He twiddles with the gold band on his left-hand ring finger as he stares into his empty glass, twisting the engagement ring round and round without thinking about it. He can feel the alcohol start to seep through his mind, distorting his thoughts. He wants it to move faster and let him forget. Alcohol is the only way.
“Refill, Dan?” the bartender asks.
Without thinking, he affirms it. The bartender slams down another glass of beer and leaves him alone again.
His reflection in the dark, rain-beaten window catches his attention: Exhausted, down-trodden. Several days’ worth of black stubble covers his jawbone and cheeks, and his hair is rumpled. He takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes, and sips his beer. He feels old.
Suddenly a voice rings in his head, Leah’s voice the day his brother died. He’d been drinking then, too, bottle after bottle of beer.
“Oh, sweetheart, put the bottle down,” she’d begged.
“It’s not a bottle,” he murmurs into his glass.
“Please, Dan. You can get through this.”
He shakes his head.
“I can’t,” he says, “not without you.”
Someone claps him on the shoulder. Putting his glasses back on, he looks up. It’s a paunchy man he recognizes from some of the countless parties he’s been to. The name evades him.
“Dan?” the man says. “I heard what happened to Leah, Dan. I’m real sorry. She was a good kid.”
His throat constricts. He nods but says nothing. The man pats Dan’s shoulder awkwardly and meanders off to play pool.
Dan hunches over the bar and covers his face with his hands, “guitar hands,” as Leah called them. She said hers were piano hands.
I heard what happened to Leah. He gulps down half his beer in sudden desperation. His fault. If he hadn’t gotten drunk at that last party – if she hadn’t driven to pick him up—
He remembers sitting at a table in a dimly-lit basement, long after everyone else had driven home or staggered upstairs to crash for the night, while one of his more sober friends stood over him, repeatedly asking, “Do you want me to call a cab?”
“I called Leah,” Dan said. “She’s coming.”
Over and over and over again, for three hours, he assured everyone who asked that he had a ride. Until the call came from one of Leah’s friends, he never doubted that she would be there.
“Leah’s in the hospital!” The voice on the phone sounded tinny, distant, frightened. “She’s asking for you.”
In that moment his world collapsed, spinning out of control with far more resign than it had ever done when he’d gotten wasted.
He stared at the receiver dumbly for a moment before asking in a hoarse voice, “What happened?”
Given his inebriated condition, the hospital staff were reluctant to let him in to see her, but they were finally convinced to admit him due to his obvious anguish.
Abrasions and bruises covered Leah’s face, but she smiled when she saw him. Dan fell to his knees beside her and gripped her hands. He tried to smile back at her. He couldn’t.
“Leah,” he said. His voice barely came out. He coughed and tried again. “Leah,” he said, “I love you. God, I love you, Leah! You know that, right?”
She closed her eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, and he guzzles down the rest of his beer. He can’t get that picture out of his head, the image of Leah dying in the hospital bed. The beer isn’t helping tonight. His every thought leads back to Leah.
He remembers the way she would stand outside during thunderstorms and laugh as torrents of rain drenched her ginger hair, the way her hazel eyes brightened when she’d been crying, the way she would take his hands and make him dance with her anywhere the impulse seized her, the way she seemed to be biting back a smile whenever he was upset by something trivial. He remembers coming home from wild parties at three in the morning, sick with drinking, and how she’d suddenly be kneeling next to him, rubbing his back and singing softly to him as he puked into the downstairs toilet. He still doesn’t understand why she had done that for him. What she’d seen in him.
He asked her, once. She had been sitting at her piano, tinkering with some chords, and he’d been cross-legged on the floor with his guitar in his lap. He strummed notes at random, but his mind was on his most recent hangover. Looking up at Leah, he asked, “Why are you with me?”
She looked surprised for a moment, but then she smiled.
“Because,” she said, “I love you.”
And she twirled away to the kitchen to make lunch.
“’Nother refill?” the bartender asks.
Dan nods wearily. He stares into the new glass and sees his reflection gazing back at him from the amber liquid.
“Why?” he asks. “Why did you love me?”
He keeps staring into his glass, but it gives him no answer. He sighs and drinks again. Something inside him hurts. His lungs, maybe. Like he can’t get enough air, no matter how deeply he breathes.
“What happened?” he whispers. “What happened, Leah?”
This time he doesn’t look to his beer for any answers. He knows what happened.
