Purgatory Blues (2013), page 10
Andy decided that if the conversation was going to go any further then he was going to need a recharge, he stood up and was about to excuse himself when he heard a voice behind him call out, “Hey, Andy!”
He turned around, but before he could even catch sight of who it was, the side of his face collided with something that felt like a hammer striking an anvil. The impact took him off his feet and sent him crashing into the table behind him. He hadn’t seen it coming and he wasn’t even able to control his fall. The crumbling table took down another two of the metal-heads sitting there. It was at least fifteen seconds till Andy realized that he was in a pile of broken glass and wood. He was dizzy, but the pain woke him up.
There were two people on either side of him trying to help him to his feet and once he understood what was happening, he accepted their assistance. Survival instincts and adrenaline began to kick in. He felt numb. He felt angry. He felt alive. He was in the mood to rip someone to pieces or die trying. It was then that he noticed…the music had stopped and the ringing noise was in his head.
When he got his feet under him he saw Allen wrestling with four guys who were attempting, rather ineffectively, to restrain him. Sharon pushed past a bunch of people who were enjoying the commotion. She took in the scene and the first words out of her mouth were “what the fuck!?”
One of the metal-head kids volunteered his take on the situation. “It wasn’t us, this guy just walked in here and sucker punched Andy. He’s not with us”. Sharon looked at Allen and saw his patch. He’d walked in wearing his colors. She’d heard of the Reapers but had yet to meet one. Under the circumstances, she chose not to introduce herself.
Allen was blonde, broad and tall with soft features. The term “brick shithouse” always came to Andy’s mind. It was highly unlikely that anyone in the room could’ve stopped Allen if he wanted to cause more trouble, their ineptitude was demonstrated in the fact that they were trying to hold someone back who wasn’t fighting them in the first place and Allen was twice their size. One of the guys was patting him on the chest saying, “Calm down man, calm down”.
Allen swatted him away, saying “get the fuck off me”, in annoyance. He stood there and allowed the rest of them to hold on to his arms, he didn’t want to fight them and he didn’t need to, but they held on to him nonetheless.
Sharon rushed over to Andy, “do you know this guy?” She asked with panic her voice.
Andy pushed her behind him protectively without answering her question. “Hey!” He shouted to the guys holding on to Allen, “let him go”. All except one of them stepped away from Allen. Andy rolled his eyes, thinking that there was always one guy who seemed to imagine himself as a little more important than he really was, the kind of guy who thinks he’s a take-charge sort of fellow and likes to get involved in everything that happens. That guy…was standing nose to nose with Allen.
Andy walked up to him, grabbed him by the collar and pushed him aside, “I said, let him go!” Captain Braveheart sheepishly walked away to the side but stood there giving Allen a dagger like stare.
Allen jerked his upper body in Braveheart’s direction and the guy flinched. “Bitch”, Allen said to him with contempt. He turned back to Andy and stared him down. The silence was ominous. “She told me”, he said. It was all he needed to say. He knew that Andy knew what he was talking about. No further explanation was necessary.
Andy took a deep breath before he answered and considered the weight of Allen’s statement. “I guess I deserved that then”, he said and then clicked his jaw back in to place. “So now we’re even, unless you want to take this outside? Only the first one is free”.
Andy’s blood was on fire. He wanted Allen to take another swing. He was wearing his kutte. It was Allen’s only mistake. Their conflict was personal, but he had just attacked another member of the club with his patch on. That made it club business. “Same old Allen”, Andy thought to himself, “never thinking things through”.
Allen stood there silently. He seemed to be tensing to throw another punch, his fists were balled and his shoulders were flexing. All of a sudden he reached back under his jacket and pulled out his Glock. He pulled back the slide and chambered a bullet to the sound of people screaming in panic and running for cover. He aimed at Andy’s head, right between the eyes.
