dreamed a simple dream about Kirsten and the things I should have said when I wandered into her shop a few hours earlier to make dumb, lonely guy talk before she stopped me to say she had to get back to work.  

I’ve been flirting with her since the summer. It didn’t take much to get me going. She noticed a pair of cut-off jeans I wore one scorching August day and remarked that she didn’t think anybody did that anymore and how cute she thought it was. A thin straw, but I grabbed it. Eventually she helped me pick out paint colors for rooms in the house my ex-wife left me to decorate without her.

But I was talking about Jan and the car and his Amsterdam weed. I don’t know how he managed to get so much in through Logan. Well, that sounds silly, since it’s an all or nothing proposition, but still I thought he was a plucky and resourceful bastard. Not to mention lucky. Especially lucky, I would say, since we’d both smoked it, and I was the one on the floor. He was the one leaning over me, repeating my name and slapping me like a GI in a war movie slaps his wounded buddy, saying nutty crap like, “C’mon Ned, don’t quit on me now. C’mon, boy.”

I could see and, especially hear, everything, everything he was saying, every complaint surly Pete the bartender made about me, another friggin’ waster. I could hear Jan’s friend Carlene repeating my full name to the first EMT through the door__ if the room didn’t know me before, they knew me now. I could hear the Who song on the jukebox and Buddy cracking on the game, “Get on the good foot now.” You won’t believe me, but I could hear the snap of the cue stick against the cue ball and the ensuing break, the sound of one hand clapping, everything, but I could not make myself known to anybody. I had no motor control. Couldn’t move a muscle, couldn’t say a word.

That was embarrassing, and distressing but neither of those feelings accurately sum up what I felt about my situation. My ass was wet on one side, where the beer had landed, or where I had landed in the beer. Where’s my physics?  Later I found a bruise there and cat-like scratches on the side of my right hand. If I could have gotten to my feet, I would have headed toward the door and let the night swallow me whole.

I had a foolish thought that my sudden paralysis should have come over me when I popped in on Kirsten at the hardware store. A depthless concern for my well-being and a desire to play the healing angel were qualities I imagined she could step into. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a need for her attention that made me wish that. No, I wanted to make what had actually happened between us earlier go away—just vaporize. The dumb, lonely guy talk. Me, unshaven and wearing a baggy hooded sweatshirt. She, put together and smart.

Kirsten too easily put me in mind of a song I loved, and I am embarrassed to think of that. The best thing would have been to keep it at a distance, the image of her hair swept up, the half smile, the memory of the song. Just seeing her was a balm. Why does the heart have to complicate things and desire more? It was a mistake to keep talking to her. I had no business.

She offered some information about paintings she had hanging at a restaurant on Broadway. Maybe it surprised me that she would volunteer something so personal to me. Her green eyes were alight.  I was supposed to take an interest, and I did. In fact, I was very interested, and my first impulse was to say, “Well, let’s go look at them,” but what I said was, “I don’t know anything about art.”

I’m being hoisted now, I can see that. But I cannot feel it. Jan, surly Pete and Buddy move me from one end of the bar to the other, where I will be out of the way until the professionals arrive. While I float above the floor, I recall stories about people who’ve had similar experiences. Many claim to have been guided through the gloaming by some sort of otherworldly light, but I’m guessing it’s not my time because the lights in this joint seem to have caught fire since I hit the floor. I am a full-blown 10,000-watt disaster.

But I mentioned the first EMT through the door. There were two of them working me, a young woman who looked like Rosie Perez and a thickly built guy with a bad haircut called Mike. Jan was telling Mike that I couldn’t speak. Mike wanted to know how much I’d had to drink. When did I eat last?

Rosie put a cool hand on my wrist, felt around for a pulse, gave up and moved the same hand to my neck.

My proxy in the real world, Jan, did not explain things the way I would have. If the shoe were on the other foot, I would not have held back.

Well, Mike, I would have said, we were drinking with our friends at a place before this, and Jan wasn’t going for it, if you know what I mean.

No, Mike, I don’t know if he takes any medication, but I watched him down a Manhattan and several beers before we smoked the better part of a joint together and walked in here. Now, Mike, I’m not a medical man, but don’t most people call in your line of work call that self-medicating?

And another thing, Mike, I don’t know if this helps at all, but he’s been acting funny around me lately, like he’s hiding something.

I’m pretty sure the EMT would not want to hear this part of the story, but I can’t leave it alone. I am not comfy with how much Jan knows about my ex-wife’s comings and goings. When I was climbing into his car, I noticed a black beret in the back seat of his Volvo.

“Is that Bonnie’s hat?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said without hesitation. “Yeah.”

“Well, what’s it doing there?”

 “What? I dunno, she must have left it back there last week. She and Liz took Mutton for a walk.”

Liz is Jan’s wife and Mutton is their Border collie.

I should mention that my blood pressure, which had been surfing all day, started to percolate when I heard this. I could feel my face heating up. Then I asked myself, how much could a hat mean, anyway? Liz and Bonnie were like sisters. It was not unusual for them to spend a Sunday together.

“How is she?” I asked Jan.

“She’s good, Ned. She made a beautiful dinner for us. A lot of laughs, like old times.”

 Wow, I thought. Like old times. I sneezed and took a hit of Sudafed.

 How’s the colorist? asked Jan.

“Next question, brother,” I said.

But I was talking about Mike and Rosie and my vital signs. Jan doesn’t know about my blood pressure. And for this he can be forgiven, but I cannot. I take medicine for it, I’m downing Sudafed, I drink, and smoke weed. No wonder Rosie says my blood pressure has tanked and I’m dehydrated. Rosie and Mike don’t like my heart rate, which is stuttering at a weird clip, and they don’t like that my veins have collapsed. They want to cart me off to the hospital.

The bed of the gurney is very low to the floor. It’s basically a lateral move to get me on the thing. As they do it, Mike leans over and asks me if any of this is about a woman. Honest to Christ, I smile at the idea that he and Jan must be watching the same old movies.

But Mike doesn’t smile when he says it. He’s not joking. He knows. The mission is not new, the m.o. is not new, the patient is not new. He has maneuvered his way through the chambers of similarly twisted hearts before. He recognizes types.

He doesn’t have to hear about Bonnie and how empty the house feels without her. Painting the walls just made things worse. At the end of the day, I look at them and feel angry, blind-sided by the tussle and empty except for anger.

Mike already knows that I know she’s not coming back. that, I’ve stumbled through a blue fog until I’m dizzy, until I have tipped over and crashed.

I nod ever so slightly. Some power is coming back to me. I feel it completely and all at once, a cold shower, stinging me, waking me up to myself. I feel ashamed, and I want to confess to all the denizens in this dive, but I cannot make a sound.

Mike says, “It will be alright.”

Jan tells Mike he will follow the ambulance to the hospital and then asks Carlene, whose dark shoulder length hair and lithe movements remind me of Bonnie, if she wants to come along for the ride, for moral support.

Jan is the devil, I think.

They roll me past the end of the bar and turn me toward the open door now, my angels, Rosie and Mike. The ambulance casts swirls of red light on the sidewalk. 

Buddy turns my way and calls after me, “All aboard___ the night train!”