No. Of course cavalier and amorous Patrick
said nothing of the sort. Instead the long overdue cold coffee assignation
between Pat and Kristina (Kitty) Petite went something like this—Patrick’s apprehension was
very much like a dilettante guitarist finger picking his way through classical
sheet music for the first time.
Patrick: Well (eyelids averting
south, semi-stuttering) I was just (er-ah-eh) wondering if you like doing this
(and-ah-hmmm…) if you wouldn’t mind getting together more often (er-yeah) to do
more of (Don’t think about sex, don’t think about fucking, don’t think about)
have sex (very Homer Simpson like D’OH) I mean sex-er seven pots of coffee and
(shit Romeo-nice one. Cigarettes. In dire need of a smoke. Kris doesn’t smoke.
Fuck. Coffee. More coffee. Need more coffee) and talk. You know, just (Let it
all) hang out and get to know (Bra size. Moist feeling of your breath on the
back of my neck as I wake up next to you and you are dressed only in my
Metallica Kill ‘em All T-shirt and nothing else and as we make love for what
must be PI rounded to the Nth co-sign time you do that Irish accent and lick
your tongue all around my) you more (intimately) in time and just (Please God,
for fuck’s sake I’m Irish, how much more Catholic can you get?) do this more
often. You know, this?
Upon
Hearing Patrick’s modest and thoroughly rehearsed proposal Kristina Rock the
lids of her eyes pause in mid-blink; a pink rose stranded in partial bloom. She
knew that all Pat really wanted was just someone to hold on to him at night.
Someone to chain-smoke filterless cigarettes with as he flicked on the CD player
and lulled to the hypnotic sway of Enya. Someone to smile at him into his
vision and sip coffee with him first thing in the morning. Someone, simply, to
believe in him. Do you think anyone wants to date let alone marry a
superhero-the demands. To reaffirm his
stolid belief in himself. A belief that most people refused to somehow see or
at least acknowledge.
Kristina
Petite (subtle shrug of shoulders): “…..”
Kris knew
that she did believe in him. She just wanted Patrick to walk through the exit
sign of his late teenage and early twenties knowing that.
Patrick
repeats his rhetoric again, thinking of earlier in the day when he found out
from an anonymous source (Hale, who found out from Strickler, who heard it from
his girlfriend Andrea who was informed by Kristina herself-Kristina who told
Dave that it was over and over and fuckoff and whatnot) and called Dave up to
pursue his prey.
“BRRRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG.”
The phone rings like it is bearing unwelcome tidings of grief form a fleeting joy.
DVB always answers the telephone with “How’s it going” or a
dated “Nocturnal greetings and salutations”. Patrick always responds to David’s
greetings with a favorite minor league franchise domestic beer vocal caterwaul
of
“DAAAAAAAY-HEY-YAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE”
“Mr. Patrick A. McReynolds. How’s
Life with you?”
“S’aw good Holmes. Guess where I’m
calling from?”
“LUMS?”
Patrick is always inquisitive. Asking me questions he
already damn well knows the answers to.
“HMMM-MMM. Correct. And Dave, sir,
guess who’s working?”
“Mary?”
“And…..”
“Kara?”
“And…”
“Amy with the killer ass?”
“and….”
“Jodi?”
“One more…”
“Shit bro, who’s all there hanging
with you?”
“That’s the thing. Look, Dave, I
just so happened to have heard that you and Kitty broke up.”
“Whom did you hear that from?”
“Strickler.”
“When?”
“Oh five minutes ago. He called.”
“Your house.”
“No. Dude, he called here.”
“ LUMS?”
“Yeah. Dude, this is like my home.
I swear I fucking get mail delivered here.”
“Eviction notices don’t count Pat.”
“No. Seriously. I shit you not,
Strick called here like two minutes ago and said Pat man, look, dude, check it
out- Kristine like just broke up with Dave.”
“What The fuck? It hasn’t even been
fifteen minutes since we called it quits. I mean shit. News travels fast in the
west bluff. Literally dude, she called me, called it off (that took all of five
minutes) which left me seemingly despondent until I jerked off to Tori Amos
while simultaneously thinking about your older sister Amy dressed in leather and
something crotchless….”
“HEEEEEEEEEEEY. God Damnit Dave!”
“Just kidding. Maybe it wasn’t Amy.
We were doing it doggie style so I didn’t get a real good look at her face, but
I’m pretty sure we were fucking in Warren’s Honda.”
“FUCK. Not funny. All the Shit you
sa….wait hold on a sec alright bro. (Patrick with phone slightly muffled into
his flannel shoulder talking in a mock-mimicking high pitched squeal, “Yes I can please refrain from using
vulgarity while I am situated inside of this establishment.”) “Cunts. Jesus
Christ.”
“Manager?” Von Behren inquires.
“No. Some elderly bitch dressed in
a lime suit whose hair looks like a used Q-tip.”
“Alone…”
“No, she had three grandkids with
her. They were dressed like they just got back from an after Sunday school-out
for brunch luncheon or something.”
“Shit, I’m surprise with that mouth
of yours that they let you crash there all the time like you do.”
“ Dude, they have to. Dude. Think about it. What would all the
waitresses do here without me to amuse them? I mean, think about it. I’m here
for them.”