Andy didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. “Do it you fucking pussy”, he said to Allen. He knew it was a threat that held no weight, there was no way that Allen would be stupid enough to shoot somebody with a room full of witnesses.
They held each other’s gaze, neither of them backing down, until Allen pulled the slide back on the gun once again, ejecting the chambered bullet towards Andy. “You go ahead and keep that”, he said as Andy caught the bullet in his fist, “a reminder that I let you live tonight”.
Andy put the bullet in the watch-pocket of his jeans and patted it twice, “I’ll treasure it always, a reminder that you still have no balls”.
Allen smiled and nodded his head in a “we’ll see about that” sort of way, then turned and walked to the exit. Jen buzzed him out before he’d even neared the gate but Allen held it open for a moment before turning back, “another time”, he said to Andy.
Andy didn’t take his eyes off Allen till the gate closed behind him and he was out of sight. He’d wanted to run after him and finish what Allen had started but thought better of it. He felt that perhaps he’d deserved the punch, but waving a gun around Sharon’s place was not acceptable.
Sharon watched from behind Andy as Allen faded into the distance and then signaled for Jen to ring the bell. “Last round!” She shouted to the entire bar and turned to Andy.
She didn’t say a word but began checking him for cuts instead. Andy started to say “I’m sorry about this, I’ll pay for the…” but had to stop when she roughly began to inspect his face, feeling for any damage that she couldn’t see. She propped him up on a stool and then walked away to the bar counter.
A few of the regulars decided to lend a hand and move the broken furniture to a corner of the room. One of them came up to Andy, “that was one hell of a haymaker man, I saw the whole thing. That guy really rang your bell dude. How’d you even get up after that shot? Does it hurt?”
“Of all the annoying fucking things that could happen right now”, Andy thought. “What are you, writing a fuckin book? Get the fuck outta here”, Andy said and pushed him away. It was a hell of a shot and he really didn’t know how he’d managed to pick himself up afterwards. He could only guess that it was all the alcohol and drugs. As usual, the pain would probably show up later.
Sharon spoke to Jen briefly and then returned, thanking the helpful patrons as she did. She took Andy by the hand and Jen buzzed them out.
They lived in the apartment upstairs, which is where she was taking Andy. They said nothing to each other on the way up. He just followed her lead. He was too sore and too tired to do anything else.
She pulled out some keys and began unlocking the door, it was quite a process…four locks in total. “Jen’s going to close up”, she said, breaking the awkward silence. When she finally worked her way through all her security, she opened the door and pulled Andy inside with her. “Sit”, she instructed him, pointing to the couch. Andy did as he was told.
She left momentarily and returned with cotton balls, a pair of scissors, disinfectant and Band-aids. “I hope you don’t like your shirt”, Sharon said, opening and closing the scissors repeatedly.
“I’ve got five more just like it, why?”
“Well, I could take it off for you, but that glass stuck in your back might take away more of your flesh than I’d like”. Andy could hear the disapproval in her tone and it wasn’t because of the glass.
“That fucker got me good huh? Cut away I guess”, he conceded.
Sharon fell to the task, cutting from the collar all the way down the front, then through the sleeves. “So, you wanna tell me what that was all about”, she asked as she sat behind him and began peeling the blood soaked shirt from his back, picking out the glass along the way.
“Ow, well…” Andy was trying to find a way to steer his explanation to a satisfactory answer without telling Sharon what had happened with Melissa the night before. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. He didn’t know what, if anything, might ever happen between him and Sharon, but he could tell that being honest at that moment was definitely not the way to start things of. She wouldn’t understand and any attempt to explain would only paint a picture of him in the worst possible light.
“Yeah?” Sharon said, prompting him. She didn’t realize it but every time he delayed she was less gentle about removing the glass.
“Fuck! That hurts!” Andy said as he winced in pain. “It’s something like this. A long time ago, Allen took something of mine that he shouldn’t have taken. He didn’t even ask me, he just took it, I got really angry and I beat the living hell out of him. Important people decided that he deserved it, I told him he could have the thing because I didn’t want it anymore, so we’ve all just let it be, you keeping up with this so far?”
