DITW 15-1: Lessons from Kerouac and Caesar

TWELVE MONTHS LATER

Saturday, October 9

Dorchester played their encore, a rousing rendition of Holding Your Heart, around eleven o’clock. Josh and Meyer were out of the Scotiabank Arena, downtown Toronto, and ordering drinks at the Irish Embassy by eleven-twenty. The waitress escorted them to a booth for four looking out onto Yonge Street, Josh telling her they were expecting two more. Meyer ordered them Guinnesses and the waitress asked Meyer what happened to his arm. Meyer lifted his arm, bound in a cast up to his elbow, the curled tips of his puffy fingers sticking out of the end. “You wouldn’t believe it—bear attack. Up north, in the bush, thing came out of nowhere...” He shook his head and his gaze went faraway, expression grave. The waitress was attractive and Meyer tried some charm.

The waitress said, “You’re right—I don’t believe you.” Meyer had got her smiling.

Josh slid into the far side of the booth across from Meyer, leaving room for the other two who were meeting them here.

Meyer looked offended. “You don’t believe me?”

“No, offense,” she said. “You don’t strike me as the bear-fighting type.”

Meyer cocked an eyebrow. “Who said we were fighting?”

That got a laugh out of her, and Meyer relaxed into the bench, smug-smiling. 

Josh said, “Does he look like a man who could fight off a bear or does he look like a man who’d go over the handlebars of a motorcycle?”

The waitress clicked her tongue in her cheek, winking at Josh at  shooting a finger pistol. “Got it.” Then to Meyer: “Hope you were wearing a helmet.”

“What’s the point?” Josh said. “There’s no brains in there to protect.”

Meyer showed him a comical look of scrutiny, and the server laughed again. Now she turned her eye on Josh, flirting with him. Then saw his wedding ring.

“I’ll get you guys some drinks,” the woman said and trotted off, weaving through the packed pub. Josh and Meyer regarded each other then laughed, Josh leaning back on the seat-back and looking up at the pub’s high cathedral ceiling. While it was a pub now, it had long ago been one of the burgeoning city’s very first bank buildings. He fell forward again, putting his elbows on the table and shaking his head.

Meyer reached over the table and punched Josh’s shoulder, flopping back and asking him, “You still feel icky?”

“About what?”

“Taking me out—”

“On a date?”

Meyer’s joy turned to scrutiny once again. “You’re such an idiot.”

“I just took you to see your favorite band for your birthday, two dudes out watching a band like Dorchester.”

“You like Dorchester.”

“Two dudes together seeing Dorchester...? It’s suspect.”

“Come on, we’re cousins.” Then he added with theatrical indecency, “Kissing cousins,” bouncing eyebrows and blowing Josh a kiss.

Josh reacted with improvised glee, receiving the air kiss swooning with a hand held over his heart. He admitted, “Ok, it was a pretty great show.”

“Damn right it was. Dorchester’s the best, buddy.”

Josh eyed over Meyer’s shoulders, looking out the windows to the nighttime street, checking the passing pedestrians for their guests arriving. Dread seized his viscera again and his mind raced for the nearest location of his Lorazepam stashes. He put his hand over his heart again, patting the leather and feeling the hard shape of his prescription bottle poke his chest. Then the fun server was back again, two big Guinnesses on a tray, stooping and offloading them onto their table. She asked them if their company would be here soon, holding the empty tray over her bosom.

“Yeah, any minute,” Meyer told her. “They were at the same show tonight.” He thumbed over his shoulder in the vague direction of the Scotiabank Arena.

“Aw, you guys saw Dorchester?”

Josh sipped his drink, nodding, wiping the stout’s cream from his mustache. “We did.” He pointed at Meyer. “I took this guy for his birthday.”

Meyer waved to him with his broken arm. “Thanks, cuz.”

The server said, “I wish I could have got tickets. I wanted to go so bad.”

“You didn’t miss anything,” Josh said. “They were off tonight.”

Meyer eased the server’s obvious disappointment, telling her the truth. “He’s being nice. They were”—Meyer looked up to the high ceiling, searching for the right word—“Incredible. I mean, absolutely amazing. Best show I’ve seen from any band in a few years.”

Meyer and the server talked back and forth about Dorchester and Josh watched the sidewalk again waiting to recognize one of the faces bobbing by. When the server left to attend to another table, Meyer sipped his stout then wiped the foam from his smile. He said, “So what’s happening next weekend?”

Josh closed his eyes. Meyer prompted him again. “Are you going to go or not?”

Josh grumbled and rubbed his forehead. “You’re going to start asking me this now? They’ll be here any minute.”

“Are you going to go or not?” Meyer acting like it was an easy decision.

“No. I mean, yes,” Josh said, irritation overflowing. “Yes, I am going to go. Not during the day, not when anyone else is there. At night. For dinner.”

Meyer was satisfied, yet bothered. “Why didn’t you tell me already? I mean, like, was that so hard?”

Josh wagged his hands, surrendering, not wanting to talk about it, retreating from the table. Yeah, it was pretty fucking hard, Meyer.

Meyer drank, then sighed. He lowered his gaze and muttered, “Colleen’s like almost a year old.”

“Ah, Jesus,” Josh said, really getting riled, patting his prescription bottle for reassurance. “I fucking know, okay?”

Meyer smiled warmly, sympathetically. This wasn’t the first time they’d been heated over this; it was one of the supporting reasons they went away on the motorcycles.

“What about you? Are you going to go?”

