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Return to index Penguins in a Bottle



Wed, Right, and Blue



After I was set on fire, but before she started puking, we had the Married Boyfriend talk.

The bar was mostly empty. The glass doors to the deck were propped open to let in the humid night, and almost everyone was outside oohing and awwing at the last of the fireworks. They burst against the dark horizon in patriotic colors, swirling, falling shapes of fire. The road outside, framed by its overgrown grassy shoulders, sloped emptily down the hill. The whole town and then some was down at the lake. Boat traffic around here was infamous on the Fourth. From where we sat just inside the door, we could see a small square of sky between roof and treeline. Not enough of a pyromaniac or young at heart to truly appreciate the show, I found myself more captivated by the swirls of smoke, colored and billowing, visible for a brief instant after the sparks burnt out. The rain was holding off, but only just, and little tongues of lightning added to the show. Stark against a rumpled canvas of dark clouds, the whole effect was surreal.

I'd never been here before, but the tan girls in their cropped jean shorts and the middle-aged, pot-bellied men they waited on, the ones cradling Bud Lights and leaning against the door frame with satisfied looks on their faces, seemed intimately familiar. It was like something from an out-of-date coming-of-age novel. Small town patriotism; overalls and well-worn work boots; a girl with a birthday and boy troubles.

Who's to say which loves are true?

She sat in silence, hunched over, picking at the edge of the bar. I wrapped my hand around her nearly empty beer bottle, letting what was left of the cold soak into my fingers for a moment. She looked up at me, wisps of blonde hair escaping from her ponytail. "I need to get drunk," she said, as I applied my now-cool fingers to the still-smarting skin under my eye where the Morning Glory sparks had fallen earlier.

"Finish your beer," I suggested. "Before I do." Empty threat; I was driving. That was my supporting role in tonight's drama. "Or I'll order you the most disgusting cocktail I can think of."

She didn't answer, but pulled out her cell phone and fiddled with it instead. I resisted the urge to sigh. What could I say she didn't already know?

"It's not that I don't know it's wrong," she said suddenly, setting her phone down abruptly. "He's married. It's adultery. He gives me nothing but grief, and I ought to just break up with him." She grabbed her phone, started typing--and put it down again.

My mind jumped to the theology lecture I had attended only a few weeks ago. But now was not the time for a discussion about sin and commandments. Besides, she never listened to my religious or intellectual pretensions anyway. I couldn't blame her. Neither did I.

How many innocent people had their relationship hurt?

"But I love him," she said eventually, as I knew she would. She picked up the beer bottle and faced it like it was her executioner. Throwing her head back, she downed the last of it in two gulps.

Yeah, right. Nobody was innocent.

Except maybe the children.

"I shouldn't love him, but I do. And he shouldn't love me. But he does. I think he does." She looked at me. "Doesn't he?"

If the stupid man cheats on her, he can cheat on you, I thought, not for the first time. And true love is supposed to be sinless. But what did I know?

"You'd be even more miserable without him."

Oh yeah. That.

For the first time since the yeager bombs and expensive appetizers of the afternoon, she smiled, a real one that brightened her thin face and put a sparkle in her eyes. "You know, you're the only person who's ever picked up on that."

I grinned at her, but my heart wasn't in it. "That's what I'm here for."

The fireworks must have ended. The front door began swinging open continuously as groups of locals and tourists arrived, up from the lake at last. The regulars began filing back in from the porch, still waving sparklers around. I tried not to notice as more sparks came flying my way. The owner, a friend of hers who'd promised her a free birthday drink, looked drunk already, loud, red-faced and weaving as he flung snap dragons in the direction unsuspecting customers. Probably his neighbors. An exceptionally loud one went off just behind me, and clutched the counter hard to suppress my urge to jump. Glowering, I fished its remains out of my hair. Jerk.

In the corner across the room, by the shiny new drum set I'd been eyeing earlier, a band was setting up. Long haired and longer in the tooth, they looked like a motley crew (ha) of '80s rejects.

"Ten bucks says they play nothing but '80s," she said, looking amused.

"Ten bucks says their keyboardist isn't even fifteen yet," I answered, nodding towards the shaggy-haired kid who was testing out the keys.

"If I had ten bucks..."

"Ditto. I owe you a drink, anyway."

She flagged down a waitress to order a yeager bomb, paying herself before I could even reach for my wallet, and asked for a glass of water for me. Seconds later, the band struck up something unspeakably loud and unmistakably '80s. We glanced at each other, grinning.