Only two blocks from the party, on her way to pick him up, she’d been hit by a drunk driver – another guest from the same party, on his way home for the night. Dan went crazy waiting for a cab to come for him, though it arrived within ten minutes of his frenzied call. The cabbie, already speeding, couldn’t drive fast enough, and Dan cursed him up one side and down the other before realizing that Leah never would have done it. He spent the rest of the cab ride alternating between guilt for shouting at his driver and anxiety for Leah. By way of apology, he gave the cabbie ten dollars over what he owed for the ride before sprinting into the hospital and forgetting about everything except his injured fiancée.
He knows what happened. His fault.
“Oh my God,” he whispers. He cradles his head in his hands as tears slide down his face. He’s ashamed of them, but he can’t stop them. The feeling in his lungs is bigger now, overwhelming. He has no lungs, only a swollen heart that feels like it’s about to burst. Frantically he empties his glass, tries to drown the feeling with alcohol. The bartender leaves him another beer without asking if he’d like one. Dan swallows half of it before suddenly shoving it away and staring at it in horror.
“What am I doing?” he cries.
He needs alcohol. He needs it. It’s the only thing he knows that has the power to release him, to let him get out of his own head. The only reason he made it past his brother’s death without the help of beer was because Leah pulled him through. She can’t pull him through this. Only alcohol can. True, it hasn’t helped yet tonight, but if he can get drunk enough, if he can get disgustingly drunk and pass out—
But Leah – not only had Leah hated drinking, little though she’d ever berated him for it – Leah had died because of alcohol! He had called her, as she so often begged him to, when he was too drunk to drive himself home safely, and she’d been hit by a drunk driver, and now – what is he doing? Sitting in a bar, drinking away, and then, when he’s wasted enough to forget why he came in the first place, he’ll get in his car and drive home! What if this is him – what if he is the drunk who kills someone’s fiancée, daughter, sister?
He won’t do it. He won’t drink anymore, as long as he lives – he refuses to be put in the same class as the man who killed Leah—
For a moment, it’s easy. He is resolved. He’ll stop drinking. But then the phrase as long as he lives echoes within him, and his resolve crumbles. He can’t, he can’t – he can’t get through this without the power to forget, let alone his entire life. He can’t. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t.
He has to. Leah would never – Leah would tell him how strong he is, she would tell him he can do it without alcohol, just like she did when his brother overdosed on heroin.
“I can’t, Leah,” he whispers miserably. “I’m not strong enough, I’m not – I can’t do this on my own—”
He hears her voice in his head, the way it sounded during their one real fight.
“Don’t you realize,” Leah cried, “how much better you could be if you’d just stop?”
He clenches his teeth and grips he sides of his glass as if his fingers are glued to it. Droplets of sweat bead on his forehead, and his brow furrows.
“You don’t get it, Leah!” he’d yelled. “I can’t just stop! It’s not that easy!”
His whole body tenses to keep dry sobs from rippling through it. He bows his head, his eyes squeezed shut. His glass of beer is cool against the palms of his hands, and tempting. It speaks to him.
This is the only way, it whispers. Dan trembles. This is all that will help you forget. This is all that will get rid of her.
His eyes fly open, and he releases the glass as if it has burned him.
“My God!” he cries.
Is this what he wants? To get rid of her? Is he so willing to put escape – forgetfulness – habit – before the best thing that ever happened to him? Take alcohol over memories of Leah, just because the memories cause him pain?
No. More exhausted than he’s ever been in his life, Dan pushes back his stool, stands up, and wipes his eyes on his sleeve. He digs in his pocket for his keys and cash. He leaves money enough on the bar counter for the three beers he finished and the one he won’t and makes his way towards the door. A dull sort of ache throbs in his chest, but he ignores it.
The first snow of winter drifts slowly down around him. Already a fine dusting of it has turned the sidewalks and streets to silver in the light of the streetlamps. He stops, almost in surprise, and stares at it for a moment. Then, closing his eyes, he turns his face to the sky and lets snowflakes fall on him.
He thinks about how it would be if Leah were here: How she would gaze at the snow with childlike wonder, how she would laugh and run out into the middle of the sidewalk and stand there with her hands raised to the sky.
“How beautiful the snow looks!” she would say.
I know, actually this is kind of dark for me... Most of my poetry is really dark, but the characters in my stories almost always get happy endings... I actually was kind of sorry to give Dan a not-particularly-happy ending, but it had to happen...even though technically I could've changed the story so it didn't have to happen, but it always feels like it DID have to happen, you know?
