Are You Sitting Down?, Page 8

  Although I had no children of my own, I knew what it must be like for a parent to lose a child to the poisons under the sink or the unlocked gun cabinet. They are the news stories we take for granted when they happen to someone else, but also the blame that beats us up when the mistake does happen to us. We shake our head in sorrow at the disturbing front page news, but have forgotten all about it by the time we are reading the funnies. It feels a lot different when we become the headlines.

  I’m not talking about my Dad. He woke up and died in the middle of the night from a stroke. Losing him was a different kind of pain. I still felt empty inside, but it was more like losing a best friend. With my sisters arms wrapped around my waist, or my own arms wrapped around my mother’s neck, I knew I wasn’t feeling this way alone. In time, that pain healed even though it might have left a scar on the inside. The sickness I’m talking about has never gone away.

  I wonder sometimes if it’s the way Mom felt that night. Dad probably shook her from her peaceful sleep to get her to call for an ambulance. She probably bursts into tears, unaware of what she could possibly do to help him. There was nothing to do. She sat on the floor next to the bed and held his hand, and he went. A piece of her, deep inside somewhere where those feelings are kept, died with him. That’s the ache I’m talking about. I just can’t kick it.

  I first met Lind at work. I was doing five nights a week, Tuesday through Saturday, at a bar called Zero’s over on the end of The Row. That’s what we called the line of buildings across the street from the fraternity houses. It’s an old shopping mall now home to mostly frat bars. There was a gas station at one end and an all night diner on the other. A coffee shop, a textbook outlet, and a laundry mat broke up the neon bar signs.

  Lind was short for Lindsey. She was dancing with the wall on a slow Wednesday night. She played horrible 80’s music on the jukebox most of the evening. I would have threatened to unplug it on her but she fed my tip jar three or four bucks for every beer she drank, and two hours into my shift she’d emptied about six bottles. Soon, we were the only two in the bar. After wasting a few quarters between the video games and the pool table, she settled down on a bar stool to flirt with me.

  “You got a girlfriend?” she asked.

  “Nope,” I said, wiping down the bar, stocking the cooler, and going through the typical routine of a bartender trying to look busy to pass the time. “What about you?”

  “I don’t date girls,” she snickered. It was a loud animal-like laugh through the nose.

  “Got a boyfriend?” I asked. Drunken bubbly sorority girl humor never fazed me.

  “Nope. Not anymore. Tonight, I’m celebrating being single again.”

  I refrained from asking any more questions. It was the number one rule of bartending on a slow night. Never open the door to confessional. It could be hours before any one else walked in if at all, and I didn’t want to make the night go by any slower by having to listen to her cry and bitch about why her boyfriend left her. Smashed girls and sob stories don’t mix, and I found it highly unusual that she was out celebrating alone. Usually there’s a flock of girls in here when a relationship has called it quits.

  Some regulars wandered in for a game of pool. More guys came in to celebrate a basketball game victory, and some more from a study break. Lind lost herself in the crowd of jocks and frat guys, flirting with them all. As my shift picked up, she fell out of sight and out of mind. I assumed she’d left until one of the guys came up and told me some girl was passed out on the bathroom floor.

  I got him to help me pick her up and put her in a booth. Some guys, who had crowded around to watch, joked about taking advantage of her. I was afraid that someone already had. Her pants were unzipped. She might have just fallen off the toilet, but I still feared the worst. I called a chick bartender from the joint next door for advice. She had coverage so she offered to come over and help. She checked Lind’s pockets for an ID. The address on her license was local. We contemplated calling her a cab. Lind woke up just as we were looking through the numbers on her cell.

  “Can we call you a cab?” I asked.

  She shook her head no. “Call Shelly. She’s my roommate. She’ll come and get me.”

  A few weeks later, Lind was in the bar again on my shift. I was relieved to see Shelly with her. Lind seemed much more reserved and together this time. She sipped one beer for about an hour while sitting in the corner talking to Shelly. I caught myself looking at her several times, unsure if it was the same reckless girl who’d been in here that night. I spoke up when Shelly came to the bar to buy another round.