“I think so”, Sharon said tentatively.
“So, yesterday I accidentally borrowed the thing without him knowing about it. Even though I put it right back, he found out anyway, so now he thinks that he’s allowed to get me back for the beating I gave him way back when…”
“That doesn’t make sense”, Sharon interrupted, “how do you accidentally borrow something?”
“Shit! Are you pushing those things in or pulling them out?” Andy said after a particularly big piece of bottle was removed.
“Don’t be a baby, we’re not even at the hard part yet, this is going to burn like hell when I put the disinfectant on. Go on, accidentally borrowed?”
“Yeah, well…” Andy wasn’t sure how to get through the next part without flat out lying but he tried, “that’s a little complicated, it’s a really long story, you don’t want to hear about that anyway”.
“No, I really do”, Sharon insisted, not fooled by Andy’s attempt to side step the subject.
“Let me see, how do I explain…it’s sort of like OW! Jesus Christ woman!”
“Just fucking say it Andy!” Sharon shouted as she pressed a cotton ball with disinfectant into his flesh.
It was the first time that she’d ever said his name. She was serious. Andy had no idea what to do. Normally so in charge, he’d never found himself in a situation where he was lost for words. He’d never cheated on anyone before. “Is this cheating?” He wondered. He didn’t know what it was. He was thinking so hard he didn’t realize that he hadn’t said anything for about thirty seconds.
“It’s a woman isn’t it? The thing, it’s a woman, that guy Allen said ‘she told me’”. She paused waiting for an answer, “is it?”
“Is what?” Andy asked, snapping back in to the conversation.
“Is the thing that you borrowed a woman?”
“No”. He said the word but it sounded more like a question than an answer. He’d never been comfortable with lying to anyone that he cared about. There was no conviction in his reply.
“Fucking dick!” She said and pushed his head as hard as she could. Andy didn’t look back. She did it once again, “Asshole!”
She began to hurry cleaning him up. She wanted to be rid of him. She didn’t know how to feel or what to do, so she thought it’d be best if he just weren’t there so she could think. She wiped the wounds haphazardly.
She was starting to feel hot, she felt a sinking kind of feeling, she felt like something had been ripped out of her but she didn’t know why or what it was. “So what was tonight about? Huh? Did you just feel guilty and decide to show up and fuck me one more time? Was it to rub it in my face? Or weren’t you going to tell me?”
She was firing questions at him so fast, he wasn’t really sure if he was supposed to answer or not.
“Can you calm down for a minute?” Andy said, desperately trying to bring the situation back to a rational level. “Were we in a relationship? I don’t recall us having any conversations about us being exclusive”.
“That…” she faltered for logic at that moment, “that’s not the point, you kissed me and you lied to my face”, she said as she began opening Band-aids. “You came here and you kissed me and you had sex with whoever the fuck…whoever the fuck this…woman is! You fucking lied!”
“I did not!” Andy said indignantly as he stood and turned to face her.
Sharon reached out and grabbed a hold of his belt, tugged him forward, turned him and pulled him back in to a seated position all in one smooth motion. She started putting the Band-aids in place and then slapping them down as hard as she could.
Her voice suddenly became eerily calm but still raced ahead, “you’re a fucking liar, that’s all there is to it. So who is she? Wait I don’t want to know. I don’t want that fucking picture in my head”. She slapped on another Band-aid and Andy cried out in pain.
“God!” Andy screamed as she hit his back with everything she had. “Look, I wish it didn’t happen. I woke up and regretted the whole thing, I was really drunk and feeling really depressed and it just happened. I didn’t plan it”.
“Suuurrre, it always just happens. No one ever plans it. It’s just like oops, I’m sorry, I tripped and now I fucked you”, she said, bleeding sarcasm.
