A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk outside the bar.
“Is that the line to get in?” asked Samantha.
“Yes. No. I think everyone is just smoking. Good ol’ Massachusetts.”
We sidestepped through the throng of smokers and went inside. The room was filled with cheers and jeers and lots of dark polished wood and high backed booths. Several screens around the room showed the end of the basketball game. The Celtics were losing. We moved to the far end of the bar.
“What are you drinking?” I asked.
Samantha told me. Then she ran off to the bathroom. I was left alone at the edge of the bar. I snaked a fifty from my wallet. The bartender was slow, preoccupied with nothing. Finally, our eyes caught.
“I’ll take a this and a that,” I said.
He nodded and moved off. Samantha returned and wrapped her arms around my waist. We looked up at the screens and waited for the drinks. They came and we moved off to a booth in the corner.
I held onto Samantha’s thigh. She pressed close to me. We were a couple. We were giddy with alcohol and Crazy Fish on a Plate. We were giddy with each other. We sipped and cuddled and watched the game. The crowd inside was antsy, shaky. The Celtics were losing and we were inside a bar just outside of Boston. We needed shots of something.
“Shots?” I asked.
“Okay. What?”
“You pick.”
“Not tequila. I go nuts when I drink tequila.”
Hmmm…Maybe we should get some tequila.
“Ok,” I said. “How about a wimpy shot? Something like a red-headed slut or a grape-crush?”
“What’s in that?”
“I’m not sure. But they’re both easy.”
We got shots. I downed mine in one motion. Samantha sipped hers. She was so classy. The blood rushed to our faces. Our ears and noses were red and our lips wet. We were drunks. Two drunks sitting in a bar. We were partners in crime.
The Celtics were losing. They were down ten with less than a minute to go. A little blue eyed waitress came over to the booth. She bowed. We were the King and the Queen of the bar. Everyone knew it. We knew it.
“Are you two alright over here?”
I pointed to our glasses.
“Fire it up?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Do you want to start a tab?”
“Perfect.”
The waitress went away. A woman paced back and forth back and forth in front of us, often covering her face with her hands. On the screen, Paul Pierce was at the line shooting free throws. Some smartass in the room said, “Don’t fucking miss.”
And Pierce missed but it didn’t matter anyway. The Celtics were going to lose. Fuck it. I squeezed Samantha’s leg.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m fine. This is so much fun.”
“It’s too bad the Celtics are losing, though. This place is gonna be mad when they lose.”
“Yeah.”
“Another shot?”
“Okay.”
I looked around for our waitress. She had disappeared. I got up.
“I’m going to get shots at the bar. Our waitress is cute, but she’s slow.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be right back.”
“I love you, David.”
“I know.”
I went to the bar. I flagged the bartender and ordered. He nodded and proceeded to move to the far end of the bar where he could lean. He sucked on a few limes and stared off into space. What the fuck? I thought. He was leaning and sucking for so long that I thought he had already forgotten my order. I gave him the crazy eyes and he kind of nodded slowly, as if waking from a daydream. What a fuck.
I watched Samantha over the tops of the booths. She was sitting, smiling, all alone at our big table in our big booth. I tried to get her attention by making silly faces but she didn’t look over at me. It was okay. I could play the voyeur. It was how we’d met. I’d been watching her. I watched her now. Our ears and noses were red and our lips wet. Two drunks in a bar. The shots came.
“Thanks, you fucking piece of shit,” I mumbled.
“What was that?”
“I said, Thanks, I’ve got to take my seat.”
“Whatever, man.”
He offered me a lime to suck on. I ignored him and walked away with the shots. I slid next to Samantha.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
“Did I miss anything?”
Samantha pointed to the pacing woman.
“That woman is bugging out.”
“Big Celtics fan,” I said.
“Oh yeah.”
“Shot?”
“Yeah.”
We drank our shots. I downed mine in one motion. Samantha sipped hers. She was so classy. The Celtics lost. People whined.
“Fuck.”
“Bullshit.”
“That sucked. Let’s scram.”
“Nice work, Pierce.”
“Fuck fuck fuck.”
“Bullshit bullshit bullshit.”
But we were still smiling, the King and the Queen. I was glad that Samantha got to see some of a Celtics game so close to Boston, even if they did lose. The other patrons tucked their tails between their legs and poured out onto the sidewalk and the street. The room grew quiet. Then Depeche Mode began to pump through the speakers. I liked this bar. Samantha liked it too.
“I love Depeche Mode,” she said.
“Me too. Violator is their best album.”
Samantha stared at me then with eyes filled with love and alcohol. She bit her lip. I wanted to bite them too.
“Who are you?” she asked. “Most guys hate Depeche Mode.”
I’m not most guys.
“I like good music,” I explained. “Depeche Mode is good music.”
