A Tapless Shoulder (6 page)

“
Frankie,” I
said, “what’s up, man? Yeah, no, nothing, hey, did you just call me
earlier, I mean, you know what I mean?” I tried to sound casual yet
stern, like it wasn’t actually a question if it had been him. I
heard his sincerity and bafflement and I’d known Frankie a long
time and knew undoubtedly that both were genuine. I made a gesture
to Nate indicating we were of course mistaken.

“
Never mind,
man, gotta book, talk to you later. What… yeah, see you then,” I
ended the call. “Okay, so yeah, I don’t think it was
Frankie.”

“
I told you
man,” Nate said.

“
I know,” I replied like saying each word was painful. “I
also know never to be
your
partner in
crime: I lean on you a tiny bit, and you name, Frankie.
Nice
. Look, it doesn’t matter, like I mean, what can we do?
There is
nothing
we can do. So I say we go forward
like nothing happened. It didn’t happen. Here I am, here you are,
and that’s that… and maybe ‘yay for beer.’” I was holding up my
glass.

He looked at
me for a moment then asked, “Cool if I crash at your place
tonight?”

“
No,” I shook
my head, “you have to sleep in your own bed tonight, okay, it was
just a bad dream, it’s over now,” I reached across the table and
tussled his hair. “I love you.”

“
You’re an
asshole,” Nate said and sighed like he was finally tired of me
making fun of him.

“
Dude, my
wife hates you.” I said confident that was enough information on
the subject.

He looked
surprised. “Katie? No she doesn’t,” he said as if saying so
magically made it so.

“
Oh, fuck, that’s right; I just say that to everyone. Yeah;
every time my dad left the room I told my mom
he
hated
her
. I just, I don’t
know, I love to throw that shit out there, just trying to add… more
hate to the world, it’s something I do, keeps it interesting, you
know; reactions and shit.” I shook my head and did an impression of
what I thought I would look like if I were
amazed.

“
Man, whatever,” he stated quite dramatically as though we
were both insane but he wanted
all
the attention,
“remember, last September, at Rock On Johnny’s, like, everyone was
there, and I ended up talking to her for like an hour. Man,
remember?” He looked at me like I was the one completely oblivious,
and because of that I couldn’t
not
laugh at
him.

“
Is ‘retarding’ a word because I swear that’s what you’re
doing right now, right before my very eyes.” I was bewildered and
nearly frightened by just how far from reality he seemed. “You mean
you talked to
my
sister
for like
five minutes
, and even she called you a total douche bag because
you dumped a beer on your face every time you took a drink. Ring
any bells?
NO
?
WHAT
? That’s weird!” I was amazed, again, at the complete lack
of brainpower I was dealing with, it had become painful, and I
wanted
out
. What on earth
was
I doing there I
thought, again to myself. “I have to go, so come on,” I said,
“let’s go,” I clapped my hands together; “we’ll share my
wife.”

Nate told me
he would likely end up at his parents’ for the night and would call
me later to see if anything more happened to me and let me know if
anything further happened to him or, adding a footnote on his
behalf, if he just thought of something dumb to say. I no longer
cared. This was an overdrawn moment absent of common sense and I
should have been ashamed of myself for not having realized that
sooner. I should have welcomed the absurdity of it all. Nate said
he would give me a lift home and as we were walking to his car my
cell phone rang: unknown caller. I didn’t bother answering it. Of
course they didn’t leave a message.

“
Actually,
Nate,” I said distractedly as I scrolled down to my dad’s number on
my phone, “would you mind if we stopped by my parents’
place?”

The phone
began to ring.

“
Dad,” I was nearly shouting into the phone, “what are you
listening to, holy crap, what? Can you turn it down? Can you even
hear me?! No, I don’t, no; don’t put the phone to the speaker. I
don’t
care
who it is, yeah, thanks, nope, I
hate it. Look, I will be there shortly, do you think you can maybe
not be this completely shit faced? Just, hey, hey, hey, put, hey,
put your face in coffee, put, hey… fuck.”