“Hey!” Andy tried to fight back, “we never said what this was, so I didn’t do anything technically wrong. But I understand that you feel bad about it. I feel bad about having done this to you, because…I care about you, and yes…tonight was different. I feel like I might want more but I don’t know if I’m ready yet…” He only realized how far down the wrong path he’d gone once the words came out.
She got up off the couch and walked across the room, pacing as she spoke. “You might want more but you don’t know if you’re ready”, she said with a tilt of her head, her palms up as though she were weighing the words, “you might want more, but you don’t know if you’re ready. Let’s see, does that mean that you get to drink, party, be fucking miserable and fuck your way through everything with two legs and a heartbeat while I fucking sit around and wait for the slim chance that you’ll find your way back here when you’re done?”
She stopped pacing and looked at him from across the room. “Or maybe it means that you might want to be with me but you’re not quite sure yet if I’m worth loving. Oh wait, wait, I know what it is, maybe you just can’t love me because for you to be able to do that I’d have to be dead!”
Sharon realized what she’d said only after she said it. She knew she shouldn’t have but she didn’t take it back, she just let the words hang there like a body in the gallows. She’d slipped a blade between his ribs and found his heart.
“That’s low”, Andy said, there were no other words he could find.
“But it’s true”. A single tear rolled down Sharon’s cheek. She looked at him like she was seeing the truth for the first time. She wondered if it had been there all along, and maybe she’d just preferred her fantasy instead of reality. She’d been hoping that one day he’d be fixed and she’d be the one to do it.
Andy looked away, unable to hold her gaze.
Sharon couldn’t maintain her composure any longer. She began to weep openly. She stormed of in to the bedroom and returned seconds later. “Here’s your fucking T-shirt from the last fucking time you were fucking here and fucked me”, she said, throwing a balled up shirt at him, “please just fucking go”, she said through her tears.
With her back to the wall she slid down in to a fetal position. Her tears were a river.
Andy put the shirt on in silence and he noticed a bottle of scotch on the coffee table, it was half empty. He picked it up, “I’m gonna borrow this”, he said.
“Fuck off!” She screamed and threw a shoe at him. She missed completely, hitting the door instead. He left the apartment without another word.
Chapter 7
As Andy walked down the stairs from Sharon’s apartment, he wondered how things could possibly have gone so wrong so fast. He couldn’t really blame Sharon though. If he’d been in her position, the revelation of his infidelity, while not causing the exact same reaction, would probably have cut as deep, if not deeper.
There was one thing that he found to be unforgivable and he hated himself because he’d just done it to the one person that he knew he absolutely shouldn’t have. She’d been faithful and she’d been loyal.
He mused on the nature of pain, considering that emotional pain might be like a sort of unwanted gift. Like the Christmas cake that your neighbor gives you, you don’t want it, you know it’s terrible, but it lasts so you just rewrap it and give it to someone else next Christmas.
He wondered if maybe people just couldn’t get over the bad things that other people did to them until they’d done them to someone else. They held on to the pain until they passed it on. He found the very idea vile. “If that’s true, then the human race is completely and utterly fucked”, he thought.
When he got to his car in the parking lot, he saw the last few stragglers from the bar going home. He looked around and noticed that his car wasn’t visible from the road. He wondered how Allen had known to find him there, thinking that it surely couldn’t have been pure coincidence, the Sergeant at arms going out for a game of pool on a Sunday night, all by himself?
He knew that no one could’ve told Allen either because no one knew that he would be there. He briefly entertained the notion that someone at the Sink might have called Allen, but thought it unlikely.
He decided it was a mystery best solved later…but only if he remembered, his plan then was to kill as many brain cells as he could and erase the pain that he was feeling. Now was all that mattered. He spotted Jen locking the door to the bar and remembered the bottle in his hand. He opened it and downed half of its contents as he walked up to her.