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Hey, thanks for calling me that night. Lind doesn’t even remember. That was a tough week for her. Her boyfriend was killed in Iraq.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope she’s okay.”

  Lind certainly wasn’t the first inebriated girl I’d picked up off the floor at Zero’s or at any of the other bars I’d worked at, and a couple of them I’d put into cabs more than once. They’d drowned their sorrows in cheap beer for flunking a test, celebrated a twenty-first birthday, or finally graduated from college. The difference between them and Lind was that most of the time, there was a friend here for them.

  My only intervention was usually calling a cab, handing out bottled water, or making an ice pack. The fact that Lind had been here alone that night still intrigued me. Shelly was obviously a friend, but where was she that night when Lind needed her most? Suddenly, Lind seemed more appealing.

  I hate to sound like I wanted to take advantage of her situation. A sad lonely girl losing a military boyfriend and passing out alone in a bar can seem awfully vulnerable. Lind was pretty. She had full sandy blond hair right from a shampoo commercial. Her green eyes were probably colored contacts and her glossy pink lips were painted on. With a nice rack, an hourglass figure, and a heart shaped ass, she’d have another boyfriend in no time.

  I admired the fact that she appeared sensitive right now at the table with Shelly. No one would have ever believed how sloppy drunk she was that night. Her slow buzz tonight must have cured her grief because she winked at me when she came up to the bar to buy the next round. She giggled and tossed her hair to flirt. It was much more innocent than the loud pig snort laugh I remembered from before.

  “This one’s on me,” I said pushing her money back across the bar.

  I was a bit surprised when they left shortly after, but I knew she’d be back. And it was sooner than expected. She was waiting for me outside that night when the bar closed. Before I had a chance to speak, she’d pinned me against the wall and kissed me. Since it was a week night, the only place still open was the diner just a few doors down. She suggested we go back to my place. I liked her idea better.

  The love we made that night was exciting and familiar. I’d had plenty of one night stands before, but usually only after a night on the other side of the bar when I’d had a chance to drink and socialize. Exploring a girl’s body for the first time was always a thrill. I remember studying her appendix scar while kissing her stomach, something I’d never taken time to notice on a girl before.

  I don’t remember ever having had sex sober before that night. It’d never been this easy. I think it was the only time Lind and I would ever make such clean love. Smoking pot was a bit simple for her and pretty much a staple for me. She preferred cocaine, and ecstasy on the weekends if we went out dancing. Her purse was an illegal medicine cabinet and reminded me of my younger sister.

  The Lind I’d seen that very first night soon reappeared, and stayed around quite often. There was never a night we went out that she didn’t drink too much. We’d end up having to call it an early night because she’d pass out. I’d get pissed and try to dump her off at her apartment, but she always conveniently woke up in my car and wanted to go back to my place. She’d beg me to make love to her and then pass out again in the middle of it. This practice was also a little too familiar, but it was usually me who fell asleep.
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  If we had not had sex that first night, if she had not been such an easy piece, I think I could have fallen in love with her. She was a trophy on my arm in the eyes of my buddies, but it wasn’t even fair to call her a “catch.” There had never been a hunt or chase. I knew that sooner or later I’d call it off before she got too serious. I’d break her heart before she wanted to leave a toothbrush and some clothes at my apartment. When I found out the spill about the boyfriend in Iraq had just been a lie to reel me in, I didn’t feel so bad about letting her go.

  It all started when I decided not to call her for a few days. I ignored her voice messages and went out alone. I think I even took a different girl home one night. Dating girls I met at work doesn’t make the break-up so easy though. A few nights later, Lind was there waiting for me when my shift started. She yelled. I ignored her. She dumped a bowl of popcorn across the bar.