Two drunks in a bar. Two drunks in love in a bar. In Hudson. Just outside of Boston. Our waitress returned.
“How late are you open?” Samantha asked.
It was the classic alcoholic question. I loved that.
“Until one,” said the waitress. “You’ve got plenty of time.”
“Great.”
“Drinks?” she asked.
“Yes, please.”
The waitress left and we talked. The bar was wide open, calm. Samantha told me more crazy stories about the men she’d dated. I told her more crazy stories about the women I’d dated. We liked to trade crazy stories, just like at the restaurant, only now we offered more detail. We were getting drunk, loose. I was squeezing her thigh. She pressed close to me. We got up and went outside to have a cigarette. And as we were dancing on the sidewalk, a group of heavy New York accents came spilling toward us. They were drunk, a bit rowdy.
“Hey. Let’s go inside this bar.”
“Nah. It’s dead. Look at it. It’s dead.”
“No one is in there.”
“We’re in there,” we said.
We were wearing our monster suit again. Arms, legs, penis, vagina. Two heads. They loved Samantha immediately. They had to be cordial to me because I was with her, but they’d kill me given the chance.
“And who are you?” asked a bloke wearing a rugby shirt.
“I’m Samantha. I’m from Washington. I’m hot. I’m always right.”
She never says that. I don’t know why I keep writing it. I must think it’s funny.
Rugby guy told us they were visiting from New York. Then we all went inside the bar. They offered to buy us drinks. We had a posse now. We took up stools. We got drinks. We chatted with our new friends. We took some pictures. They quickly learned that we were the King and Queen of the bar. They were our servants. They worked for us. We were Gods. Our ears and noses were red and our lips wet. We were drunks. We were in love.
“Who wants a shot of green monkey piss?” someone asked.
“I do!”
“I do!”
“I do!”
Samantha was one of the first “I do’s” and I looked over to he
r, surprised. She had turned into party girl. I loved this. The New York posse, who had come with a girl but who was dust compared to Samantha, loved this too. They were in love with Samantha. They wanted to cut my throat.
We slammed a row of shots. I tossed a twenty at someone and someone else ordered more drinks. I was drinking Jack Daniel’s through a straw. I had been for some time.
Music and drinks and we were the bar now, our group of miscreants and would be murderers. We sang and laughed and a mountain of muscle sat next to Samantha and me after we motioned for him to come closer to the King and Queen. He told us a story.
“Guess who we fucking saw tonight?” he asked.
“Tom Brady?” I guessed.
“No. But you’re on the right track.”
“Josh Beckett?”
“Yes. Fucking Josh Beckett. He was at the liquor store buying five gallons of Hennessey. He had a hood up and he was pretending he was talking on his cell phone the whole time. What a dick.”
These guys hated everything about Boston sports teams. They were from New York. It was their birthright to hate Boston. But they needed us, just like we needed them. Samantha fanned herself with a menu.
“I forgot to tell you something,” she whispered to me.
“What?”
“I forgot to tell you about the dancing.”
The dancing…The dancing? What does that mean? Was she a stripper in Seattle? How did I miss that one? But no. Samantha just loved to dance. And so she danced.
“Oh my god,” someone said.
“Look at this.”
“That dude is the luckiest guy in here.”
“Let’s fucking kill him.”
“Oh my god.”
A small guy in a paisley shirt that reminded me of something from my own wardrobe pushed me. His name was Phil.
“Go dance with her!”
I shook my head.
“No way. I’m watching this just like you guys.
Phil pushed me again.
“Go dance with her!”
“No way. Out of my realm of possibility. I’d ruin it for everyone.”
Phil cheered. Samantha danced for us. Her dark hair whirled. Her hips swayed while her white smile illuminated the bronzed, glistening flesh of her face. But she stopped dancing after getting everyone excited and then she fell into me, laughing, smiling. Our ears and noses were red and our lips wet. We kissed.
“You’re awesome,” I told her.
“I love to dance!”
“You’re awesome.”
Then someone came over to me and whispered into my ear, “Dude, we’ve decided...we’re going to kill you and kidnap your girlfriend.”
“Please don’t.”
“Well, we’ll see.”
Good enough. I had bought myself some time. Now I had to make more friends. I bought more drinks. Someone else bought more drinks. Everyone’s ears and noses were red and everyone’s lips were wet. We were all drunk. The cute waitress appeared at my side and I settled up our tab from earlier.
“More green monkey piss!” someone boomed.
And so we lined up more shots. We drank them. Then we lined up more. We drank them. We were caving in. We were caving in fast.
Do we need to settle up any more with the horrid bartender? I wondered. Last call had come and gone. The lights were coming up now. Phil was making some bad noise with the blonde, shithead bartender. More money flew. We left a tip of some sort. We were nice to the waitress. Fuck the bartender. But we tipped him anyway. Then, the street.
