Young Writers Society

Those first shots were far from their last. They staggered as they went from bar to bar, in and out, the quick up and down of a shot glass and then off to the next. The sidewalks were lined with smokers who had been forced to puff outside. In the winter, these crowds became smaller and their breaks fewer. Now, though, the reprieve of a warm summer night allowed them the freedom of taking their time.

Their destination, as chosen by Heather, was a common hangout for their fellow students from Polybius. The four entered, waved on by the bouncer, and oh, how has it come to this that they are so well known at this place?

It is the same as always, low lighting, a few tables lining the walls and a bar which completely surrounds the bartender. It should have made it easier to get the bartender’s attention, but she is the type to play favorites, let the lower ones wait. And only when she has become bored with the game does she dare cross to get their order. They were regulars who waited regularly.

Heather seemed not to notice, or did her best to make it appear that way. There was certainly an ulterior motive for her choice here; they had abandoned hope for the place several weeks ago. David made a checklist in his mind: nice dress, nice shoes, a bar that caters to the stereotypical frat brother. Heather was looking for nothing more than an insincere encounter, a placeholder to numb the terror of feeling unwanted. No strings attached with someone eager not to let any be attached. He decided he would try his best to get her that one-night stand.

The group had decided to forego shots for mixed drinks. Jeremy and Heather shared a screwdriver while Russ sipped on a rum and cola. David ordered his usual whiskey sour.

“I’ll never understand why you like that stuff so much,” Jeremy said. “I mean, whiskey? Really?”

“Just because you can’t handle it,” David returned.

“But it’s so…I don’t know…”

“Redneck?”

“…not gay.”

David simply smiled. “Well, we can’t have that, can we? One day, Jeremy, I’ll have the money to order martinis and mojitos, but for now I’ll stick with this. Actually, I’ll probably just order more expensive whiskey, but that’s not the point. Besides, you should see some of the looks I get when I order it at Acro. Some of those guys think they’re really flirting with a straight guy.”

Jeremy’s eyes scrunched as he nodded forward slightly. “Are they?”

“Hardly.”

Jeremy chuckled, looking off in the distance. “I’ve not gotten so much as a peck on the cheek from you, David.”

“Yes, we’ll be keeping it that way, too. Gays can be friends.”

“So I’ve heard.” His friend leaned forward, his eyes somewhere behind David. “Excuse me.”

Heather came alongside David. “It’s her, you know. Audrey.”

Audrey. The so-called fag hag. David didn’t hate the idea that Jeremy preferred Audrey’s company over his own so much as he hated the idea that this girl--this pleated-skirt, foundation-caked dilettante--reveled in it so thoroughly. Audrey didn’t give three shits about the real Jeremy. He was an accessory. A handbag. Something shiny she dangled on her wrist to show others that she was up with the times. Jeremy refused to see it.

Audrey and Jeremy stayed on their side of the bar. David, Heather and Russ stayed on theirs. Jeremy’s screwdrivers were served in record time the remainder of the night.

---

Except for the small drunken grind of his feet, the slow patter of the rain was all David could hear as he paced swiftly along an unlit sidewalk. His friend Heather was on the way to meet him at an abandoned playground which had been close to his childhood home. He was a college student now, and though at one time he might have been excited at the prospect of soaring from the jungle gym to the monkey bars, he was not now. This place was not one he remembered fondly.

Their venture to the bar had been a disaster. Celebrating turned to brooding. David had left in a hurry, and now Heather, in a state herself, was tracking him down. “The playground,” she had told him on the phone, as if it were the only one he had ever set foot on.

The rain had created a giant puddle at its entrance, which as fate would have it, David did not see. Wet socks were simply one more piece of misery to add to the massive stinking pile. He saw the swing set and rushed for it, though he wasn’t sure exactly why. Perhaps he might have one moment of joy in this dark, wet world.

The metal poles that supported David’s swing had long been consumed by overgrowth, as had the monkey bars and metal slide, the unruly forces of nature caring little for the sanctity of his former world. The playground had become a graveyard of mangled steel and rugged weeds illuminated in the occasional flash of lightning. Everything here was choking.

Heather’s bulky wagon pulled into a parking spot in front of David. Her headlights lit his form, which wasn’t swinging so much as dangling, his body giving itself up to the natural motion of the chains. Heather shoved open her door. “David, are you crazy? Get the fuck out of this storm!”

