A beach bar. Early evening. These days, I only visit quiet bars that serve decent hamburgers in baskets. This bar allegedly has a decent burger.
It is anything but quiet.
There is a band. The musicians are supposed to be playing country. They aren’t. The lead singer has a voice that sounds like a recently maintenanced M4 Sherman tank.
There’s a man sitting beside me. He’s staring into his glass. He’s overdressed. He wears a loosened necktie.
The bartender refuses to serve him another drink. Then, the bartender gives me a glance which seems to say, “This guy’s tanked.”
He’s half-tight, all right. He introduces himself. We shake hands.
I shouldn’t engage him. I really shouldn’t. I know this. Drunk folks like me too much. They latch onto me like deer ticks on a German shorthaired pointer.
Take, for instance, the time in New Orleans, with my cousin. An intoxicated seventy-three-year-old woman forced me onto the dance floor practically at gunpoint. We danced a light bossa nova. We twirled.
She asked me to dip her. I did. Paramedics were involved. Her hip
was never the same.
The man at the bar tells me his daughter died five years ago yesterday. He’s in town, visiting her headstone. His face looks swollen when he says it.
“You think you’ve gotten over the worst,” he says. “But you never get over your baby.”
He’s a mess. The bartender helps him outside for some fresh air. He collapses on a bench.
I should leave him. I should let him be with his memories. I should go inside and eat my burger.
But I can't. I’ve got too much of my mother in me.
The bartender has taken his keys and called a cab. And here I sit. Babysitting.
He tells me about the time he took his girl to the zoo. How she acted when she saw the monkeys. She didn’t want to leave…