Time perception is the first thing to go when you are drinking. For one thing you do not check the time so often and for another you begin to forget the time when you last checked anyway. The jazz group took the stage and started playing what seemed like nonstop improvisation for an hour and a half. To me it sounded beautiful as though there was just the right ratio between order and chaos. The alto sax player visibly had been drinking but he played better than all the others.
I got up to use the bathroom and Brent joined me. He asked if I liked jazz and I told him I used to be more of a musician in my high school years. He seemed surprised and interested but when I started to tell him some details his phone went off and he picked it up. I peed while he was talking and I did not listen to his conversation. He hung up and while I was looking in the mirror he started peeing and said to me,
“You know Sarah Roth?”
“Yes.”
“Hadn’t talked to her in a while. She just called to see if I was busy.”
“Oh, I saw her last Saturday.”
“For what?”
“We went to a concert together.”
“Oh.”
I was not halfway drunk but I had had enough to be careless. I said,
“Are you jealous?”
Brent looked at me as though I had punched him in the stomach. He said, “No, we’ve been best friends since freshman year.” It sounded more like a rebuttal than a reply. We did not talk anymore and he soon left the club to meet Sarah. I felt rather jealous and anxious so I had another beer with Bill. Then we all left the club.
Brooke walked with me and asked how I was doing. I told her I was alright and reciprocated the question.
“I’m good,” she said. “Mike and I are thinking of moving in together.” She was
the kind of girl that always had a boyfriend. Her life was filled with plans, a plethora of
empty plans that never came to fruition.
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“Well, I can’t just leave my girlfriends. They wouldn’t do without me. The apartment would be too quiet.” Her voice was as artificial as the straightness of her hair.
“Too quiet, huh?”
“You wouldn’t believe it.” We were a good distance behind Jerry and Sandy and
Bill and she suddenly spoke in a hushed severe tone,
“My life’s been such a mess. Mike doesn’t get along with any of my friends and they really don’t think I should move in with him. They don’t know him though. They’re just upset because they don’t have nice boyfriends like I do. That’s what I think.”
I might have told her that her problems were imaginary and self-created. But I was tired and I was not in any state to rock the boat. We entered another more crowed bar and I sat between Bill and Jerry with the two women on the sides. Jerry treated us to a bottle of one of his favorite port wines and we discussed memories from college.
“Remember the time,” said Bill, “When there was a water issue and none of the freshman could shower for two days?”
“Those freshman dorms smelled like shit,” said Jerry, “all the time.”
“Some of them.”
“All of them.”
“We had good housing sophomore year though.”
“It was alright.”
“I was in a single,” said Sandy. “It was terrific.”
“You weren’t lonely?” I said.
“God, no! It was great. It’s not like I never left.”
I had finished my glass. When Bill mentioned sophomore year it made me think about Catherine Hudson, a girl I dated then. I never quite got the reciprocal feeling from her though and during that summer as we had already started to grow distant a New Jersey boy endeared her and I promptly ended the relationship.
I asked the bartender for a shot of whisky and I continued daydreaming and ignoring the nearby conversation. Not after long Bill caught me falling asleep and laughed uneasily.
“You alright ’Ric?”
“Yeah.” I stretched my back. “I’m a little tired.”
“No shit,” he said. “Maybe you ought to hit the hay early tonight.”
Bill was a good man. He was not afraid to ask me to leave for my own sake. I told him I would get home in a couple minutes and Jerry said to me,
“You remember that time so got so drunk you vomited in Jen Harrison’s salad?”
“Yes.”
“That was hilarious.”
“It was certainly memorable.”
“You must have been embarrassed.”
“I was.”
“Can you imagine?” he said to Sandy. “Must have annoyed old Jen, huh?”
“She was alright about it,” I said.
“She was pissed behind your back.”
“Can’t change the past, Jerry.”
“Oh, can’t change the past!” he roared. “Coming from the king of lies himself!”
He looked to the others. “All hail the great Oh Untruthful!” It seemed the mild-tempered conventionalist had some prickly feelings in custody under his skin.
“Alright, alright,” said Bill. “That was a long time ago. You shouldn’t still be bitter.”
“I’m not bitter.”
“Alright.”
“Are you bitter, ’Ric?”
“No, why should I be?”
“I don’t know.”
I imagined how I would feel the next morning. I would probably wake up around noon and get up and get dressed and silently acknowledge that I would rather be dreaming.
Brooke did not drink and she was intentionally looking anxious. I asked if she was alright.
“I’m fine, Eric,” she said sternly without looking at me. I left the bar and fell asleep again on the subway.
We were all guilty during those cold times in New York. It was dark in the streets at night and when we gathered we were all guilty. There was always nostalgia laced in our voices. It was a cold nostalgia that wrenched your soul back in time. We shivered together in the cold but we could not see our breath in the dark. We were not looking for it anyway. It was cold in New York and we were all oblivious and fully aware of our guilt.
When I got upstairs and cleaned up it was somehow already past three in the morning. I had a glass of water before I went to bed and my apartment never felt so empty.
