Another Night in the Hills

"Another evening at the club," Alexandra said, "could our life be any more empty and dead."

"Your friends are here," Richard said, pointing out Lavinia and Charlotte across the room, "why don't you go say 'hi' to them."

"And tell them what, darling, that I've let you off with murder and I'm drinking again." She said the words very sweetly, as though she were telling him happy anniversary, and yet she actually wanted to plunge an ice pick through her husband's genitals.

Behind them and on the other side of the bar, Gunther had the good sense to be very afraid. Oh he'd served Alexandra her tumbler of Knob Creek bourbon, straight, with no ice and no water, exactly as she'd asked for it. But he'd been the barman for awhile, and he remembered everything. Like the last time she'd had a drink...if Gunther remembered right, she'd been mad at Richard that time too. Supposedly she'd caught him with some girl. Anyway, that night had started with bourbon like tonight, and it ended with her leaving, alone and blind drunk, getting behind the wheel of their Aston Martin, and promptly wrapping the car around a telephone pole. She lived, but the six weeks worth of baby girl she unknowingly carried in her belly at the time, did not. And what's more, rumors circulated that she couldn't conceive again.

"You've let me off with murder," Richard shot back as Gunther unashamedly eavesdropped, "what should I tell you? Wasn't me driving drunk that night, darling." Of course, Richard spoke to her just as sweetly as she spoke to him. Neither of them wanted anyone to know they were having a fight. What would people think.

Just then Ezra Wilson bellied up to the bar to have his glass refilled. "Dick," he said upon seeing Richard, "haven't seen you in a pig's age, where've you been keeping yourself?"

"Just busy at the office, Ezra."

"Well, you'll have to get out to poker night, we miss you."

"Yeah, Dick," Alexandra hissed, "don't you wanna go to poke 'er." Then she smiled and said, sweetly, "Was good seeing you, Ezra." Richard grabbed her firmly around the wrist and pulled her off to the side. "Do you mean to embarrass me in public," he growled, "is that your end game?"

"I," Alexandra swigged her entire tumbler of bourbon as though it were water, "I embarrass you. There's a better chance of pigs flying than there is of me embarrassing you. You are beyond embarrassment." With that, she pulled herself free of him and walked back to the bar in as dignified a manner as possible. "More bourbon, Gunther," she barked, "make this one a double."

"Would you like a glass of water with that, Ma'am," Gunther suggested, hoping she'd take the water and that would at least slow down her consumption of bourbon.

"No," she said emphatically, "in fact I'd like a glass of bourbon with my bourbon."

"Ma'am," Gunther said, startled.

"You heard me," she snapped, "double bourbon with another glass of bourbon on the side."

"Ooooh boy," Gunther muttered, but he had no choice. She was patron, he was barman. He poured her a double bourbon in one tumbler and a single bourbon in a second tumbler. "Your bourbon, Ma'am," he said, handing her the tumblers.

"See," Alexandra said, "that wasn't so difficult, was it?" She bared her teeth at Gunther, slammed the single bourbon, and slammed that tumbler down on the mahogany bar.

"Darling," Richard said, sidling back up to her, "don't you think you'd best slow down there? You'll sweat all your makeup off," he chided, "and we wouldn't want people to see those crow's feet."

"Sweetness," she said, "it's not my crow's feet you're worried about. It's that your friends will see that my husband drives me to drink."

"Once again, my dear, it wasn't me behind the wheel that night," the words rolled off his tongue like butter, but Alexandra knew how angry he really was. Richard had loved his Aston Martin. "Wasn't me loaded with Knob Creek and swerving down Cherry Hill Road."

"And I suppose it wasn't you earlier that afternoon," she said, her words starting to slur just a hair, "in our marital bed with an eighteen year old," she swayed on her Jimmy Choo heels, "that must've been me as well."

"Gunther," Richard commanded, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his wife had started to cry, "my wife has had enough bourbon for one night."

"Yes Sir," Gunther said, "I'll not serve her anymore."

"Also I'd like you to call her a cab, Gunther," Richard said, as Alexandra, tears streaming down her cheeks, knocked off her double bourbon.

"Of course, Sir."

"No," Alexandra said, "I don't wanna leave. I'm having fun." She shot Richard a dirty look. "Why do I have to leave just because you're a cheating rat bastard?"

"Fine," Richard said, "you stay, darling. I'll leave. And I'm taking the car." With that, Richard left a fifty on the bar for Gunther. He knew his wife was trouble when she drank, and his leaving made her Gunther's problem, so he figured fifty bucks bought the barman's discretion and silence.

