todd of tacoma

She was at the bar, D was, trying to let the bartender know we’d ditched our spot at the bar for a table in the restaurant proper, an annoying thing people do when they haven’t seen one another in half a decade or so. I had had experience with this bartender before and told D they’d make us pay our bar tab up there while they grumble vociferously, so don’t make a whole thing out of it.

He dried the same glass, one glass, over and over while I was mathing the tip. Around and around, just staring at me, that pudgy fucko!

You were what? Mathing?

I know, I know. Ten percent times two.

Do you mean mouthing?

Fight, flight, or freeze. I’m a freezer! I’m surprised my ancestors weren’t carved up by wolves or a sabertooth or a faster than usual sloth.

It takes a village, D–you need freezers to store meat.

She laughed. It’s not a great laugh. I won’t get into it.

About this mathing. We don’t need mathing, do we?

It’s something we say at work, okay. The math’s not mathing, like it’s not computing. We even say, my brain’s not braining.

You’ve changed.

I don’t think I tipped.

You haven’t changed.

She pulled me toward her by my armpits like I was a puppy, like let’s get a look at you or who’s a good boy–it’s an annoying thing she does that I don’t find as annoying as I should.

What are we going to do with you?

With me? I’m fine.

You’re not, darling. I haven’t seen you in almost five years and the first place you take me to the bartender obviously hates you. You’re still a masochist.

She let go of my armpits and kissed me on the forehead.

You punish yourself, Todd!

You’re drunk.

It’s because you grew up in that cult, right, that’s why you always punish yourself? That’s what you’re going to tell me. I haven’t seen you in five years and I still know everything about you. What are we going to do?

Continue drinking?

Drinking where? We need to pace ourselves and this place won’t allow it.

You’re not allowed to pace yourself?

Incapable of. I have one speed and they’re taking advantage of me. For a leering pieceofshit sonofabitch, our man behind the bar is not stingy with his liquor. You know what he’s doing? He’s trying to get me drunk. The man is trying to squeeze tips out of me and I’m not drinking what he’s squeezing. You get me?

They, actually.

Standard disclaimer. This blog respects the anonymity of everyone in recovery, and the names of anyone transitioning. Letters, applied mostly at random, have been assigned to most or some persons here, sometimes their places, too. Fake names are also used, because there are only twenty-six letters. None of the characters in this blog are supposed to resemble anyone. Anyone resembling real-life persons or places or letters or names for their persons, places, or letters is purely coincidental and an understood hazard of fiction writing. I take actual recovery, actual transitioning, and sometimes fiction quite seriously.

Naming the dead

She looked. 

Their shirt collar, she noticed finally, was as wide as a manhole cover, often a feature of women’s holiday-wear, and their earrings dragged along the bartop like two pink anchors. Their jeans were Lee, eighties Lee, washed to hell, and their mustache was a pushbroom ending in a baby Dali.

It’s the mustache! Dead giveaway. I can’t believe I didn’t notice!

Quiet.

It’s the most feminine mustache I have ever seen!

Bob’gerald is what they go by.

Two masculine names for a they? she was saying this quietly, or trying to. That’s no they name!

Nee just Bob, I think? Yes, I was served by them as Bob before.

The deadname is in the new name.

Bob’gerald was glaring electromagnetic death beams at us, boring mostly into D, but I was in the burn radius, too.

Are you sure it’s not just one of those two-first-names situations, like Brian Clark? Bob Hope? Ike Turner?

It has an apostrophe.

How do you know this, actually? Are you two great friends?

Name tag, I tapped my chest.

They wear a name tag! Who wears a–I need another drink. Are there servers in this area? Will he–they–make me another, do you think? Their last one was a scorcher.

Let’s wait. Don’t go back there.

They better show up soon, my buzz gets bored fast.

Pace yourself!

She popped two ice cubes in her mouth and crunched on them politely to indicate to me she was not about to let something go.

I wonder where the Gerald came from.

Obviously Gerald Ford.

Her laugh.

Trans rights activist Gerald Ford!

Okay, when she laughed, especially when she was buzzed–it was this unfortunate cackle that barely fit the woman, petite with thin-framed glasses and hair in a sort of sexy chignon that suggests she forgot her books at the library and do you mind if we circle back to grab them. Her cackle was befitting a witch.