“You know I’m going,” Meyer said. “I’m going for Sophie’s sake. During the day. You can come with me if you want. It might be easier that way.”

Josh shook his head no, then caught a familiar face walking right to left behind Meyer, out on the midnight sidewalk. “They’re here,” he told Meyer, a sign for them to drop the personal talk and get into character.

Meyer’s last words were, “Don’t be an asshole,” and it could apply to the situation next weekend, or the one right now.

Steve and his new girlfriend came into the busy pub through the double doors and looked around. Meyer raised a hand and waved until he had their attention. Steve nodded his chin their way, grinning and putting a hand on his girlfriend’s back, walking her through the throng toward the booth. His girlfriend was a black woman, a Nigerian, which he knew through Steve, back when he wasn’t pissed at him.

Meyer whispered, “Shit, what’s her name again?”

Josh covered his mouth and hissed aside, “Mariam,” then Steve and Mariam were at the table. Meyer patted the seat next to him for Mariam to come sit at his side, standing then shaking Steve’s hand. Josh rose languidly.

Steve said to his girlfriend, “This is Josh. He used to work at Swanson with me.”

Josh half-smiled and shook Mariam’s hand. Mariam had a killer smile; long braids, dazzling eyes, and big thighs.

“Pleased to meet you, Josh,” she said, in an English accent. “Steven talks about you well.”

Steve introduced Meyer as a friend and Josh’s cousin, and they all sat down, Steve beside Josh, Mariam across the table next to Meyer.

First topic of order was the Dorchester show; Steve and Mariam had floor seats, while Josh got him and Meyer lower bowl seats, in the 120s; he was still recovering financially from the road trip while unemployed. Soon the waitress was there, taking their order—four more Guinnesses—and she was back fast, the former flirting now a thing of the past. Something he was sure she did with every table.

When Mariam and Meyer broke off into their own discussion, Josh shrank from the table. Steve listened in to Meyer and Mariam for awhile but soon retreated and offloaded his attention to Josh. Josh and the divide between them. Steve grew sullen for a moment. Took a few sips of his beer. 

Then he brightened and said to Josh, “Hey, man, we really miss you around the shop.”

“That’s good I guess,” Josh said.

“Sure it is. Harjeet talks about you. When you know what’s what, I think a lot of us would want to see you come back. Big time.”

“I don’t know about that. I don’t know about anything anymore.”

“You been looking?”

“For work? No, not yet. . . . I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

There was an long, awkward silence on one side of the table. Meyer and Mariam were yucking it up on the other side, laughing about something. Mariam looked like a real hoot. But she’d renamed Steve “Steven” and that was probably a bad sign. That’s how it started.

Steve blubbered his lips, looking around, and Josh knew it was coming. He’d already forgiven Steve via text. And the whole thing seemed petty in retrospect.

Steve leaned closer, not looking at Josh, saying aside, “I really am sorry, eh?”

“I know. I told you it’s okay.”

“I know. I know you told me. I appreciate that. I mean, listen . . . I’d done it before I even thought about it. You know? As soon as I sent it I sat back and was, like, oh, maybe that wasn’t a good idea.”

“I get it,” Josh said and sipped his Guinness.

Steve waited for Josh to look over, then said, “I was an idiot. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry. I mean it.”

“I know,” Josh said, slimming his lips and nodding like a madman, not wanting to talk about it, not wanting it in his mind anymore.

Mariam had their attention now, saying “That must have been an amazing trip,” Meyer nodding alongside her, enjoying her company. Meyer agreed it was. 

Josh said yeah, it was a great trip, then in the silence after, felt awkward enough to elaborate. “It was good for both of us,” looking to Meyer.

Steve said to Mariam, “They have an apartment together.” Her eyes flicked to Josh’s wedding ring, and he instinctively put his hand over it.

“Yeah,” Meyer said, “but we just cleared our schedules and hit the road on some dirt bikes for two weeks. Trails and the wild, all the way down to South America.”

Steve said, “British Columbia to Argentina.”

Meyer nodded more and Josh’s heart felt like a lead weight in his chest. He touched the prescription bottle like an addict. He muttered, “Yup, two weeks.”

Or at least it was supposed to be two weeks.

He wanted to blurt that out. Say to Mariam, well, it was supposed to be two weeks but your stupid boyfriend sent me that goddamn picture. The one Meyer now called the $14,000 photograph.

Bad luck. Bad juju. A transcontinental curse sent via local and international networks; a jinxy data packet opened on a phone five-thousand miles from home. It had ruined the trip. Meyer blamed his broken arm on Steve’s ill-conceived forwarding of that photo he’d seen in the news. Not the news; the Lifestyle section. Ooh-la-fucking-la.

“Hey, you excuse me for a sec?” Josh nudged Steve to let him out of the booth and told everyone he was going to the can. He had a Lorazepam shaken into his palm by the time he shouldered open the men’s room door, situating it under his tongue where it would dissolve in about five minutes. Twenty minutes from now he’d feel it kick in. A Lorazepam, two Guinnesses, maybe three, maybe four, plus whiskey shots for the table, and maybe then he could smile for Steve and Mariam. Mariam. Mariam from Nigeria. Maybe two years ago in another more peaceable universe, a lawyer he knew had helped Mariam immigrate to Canada.

He emptied his bladder into the urinal, jabbed the old style flusher with his leather elbow and went to the mirror. His fucking reflection was awful. Dark circles under watery eyes, long hair, beard. Gaunt. A Bohemian benzo addict and drunk with a broken heart. 

Goddamn that fucking beautiful picture of Kimmy.