Caleb had been drunk, but never quite this drunk. Funny thing was, the numbness he so desired continued to elude him. His speech slurred. He stumbled from time to time. His brain, though, refused to shut down. He sat at the end of the bar, whiskey in front of him, and phone in his hand. His bloodshot eyes looked at the screen and tears threatened to burst forth yet again. He refused though. He hated maudlin drunks.
The rest of the bar did not enjoy a better mood than him. The few regulars sat at their tables sipping drinks and complaining about their jobs. They'd been doing it since Caleb arrived at two thirty. Behind the bar, the bartender picked at his teeth while keeping an eye on the one television. A baseball game filled the screen with the grating green of the field. Caleb wasn't sure if it was the same one that was on when he arrived or not. The jerseys looked the same. He thought about asking the bartender, but doubted the man knew either. It was something to keep his eyes on while the hours ticked by. Something to pass time when booze wasn't an option. Caleb didn't have that problem.
The messages didn't change much no matter how many times he read them. Apologies, explanations, excuses, blame. Change the order around, mix them up, or dedicate a single message to each — it didn't matter. She'd cheated. Not cheated, worse. An affair. Cheated was a one time deal. An affair was much, much worse. He backed out of the messages and saw Sarah's profile picture. They were on a boat tour of a swamp in the Everglades. He'd wanted to stay by the pool drinking colorful booze before rolling into their hotel room to fuck. She wanted to see god damn alligators while getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. He went with her. They got tipsy anyway, and they saw the alligators. They did fuck, too. Itchier than he'd have preferred, but it was a nice night in the end.
Six years later, she spent three months fucking Robert Leeson before Caleb found out. Well, before he confirmed it. She always took a little too long on her shopping trips mid day. She got phone calls at odd times and scurried out of the room to answer. She made a fool of him right in front of his face the whole time, and he took it because she seemed happy.
Caleb finished his drink and tapped the glass on the bar.
She was happy.
She had her cake and got to eat it, too.
'I never stopped loving you, I needed more, though.'
You don't think I needed more a few times, Sarah?
You don't think I wanted to fuck that waitress in...Wichita?
Kansas City?
Fuck, where was I...
"You were in Detroit at a restaurant called Wyatt's eating a steak the size of your wife's ass," said a woman standing next to him.
Caleb reeled to the side, startled and thrown off balance by her sudden appearance.
Where
'd she come from?
She wasn't here before.
Slipped up behind me from the bathroom or something?
Maybe I'm drunker than I thought, or at least as drunk as I should be.
His thoughts fumbled into one another as he looked her up and down. She had black hair, sleek and glossy, that laid back against her head. Wide, black eyes matched, staring at him with eerie concentration. Her outfit certainly would have made him notice her. She wore a leather bodice, which pushed out her pale apple sized breasts, and a pair of black slacks. The sallow face looking back at Caleb had a waxy luminosity to it which made her appeal veer into grotesque. Caleb wanted to retort with something witty to compensate for being caught off guard. Instead he replied, "The fuck, what?"
The woman skittered onto the stool beside him, swiveled to the bar and folded her hands in front of her. The bartender poured Caleb's refill and looked warily at the newcomer. Without saying anything, the bartender poured a glass of chilled vodka for her. Glassy eyed, he walked away. The woman sipped the drink and shivered, "Oh, that's terrible. And it was Detroit, remember?"
Caleb shook his head. The woman was right. It came back to him clearly. The restaurant, the table he sat at, and the tits on the waitress all snapped into focus in his besotted brain. "Do I know you?"
"No. Yes. Cosmically. Everyone knows me, but no one
knows
me. I'm Evelyn. You're very drunk."
"Not enough," he grunted, taking a sip of the whiskey. It curled in his throat, but went down. "How'd you know that, though? Were you the waitress or...hang on, you can't —"
"I plucked it out of your head, like grabbing a rubber ducky floating on a whirlpool. All of it's going down into the black, but you keep swimming against the current. Remarkable really. What's the trouble, handsome? A pretty girl gone wrong?"
Caleb found Evelyn off putting. Moreover, he no longer trusted his feeling of sobriety. Clearly he'd told someone the story about the girl in Detroit, and this strange woman overheard, parroting it back to him like a magic trick. "I'd rather not talk about it."
"Course not. Probably like pouring salt in the wound to discuss how your wife fucked that loser. Actually, I don't know him. Maybe he's more successful than you. Is that why she fucked him?"
Distrust turned quickly to anger, "Listen lady, who the fuck do you think you are?"
"I'm the solution. Or the problem. Depends on your perspective. Which do you think I am?"
Caleb didn't like being threatened, and he was reasonably sure the woman was threatening him. Still, he had enough sense to be wary. His eyes scanned the room for someone watching them. Evelyn could be bait. Make a pass at her or start an argument only to have some big thumb of a man throw him over the bar. But no, they had no one watching them. Caleb had the strangest feeling that everyone was pointedly
not
watching them. "The only solution I'm looking for is at the bottom of the glass," he murmured, trying to sound like the conversation had reached its end.
"I could fit," she mused. "Come on, I'm a little rusty at the heartfelt confession part. I only recently escaped from a skin book, I'll have you know. Let's see. Oh! I know Sarah. She told me the whole sordid affair. That's the sticky wicket, isn't it?
Affair.
You're surprisingly complacent about her fucking someone else. It's the loving someone else that did it."