"Very good, Sir. Good night, Sir," Gunther said. Richard left and Alexandra fumbled around to locate a barstool. Standing in heels had suddenly become hard work. She didn't so much sit as she flopped down on the stool. Kicking off her heels, she propped her tear-streaked face in her hands. "Here," Gunther put a glass of water in front of her, "this should help."

"I killed my baby because I was mad at my husband for screwing someone else," she muttered, "and now I can't make anymore babies and he," she started to cry again, "he went and got somebody else knocked up." Without a word, Gunther reached for the bourbon, poured a very full tumbler, and slugged the whole thing in one gulp himself. Was gonna be a long night. "Where did I go wrong?"

"Let's get you that cab, Ma'am," Gunther said, soothingly, "you've had enough."

"Enough," she looked at him, "I had more than anybody could take. Bourbon me."

"No." He didn't say it nastily, but he wasn't going to back down either. "You need to go home."

"Fuck no," she slurred, not caring that she startled him by swearing, "there's nothing there for me."

"Well you can't stay here," he said, not certain if or how to tell this woman she'd worn out her welcome, "so, we'll get you that cab and you can-"

"Fine," she sighed, "call the cab. I'll just go freshen up." She stood up in her stocking feet, collected her shoes and evening bag in her hands, "fix my face, powder my nose," she muttered, walking towards the ladies' room.

"Very good, Ma'am," Gunther said, relieved.

Powder her nose indeed. In the bathroom stall, Alexandra removed a glassine envelope of pure Bolivian cocaine from her bag. On her knees facing the toilet, she poured a fat line of coke onto the toilet seat and promptly snorted it off. "Goddamn," she muttered, her eyes rolling back in her head. Her entire body twitched violently, blood running out of her nose. She crumpled into a lifeless heap.

"I'm double parked with the meter running," a short, stocky man who could only be a cabbie announced to Gunther twenty minutes later, "who am I here to pick up?" It was then that Gunther realized Alexandra still hadn't come out of the ladies' room.

"Hang on," he told the cabbie, "she went to powder her nose."

"Women." The cabbie muttered.

Gunther signaled Octavia, one of the waitresses, and had her go into the ladies' room and get Alexandra. Women, he thought, watching Octavia go in after Alexandra, they took forever in the bathroom. Then Octavia came out shouting for someone to call 911 and all hell broke loose.

The police came, the paramedics came. Alexandra was scraped off the ladies' room floor, loaded into an ambulance, and packed off to hospital. Ezra Wilson gasped at the sight of her being taken out of the club, as did Lavinia and Charlotte. Drunk as a skunk and OD'd on cocaine, they were busily whispering among themselves. Noticeably absent, however, was Richard. Which was odd, because Gunther, ever the discrete barman, had called him (Richard's number having been in Alexandra's cell phone) to tell him that his wife had had an accident.

Some people survive overdoses like Alexandra had that night at the club. But she wasn't those people. She expired at five-thirty am, without knowing her husband never came for her. Without waking up, even. And that's a real shame, because if she had woken up, she would've seen that although her husband didn't bother to appear, someone did come.

Yes, Gunther had been the barman for quite awhile. And he remembered everything. Like how before there had been Alexandra and Richard, the best-looking couple at the club, there had simply been Alexandra, the best looking woman at the club. Even when she had been single, Gunther knew a woman like her didn't look at a man like him. They were on opposite sides, the bar a line of demarcation between them. But he watched her from his side of the bar. She was a woman who could have anything...anyone, she desired. For awhile, it looked like she'd not settle for anybody. She ran around with this one and that, men and ladies, never too serious about any of them. Then her father, Mr. D'Antonio himself, had passed, and a change had come over her. She no longer cared to have wild weekends with polo players or liquid lunches with supermodels. She only had eyes for that Dick...errr, Richard. When she'd met him, he'd been a stunt driver in the movies, he wore jeans and tank tops everywhere.

But she married him anyway. The minute they married, he draped himself in her family money. All of a sudden he was strutting in custom made suits, talking like his opinion was the only one that mattered, losing tens of thousands of dollars at poker on a weekly basis, and tooling around in that car she bought him.

The car. It was a 1967 Aston Martin DB6. Red, too. Probably cost half a million dollars...sure, she had the money, but far as Gunther was concerned, a car like that was worth more than a man like Richard. And he tooled around in it as though he bought it himself. In his previous life as a stunt driver, he'd driven anything that had wheels, he'd participated in countless high-speed chases on film where his face was never shown. Behind the wheel of that thing, he was in the starring role, it was the Richard show. He'd cruise past the high school and wave to the young girls. They'd gape at that car, having never seen anything like it, and he'd think they were smiling at him when really he was just the monkey behind the wheel.