  I’m glad there were only two other guys in the bar to see this, and I knew both of them. It was still embarrassing, but I’m sure they understood such trouble with girls. I walked around the bar and grabbed Lind by the shoulders. She tried to pull away, arms flailing. When she’d stopped and calmed down long enough for me to say something, I told her to go home. She left in tears. I look back on that moment now and wish I had broken up with her. Things might have been a lot different now.

  Instead, I picked up the phone and called her the next day. When you aren’t getting laid, apologies come much easier. She came over that night for what was to be a quiet evening at home with just the two of us. I was bored. We were drinking. Soon, Lind was scraping lines of cocaine across a mirror on my coffee table.

  Lying on the floor naked, I woke up when it was still dark outside. The sun had just barely touched the sky but I squinted my eyes as if it were rising right there in my apartment. My crotch ached from sex I didn’t remember having. Lind was lying in bed. I crawled into bed and threw my arm around here. When I woke up again, it was noon. I crawled out of bed and took a hot shower. My head throbbed. I didn’t have any aspirin, so I was going to make a trip to the drug store.

  After getting dressed, I sat down on the edge of the bed to put my shoes on. I reached over to wake Lind. She wouldn’t wake up. I put my hand on her chest and put my head up close to her nose and mouth. Her heart wasn’t beating, and she wasn’t breathing. I called emergency services. They let me ride in the ambulance. Again, I knew what it must have felt like to be my mother, leaning over an emergency technician in the back of an ambulance as they tried to revive someone right there in front of you but couldn’t.

  The only difference was that I didn’t love Lind the way my mother loved my father. Before, I didn’t think I loved Lind at all. Now that she was gone, some feeling from deep inside kept interfering with the pain, overwhelming me with confusion. I was still coming down from the alcohol and the drugs from last night. I passed out before the ambulance had reached the hospital.

  * * * *

  “Is Sebastian there?” I could hear my Mom asking Travis on the phone.

  “Yeah, Mom. He’s here.”

  “What has he done?”

  They were four little words I’d heard her say quite a bit over the years. What had I done? Doctors had revived me in the hospital. Knowing that Lind was gone, I panicked. I was hysterical, and on the verge of a breakdown. I managed to keep myself together long enough to sneak out of the hospital. I caught a cab back to my apartment. I threw some clothes in a bag, and without even thinking about what to do or where to go, I drove to Memphis. When I got to the city, I called Travis and told him where I was. He gave me directions to his apartment. I had already told Travis what happened before Mom called. The police had come to her house looking for me. They’d told her about Lind. She had never met Lind and didn’t even know who she was.

  “They just want to ask you some questions,” Mom said on the phone.

  “I’m a suspect now.”

  “You should have thought about that before you ran away,” Mom told me.

  A detective and two cops were knocking on Travis’s door an hour after we hung up with Mom. They didn’t arrest me. The detective told me Lind had died of a lethal concoction of alcohol, cocaine, and valium. An overdose. Doctors had tested my blood when I passed out and found the same levels of alcohol and cocaine, but no valium. Passing out in the ambulance was the only thing that saved me from going to jail for murder.

  The detective asked about the valium. I told him about Lind’s pill addiction. Her purse was in my apartment and its contents would prove it. I agreed to take him there. It wasn’t the first time I’d ever been in the back of a cop car, but it was the longest ride I’d ever taken in one. The eighty miles from Memphis back to Ruby Dregs only took about twenty minutes at the speed the cop was driving. Travis agreed to go with me.

  “Why is my door open? Did you send someone here already?” I asked the detective.

  “Stay here,” he ordered.

  With guns pulled, they ran up the stairs and flanked the doorway. They glided around the wall and into my apartment. I heard them yell “Police!” Travis looked at me wide-eyed when we heard scuffling inside.

  “Do you have a roommate?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Did someone break in?”

  Neither of us dared to go up the stairs to find out. Soon, the cop emerged escorting a woman with her hands cuffed behind her back.

  “Who is that?” Travis asked.

  “It’s Shelly. Lind’s best friend,” I said.

  “Why is she here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Murderer!” she yelled at me as the cop put her in the back seat of his car.