It’s from Geraldine, bitches–my nana!

It came from the bar like the voice of a minor god and it shut us up and it shut up the restaurant, too. We could hear shoes squeak in the kitchen it got so quiet.

My apologies, D said, often the first to break silences. I’ll tell my friend to shut up.

And now we could hear clogs in a hallway.

Did the music just turn back on?

Was it off?

It was off and now it’s on. They control it from the bar! They turned it off to listen, they’re communists!

Shhh, no they didn’t!

Clogs growing ever louder.

I hated to shush her. You shouldn’t have to shush your friends.

Ol’ Boobjob is a spy.

Don’t get me eighty-sixed!

Trying to get intel on us. We’ll show them–we’re not that intelligent.

I’m serious. I love their spam musubi.

It’s just, here’s what, Gerald is not a real name anymore. This guy, this gal, they set themselves up to be de facto mocked or at least looked at sideways by the likes of us, for their name alone, nothing else, admit it, just so they can retaliate.

They make great cocktails.

Clogs getting louder and louder and other clogs joined the procession.

Depriving us of the right to laugh at our ancestors’ names!

Take the name tag off, you don’t work at Kinko’s!

The clogs stopped clogging. A new server, now our server, came in suddenly, sweaty and red-faced like a referee who’d just been struck by a punt.

What are we having!

Still deciding.

Another server joined our new server, followed by a sweaty host, too, and all three watched o’er by Bob’gerald at the bar, a phalanx of aggrieved hospitality.

Oh, shit.

I have a two-top in that corner over there, if you’d like it.

It was tucked between the hall to the bathroom and a plastic plant, or some sort of barely alive plant that grows a leaf every two years. But we weren’t being asked to leave.

Is that the naughty corner?

I have a group coming in in about twenty minutes.

They reserved this area.

If you don’t mind moving.

It’s a good area, D said, view of the bar. Lucky them, having a group.

It’s why it says reserved.

She was holding a stack of RESERVED signs and had not yet laid one down, not anywhere.

I think, D popped in two more cubes of ice while she talked, I think I forgot I have Celiac’s and I’m going to diarrhea all over this booth if we don’t leave soon, honey.

That’s good, ma’am.

Ma’am? Todd, let’s go–we’re clearly not welcome here!

Her coat pretty much materialized when she said this and I noticed her purse for the first time this afternoon. It was a smallish Gucci thing that looked like a briefcase. She could have been grading papers at the library, papers about Renaissance dress codes and sexuality. Our server flinched when she saw it, the Gucci bag, not only because it was overlarge and a bit gaudy, but because it was befitting a person who might strike another person with it.

D stood up and did not strike, to the surprise and relief of everyone watching.

Relief, until she pointed at the bar and screamed, that man made me drink sake!

Bells

You don’t have Celiac’s.

Nobody does.

What’s with the Florida Mom purse, by the way?

I have an allergy to people’s chosen names. I didn’t change my name when I got married, did I? And even if I had, I would have only got to choose between two, wouldn’t I?

That’s not the same thing.

Bob is in the name. The deadname is in the name.

You can’t deadname yourself.

We’re more sophisticated in Seattle, dear.

You’ve proved that.

Relax, love. I’m trying to be silly.

To go with her cackle, yes, there was a witch inside her, but there was also a smile inside her. We had found this out about ourselves, as with everything, long ago–high school or shortly after, maybe–and found it was unchangeable. With just the right amount of alcohol, a smile would come out, and with just the right amount of alcohol, a witch would come out. No telling until they arrive. What’s handy about this setup, though, if it’s a known issue, is that you can pass any bad behavior off as your witch–or warlock, if you prefer. D and I were about to engage in an old-friends verbal scuffle, but she reminded me we didn’t have to fight if I was willing to overlook her…whatever.

There’s a woman in my office who changed their name to Taurus, she said.

There’s a smile behind every witch and a witch behind every smile–I guess that’s what I mean.

Like the bull?

Like the bull.

FTM?

No, other direction. Changed her name to an animal whose identity is one-third horns and two-thirds testicles.

The relief you feel when you laugh when you shouldn’t. A cold, sudden wind hit me in the face. D looked up like she’d been hit, too. This, I thought, this is a fart in church. The spires here! D said. If you took a cityscape of Tacoma it would look like a burnt two-by-four full of nails sticking up. Has anyone anywhere ever taken a cityscape of Tacoma?