One afternoon Alexandra came home from Cartier's to find him in bed with a seventeen year old from the high school. He'd picked the girl up while cursing in the car, no doubt. And Alexandra had been angry, who wouldn't be. But Richard had smoothed things over, or so he thought. He'd shown the girl out, convinced his wife he was sorry...oh, he was sorry, how many cheating husbands insisted they were sorry after...and gotten her to dress and accompany him to the club as though nothing happened.

And she'd dutifully dressed and gone with him, but she was mad as fuck. She mainlined bourbon that night as rumors swirled as to what Richard had done during the afternoon. Finally she slammed her glass on the bar and announced, "I just can't." Then she went to the coat room, grabbed the car keys out of Richard's top coat, and walked out. The music was playing inside the club, so no one heard her start the car and speed away. How she made it to Cherry Hill Road in her condition is anybody's guess, but she didn't make it beyond there. She totaled the car, wrapped it 'round a telephone pole.

When Gunther heard what she did, he thought she totaled the car to get back at Richard. It was six months before she reappeared at the club, the plastic surgeon having put her face back together without even a scar. When she reappeared, she no longer drank. By that time, the story was out that she had been pregnant when she crashed the car, although she didn't know it at the time. Gunther wanted to smash Richard like Alexandra smashed the car, but Richard seemed to have become the doting husband upon their reappearance at the club as a couple.

But that was just an act. The former stunt driver was also good actor. His wife, his wealthy wife, had a tragic accident, she nearly died, she lost her child and couldn't conceive another. Yes, she destroyed his toy car in the process, but so what. He doted on her like a good boy in public, and in secret he was up to his old tricks. The seventeen year old from the high school, that was one particular trick he enjoyed. And never did give up. In fact, it was she he impregnated, and Alexandra's having found out about it that led to her overdose and death.

Anyway, when Alexandra died, the hospital, mistaking Gunther for her husband, released her personal effects (one clutch purse, her clothes from that evening) to him. Gunther, not really wanting to explain to a hospital orderly that he was merely the bartender and the lady's actual husband couldn't be bothered to come and watch his wife die, took the effects without a word. He knew Alexandra had lived with Richard in what had once been her father's home, and, having many years ago bar tended a private party for the late Mr. D'Antonio, he knew the house's location. He would pay Richard a visit and return Alexandra's things. It was the right thing to do.

And so at 2:30 pm Gunther presented himself at the house, showered and dressed in a dark blue suit. He rang the bell and a liveried butler answered the door.

"Yes," the butler said, sounding very bored.

"I need to see the man of the house," Gunther said, "I have his late wife's personal effects. Her purse and clothes from last night."

"Wait here," the butler slammed the door. Gunther waited.

Ten minutes later the door was reopened by Richard himself. He was naked from the waist up, wearing only a pair of tattered jeans. "Gunther," he said, "little early for a whiskey soda." He stepped out of the house and pulled the door closed behind him.

"Your wife passed away at five-thirty this morning," Gunther said flatly, "the hospital mistook me for you and released her personal effects to me." He handed Richard the purse and shoes.

"Good man," Richard said, unabashedly reaching into his deceased wife's purse to pull out a crumpled hundred dollar bill, "you've gone above and beyond the call of duty." He attempted to hand Gunther the money, but Gunther refused. "Go on, take it, Gunther. She certainly has no use for it where she is."

"I didn't come here for her money," Gunther insisted. And before either man realized what was happening, Gunther made a fist and hit Richard squarely in the jaw. "You bastard," he growled, "she was a goddess and you wrecked her."

"What the hell, man," Richard staggered back, obviously not expecting to have been punched, "fuck's sake."

"You didn't deserve her," Gunther said, "the way you lived off her and screwed around on her...beautiful woman like that." He hit Richard again.

"All right now," Richard straightened up, "that's about all you get." He made a fist of his own, and he would've hit Gunther in the throat if Gunther hadn't moved fast enough to sidestep him, leaving Richard to fall forward, unable to stop himself in his own momentum.

"Big stuntman," Gunther laughed, "what's a matter, you never been a fight scene? Or do the real actors do those?" He turned and started back down the driveway.

"Anything else to say for yourself," Richard called from on the ground.

"Yeah," Gunther looked at him over his shoulder, "see you at the club, Dick."