We were
sitting at a red light, still in Nate’s car; we weren’t sitting on
the asphalt with the car behind us or anything like that. I was
staring ahead, tired and oblivious. Nate was looking at a couple
guys with their coffees standing at the street corner, waiting to
cross the road. “You’re fucking dead,” he said as he put the car in
park and got out. I looked at the open car door, and then watched
him head around the car toward the two guys. I got out
too.

“
What the,” I said and stopped as Nate was now already
swinging punches at the
second
guy who was
unsuccessfully trying to lurch away.
This just happened way too fast;
I thought and looked around for something I could
understand. I actually found a couple of things: the parked car, I
got that, and the other guy, or more accurately the first guy. He
was holding his face on the ground, and was peering at me from
beneath his hunched body. He had taken some punches in the face and
ended up on the ground. It wasn’t as straightforward as the parked
car, but I felt it should still count; had he been jumping about
like he had just won something
after
being socked in
the face, then yeah, he’d have been off the list.

He wanted to
speak, maybe to swear, maybe to explain, but neither came and he
just continued to watch me from the safe confines of his defeated
state, a hunkered crumpled pile on the ground. His coffee lay
sideways, leaking slowly. I bent down and righted it where it was
on the sidewalk. Apparently my primary concern, even in a violent
situation, was the preservation of coffee, saving as much of it as
possible.

There was a
red bandana beside the coffee, and had we
not
been
outside, I may have been compelled to use it to clean up the coffee
that had spilled. I shrugged like I was talking to myself and
needed to react. I picked up the bandana and tossed it over toward
the first guy Nate had knocked down. He cautiously reached out for
it, and brought it toward his face, which looked to be hurting in a
number of ways.

Nate had run
back from where the other guy was laying, which was on someone’s
lawn a fair distance down the road.

I shook my
head, “Um, what the fuck was that? You went from
‘
Oh no, someone phoned me and
laughed
’ to
‘
that guy’s got a scarf; I’m
punching his face!
’”

“
They were
flashing their colours at us,” he said casually, as he turned to
his car door.

“
What?” I
wasn’t processing this fast enough I thought, or at all. He stood
at his open door and pointed to the guy, the first guy who was now
walking past me toward the other guy. I stared at him as he passed.
I may not have known what happened, but I knew which side I was
on.

“
He fuckin’
turned to show us his bandana and then his fucknut buddy did the
same!”

I looked at
Nate blankly, and tried my best to understand what he meant and
then what that meant to me. I knew my reaction was underrated
because it just made me feel so very tired. Evidently my answer to
all of this confusion was to go home and go to bed.

“
Yeah, but we’re not in a gang, so why would we care if they
are? They’re obviously idiots, dumb fucking idiots, giving suburban
gangs a bad name. You should have laughed at them or flipped them
off,” I was speaking as fast as I could. Cars were now zipping
around us. No one had yet braved honking, but I knew there would be
cars that would soon happen upon us and not understand why
they
weren’t
to
honk at the crazy man.

“
There was a
time when you would have done the exact same thing,” he said
calmly, and as completely accurate as that statement may have been,
the problem was it did not send us on our way.

“
I don’t think so, I’m fairly certain I would have put the
window down and asked them what their bandana thing meant, and if
they got them at H and M. Look, maybe we can talk about this over
their coffee,” I very nearly shouted at him. “I’m a dad now: I
don’t punch nearly enough people anymore… or anyone for that
matter.” I was wondering why we weren’t in the car as we continued
to shout at each other over the car’s roof, each standing with
wide-open doors, on the verge of getting in. I got into the car,
hoping he would follow. He did. I wondered why I hadn’t just done
that sooner. “Did you see that woman in the car behind us?” I spoke
quickly and pointed my thumb behind us, “she is probably on the
phone with the cops because she probably thinks you went and did
all that just to steal coffee or something. It’s a matter of
perspective; now to her
you
are the bad guy
because I’m pretty sure she’s not saying, ‘
Oh well, they must have shown those boys their
bandanas.’
No, she’s a
hundred and she thinks you’re fucking psychotic.”