Several seconds passed, but David did not stir. This was too much, even for her, so she retreated back to the warmth of the car. Her wait consisted of seven tedious minutes of swaying and posturing, all performed brilliantly for the purpose of inspiring a certain empathy on her part. Heather dared not honk the horn to stir him from his self-imposed state of perpetual gloom, but neither would she be forced from her own car to fetch him. No, she had come to him unquestioningly and if he wished to behave in such a manner as though her help were inconsequential, she would make no attempt to give it to him. David, seemingly aware that he was not to be immediately consoled and blessed with Heather’s unconditional love and caring, entered the car. The atmosphere was tense, and the two, both weighed down by the heavy burden of weariness, simply said nothing. Heather started the car and pulled off toward the direction of home. It took her a few minutes to gather herself, but she reached out to David by whispering his name. He heaved a heavy sigh and cast an unmoving glare at the road ahead. Since the beginning of the ride, David had wanted to appease her sense of curiosity; after all, Heather had been dragged out here. But he knew he needed to calm down first.

He sat in the passenger seat, his eyes fixed on the yellow street lines passing by. It was a strangely mesmerizing practice--the dashes go by and the dashes go by. He welcomed the simplicity of it. Watching the dashes blur by was one of those small observances he might mark as miraculous.

David turned the radio knob until it reached a jazz station, something he could listen to without a headache concealing itself in the music. The jazz soothed him while he twitched alongside his friend, kept him from tearing his eyes from his head: the sigh of the ride cymbal, the loose beat of the snare, the sweet tune of the piano. At that moment his world consisted only of him, the jazz, and the black cloud of the road illuminated in the headlights.

All else was darkness, save for the face and neck of Heather Sullivan which were lit green by the dash. She had come to be, through a firm and undying allegiance to him, the one to chauffer his ass around at three in the morning. Heather was an emphatic hippie--or so she labeled herself--albeit an extremely practical and reliable person. She had the capacity to be both spontaneous and calculating. Though he loved her like a sister, David had the unnerving suspicion that the nature of Heather’s spontaneity was not much more than a series of calculations directed toward giving her a well-crafted appearance of being spontaneous. He hated the falseness of it, for it was the only thing he saw in her character that could be perceived as untrue.

A Coltrane piece began, and David took the opportunity to lose himself in the yellow dashes once more. After the song ended, an announcer’s voice came on asking for support so that they might continue playing the best jazz in the county. Everywhere one looks someone asking for something, and how it is a wonder that any are willing to heed such calls. When the announcement ended, he twisted the radio knob all the way down and articulated the thought foremost in his mind:

“Fuck that fucking fucker.”

Heather waited a few stunned moments before responding softly. “Such eloquence, David. That good old nugget of using ‘fuck’ as a verb, an adjective, and a noun.” Light from the dash reflected off her red lips. “Now tell me what happened. And I want everything; leave nothing out. I know you too well. You tend to omit certain details.”

Two words. “Audrey Ivors.”

“I see.” Further attempts to coax him with speech were pointless. Continued silence was the best method.

---

“Stop here!” David said abruptly.

Heather pulled over and out of the car David ran.

“Where are we?” Heather asked, her headlights shutting off. “Audrey’s house?”

“No,” he said gently, “I used to live here.”

Indeed it was the same house that he had known in his childhood. Little did David know that in the very house he had lived for fifteen years, Anna Maria Pascal--grandmother of two and fellow recipient of the jazz station’s plea--had heard the same broadcast as him, and having cherished jazz all her life, wrote a check for fifty dollars. It is perhaps for the smallest causes--the salvation of an unimportant radio station--that the most joy a few dollars can make, while the largest cases of professional philanthropy do little to show on the part of the donors the love for man that the word otherwise pretends.

And at this very moment, Anna Maria Pascal was switching off the old radio in her small den unbeknownst to her sick husband, alone in bed upstairs. While David stood silently outside the house conjuring the shattered spirits of his childhood, Anna Maria Pascal, her joints riddled with painful bouts of arthritis, climbed the stairs to her bedroom where her sleeping husband awaited her. He was completely unaware of her late night trips to the den, which he would have deemed irresponsible and unwise, especially on account of the inflammation of her arthritis caused by the climbing of the stairs.