Those spires are the high school. It was the set of 10 Things I Hate About You.

That’s nice, dear. Is that a window full of tits?

I still have a massive crush on Julia Stiles, especially high school Julia Stiles.

I still have it for Heath Ledger. I’d fuck his corpse. Do you think he left a corpse? Or did they burn him up?

I was standing in a puddle reflecting a church’s windows reflecting an orange-gray sky, and I could see the church spires there, and then I lost track of wherever I was looking, I was so nested in a house of mirrors in my head. These places of worship, most half-abandoned, are–D was right–our tallest buildings here. They’re the nails.

I don’t think God hears prayers in Tacoma, Todd. Let’s go into the tit store.

She grabbed me by my coat and lifted one of my shoes, like I was a helpless animal, and peeled off a leaf that was clinging to my sole, and she let the wind take it.

The actor Julia Stiles playing a high schooler is what I mean, not Julia Stiles in high school.

We ducked under an awning with our arms shielding our faces. The wind took a few more unsuspecting leaves away by surprise. One hit the window of the tit store–the boutique–a ceramics and potted plants specialty shop with no discernible specialty. You got the feeling some rich kid opened it because she liked the sound of the welcome in bell.

Welcome in!

Hi.

Welcome in!

Hi.

It looked larger inside than outside, the store, not the tits. It was floor to ceiling pottery, mostly plant pots to go with the potted plants, mostly spider plants and rubbery things, but also some mugs and knickknacks. Incense holders and chopstick holders and paperweights, too, most with poorly painted boobs on them, and some with benign, cartoonish penises, too, that were no threat to anyone.

My God, this.

It was a unicorn rearing up with a hole where its horn should be. Its face, contorted, looked terribly annoyed, sort of a dog’s face when it’s trying to paw off its muzzle. It had a good dick, too.

For your toothbrush! Dental hygiene makes me horny!

A sudden onrush–is that what they call it?–of memory. More than a decade ago, D bought me a toothbrush to keep at her place, so I could more comfortably crash there when I was drunk, something I did on an almost twice-weekly basis. Her boyfriend was jealous, and a jealous type, hence the separate holder for my brush, so it wouldn’t have to mingle with theirs, the happy couple’s. It somehow, for some reason, pacified him. He could have been pacified by a tennis ball, though.

I’ve never understood the unicorn rearing. They’re always rearing. But it’s a cuddly creature, right, often turquoise?

Cuddly? They have horns. A horn.

Not this one.

Your brush is the horn. What don’t you understand?

All of it.

Unicorns are badass.

That belongs on a throw pillow. Do you own that throw pillow?

It’s wine o’clock somewhere.

A rearing horse is one that’s in pain, isn’t it? Or ready to fight? It would kick in your teeth, not brush them.

It’s cute, right? the boutique cashier or attendant or owner said.

We’re trying to decide.

Did the music just stop?

Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t think I had anything on, Ms. Boutique apologized. What would you like to hear?

No, it stopped. I know it stopped.

What was it?

Ginger

The wind was now gusting against treetops like it was aiming for them. Leaves and rain, in equal measure, were slapping against curbs and into windshields. There were banks of them rotting, the leaves, rotting on the sidewalks and in the streets. Leaf blowers were obviously futile against these piles and traffic was slowly churning them over into mire and bogwater, and the Stadium District building owners weren’t going to pay for groundskeeping, and the shop owners and cafe owners probably couldn’t afford groundskeeping, and the city doesn’t care about the sidewalks or streets–or crosswalks where they meet–until the sopping shit gets into the storm sewers.

Somebody get these people a rake!

There’s this bar a couple blocks from the boutique, and there were three bars in between. We would stop by all three in turn en route to the bar a couple blocks from the boutique and therefore never make it all the way there–to the bar a couple blocks from the boutique–so I won’t even describe it. They wouldn’t have liked us tramping leaf sludge all over their tiles, anyway.

Our last bar, though, it looked like an old bank and they made great use of it, made use of its massive vault for barback storage, for instance, for bottles and kegs and stuff, and all the old teller windows were cocktail stations. There were even pens on chains hanging around, that light touch was my favorite part. D’s favorite part was this, as we sat down she said, open the vault, gimme everything you got!

