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Screwdriver
by T. E. Cowell He had just had another argument with his girlfriend about his drinking. They had been living together about six months now and had the same argument about once a week. She didn’t like his drinking and he didn’t like her getting on his case about his drinking. As usual when she got on his case he left the apartment, left her standing there all twisted up inside. It was dark outside, the sun down, and cold as ever. A lot of last week’s snowfall had melted away after yesterday’s rainfall, but there were still some mounds of old hardened snow against the curbs and at the edges of parking lots. For the most part the sidewalks were clear again for walking, just some slush here and there, but there were spots he knew he had to watch out for, icy patches invisible to the naked eye that if he wasn’t careful could land him in the hospital. He had his big brown thrift store coat on and his big warm goofy thrift store Russian Cossack hat, and sweatpants under his go-to thrift store charcoal-gray pants. Also his warm thrift store winter boots, so he was all right, he was warm enough. He’d forgotten his thrift store gloves though inside the apartment in his rush to get away from her. Luckily his big brown coat had deep warm front pockets for his hands. He stopped at the corner and waited either for the light to turn green or for the cars to stop coming. He knew they weren’t right for each other, knew it couldn’t last. He knew the breakup would be painful, that breakups always were. They might’ve broken up by now already if he wasn’t always leaving her apartment before the argument could turn into something bigger, like a full-blown fight with irrevocable consequences. Plenty of times he almost said something that would’ve ended it. The words “I’ve had it! We’re fucking through!” forever stayed on the tip of his tongue. Part of the reason for this was because he was living with her in her apartment and didn’t want to move back in with his parents. The other part was that he liked her. He walked two blocks then veered into a cheesy sports bar that drew a younger crowd than most of the other bars in the area. He’d been in this bar before and hadn’t thought much of it but didn’t feel like going to any of the other bars, which were pretty much all workingman’s bars. He didn’t want to see all the sad aging work-tired drunk tradesmen sitting slouched on the barstools, didn’t want to hear them blabbering on about sports or exes or mortgages. The music in the sports bar was horrible and the lighting too dim and everyone was talking too loudly, just a continuous wave of sound. He found a stool that no one was sitting on or standing too close to and sat down. He took a menu that was on the bar in front of a young woman sitting next to him who had blonde neck-length hair and a slender neck like a giraffe’s. This young woman was talking to another young woman, talking animatedly like pretty much everyone else in the place was. The muscles around her shoulders kept jumping in accord with her arms and hands, which she continually raised up and down as she talked. He studied the menu, decided life was short and that he’d try a cocktail he’d never tried before, one he’d noticed on the menu on a previous visit. It was a drink named after F. Scott Fitzgerald, a drink that apparently Fitzgerald had been keen on drinking, though who the hell really knew––maybe the menu was just a scam like everything else. He didn’t have much respect for Fitzgerald, had never cared for the guy’s writing, had always thought of him as effeminate and too intellectual, but Fitzgerald had made it as a writer, and if he couldn’t respect the guy for his work then he could respect him for having been a success. He ordered the cocktail when the bartender came his way. It tasted too fruity, too girly, as he had anticipated. But because it had some gin in it he drank every last drop. Giraffe Neck was looking at him now, for some reason that he couldn’t figure. He could see her looking at him out of his periphery but made a point of not looking back at her. Giraffe Neck surprised him by saying something to him. He couldn’t understand what though with all the noise around. He looked at Giraffe Neck. “What?” he said, and brought his ear closer to her mouth. “I said what’s wrong?” he heard. “You look all pensive.” Giraffe Neck’s vocabulary took him by surprise. He’d assumed everyone in this place except himself was an absolute moron. He looked at Giraffe Neck, leaned closer to her ear and said, “If you had half a brain you’d be pensive too.” It shut her up, as he’d hoped. A few seconds later Giraffe Neck and her friend got up and walked away. He’d tried to explain to his girlfriend why he drank but she refused to listen. She thought drinking was bad for him, that it was killing him, and maybe it was, maybe he was as selfish as she often accused him of being. But he didn’t want to stop drinking, not now. Maybe later he would, or at least cut back, but not now, not when he was in the prime of his life. He drank because when he drank ideas often came to him and when he was lucky he was able to write these ideas down and turn them into stories. He drank because drinking seemed to clear his head of some if not all of the bullshit that his head was constantly cluttered with when he was sober. He got in a zone when he drank a certain amount and when he was in this zone he felt great, felt amazing. It cost him in the mornings, of course, the hangovers, but they weren’t that bad most of the time. He felt kind of guilty though after he finally got up to start his day and found his girlfriend gone, already off at work. Every morning after they’d had an argument the night before she’d leave a note for him, something short and sweet and apologetic. He was surprised, really, that she’d stayed with him for as long as she had, that she hadn’t kicked him out of her apartment yet or had her brawny dad do it for her. He was surprised but at the same time he wasn’t. He knew that he had something and that she knew it too. He was still relatively young and had already been published numerous times. It was only a matter of time before he’d be published in the bigger magazines and start gaining some recognition. This he believed and his girlfriend did too. He had something and his girlfriend knew it. To her writing was a big fat beautiful mystery. She had an English degree and enjoyed reading and even tried from time to time to write, but unlike him he didn’t think she would ever know reading and writing as intimately as he did, she’d never hate it and love it and be consumed and transformed by it. His girlfriend thought writers had this mysterious aura about them, and it was this more than anything else that he thought turned her on to him. He was largely a mystery to her and until he was no longer a mystery she would lust for him and share herself and her life and her apartment with him. That was what he thought. After the cocktail he paid the bartender and left the cheesy sports bar. He walked to a café a block or two away that was still open, paid for a day-old scone and then sat on a worn leather couch in the corner to eat it. As he chewed the scone he stared at students who stared at laptops. After the scone he walked back to the apartment. He found her already in bed, sleeping or pretending. He didn’t bother her. He slept on the floor in the other room, as he usually did after they’d argued. In the morning the note was different. It basically said that she’d had enough of him and that she wanted him out of her apartment by the end of the day. He read the note twice, and afterwards immediately started cramming his things into his backpack––clothes, his laptop, a bagel he’d bought the other day. He left her apartment for the last time and walked to a breakfast spot he knew. He ordered a screwdriver, nothing else, and drank it staring out the window, at the traffic going by on the street, feeling twisted up inside. He didn’t feel hungry enough to eat the bagel. He ordered a second screwdriver, asking the waitress if she could please make this one a little stronger. |
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