Everything was tunnel vision. Were we in the street? No, we were in an alleyway next to the bar. The air was thick. It was dark out. Shadows and light. Samantha squatted next to a dumpster. I followed suit and pissed on a metal staircase.
Did we say goodbye to the New York posse? I wondered. I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Job well done.
Samantha had become a puppet without strings. She was floppy. So floppy. And beautiful. I could see this through my tunnel vision. She was crying. Her bag was on the ground. I slung it across my chest.
“Baby, what’s the matter?” I asked.
“I don’t…I don’t want you to go.”
She was crying. I held her face.
“Look at me.”
She looked up at me with wet hazel eyes. Our ears and noses were red and our lips wet.
“I’m right here,” I said. “I’m right in front of you. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
We kissed. Then I was beckoned by a dull sense of responsibility.
“But we have to get out of here,” I said. “We have to get a cab.”
Samantha flailed her arms. She pushed me off.
“No. Get off of me.”
“It’s okay. Listen, we have to get out of here. You need to pull it together for just a few minutes, okay?”
There was more flailing. I wasn’t sure if she recognized me anymore. She sat on the ground. She smoked a cigarette. I stepped out of the alley and onto the sidewalk. I waved down a taxi. I opened the back door and stuck my head inside.
“It’ll be just a second, buddy. Just hang on. I’ll pay.”
“Whatever.”
I ran back into the alley and tried to scoop up Samantha. She was floppy, uncooperative. It was madness but I loved it.
“The cab is waiting,” I tried to tell her. “We’ve got to go now.”
“What? Fuck off.”
Gravity was having its way with her body. She would sleep in the alley if I let her. But I couldn’t do that. The New York boys must have been nearby, waiting to see if I’d leave her. But I wasn’t going to. She was my girlfriend. And so we wrestled. I won. I pulled her into my tunnel vision and we made it into the back of the cab. She slumped against the door, her head low.
“Ledgewood,” I slurred.
The car moved. I blacked out for a moment in the backseat. When I opened my eyes, we were moving up Ledgewood and it was dark out and quiet.
“Stop right here!” I yelled.
The car came to a fast stop. I’d startled the driver. He must have thought we were dead. We were stopped at the end of the street. I tried to stir Samantha. She was making wet drunken sounds. She was wasted. So was I. But someone had to run this show.
“C’mon, baby. We’re here. We have to get out now.”
I opened the back door.
“How much, buddy?” I asked.
“MMmmmmuuuussssshhh,” said the driver.
I had no fucking clue what he said.
“Sounds good, my man.”
I shoved a twenty in his direction, maybe more, maybe less. I was confident that whatever I gave him would cover it. It was a short ride. Samantha was resisting me again. Then suddenly she was lucid.
“Where the fuck is my bag?”
“I have it. It’s right here across my chest.”
She sighed drunken relief.
“We have to get out now, baby,” I said.
There were grumbles and grunts, what the fucks and assholes and growls. She got out of the car. Or maybe I pulled her out of the car. We stood in the street. She stumbled in slow motion onto a grassy bank: the front of someone’s lawn. The door of the cab was still open. I quickly assessed the situation and realized that I had to close the door. And so I did.
“Thanks, pal.”
Then I ran over to the lawn where Samantha had crashed. I worried that she would hit her head on the road. She was taking her clothes off.
“What are you…?”
Fuck it. I helped her take her clothes off. I took off my own clothes. We kissed and rolled around and the ground was soft and cool and we were in the grass and in the leaves and twigs and I pulled off her pants and then her panties and I went down on her and got a mouthful of leaves and I spat them out and I thought, This is so bad…We have to get out of here, but we weren’t stopping.
“We have to get out of here.”
Kiss,
smooch, Kiss.
“We can’t be here. This is so fucking bad. We’re on the side of the road, baby.”
Kiss, smooch, Kiss.
Samantha was completely naked. So was I. We were fucking on a lawn. Then we were fucking on the side of the road. I looked at her tits, soft and white, under the streetlight. I worried about her head again. She was half in/ half out of the road.
This is bad. We can’t be here.
Then a red car rolled by. It rolled by slowly. We were naked and fucking in the road and on a lawn. It was late. It was dark.
I bet that car heard us and wanted to see the show. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I saw lights come on at the house we were terrorizing so they must have got a good show too. Thank god no one called the cops. Thank god. They probably would’ve brought Samantha home and I’d be in the clink on rape charges. But…people know love when they see it. We were in love.
We stopped. We had to stop. I pulled Samantha out of the road. She was spaghetti. I almost dropped her. I was getting wavy now too. The green monkey piss was racing through my system. I was failing fast, melting. We had to get out of there before something went wrong.
“Samantha, you have to pull it together. We have to get out of here.”
“No.”
“C’mon.”