She, in fact, did get almost everything they got–she ordered this tiki concoction she called a Player Piano. I asked for a Negroni, with mezcal instead of gin.

Not really a Negroni at all.

Wait, you didn’t even question her about the Player Piano, I joked, hoping the joke would joke.

This man knows what he wants, D said.

Everything’s the same, just substitute mezcal for gin, I argued.

I was afraid of what I’d get, or maybe even more afraid of our bartender cutting my orange twist with a special knife she stored in a cup of spit and backwash for princesses like me. She was pulling off bangs, our bartender was, and wearing hoop earrings, too. They were catching the dusk light just right so that everything outside, that is, everything behind us, looked like a reflection on the side of an old car, an old blue car with cracked paint and flecks of rust and silver, and blown out with a huge gray reflection–like another time was dangling from her ears, in a circle broken only by her lobes. I was staring now, so I tried to play off noticing something perpendicular, you know, the way you do when you’re caught staring.

I think half your garnish got in her hair, I said.

But what was I looking at?

I think it did, our bartender replied, not D. Dust and orange peel spray rolled out like a dust storm. All my clothes smell citrusy, she said. If I don’t wash them within a few days they start to smell like a dumpster.

Citrus can do that?

I’ve never made one of these before, she moved on, setting our drinks down, and she was not talking to me.

It’s my go-to.

Bullshit, it’s not.

I’m kidding, you’re right. But it’s not all that exotic, is it?

It’s not, but it gave me some ideas. She opened a small notebook and started to jot in it.

I hope they’re not bad ideas.

I’ll have to watch you.

Whoa, ladies! I didn’t say.

Take another sip, she said.

I had seen D blush I think four times.

I can tell what people taste by the look on their faces.

Can you?

Once when she met my parents, my hyper-religious parents, and accidentally blasphemed, she blushed redder than the steak she was cutting.

The hell you can!

Once at a campfire when she told a boring story and realized halfway through telling it she was combining three or four boring stories into one and no one had noticed or questioned her, because why? She blushed and stopped talking and, sure enough, no one noticed.

I have a poker face. Here we go.

She doesn’t.

Once when she heard a noise while going down on me in a church basement, our only sexual encounter, and she realized what she was doing and to whom. She gave me a peck on the tip like it was my forehead or cheek and instead of laughing like she ought to have laughed, she froze–and blushed.

Try it, you can’t hide what you’re tasting from me.

And once when she met her boyfriend, who became her husband, and then stopped being her husband. I forget if it was the beginning or the end of that relationship that she blushed. She was waving to him.

Mmm!

Nutmeg.

No fucking way–that’s terrible of you! I hate nutmeg.

And now you like it.

And now nutmeg made her blush.

It’s a lot. I don’t usually order a lot.

I can tell.

Cheers, she raised her glass. Here’s to a lot.

Once she stopped blushing, you could see she didn’t really like it, the drink, and she didn’t do a great job hiding that fact. She went singsong, her blatant tell, and she coughed a little.

Mm-mmm-mhm! Holy shit, that’s good!

The streetlamps were lighting up now and they were warming up the bar, too, and practically setting the leaves outside on fire. They were so orange. There was a corona around everything I looked at, too, and it tipped me off to the fact I was drunk on smoky liquor and about to start having a good time. I was about to be fun.

Take out your horse, I said. Let’s settle this.

Settle what?

Take it out.

What horse?

You’ll see.

D pulled out the unicorn and set it on the countertop.

Is this–

A toothbrush holder.

Remember when you bought that toothbrush holder for my place?

You bought it.

I didn’t have a toothbrush holder, and you said it was gross and impossible to try to balance yours on its back by the sink, right next to the toilet, so you bought it a holder. My boyfriend thought it was pretty smart, so he bought a his and hers to match. You were like our little boy.

You’re drunk, I said and I turned to our bartender, this horse, this unicorn, whatever you want to call it, is it cuddly or fierce or tortured? Don’t answer too quickly. Look at its face, look at it rearing.

It’s a unicorn, it’s a spirit animal, I don’t know, what am I supposed to notice? It’s on its hind legs? It’s sexy? Decent dick? I don’t know!