It was too loud for conversation, but it didn't matter. Her phone buzzed, and she was off in texting land again. I sipped my water, poking the ice cubes with the straw, resisting the urge to take care of her untouched shot for her.

I'd been cheated on. I knew what i felt like. Why didn't her adultery bother me more? Well, for one thing the wife hardly cut a convincing "saintly victim" figure. But then, I'd never met the woman. Consider the source...

It was the inexplicable dilemma between moral "true" happiness and the makeshift loves we patch together for ourselves in what we're so pleased to call 'real life' all over again. I was sick of thinking about it. Was she looking for approval? Was I giving it to her?

Was this any time to care?

Halfway through the third song it finally dawned on me what they were playing. She looked up at the same time, as surprised as I was. Suddenly grinning, we broke into song simultaneously: "8 6 7 5 3 oh niiiiine!"

She laughed, though the bass drowned it out. I felt myself relax. Maybe we could salvage the night. It was a celebration, after all. Many happy twenty first returns and all that.

Or an escape artist's con.

"Want to move on?" she hollered into my ear over the rising sound of the drums.

"Sure!" I mouthed back. Leaving our empty and perspiring glasses on the counter, we edged past the band's throbbing speakers and their gathering crowd of increasingly drunk fans into the relative silence of the dark parking lot. I shook my head, trying to dispel the faint ringing in my ears.

It was pitch black by the dumpster, but the worst of the crowded tangle of newly arrived vehicles was at the other end of the small lot. We were one of the few not yet blocked in.

She was still texting as I pulled out, aiming for the next restaurant-bar down the road.

"I want to get sick tonight," she announced as I snatched a fortuitous parking space. The Bearded Clam was a lot busier than the last place, though still far from packed. It was new to me too, and I followed her in braced for distinct unpleasantness.

Instead, I found myself liking the place. It was practically homey. A tall black woman with the biggest hair I'd ever seen and a hat to match was belting out something that sounded vaguely familiar, and the stale stench of secondhand smoke wasn't nearly as strong as I'd feared. A loose crowd of dancers was stomping and waving by the window, and the women working at the bar looked rushed but friendly.

She was confident and forceful even when depressed. Flashing her ID before the three older ladies who descended on us could even get the question out, she announced, "It's my birthday, what've you got?"

"Birthday! Congratulations. First drink's on us then," one of the ladies said, wiping her hands on her apron. "What'd you like?"

"Surprise me."

Another one turned to me. "Got your ID?"

"I'm just driving tonight." No, actually. I was six months away from that liberty. Sometimes I missed Europe.

"Would you like a coke? DD's get it free."

That brightened my mood considerably. "Thanks."

"Here you go, hon," the first barmaid said to her, sliding something tall and queasy green towards us. "Liquid Marijuana. Enjoy"

She looked at me, amused. I shrugged. "That's more imaginative than what I was going to get you, anyway." I raised my coke and clinked glasses with her. "Cheers."

I watched her take a long, slow drink. "Any good?"

"All right."

"Let's get a table."

We had hardly sat down when her phone buzzed again. All the humor drained out of her face as she read the text message.

"He's not being birthday girl-friendly, is he?" I asked. Rhetorically.

She looked so lost right then it just killed me. Mouth tight, she dropped her phone on the table and downed half the tall drink at once. Setting it down with an air of finality, she looked me in the eye, and I had the feeling she was having a rare moment of totally frank self-evaluation. She needed me. And I didn't know what to say.

Then the music died, there was scattered clapping, and she'd shaken it off. "I have a six month old baby girl, a married boyfriend, and America shares my birthday. What more could a girl ask for?"

"Another drink?"

"Damn straight."

She stood up, only slightly off balance, and made her way back to the bar. Who knew what was right? I wondered, watching her go and drawing circles in the moisture on my coke glass. After all. She would push it to the limit, daring herself to break it off, to say the final words. And she would back off, because she couldn't be happy without him. Maybe she should've been. But she wouldn't be. So she'd talk to him about his wife and his struggling marriage and in the same breath tell me how there was always the chance she'd end up with him, how they were meant to be. I couldn't condone it. But I couldn't condemn her. Let he who is without sin...

I knew what the world looked like through her eyes by now, so many years into this odd, sometimes one-sided, friendship. I knew where I could push her, and how hard, before her pride came up and her foot went down. This much persuasion, no more. This far with your standards, no farther. Like everybody else, she did the best she could with what she thought she had, the lines of the illusory and the real merging and forming special limits and standards all their own. Can't and can, should and want, ought and ought not. Every judgment call looks different when you're desperate at 2 a.m.