For Anna Maria Pascal--who had been sneaking snippets of jazz for several years now--the writing of the check had been a real deed done completely without the consideration of her husband, whom she had always relied on for guidance and support for such actions. Writing the check represented a small, yet not inconsiderable, rebellion on her part. Yet, she realized, it was likely that she would be doing many things on her own soon enough, and that this little rebellion of hers was only significant because her husband was still alive.

And what if he actually lay dead right now in his bed, passed before she had even written the check? Would then her actions be empty, having nothing within them to consider them a rebellion? But no! she quickly realized, he was still breathing and still alive, and everything she had done this night was everything she knew it had been all along. The check would go out safely tomorrow, the deed being done, and even should her husband die before that time--God forbid--it would not matter for she had done it all before his passing.

Outside, David heard the sad tune of a cornet. Heather had turned back on the car’s radio.

---

“I was trying to be civil,” David said as the two drove closer to his apartment. He had been walking in the rain for nearly an hour. The ride back felt an eternity.

“That’s when we got to dancing. Russ had disappeared, and you were talking to that blond with the goatee.”

“Derek.”

“Yes, him. Russ was gone and you were with Derek and I was standing alone. Jeremy invited me over to dance. I was trying to be civil. Audrey was there--right next to me. The music was loud, pulsing. And we were just shouting to one another. Jeremy was in his own world.”

David chewed on his seatbelt for a moment. “Audrey--she just kept saying how I had forgotten from where I came. That I didn’t belong. That I was a fake.”

“A fake?”

“Yes, that I was pretending to be something I wasn’t. That anyone who acted the way I did was trying too hard.”

Heather nodded gently, her face in earnest concentration.

David continued, “She said that if I act the way I do, it’s a betrayal. That I might as well come from somewhere like West Virginia. We were dancing and she was shouting. She just kept shouting. Then the song ended and we all stopped, as if nothing had happened at all. She came up to me, and with venom, leaned into my ear and whispered:

“West Virginian!”

---

David was sleeping by the time Heather pulled up to his apartment. She guided him up the stairs, opened his door and led him to bed. She pulled off his jeans and pulled on his covers. There the little gay boy sleeps, she thought. How she loved him. As though he were her own brother.

Her thoughts turned to her real brother, PFC Arne Sullivan, killed-in-action. IED on the road to Tikrit. At Arne’s memorial on what was to be his twenty-third birthday, she had met another member of his unit. She wanted to know the details of Arne’s death. She needed to know the last thing he ever said, the grand, awe-inspiring words she knew her brother capable of. What those yet to serve should hope to know, what should inspire them to truly believe in their duty and sacrifice.

The soldier refused politely at first. Then sternly. She kept pushing.

“Do you wanna know what he said?” he answered. “Do you really wanna know?”

“Yes,” she said stridently, “I must know.”

“Damn, the meatloaf was bad today,” he replied. “The goddamned meatloaf was bad. Then the roadside blew and I saw his goddamned arm hanging by a few strings. And then if I didn’t blow chunks all over the place right there. Everything went kind of black after that.”

Sitting at the end of David’s bed, a tear fell down Heather’s cheek.

She had broken down, fallen into a stupor for the next week. First, she simply cried in bed. Then to keep her mind occupied, she began cleaning. She learned the names of every cleanser, powdered and liquid, tile and carpet. When there was nothing left to clean, she turned to sewing. She locked herself in her room and learned the trade of thread and needle and fabric. Her parents, worried, brought Heather her mother’s old sewing kit and purchased a variety of materials hoping that their daughter would put her grief toward something positive. But they hadn’t known the details of Arne’s death like Heather had. They didn’t realize the unhealthy obsession she had adopted.

She had never learned the man’s name, the soldier she had spoken to. He had come to the house for eight straight days, abhorrently sorry--begging to be seen, to explain. He knew the terror she was feeling. The sheer empty loss. He knew it all and wanted to console her. She sent him away each time.

Now Heather looked at her friend David, who lay there drunkenly snoring in bed. And she cried.

She couldn’t lose him. Not like her brother anyway. He was safe. He couldn’t be harmed. No, her little gay boy could never be shipped off to Tikrit to eat bad meatloaf. The military wouldn’t take him. He would never run into a roadside bomb and have to sit there, his arm dangling, leaving her to wonder in her little girl fantasies that if she had been there she could have sewed it back on and everything would have been all right after all.