You suffuse it with whatever you need to comfort you.

What’s wrong with that?

It’s a safety blanket! It reminds you every day you’re a weak, simpering eleven-year-old. Do you really want to look at this and be reminded of your own regression or, fuck, senescence every single day, twice a day?

You don’t look at a toothpaste holder. You grab and brush.

It looks like it’s in pain.

No more than any other horse.

You just pull out your toothbrush and two minutes later you put it back in.

Look at its tail! Even its tail looks like it’s in pain! Like some invisible force is yanking on it!

Do you know how you get a horse’s tail to rise? our bartender said.

Smack it?

You’d like that, wouldn’t you? She rolled her shoulders back a little and looked around like there was a secret coming, I shouldn’t tell you guys this. It’ll just lead to other things I shouldn’t tell you.

Then, please do.

And then I’ll tell you those things and then you’ll want to hear more. I shouldn’t. Can I tell you guys this?

D was making clip-clop sounds and trotting her toothpaste holder along the bartop. There were two other people in the bar, eight or ten stools away. It was early. It was achingly quiet between songs, music acting as it was this day.

I nodded.

Breeders did this at auctions and fairs and stuff to make old horses look young. She held a pregnant pause for us to say what? in, but we didn’t.

Gingering.

Gingering…

She plucked a piece of ginger root from her garnish and fruits station and trimmed back the skin like a circumcision.

They would ginger their assholes.

That looks so much like a dick! D laughed.

Touch it, she pointed to the fleshy tip.

Now, touch it to your lips.

D did. Mmm, I have some in my drink.

You don’t, actually. Just nutmeg. Now, touch it to your eyes.

Fuck right off! D was laughing. Oh, was she laughing. She’d been sort of laughing since we entered the bar. Like she was making up for something, and when she really got going–well, you’ve heard it, that cackle. But it was welcome here, it bounced off the walls almost warmly, like whatever roughness was in her voice, those rough corners were rounded when they hit the puffy coats and scarves hanging on the coat hooks, or the cloth napkins and the red placemats. Her laugh, winterized.

You get their tails to rise high up, like that one on the toothbrush holder, by gingering their assholes.

Like stick it in?

Just apply it like a lipstick and poof! instant youth. They get pretty uncomfortable.

I swear I’m gonna pee myself!

They jump around a lot more, too, and look like they’re untamed and young. Added bonus.

How do you get one to grow a horn?

You fuck it.

Laughter like a wave. The couple at the end of the bar shifted on their barstools.

A vet friend told me this. Actually, he wasn’t a vet, his dad or mom was a vet, or a vet tech, or maybe it wasn’t his dad or mom. He wasn’t really a friend, either. We fucked, that’s how I knew him. We fucked and one day he was telling me about gingering and it seemed like it was getting him…a little too excited, so I egged him on.

Stop.

I told you! There’s always more. Should I tell you this?

You have to.

I said to him, does that story make all the ladies crazy? And he said, stop it, but I could see the skin between his eyebrows flutter–remember, I’m an ace at reading faces–so I asked him just a little differently, I said, does it kind of make you hot? And he said, shut up, but he didn’t mean shut up.

Shut. Up. Are you serious right now?

Look, no doesn’t mean yes, but in this instance, I was asking his face what his asshole wanted, and it knew what it knew, so I said, do you think you could fuck me like a young buck if I gingered you?

I will pee all over this stool! Shut! Up!

You gotta be point blank sometimes. So, I asked him, do you have ginger in this shithole apartment? Yeah, he says, and he did. For some reason that always stands out to me as the most unbelievable part of this story, that he had ginger there–if you knew him, unbelievable–and that it was unrefrigerated, like it was ready to play hide-the-spice with. I pared it down to the best bits and made it kind of look like a hairy sex dagger, you know, with a handle to protect my cuticles from the ginger flesh.

Or from his dingleberries! I smiled pathetically. My jokes just weren’t joking.

And here he said the funniest part. I’m about to insert a really uncomfortable spice into his asshole, and he tells me, not too fast! Like it’d be better slow!

She sprayed a couple jiggers at her prep station, like it was part of the story. I heard a throat clear at the end of the bar. The man who’d cleared it had a walrus mustache, I just noticed it. It was as masculine as Bob’gerald’s was feminine.

