#41: Evening Drinks at the Electric Lizard

Leave your shirt on, she said. I want you to do me Pooh style.

Pooh style, he said.

Give me your hundred-acre wood, she said.

He couldn’t do it. He went out to the living room and held the television’s remote control like a chocolate bar. He wanted to unwrap it. She came out and laughed and then got mad. Was he serious? He was. He almost couldn’t believe he was.

He went out then, to buy beer, but instead of going to the supermarket he drove past, to the little bar with all the rope lights strung overhead and in paths along the carpet. He sat at the bar and looked at himself sullen in the mirror. The bartender recognized him and when she asked what was wrong he wanted something to really have been wrong and he said, my wife. She’s, he said, but what? The bartender looked at him. She’s cheating on me, he said. The bartender gulped in air. And she threw a glass at me. That’s why I left. Oh my god, the bartender said. Let me get you another drink.

She got the drink. Are you going to leave her? the bartender said. No, he said. Why?  Well, he said. This experiment had gone down a weird path. He looked at his eyes in the mirror, just visible over the bartender’s back. Now he was pathetic. He was drinking gin in a bar and complaining about a woman who’d cheated on him and pitched a rocks glass his way and he wasn’t even going to leave her. The bartender kept staring, waiting for an answer. She’s pregnant, he said. Oh my god, the bartender said.

She’d better not come back in here, the bartender said. I might not serve her.

She’s a good person, he said, because he and his wife liked this place. She’s going through a lot lately.

Like what?

Well, he said. She has AIDS.

AIDS, she said. Really? And she’s pregnant? From you or the other guy?

Oh, he said. He lifted his drink and tried to block the bartender with it. Her reflection swam up through the gin, wobbly.