Alcoholic

David Leto was a tall, angular man with a shock of graying hair that would not be tamed. Drunk as he was, the brown blazer he always wore one night became an encumbrance, and so he decided to hang it atop the boar’s head mounted at the far end of Casey’s Bar, in outlying Miami. That he was able to drag a table, climb onto it and successfully drape the jacket upon the animal, then make it back down in one piece prompted a round of passionate applause from the others in the room. Loping back to his stool, he hollered for more scotch, shocking the bartender out of his stupor. As he waited, David rattled his keys in the palm of his sweaty left hand, an old nervous habit compounded by alcohol.

“Everything okay?” a hand clapped him on his shoulder. Without missing a beat, a short, dark-haired man in glasses hopped onto the stool beside him.

David nodded. He was quieted by the new presence.

“So what’s with this weather?” The man said his name was Fritz. He leaned in, and started taking handfuls of peanuts.

A one-time Philadelphia sportswriter, Fritz quit his job to write a book that had turned into a thousand plus pages of egomaniacal athletes using women and abusing drugs. “Same story again and again. Breaks your heart.” He had just moved to Miami a few days before, here to freelance, and added that his dog was tied up in front of the bar.

David nodded again, wearily.

“A pup,” Fritz continued. Seagulls had attacked the animal at the beach earlier, during one of the day’s brief respites from rain. “Been wired since.”

“I thought dogs came that way. Wired.”

The writer shrugged. “Nah… Mine’s usually the Tim Leary of the animal kingdom.”

Hemingway was the dog’s name, and David, a native of Florida, rolled his eyes whilst issuing a simultaneous sigh.

“Let me tell you a real story,” the drunk said. “It’s far more interesting than over-used athletes, or your dog, or the boar’s head wearing my coat.” David stuck his elbows on the bar and stared into the bowl of mixed nuts. “I have these crazy dreams. One of them takes place in a future of indeterminate… of the indeterminate. There is this guy, his name is Mark, and he looks something like me. Mark came from a small town near the Keys and on his arrival in St. Augustine for a job interview he met a beautiful redhead who worked in the ticket office.

“During her breaks, she liked to roam the platforms at the train station, cigarette, coffee in hand, guiding misdirected travelers toward their appropriate destinations. Mark’s initial encounter with her concerned a query as to the best dinner spot in town and she smiled, agreeing to accompany him. By the time they arrived at the little bistro above a bowling alley, Mark already knew he wanted to see her again.

“And even though Claire seemed perfect in every way, her habit of nervousness bothered him. He questioned her about it in the intervening weeks. Her apartment was unspeakably clean- practically unlived in- and she ate and spent all the time she could at work, roaming, studying the travelers.

“The poor sucker would realize years later that she had been looking for a particular person- not just people watching. Why had he not seen that? Eventually, following the requisite number of dates, Mark proposed and Claire eagerly accepted. This fellow stupidly thought he could gloss over the things she had not told him by putting a diamond on her finger. And in the days that led up to their wedding, the couple attended party after party. She grew more distant. On the eve of her birthday, a few weeks before they were to be wed, she told him she was very sick. She needed a new heart.” David started to cry.

The bartender made his move. Rolling his eyes at Fritz, he slid the bowl of peanuts out of the drunken man’s path and muttered “get this guy outta here.” The writer shrugged again and tossed his dog a look out the window. The mutt gazed back at him, tail wagging.

David continued, “They both held each other that night, all night long, until Mark got into his head this insane idea. It’s the distant future, you will remember. Mark took her to a doctor he had been reading about in The New Yorker. This man invented an artificial heart. I mean to say he created it. Mark wanted desperately to save her. All he could talk about to anyone who would listen was the way her hair shone in sunlight and how her face betrayed this idea he was everything to her.

“In the doctor’s office, Mark pelted the lab-coated academic with questions about his invention, electric impulses, the human heart itself. Mark also wanted to know what had caused her condition in the first place. And in my dream-” David leaned forward on the stool and poked the writer with a finger to the chest. Fritz, in turn, asked David to lower his voice as he realized they had attracted a crowd of listeners. “Let them overhear… In my dream the doctor said he knew of a way Mark could keep her alive. They would each utilize the same heart- his. Only one condition applied to the procedure. As all Mark could think of was his inability to cope without her, he agreed, although it would weaken him tremendously. Possibly kill him.”

“So what happened?” Fritz asked. He was writing on a small, crumpled flyer that read Hook a deal at Barnacle Bill’s!

David had long since displaced his rattle of keys- possibly in the peanut bowl- and he took to the frantic tapping of a gold wedding band. “After all his effort, after the frantic calls, the nights of research reading medical dictionaries, after their love… She looked at him and said, ‘Stop.’ In that moment he saw the light had gone out of her face. She was already dead.” He slumped over.

The bartender nudged Fritz again, asked him once more to take David home. Other patrons sneered in their direction.