Not too fast!

He was just a poor, nervous little guy, D said.

The throat cleared again. It was ignored again.

Then, I have him get up on the countertop, right, to do the deed, and I’m stroking him a little because I want to make sure he’s ready for me once I get him spiced up–we had already fucked three times that day, I think, we were young–and I’m leaning against his thigh and his breath is super loud, like he’s a bull or something, and I think he actually mentioned he felt like a bull about to give semen. Remember, his mom’s side of the family were all in the veterinary industry. And then he told me, tell me when you’re about to go.

Oh, no.

I’m literally peeing. No!

Tell me when you’re about to go…

Laughter. Cackling. Wind and rain. I was in an orchestra pit.

At the end of the bar the couple tossed down two credit cards, signaling they were very much ready to leave now, thank you and down the middle, please.

Ready to go?

Yep!

One sec, our bartender said and she leaned closer to us. So, I go after him. I have to chase him. I have to fucking wrestle him! And thank God I’d got him hard beforehand because he was bucking everywhere and I had no space or time to do my usual good work. He jumped off the countertop and into this stack of magazines. Some of the perfume pages got on his tits and I’m really sensitive to the stuff. Thank God I also lubed myself up pretty good before I started in on this business, because I had just put a lotta quarters into this bull, you know. So, I kind of tackle him to the couch, takes all my might, and I pull him on top of me and God! he was going like a fifty-five-horsepower dildo gun! It wasn’t even sexual, nothing about it felt good at all, except the experience. I thought to myself, to get through it, well, I am having an experience.

I’ve had my share of those! I commiserated.

Just have to print it up, our bartender said to the end of the bar.

Don’t wait for the ticket. Just leave cash, I heard them whispering, and counting. I don’t have enough, one finally said.

Doesn’t matter, don’t tip, our bartender spoke up. Just drop what you have!

Didn’t plan to!

He came rockets right off bat, and I knew that would happen. He never lasted when we did the weird stuff.

The bar had bells on the door, like at the boutique. I only just then noticed, when everyone disgusted left the room.

But he was still so fucking uncomfortable–still!–and he still had too many wiggles to sit still, so I thought I’d put all his strange energy to use again. I went to the fridge and cut an English cucumber.

No.

About the length of his dick. Yea long.

No.

Pretty good.

Yeah, not bad.

Cut some kitchen twine, took it to the couch and fitted him with kind of a cucumber tourniquet dick to fuck me with.

That’s not true!

It would never hold.

No, it’s true! Franken-cumber did eventually fall off, yes, but it held together for five or six good thrusts–and that’s the bar I set for counting it as sexual intercourse proper, no less!–plus, the boy was a good boy and he finished me off with his hand.

He didn’t have ginger on his fingers?

Oh no, God, that would have been awful. Just on his asshole. He had that perfume on his tits, though. Gave me a rash and smelled awful. Kind of high school girl at a lake, that’s what it was giving me. Sandy, sunburned. Stung. You want another?

I had drunk my Negroni.

Probably another, thank you.

I’ll have a High School Girl on a Lake, please.

You want a custom cocktail that goes with the story? Like community theaters do?

I could use an intermission, D swooned. She was entering that blotto territory now, gonzo time. I hadn’t seen this look on her in years. Something had caught up to her, something from earlier in the day, maybe, maybe the curse of Bob’gerald, I wouldn’t be surprised, or something even earlier.

How did he get it in?

Hm?

The cucumber. How did he get it in?

It had to be a behind thing. He probably held it. I’m not sure anymore. That’s funny.

Funny time, D said.

I pictured this man’s long penis snapping away from the cucumber like a taut cable, like off a bridge in a storm, and the bridge falling away into a deep ocean.

I did it. I think I peed myself, D said.

The hall over there, our bartender barely stopped, she was still monologuing, bathroom’s over there. This one place I worked, Italian place, my partner made this travesty he called The Consigliere. Smell-wise, the closest I can get to High School Girl on a Lake. Taste-wise, I ‘d look elsewhere.

She pulled out a pint of some sort of cheesecake ice cream. Then she put a round ice cube in a snifter.

It smells better than it tastes, I’ll remind you. I would never in good conscience serve this to anyone.

D hadn’t left her stool.

I noticed there was no music. Had there been?