I'd never met the man, but sometimes I wondered how he'd kept it from his wife this long. So many people seemed to know. Or maybe that was another illusion. Did it matter? Not really. Nothing I said was really going to impact the situation. Only, if I was lucky, how she felt about it. As her friend, wasn't it my job to help make her birthday even a little happy? And after everything, I just didn't have the energy to get worked up over this ongoing shattering of commandments. The guy was a jerk and his wife was worse. Which didn't justify anything. But I didn't expect it to. There was just an ironic kind of fittingness about how these things worked out sometimes. Karma? Like a porsche next to an oldsmobile.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. What? Even for bad puns that didn't make sense. She was the one who was supposed to be drunk. How long had it been since I'd slept?

She was back, with a waitress and menus. The drink was pink this time. "Chicken fried steak?" she asked me. "Whatever you want," I replied gravely, knowing I wouldn't eat it. I pulled a menu toward me, curious if not hungry. But then I saw "crabcakes."

"I'll have some of those," I told the harassed-looking waitress, who just nodded and left in a hurry.

"He hasn't bothered to do anything special for me at all," she said abruptly. She picked up her drink, looked at it, and sat it back down. "And he dropped all those hints..."

I patted her shoulder sympathetically. "He is a man. They do that."

She checked the time on her phone. "I'm giving him til midnight to make my birthday fantastic," she said with the logic of the desperate and slightly drunk. "And then... it's over."

"You think he won't, then?"

"I know he won't."

I wasn't about to argue with her. There was no way she'd actually do it. I almost said, 'Life decisions are best not made while drunk.' But I didn't. Why bother? Besides, some people make a lot more sense under the influence.

Europe came to mind again, and my knee twinged. Well. Some people.

"He hates being around me when I'm drunk. I get emotional and needy and moody and try to break up with him." She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. "And yet his only gift was to offer to buy me alcohol a day early."

Before I could reply, our food came. I paid the lady before she could object. "Since I didn't buy you a drink," I explained, and turned my attention to the steaming seafood in front of me. Heaven.

The music swelled, some famous song's big finish. In the near-quiet that followed, her voice was far too loud. "That woman looks like a drag queen," she said contemptuously.

I choked. Maybe no one had heard. When nothing came flying our way, I snuck a surreptitious glance at the singer, considering. No... she didn't. My rapidly-approaching-drunk friend was just spoiling for a fight. Not a good sign.

I watched her pick at the mostly uneaten sandwich. Swallowing a last bite of delicious crab, I decided to wing it. "The thing about boyfriends--" Adulterers my mind echoed-- "is they just don't get it." Not the best opening line, and I had no idea where I was going with it, but why not? "For all their professions of love, and deliberate association of love with sex--which is entirely for our so-called benefit--" Remember who you're talking to-- "I mean, for all the ways they try to make a relationship work, what do they really know about us? They're not us. And you can't tell them, because some things just don't translate. And not even just between the sexes, but just from mind to mind. I mean--" I was babbling now, but it was too late to stop. "Think about it. All you can do is get a rough estimate and guess, but you're never going to feel what another person feels, and therefore you're never going to be able to anticipate what they want." I paused for breath. "Remember, freshman year, when we thought we were psychic?" I don't know what that had to do with anything. What the hell was I talking about? I think it may have been a load of bullshit.

She wasn't looking at me, but she wasn't looking around for more people to insult, either.

This time, it was my phone that buzzed.

Hay you hows it.

My fingers were stiff on the too-small keys. Waiting for her to get drunk so we can go home.

O...k... hav fun w that.

Annoyance throbbed, sudden and sharp in my gut. Idiot. But I felt guilty for thinking it.

"He says he's busy."

I looked up. "What?"

"That's his excuse. That's always his excuse."

Well, maybe he is. I pushed the annoyance away. My head was starting to throb. We needed to end this. Soon.

She was looking lost again, and my impatience faded away, replaced by a helplessness that wasn't an improvement.

She sighed. "Let's go."

"Okay." I drained the last of my coke and started fishing in my pockets for a few dollars to tip with. "Onwards, or are you ready to go home?"

No answer.

"Hey..."

She was staring at her phone again... and almost smiling.

Oh.

"Home," she finally answered, snapping her phone shut. She stared at the remains of her pink drink. "I can't just let alcohol go to waste. But..." she made a face.

I was almost amused. Lightweight.