“I guess I’m not entertaining anymore,” David shouted, slurping a last mouthful of scotch.

Some feet away, a man in a polo shirt got up from the booth where he had been sitting with a nonchalant blond. Coming toward them he said, “I’m on a date, guys. We didn’t come here to see a show.”

“Listen-” Fritz stood, holding up his hands.

“Do you know what’s funny?” David interjected, scanning the room. “I always thought my first bar fight would be with a biker type. Leather vest, tattoos. This guy is me.” No time to think. He squeezed his eyes shut, pulled back his fist and hammered the other man multiple times. “I wish I had my ring with the skull-and-cross bones!”

Polo shirt fell to the ground. A roar went up around them. Blurting a furious string of expletives, the man sprung back to his feet. He lunged at David and grabbed him by the throat. Momentum carried them backward. On tiptoe, gasping for air, the drunk struggled to laugh. “Take your best shot, big guy!”

With a sudden whoosh, the doors to Casey’s swung open and summer’s neon-dusk light streamed in. Fritz yelled something unintelligibly, and the crowd that had gathered around the fight surged. A group of pigeons flew into the bar, cooing and squawking frantically. Feathers flew. Thundering after the birds, Hemingway the dog bounded by. The manic pup’s jowls drooled saliva everywhere, and in his haste he tripped David’s attacker from behind. The man went down again- this time hard.

As pigeons swirled around the room, David waded slowly through the chaos. He leaped several times at the boar’s head, grabbing at his jacket. Finally managing to catch a sleeve, he pulled the blazer down.

Off in a far corner, Hemingway howled at the birds in the rafters. David approached, tossed his blazer at the dog, and then he lunged, wrapping it round the animal’s head. “I love this jacket,” he moaned.

With the animal writhing against his body, and hoping to avoid Polo shirt, David slipped and stumbled toward the back of the bar, out an alleyway entrance. All the time, he spoke soothingly to the animal.

Fritz was waiting for them. “Dad never taught me to throw a punch. Said I was the right height for making fast exits.” Taking the baffled dog, he attached a worn leather leash to its collar and wrapped the cord around his forearm. Hemingway hopped up and down, snarling all the time and catching his breath by exhaling comically.

The two men set out on a rapid walk. Night air poured over them, washing away the smell of cigarettes and alcohol. “I almost had the guy,” David slurred tiredly.

“He didn’t like the story you were telling.” Fritz said his apartment was a few blocks away. “You can get yourself together there, go back to…wherever.”

Lost in his thoughts, David said, “I lost my ring. It’s just as well.”

The writer asked him about his wife.

“There are these two women. One… she’s perfect. Perfect for me. Beautiful, accomplished. She comes from money and runs in all the right circles- the same ones I do. We’re married ten years. Renewing our vows two days from now in Santa Monica. In front of 350 of our closest friends.”

“Three-hundred fifty? So what are you doing here?”

“The other woman… It’s her I’m in love with.”

***

It seemed as though the night slowly calmed things in the minds of the two men. As they walked toward Fritz’s apartment, Hemingway regained what his owner called his “je ne sais something.” The animal grew quieter and took to only the occasional fire hydrant- even soundlessly passing by a black Labrador.

“I was twenty-six-years old the day I met Rita in a bar a lot like the one we just left. My father had only hours before chosen to tell me that, at the conclusion of the next business quarter, I would become president of one of his companies. A forger of one dollar bills- who looks?” David chuckled, stumbling on a curb. “He had more mental toughness than anyone, Dad did. I was nothing but a figurehead. Something of the founder working his way up the corporate ladder over again. There to encourage the stakeholders.”

The writer turned onto a street lined with trees and gently sloping driveways. He glanced over his shoulder. The light rain that had been the backdrop of the day chose then to reappear.

David followed absentmindedly, eyes drooping, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Rita grew up in a housing project in the middle of Chicago. On any night, ten people crashed in her mother’s apartment. Later, she would tell me by the age of sixteen she had been molested too many times to count. We were not an ‘opposites attract’ story. Years passed between us before she revealed anything personal, anything of substance. She had already been living in my home, sleeping in my bed, becoming indispensable to the people in my life.” He laughed wryly.

Fritz slowed his pace and directed David toward his apartment building. “Shower, clean up, sleep it off, if you want.”

He shook his head. “I am not making this up. Why did it happen to me?”

They were in the porch light of a massive, beige-yellow building lined by brick and poorly kept gardens. His eyes were red and his face so full of exhaustion that the writer’s stomach lurched looking at him. Fritz sighed. “As one who traffics in them daily, I can tell you stereotypes exist for a reason. So you fell for the wrong person. Not the first, won’t be the last.”

Again, David shook his head. He hardly felt drunk as he stood, half on the porch- half off, rain falling faster, pelting his fingertips with watery blasts. “For a writer, you’re not very observant.” He walked into the lobby of the building and squeezed his eyes shut in the bright light.

