We walked away from the car, I assumed in the direction of Tyler’s guy. We moved toward the beach, past landmarks that proved how wealthy Colburn used to be. A spiral staircase that stopped abruptly, leading nowhere. A fifteen foot tall gargoyle made of black marble. All surrounded by abandoned buildings, the sidewalks sparkling with the violence of shattered glass.
I think about zombies. With a clean white sheet of paper before me, waiting to be filled, I imagine zombies crawling, slime-covered, out of a pit, driving cars to work, lining up for their morning coffee, streaming into offices across the country, parking themselves at computers, trying to focus on work that uses only a small part of their brains, which is good, because most of their brains have been left behind in the muck. They screw their drooping eyeballs back in after staring at computer screens for hours. My eyes ooze as I write this, and my paper is no longer clean. Instead, it is filled with messy, decaying, once-human parts.
It was the sort of conversation that can only happen in a bar on Sunday night, surrounded by truly dedicated drinkers. These are the professional alcoholics who latch onto a place and dig deep, like ticks. They stay until they’re kicked out, steadily downing their drinks. Always straight liquor, too—if you’ve come to the point where drinking all day seems like the most productive use of your time, you’re not likely to be seen with a parade of empty cocktail glasses in front of you, twirling tiny umbrellas in your fingers.
Dear Lucy and Nick,
The last time I saw either of you was in Olympia, when I was living in a weird apartment downtown with no real windows, just a few skylights that didn’t open. That was seriously the quintessential Olympia bachelor pad: right downtown, neighbors that didn’t want to know you that well, and affordable rent. As depressing as the lack of windows was, I really miss that place, even now. It was the first time I could honestly say I lived alone. Entirely alone. Christ, that little bit of solitude was pretty fantastic for me, albeit a bit dangerous. It seems, left to my own devices, I tend to make poor decisions about many things. Ahhh, the folly of youth. Well, probably just folly. I wasn’t exactly a youth. Anyhow, I was living downtown, about a block from the Brotherhood Tavern.
She is having a great night. She is wearing gold sequins. She is singing. She is singing in front of people. She is singing her heart out in front of people and she is singing Phil Collins. She is just a little bit hammered.
The lights of Hollywood Blvd sparkle like the cheaply-glamorous jackets of transvestite hookers who stand at their posts. You and I tumble out of a once-famous Italian restaurant with cracked red leather seats and faded pink wall paper, where the stars once ate and drank fifty years ago, but now only those do who wish to say that they did. We’re drunk and silly and revel in our astute foolishness. We dance around dirty sidewalks and yell threats at the sky and swagger down the blvd as if we own love like it’s a brand new car bought off the lot for cash. Singles look on us and think “fucking lucky” or “get a fucking room.” We fixate on how well we get along, and that we enjoy each other unlike the dating buffet at which we both have feasted yet walked away from still hungry.
Jacob, just fifteen, watched the man-child walk down his Gran’s street almost every day. The man walked with his head bent, his shoulders hunched forward. To Jacob, he always looked like someone who was about to break into a run. Course he never did. In fact, Jacob wasn’t even sure he could run.
The first time we met Davie blew into the pub, a tornado trailing all lesser mortals in his wake. The room brightened. In a booming crescendo, he hailed a couple of my friends.
Everyone turned to look but he noticed me.
Rain. Falling on the inn’s red-tiled roof that slants sharply over the veranda. Sluicing over the low-hanging edge of the roof, falling and glittering in a white-water curtain. The veranda, deep and always shadowy even on a sunny day, surrounds the inn and shields the first-floor rooms from the pelting rain. Bundled up in my raincoat, I walk quick-stepped onto the veranda and set down the two bags of groceries and household supplies on the cement floor, next to the entrance door.