  Shelly had broken into my apartment to steal Lind’s purse. It still contained around a dozen bottles of valium. I don’t know if she wanted it for personal reasons or to make me look guilty of being responsible for Lind’s death. Probably both. We had arrived just in time to stop her. The detective told me that if she had gotten away, the story I’d told him would have looked false and I would have been arrested. Lind’s purse would have most likely disappeared, and I’d been sent to jail.

  Lind had no family, or at least no relatives who cared to press charges against me. A bag of cocaine found in Lind’s purse cleared me of the responsibility of possession for the drugs that killed her. A receipt in her purse from a gas station near her apartment confirmed she’d bought the beer we drank that night. The marijuana they found in my apartment was mine, but luckily we had not used it.

  With nothing firm to charge me, the judge gave me a break. The amount of drug paraphernalia found in Shelly and Lind’s apartment was proof to the judge that Lind was gambling with her own life and it was only a matter of time before something like this would have happened. My older brother Martin agreed to drive me back to Memphis to pick up my car a few days later. Travis took off from work to stay in town and offer his support if I needed it.

  “Hey, wasn’t this your girlfriend?” A guy asked me one night at the bar. He was holding up a newspaper with Lind’s death as the front page cover story.

  After the cops let me go, I picked up a few shifts at Zero’s. They didn’t want me to leave town for a few days, not even to go get my car.

  “No, she wasn’t my girlfriend.” I said. I was hoping to stay out of the public eye.

  “Sure, she was. You woke up next to her dead body, right?” the guy continued to harass me.

  “Hey, man, I don’t want to talk about it,” I said trying to keep things low.

  “This guy sleeps with dead chicks,” he said, laughing with his buddies.

  I refrained from jumping across the bar and hitting him. Ignoring another guy’s taunts two nights later got a beer thrown in my face. The manager of the bar suggested I take a few weeks off until things calmed down. I was too afraid to drink or smoke anything, just knowing the cops would call me back in and bust me for something. I was walking on egg shells, and not having a job to occupy my mind was going to drive me insane.<
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  Lind might have been dead, but her soul was not resting peacefully. She haunted my dreams. I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat on the floor. I just couldn’t sleep in that bed where she had died. After several sober and sleepless nights, I got a phone call from the detective. I was all clear of any charges and anything to do with Lind. The case was closed as a wrongful death. Finally, I could go to Memphis and pick up my car. I could have a drink, or two, or three and smoke a joint.

  Instead of a bottle of vodka clearing my head, it made it worse. I tried to go out to a bar, but everywhere I looked I saw Lind. Every girl on the dance floor had her face. The more I drank the more dead she looked, skin peeling and bugs crawling out of her mouth and eyes as she called me a murderer. I bought a dime bag of coke from someone, hoping it would numb my brain.

  A buddy of mine gave me two pills that I chased with a few shots of tequila. He said it would help me chill. Instead, it sent the room spinning. Now, Lind’s face was every face in the room, men and women. I crashed to the floor as several Linds hovered over me. They were asking if I was alright, but all I heard was “Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!” over and over again.

  I woke up in the back of Martin’s car. He and Travis were in the front seat. I felt like I’d been asleep for days, but they told me only a few hours had passed. Martin was taking us back to Memphis. Travis was going to let me stay with him for a few days to “straighten my life out.”

  I didn’t know how I was going to do that. I didn’t have much of a life to figure out. I was twenty-two years old and had probably killed enough brain cells from so much intoxication that I should probably be legally deemed a teenager all over again. The only job I’d ever held was in a bar. I’d worked as a bar back right out of high school, and as a waiter for a year, finally moving my way up to tending bar. I wasn’t like Martin or Travis. They’d taken the right path and gone to college. They’d settled down and got good paying jobs. The pieces of my puzzle didn’t fit together like that. Although I’d run away to his place just two weeks ago, unsure where to go actually, I didn’t want to spend days with my fag brother so he could remind me all the time about getting my shit together. I’d heard enough of that from Mom over the past few years.