Upstairs, Fritz fed the dog as his guest collapsed on the couch. Before passing out, David managed to remove his blazer and it fell to the floor. The writer picked up a wastebasket put it beside the man’s head. Grabbing the jacket, he threw it on the chair and turned out the living-room lights.

Within a few seconds, Fritz came back and snatched the garment. At the kitchen table, with Hemingway gazing at him expectantly, he rifled through the pockets. Nothing on the outside, but an inner, zippered pocket contained David’s wallet. Flipping the worn leather case open, he came upon a series of photographs. One pictured a striking blond wearing a large diamond ring.

Several other cards in the wallet- business connections, stockbrokers, one for a gentleman’s club called Dahlila’s. In the back, in a pocket of deeply creased leather, Fritz found a folded picture of a heavyset woman with short black hair. “Rita,” he murmured.

Hemingway snarfled suddenly and did a jig on the floor, nails clicking. Rising, still holding the photograph of Rita, Fritz clipped the leash back on the dog’s collar, grabbed a plastic bag, and together they snuck out of the apartment. Walking downstairs again, the writer studied the picture in the brightly lit hallway. Fritz realized that in profile, the woman looked less as though she carried a few extra pounds and more as though she was pregnant. His breath caught in his throat. “So where are they?” he said.

Outside the building, the dog dug furiously in a bed of sagging, yellow flowers. As the plants were nearly dead, Fritz did not dissuade the pup and continued thinking about Rita and the missing child. His houseguest hardly struck him as the fatherly type, yet he wondered why David kept- out of every possible photograph he must have taken of her- this particular one. “Probably to torture himself.” He thought of the bar fight, of the provoked attack.

***

Later, Fritz lay in his bed trying to fall asleep. On the television in front of him, he had muted a talk show. Paternity results he guessed, from the procession of young men with horrified expressions and women balancing infants on their hips.

Just then, Hemingway scrambled from his position on the floor beside the bed. Whimpering, he started scratching at the door.

“What now?” Fritz asked sharply, trudging toward the dog. Pulling the door open, he leaned down to restrain the animal in an effort not to wake their guest, but Hemingway was off like a shot toward the kitchen.

The light was on, and the writer immediately saw what the dog had heard. David sat at the table, gnawing on an apple. “I’ll replace this,” he said.

Fritz waved it off. “Thought you’d sleep the rest of the night.”

“I woke up to throw-up, then I couldn’t calm back down. I’ll replace the trashcan, too.”

“You were mid-sentence when you passed out. Rita, pregnancy,” the writer nudged.

David’s eyes widened and he looked away. “I don’t want to talk.” Awkwardly, he paced the short expanse of kitchen between the window and refrigerator.

Fritz was silent for a few seconds. Then, he took an apple and began to turn it over in his hands. “So… when did your baby die?”

For a few minutes, he failed to say anything. Finally: “She miscarried in the third trimester. It happened while we were asleep in our bed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The ER doctor, Womack was his name, he seemed surprised when Rita said she had experienced no discomfort, no stomach pains, no bleeding, nothing.” David rinsed his hands. He splashed cold water on his face. “They did tests, kept her for a few hours, then we went home. A day later, they called with results. She turned pale while she was talking to them, and hung up without saying goodbye.”

He was red-faced, still leaning on the counter beside the sink. “She went to our room, locked the door, and would not talk to me for hours. When she came out, she was carrying two duffle bags. She walked out of the house. I followed her. I managed to slow her down before she got into the taxicab. She was crying, her whole body shaking. The skin on her face pulsed in this way I had never seen before. She talked a mile a minute and I couldn’t understand a word. I got so afraid that I let her go. She slipped into the cab and was gone.”

Fritz said, “So what happened?”

“In a few days, I found her at her friend’s house. She didn’t recognize me. I saw her arms, though, and I realized I had not looked at her closely since she became pregnant. All along her left arm-”

“Track marks. Pregnant.” The writer said the words as though they were curses.

David pursed his lips. For a minute, he nodded in silence, squeezing his eyes shut. “The sonogram was on the table next to her. From the first doctor visit. I took it.”

“Say you left her there. Tell me you didn’t look back.”

“For a writer… you can’t see the forest for the trees.”

***

The next morning, Fritz saw his guest off shortly before eight. He asked him what he planned to do with the twenty-odd hours that remained until his re-wedding in California.

“I was weak for ten years I did what other people wanted. Why did I care what they thought? They were all unhappy too.” David stood in the doorway. He rubbed the knuckles of his bruised left hand.

“You’re here for her. Are you serious? Another question. Are you serious?”

“Listen, every night I have the same damn nightmare. It’s about a man willing to do anything for this completely flawed person he loves more than life itself. It scares me to death, but now I need to be that man.” David started off down the hall. He tossed the writer a last look, over his shoulder. “The least you can do is call me hopeful, if a fool.”