We still
weren’t moving. He looked in the rear-view mirror and laughed,
“Yeah, but I know she’s wrong and I’m right.”

He was
laughing. My heart was pounding, and I felt like I couldn’t speak
without yelling. How could he just sit there and laugh and not race
us away from there? He began to wave to her. I got out, about to
run, in any direction. I retrieved the coffee that had been left
behind, the one I’d saved from completely leaking on the ground. It
had weathered being dropped very well and I thought the old lady
may as well be right. “I got the coffee, let’s go,” I said as I got
back into the car and looked behind us like we were about to be
chased.

I held a hand
out toward the road ahead of us in case he thought I wasn’t ready.
He didn’t notice; he was examining his hand. “Holy shit, Nate,
you’re a little fired up, maybe we should have cabbed it,” I
studied him, wondering if I’d missed just how much he’d had to
drink. “Three right? You had three?” I felt out of breath. This
waiting to be arrested or whatever it was we were doing now was
really doing me in.

“
Yeah, but
that was right off the bat, and we were there for what? Over three
hours?”

“
Oh, okay,
well, let us count the seconds and talk about it longer – Jesus,
Nate – let’s fucking go,” I pleaded. That did it. At last, he
started the car and we were moving again. What seemed like sixty
minutes had really only been maybe ten or fifteen. I pulled the tab
back on the lid of the coffee; even to a pessimist, it was three
quarters full.

“
You know I’m
not sharing this with you, right?” I said, as I took a drink from
the coffee and wished it was hotter. I made a face at it, then
rolled down the window and lobbed the cup out.

“
Why’d you do
that?” Nate asked rightfully.

“
I don’t
actually know,” I replied, “I think being with you impairs my
judgement, it’s like we’re kids again. Fucking stupid, eh? Okay,
I’m an idiot; let’s go back, I’ll pick that up.”

“
You see,
this is why I don’t date.”

“
What? Why?
The women you date throw stuff out the window when you go
places?”

“
No, man, the
hassle, you know, having to do things.”

“
Having to do things; Nate, that’s not
women
,
that’s
being
alive
.”

“
You know
what I mean, I mean, like, things you don’t want to do.”

“
Right, right, like turning around for instance. You know,
the longer you keep driving the farther we have to drive back, so
you should turn around
now
before it’s a
real pain in the ass,” I declared, suddenly feeling righteous even
though it was my fault we had to turn around. “Oh, and I meant to
ask you, did you want that? The coffee, I mean. It was lukewarm and
made me want to wretch; it’s all yours if you can get it back in
the cup.” I had a big smile on my face, which then broke apart into
laughter.

“
No thanks,”
he turned the steering wheel sharply and the car followed, “maybe
I’ll just stop and get my own.”

“
Yeah, that’s
fine, nothing like some coffee after some beer after a fight,” I
said sarcastically.

“
I actually
would like that.”

“
Yeah, only my reflection likes that, minus the fight or
maybe not minus the fight – I wasn’t included in the fact there was
a fight, so I’m not sure how I should feel about it.” I was shaking
my head. “What the hell – did that just happen?” I was still a
little mystified by what had just happened. “You should have told
me they were ‘
flashing their
colours
’ before you got out,
I would’ve, I don’t know, maybe told you not to be stupid. For once
I would just like to have the chance to react like I know what is
going on. I could have helped you out, not that you needed it,
obviously, but two of them, two of us, I think that would have at
least made a little more sense.
And
in a fight is the
only time I don’t overthink things, which says something about
violence, don’t you think?” I paused to see if he didn’t think. “I
think it’s senseless, and I’m pretty sure I have to think that now,
it’s a part of being a parent or a part of being married, I don’t
know. Now I can’t stop talking because that made me stupid and
anxious and confused and I don’t know what the hell
else.”