“I’m glad you’ve found your true
calling in life. I thought it was only Nikki who called me from the payphone
when she dines at LUMS. And she only calls to
tell me that she just ate the country fried Steak and ‘Ooops. Dave, Guess what?
I just got the bill and…. No money’.”
“Oh I’m not calling from the
pay-phone.”
“You’re calling from the cashier’s
phone?”
Although Patrick is all of four blocks North of David’s
domicile, David swears he can see his head nod up and down like a handbell.
“YEP.”
“How the fuck….”
“Dude, like I told you, they love
me here. When I die they’ll guild my hairy-Irish arse and frame it on the walls
next to the watercolor of Dingledine. Besides, Carrie’s working. There’s always room for Carrie. Just like
pie.”
“Anyway, I was just about ready to
take my perfunctory post-masturbatory shower when you called and reminded me
that my seasonal summer fling has taken it’s typical romantic trajectory and
fallen short before the golden wings of autumn have in fact arrived.”
“What?”
“Before I picked up the phone and
one of my closest friends reminded me that I was once again single!”
Patrick voice lilts with an authoritative sway. He thinks of
Hawk from GI JOE. He thinks of Duke.
“You shouldn’t have fucked around
sir.”
“With whom?”
How the fuck Patrick always manages to infiltrate top
government classified information is beyond Dave.
“Nikki.”
“That was once. You know that.
Besides, I purchased my fair share of dinners for her in the past month, so I
feel romantically recompensed. Christ that girl can eat. Baby face is gonna
morph into baby Beluga if she’s not careful.”
“Laurel.”
“We barely kissed.”
“Dude, she was like fourteen.”
“She’s precocious. I mean—look me
straight in the eyes and tell me that you would not wanna hit that.”
Patrick's voice begins to wince. He continues to use his
rhetorical monotone of Flint or Iron Horse from back in the day.
“Sir, that’s besides the point.”
“If I’m not mistaken you did try to
hit that.”
Patrick repeats his stern declaration again sounding like he
is calling off a bingo number in a smoke fraught parochial school gymnasium.
“Sir, that’s besides the point. She
was jailbait. She was Lolita giving your heart a low down no good lap dance.
She was a doxy.”
“Kristine was in Paris at the time
anyway.”
“Sir, don’t digress. I happen to
also be well aware of the two girls from Barnes and Noble whom you…”
“Whaaaaaa…???”
Dammit Hale!!!
“ Do the words Amber and Sara.
Sound familiar?”
Dammit Hale!!!
“Who told you that?”
As if I needed to inquire. From four blocks away David can
see Patrick shrug his shoulders and smile as if to say I got you in check sans
the mate.
“Hale.”
Shit.
“Shit.”
Patrick still mimicking my monotone like a Simon disc with
some sort of military connections.
“Shit is right, sir.”
David thinking: time to go candor on his ass.
“You know I never slept with any of
those girls.”
Patrick thinking 'DUH'-he couldn't get it up if his dick
were an elevator.
“Oh, I know. I’m just here to
remind you of your prenuptial transgressions.”
David, thinking-prenuptial transgression? What the fuck is
that?
"Pre-nuptial
transgression my ass! What the fuck is that 'spose to mean? We never had
pre-nuptial anything. We never had nuptial anything."
Deuce.
"Dude,
Dave, sir, you should have thought of that before your fidelity found
her."
Advantage Pat
"Foundered?"
Serve Pat.
"Foundered"
Volley from Dave falls short once again to Patrick’s ace. Game. Pat is once again victorious. NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA. David the
imbecile and the loser rushes to the net to shake victor's palm.
“Pat you should have been a priest
or something man you have found my every foible.”
Patrick, sounding like he is affiliated somehow with the
Grand Olde Party.
“My pleasure, sir.”
“I treated Kristina like Shit.”
Victor rubbing it in ignominiously by repeating everything
looser says only changing the pronoun to accentuate the loser’s sudden sense of
loss and grief.
“You treated Kristina like shit.”
Empathetic.
“And now I lost her.”
Rubbing it in like a masseuse and sun block.
“And now you lost her.”
“Pat, shit bro, what am I to do?”
Reassuringly. Nodding his head.
“I’m sure she has already gotten
over you.”
On the other end of the cyber-optic connection, a weathered,
despondent DVB, all nude with the exception of a thoroughly soiled sock capped
over his pecker flips his loyal friend, confidant and sporadic spiritual guru
the bird and says:
“Glad I can always count on you for
condolences.”
Inside LUMS Family
Restaurant a boy with sandpaper, fuzzy navel goatee surreptitiously slides
dimes into the payphone and smiles to himself thinking that ATLAS has just
lifted planet earth far above his head, paused, positioned, takes a deep
breath, shoots, and scores. He hears the sound of an invisible swoosh. Nothin'
but net. The din of stacked dishes and foreign conversation suddenly become the
roar of the crowd.
“That’s what I’m here for.”
Tattered teleology.
“So what’s on your agenda for the
evening?”
Ethos unearthed.
“ Well, Dave, dude, look, say I was
just wondering if….”
Here it comes-
“Now that
you and Kristine are no longer together,”
Watch out-
“I was just
sorta of like, dude, you know, wondering if...”
Take cover-
“Do you mind?”
****
pgs. 201-210 in text....
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