"Go for it," I told her. With a shrug, she took one last, long pull on the straw, and stood up. I waited to see if she needed any help avoiding sharp corners and making it past door frames, but she was remarkably steady, considering. At the last minute, I picked up her glass and drained the last of it, just enough for a taste. Vodka. No wonder. She hated vodka.

The air outside seemed, if anything, hotter. My glasses fogged about the edges, and I wiped a finger across them. I unlocked my car and turned on the air conditioning, just ready to get out of there, but she wouldn't shut the door.

"Are you okay?"

"Nnnghh."

Leaning out over the broken pavement, she vomited, a childish, watery sound. I fiddled with the steering wheel, humming country songs in my head, suppressing my ridiculously sensitive gag reflex.

"Urgh."

I looked over at her hunched-over form sadly, and resisted the urge to reach out and rub her back, thinking she probably wouldn't appreciate it. She shivered in the heat, and I noticed how thin her shoulders were.

"I'm avoiding the door." Her voice was low.

"Thanks. The car's not actually in my name yet."

It wasn't funny, it was the sad truth, but she laughed. Shakily.

The dim glowing digital clock on the tape player slowly blinked its way into July 5th. At 12:01, she was done puking, but still hunched over and texting away.

At last, she swung around, pulling the door to, phone stowed in her pocket. We watched the silent parking lot together for a while.

"Thanks."

"Any time."

"I puked."

"Congratulations."

She fished out her phone again. "He loves me."

"Yeah?" I reached for the wheel. "Ready?"

"Yeah."

I put it in reverse and swung out in a wide arc, spun the wheel to flip the tires, and eased up the steep driveway. The highway was still mostly deserted, and I made the sharp left turn without much difficulty.

She was talking with more energy now. "He has been there for me. And I've helped him keep it together when his wife was being a bitch, so he could be there for his son. He's been so good with my baby. And he makes me happy. And gawd, the sex... He wouldn't still be with me if he didn't love me, would he? He wouldn't put up with all my crazy shit if he didn't. I know I'm hard to put up with sometimes."

Why did he put up with her? I didn't know. Maybe it was love and maybe it wasn't. But she was practically dancing in her seat now, texting with more enthusiasm. She shivered, squirming happily. "He loves me, he loves me!"

We passed the gas station, the school, the bank. I turned down her road and tried not to remember the last time I'd said something that goofy and mushy and happy.

I nearly missed her driveway, and the brakes squealed when I hit them too hard.

"Sorry." I put it in park. The night was still. It was nearly suffocating.

"I'm glad you came."

I smiled, and very nearly meant it. "Me too."

She looked at me sadly. "Sorry I puked."

"Hey, you partied. Mommy or not, you're young, it's your birthday. Your body's gift to you."

She snorted. "Yeah. It was stupid."

But you wanted it. Isn't that always your excuse? "Yeah."

"We'll hang out next week, when we don't have to drive. I'll buy you a beer."

"I'll hold you to that."

She leaned over, one long, bony arm awkwardly hugging my shoulder. "Love you."

I leaned into her arm. "Love you too."

And then she was slamming the door and disappearing into her house, and I just sat there, staring at the overgrown yard, head pounding, seeing her as the young, free, headstrong girl she had once been. Never innocent, but less cynical. Not so sad as she was now. When her biggest problem, though she didn't see it that way, was helping me pass algebra, and after that one all night party nearly sleeping through fire alarm drill before I realized and ran to shake her awake before the teacher noticed.

She'd been my rebel idol. Opinionated and I-don't-give-a-damn-what-you-think. I'd wanted her courage, her parties, her badass way of life. I'd wanted to be tall and thin and desirable. Just like her.

I sat in the nice car my parents had bought me in my baggy Star Trek t shirt and ancient J.C. Penny's jeans contemplating my staid, unremarkable college career, and as much as I loathed my drab suburbia-generated fill-in-the-blank existence, I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm to envy her jackass husband, $700 divorce lawyer bill, 2 a.m. feedings, married boyfriend, alcoholic chain-smoking trash-talking friends, or even her convenience, puzzle-piece morality.

Somewhere in a neighboring lawn, fireworks started up again. A long, lazy peal of thunder echoed out simultaneously, and some lonely dog let out a howl.

I turned on the radio and found the slowest, cheesiest country song I could. "Happy birthday, love," I said to the darkness and the radio static. I didn't know if I was talking to her, or to my country.

Stone-cold sober and feeling remarkably unpatriotic, I went home.