You’ve got a little cherry juice and gin, shake it just a few, pour it over ice.

It’s a wonderful life.

Cut a sprig of rosemary. Light the sprig on fire and wet towel it out, throw it out, it’s just a diversion. It’s your campfire. Float Bacardi 151 and light it on fire! Into the fire, you throw a shave of cinnamon, zest your orange peel in there, poof!, I’m always covered in zest, remember, and you then put it out with Aperol.

This should be illegal.

It’s a fucking forest fire.

I smell myself at Ennis Lake. Ennis, Montana.

Oh, you all are country?

Like when you put on sunscreen and wrap yourself in a towel and then you get cold. Then, you decide you want a cheeseburger on the way home.

She put on her coat.

After this one, I gotta get my sheet signed.

She pulled out and waved a pink sheet that read AA Attendance Sheet.

I’m forty signatures away from custody.

Custody?

Did you know there’s a thing called Prodigal Son Syndrome? This man suffers from it, my oldest friend.

Is this a reunion? I assumed you two were…

From eighth grade on, and then he left, left first of everybody.

I think the Sounder’s still running. You could take the Sounder back. Do you really have a kid?

We hear all these things he’s doing, drugs, sex stuff, mostly drugs, way out in Seattle, Washington!, and just when he’s supposed to come back home because he’s lost his way, he doesn’t. He gets sober.

I obviously didn’t.

And I got drunk.

I tried, if that’s what you’re thinking of.

So have I!

You can always get your car tomorrow.

He’s dead to everyone but me. And he doesn’t even come see me when I move to Seattle. He does me dirty–he moves out here!

She took a good gulp of the High School Girl on a Lake.

Fuuu-uh-uuuck! she panted. She’s three, if you have to know. Now, wipe those fucking looks off your faces. I gotta get my sheet signed.

I’ll go with you. To the meeting.

Sounder doesn’t go my direction after six. Where’s the potty?

Our bartender pointed to the bathroom again and was holding herself back from rushing around the counter to help D off her stool. But D managed–and lumbered around the corner with unexpected grace.

Hot mom.

She never said a word.

She lives in Seattle, now, is what I wanted to say. I saw her when she moved here, eight or ten years ago? Then a couple more times, then nothing. Thirty, forty miles? I wanted to say. That’s the distance we can’t be bothered to travel! That’s what I wanted to say, but I kept swallowing the words thinking they just sounded pitiful.

Is she all right?

I looked at her stupidly.

Why am I asking you? You didn’t even know she has a kid.

I moved the High School Girl on a Lake farther down the bartop. I was becoming nauseated.

She won’t really be driving, will she?

I’ll drive her, I said.

No, you won’t.

D came back with her scarf over her face and reminded us, okay, I have to get to my meeting. You have a gift, she said to our bartender. Ennis Lake smelled like shit and this, oh yes, like God pulled down his pants and squatted right over our bar.

There’s a meeting on J Street right now, our bartender said.

J…in that church? 

She nodded, you have to know these things when you bartend.

I can join you, I said.

You can’t go into a meeting with a drunk person, D said.

She walked to the door and jangled its bells.

I followed.

Sounder

She gave me a ride to the Sounder and I took the Sounder to South Tacoma Station. She told me she was going to leave a one-star Yelp review.

She shouldn’t talk to us like that, she said.

On the train, I looked D up on YouTube and found a video of her playing the cello. It wasn’t video of her, just a picture of her, and sound, and the quality of the sound was sort of flat Fisher-Price. The performance, though, was strong, like resilient strong, stubborn strong. She submerged you in a dark water. You had to hope you could hold your breath until it was over, and that you wouldn’t implode just listening to her. Then she takes you farther down, farther down, farther down, farther, where night’s not even night anymore, and the music always stops.

Then the music stopped. Abruptly. A half beat too early. It was, after all, a shitty recording.

The thumbnail photograph, or whatever you want to call it, used for the video was of D in a turtleneck with maple leaves from hip to shoulder, like a sash or a tire track. It was from a holiday show at Benaroya Hall. Another time I saw her blush, actually–at that show. She took her applause and she couldn’t bow, she said. Just couldn’t. Said she was afraid she’d just spill all over, out her sides. Like she was made of plastic filled with hot water.