I tried to round up our clothes. I was having a hard time finding everything. I got my pants and my shirt and my shoes on and fuck—I couldn’t find my cell phone. That was bad.
Where the fuck is it?
I sparked my lighter and tip toed around the lawn in search of my phone. Samantha was still naked, sitting, lying. I found my phone, miraculously, pressed down in the grass. Then I found her purse. I slung it across my chest. Then I found her pants. Then her shirt. Then her little long sleeved hoodie. I pulled her over to me and started to dress her. It was hard work. Samantha didn’t resist, but she didn’t help either. Finally, I got her pants on. Then the hoodie. I stuffed her shirt and bra into my back pockets. We were almost ready to move. Then she pulled off all of her clothes again. I was exasperated, but patient.
“Samantha.”
“No.”
“C’mon.”
“No.”
We went through the routine again. Pants on, then hoodie. We were covered in leaves and twigs. We were almost ready. Samantha started to take off the hoodie. I stopped her this time.
“Samantha, listen to me. It’s late. We’re on the side of the road. We can’t be here anymore. We have to go back to the house. We have to leave this place. What I need you to do is pull it together, just for a few minutes so we can get inside. You can do this. You can do this.”
Her head was low and her hair was full of leaves and twigs. I still had a hard on. She looked up at me and smiled. Then she said, “No.”
Fuck it, I thought. I’m not fighting with her anymore. We need action. We need to elude the police, the neighborhood watch. And so I pulled her to her feet.
“Ready?”
“No.”
“Here we go.”
I moved Samantha up the street. I didn’t have to carry her. Once her body was set in motion, it remembered how to walk, and so it did. It didn’t walk well the whole way, but her body was walking, and I was holding onto her, and she was slowly coming to the surface of the alcohol, she was slowly coming back to me.
“We’re so fucked,” I said.
“I don’t want you to go.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
We made it to her uncle’s house. We made it up the cement steps. We were trying to be hushed. We stood on the porch and I gave Samantha her bag. She fumbled around, looking for the keys to the house. She couldn’t find them. Then the door opened. I shrunk so fast, I became nothing.
I’m such a fucking asshole.
Samantha lit up like a pinball machine. Her mother/Sissy Spacek stood in the doorway.
“What are you kids doing?” she asked.
She’s been awake for a while, I thought. She’s been watching our show.
I was tiny, hiding inside of myself. Samantha recoiled to this new scene like she’d been hit with ice water. I was small but Samantha was back from oblivion.
“I couldn’t find the keys,” she said, surprisingly straight all of a sudden. I kept my head and my eyes low. We had to get inside. We had to get past Sissy. We had to get out of sight. The cops were on their way, they had to be.
“Well, get in here, you fucking idiots,” Sissy said, stepping aside.
We stumbled inside. I tried to keep my front to Sissy so she wouldn’t see the clothes hanging from my back pockets.
“Sorry, sorry,” I mumbled.
I moved past Sissy and followed Samantha into the studio. Sissy trailed us, questioning.
“It’s four in the morning. Where have you two been?”
Samantha stood in the shadows of the studio, flipping her hair. Leaves and twigs showered down from our bodies.
“We met these kids,” she said. “They wanted to kidnap me but David wouldn’t let them.”
“Eh?”
Sissy looked at me. I nodded, idiotically.
“That’s right,” I said. “But we’re fine. Took the long way home is all.”
“I see.”
More leaves and twigs seasoned the floor. Sissy rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. I sat on a little couch in the studio with my hands on my thighs, trying to play it cool. Samantha ran upstairs to get blankets, leaving me alone with Sissy.
“Are you going to be alright down here, David?” she asked.
“Yes, yes,” I said. “This will be fine. Thank you for letting me crash here.”
“Oh, it’s not a problem. Well, good night.”
“Yes, thank you. Good night.”
Sissy left. Samantha returned with blankets and sat down next to me. We started to kiss. We stopped to snap a picture. We moved to the floor. We were fucked. Our ears and noses were red and our lips wet.
I got up and turned off the lights. The sun was coming up and the room was glowing with dawn. Wrapped in blankets, we lay on the carpet in the studio, uncomfortable, kissing, hugging. We tried to have sex again. But we were fucked now worse than before. The alcohol wouldn’t release us. I had a condom somewhere, miles away. I didn’t care.
And so we tried to have sex, with varying degrees of success. My knees got rug burned. I had trouble staying hard. Samantha’s cookie was dry as a bone. I decided to go down on her but it didn’t help much. And so I fucked her with my hand and stuck my tongue up her ass. She was awake, making noises, but our ship was sinking and this wasn’t happening. And so we fumbled around and fucked it up and then we passed out.
A few hours later, it was nine in the morning and Samantha was awake. She and Sissy were driving to the Cape soon and I had to leave. We were still wasted.
SIX