Andrew's father had introduced the two of them years ago; now, like long-lost lovers who find one another at some distant point on the other side of the globe, Andrew and Jameson's Gold became hastily reacquainted.
Self-pity and reckless behavior often go hand in hand.
“Pour me another, would ya, Paul?” Not drunk. Not on the liquor, anyway. Not yet.
Paul reminded him that last call had, thirty minutes prior, come and gone. Andrew suggested, in no uncertain terms, that Paul should engage in sexual congress with himself.
Outside, a boiling July evening grabbed Andrew fast, holding him firmly, though with less warmth than the whiskey.
Taking his phone out of the pocket of naturally-faded, discounted-for-irregularities, second-hand blue jeans, he mulled the thought over in his mind; he wasn't quite sure if he should call.
It had nothing to do with the hour. He would have ended up at the same bland, semi-professional voice-mail greeting whether he phoned at one AM or one PM.
He dialed the number. Halfway through the third ring, his father picked up.
“What's up, Drew?”
Caller ID made it harder to hang up. “Uh...I thought you'd be sleeping.”
“I'm in L.A. What's up?
“I need some help.”
“How much?” Now there was a question with potential.
“A grand if you can. Five'll work, though.” He could have used fifteen, but he knew, more or less, what he would get out of the old man.
“Give me a week, alright?”
Three and a half minutes of meaningless chit-chat later, their conversation came to a close.
“Alright, Drew, I'll probably call you on Sunday.” Andrew knew not to hold his breath. “I'll send a check out first thing Monday morning.” Another unsure thing. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
He was uncertain as to what agitated him more: that he still needed to bum money off of his father or that dear-old Dad had recently decided to conclude conversations with those three loaded words.
He started the walk back to his apartment.
Andrew had always felt a little guilty when he called up – usually after a week or two without any contact – and asked for “some help”, but the “I love you” was just too much. Using a failed father's sensitive ego to extort money was a lot easier when the relationship remained shallow. The possibility that love existed, well – that complicated matters considerably.
Twenty-seven steps down the sidewalk, Andrew stopped, undid his pants, and proceeded to piss on the white and red stucco wall of an out-of-business Mexican restaurant. He began humming “La Cucaracha”, and broke into a chuckle: half-amused, half-embarrassed. After finishing, he pulled up his jeans and continued on his way, absently replaying the song through his closed mouth.
There was something else, perhaps not above or below, but parallel to the guilt: asking for money made Andrew feel less “on his own”. At twenty-one, he was a man of full legal privilege, yet he often had trouble placing himself in any certain category; he was surely not a child, but he could also not help suspecting that his professors, his bosses, his parents – all of them – were part of some class to which he would never himself belong. This suspicion only grew stronger in light of the realization that he only half-wanted to be a part of it all, to fully surrender the whimsical dream-state that is childhood, trading it for two weeks of vacation a year and a stressed mind with no room for fresh aspiration.
Still three blocks from his apartment, he stopped once more.
“This is the last time,” he declared in semi-deflated triumph. His lips frowned and his brow furrowed; he turned his gaze downward, his eyes fixing on the gum-caked sidewalk, perhaps looking for approval, for confirmation.
He was adult enough to recognize when he was lying to himself.
A shuffling of the feet soon turned into slow steps, carrying him, once again, toward home.
“So what if I ask him for money?”, he growled in reply. “He owes me.”
He owes me: here was a mantra that sounded less convincing with each utterance. The human mind is a finite thing, both in its capabilities and its perceptions; the idea of something limitless, though beneficial, is inconceivable. Furthermore, what Andrew's father had lent him in neglect, Andrew himself had more than repaid in greedy requisitions (and not always out of need). Of course, there was this troublesome “I love you” business to consider, as well.
A block from home, the Vegas-esque glow of Spirits Unlimited halted him once more. Andrew often wondered why the lights remained ablaze after closing time, attracting the drunkard in need, as though the store's proprietor not only expected, but hoped to be ripped off by some needy inebriate with a thirsty habit.
He leaned his face and hands on the glass, peering inside.
If not for a few comfortably full bottles on his own kitchen counter, Andrew might have stooped so low as to rip the shop off himself. The night was, after all, young, he reasoned, and what good were plans without the means with which to carry them out?
The thought of forcibly entering and then quickly exiting a liquor store, head full of an addict's greed, arms full of fuel for a demanding, unquenchable fire, eased an audible laugh out of him. “Oh, the things that turn men into savages,” he said, his laugh subsiding, leaving a broad grin on a closed mouth. Here was one thing, at least, that made him feel proudly aged and confidently mature.
He rapped his knuckles on the glass, puckered his lips, began whistling “La Cucaracha” again, walked the home stretch.
In his apartment, he poured himself a drink.
In the heavens, the moon, halfway through its cycle-of-phases, lay still above the streets below: two perfectly shaped halves: not dark and light, but old and new.
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