A chip the size of the
Ritz
Friday, 11/3/06.
I get to bed around 2:30 in the morning, and three hours later I’m up,
showered, and waiting for the train into work. I’ve got that
cactus-spine-in-my-head feeling I always get when I have too much whiskey, but
otherwise (thanks to water and Advil) I’m fully day-job-functional, which today (Thank God) entails little more than concentration, basic motor skills, and endless
patience with corporate a-holes. I get out of work at 4, I throw myself onto my
bed when I get home at 4:30, and sleep for the next three hours. There are only
four more Fridays left, counting this one; but I intend to spend this one
eating take-out Chinese and watching Randolph Scott westerns. Because there’s
nothing that says “Recovering from too much alcohol” more than watching middle-aged cowboys hook up with
actresses with big hair and torpedo bras.
I’m in the middle of Ride Lonesome when I get
two texts from Randi:
RANDI:
Help!
RANDI: My
bar is full of assholes!
Since Dominic is supposed to be working tonight, I can only
conclude that all tequila hell has broken loose, so I text Randi back that I’m
on my way, bid Ben Brigade goodbye, shrug off my sweats, put on some dark clothes that won’t show spill
marks, grab a book for the train ride (The Face In The Frost by
John Bellairs), and head for the train. Because I’m a regular, and this is what
regulars do.
Nice euphony,
if we’re being polite
So who’s Randi, really? In the immortal words of Glynnis:
“When you take Randi out on a date, you have to make a reservation for
three-one for her, one for you, and one for the chip on her shoulder.” (Glynnis
is never wrong about people.) But Randi didn’t always have that chip. Five years
ago she came to New York for a week-long visit with her current boyfriend and
three other couples. By the end of the week, she and the boyfriend were on the
outs (because you never really know someone until you travel with them), and on
their last night in the city, the eight of them wound up at the upstairs
Naughty Pine, where Randi sat at the bar and the other seven (including her
boyfriend) sat at Table 201. Who was behind the bar? Dominic. The first words
they spoke to each other:
DOMINIC:
So who are you, who were you, and who do you hope to be?
RANDI:
(extending a hand) Miranda Beth Landis.
DOMINIC:
Nice assonance.
At 1 AM, Randi and her friends left for their hotel, to pack
up and take a dawn flight home. At 2 AM, while Dominic was closing up, Randi
returned with her suitcase. Dominic didn’t bat an eye.
DOMINIC:
What’ll it be?
RANDI: A
change. I need a change.
DOMINIC:
Coming right up.
They’ve been together ever since, bouncing off each other
like a couple of charged particles in the Large Hadron Collider. And Randi went
from waitress to bartender to manager, at which point that chip on her shoulder
became so large you could see it from space, like the Great Wall of China.
When I walk into the Pine, it is indeed a shitshow
downstairs, with Dominic nowhere to be seen and Steve and Jon facing off
against a three-deep bar of drinkers like a couple of expendable extras
guarding the gates of Rome against Hannibal’s inebriated elephants. I don’t see
Randi, so I head upstairs to check in with Dave, who has his own packed bar to
deal with and a freshly poured pint of Guinness waiting for me when I walk
through the door. Evidently Randi told him she’d texted me, and when he asked
her exactly what time she’d done it, he factored in the time it took me to get
out of my apartment, and the time it took the R train to show up and get me to
14th Street, and started building the Guinness about three minutes before I
walked in the door. Because he is a bartender, and this is what bartenders do.
He tells me Randi is up on the roof, having a cigarette. So that’s where I
head.
That
sinking feeling
If it’s an alcoholic shitshow downstairs, it’s an emotional
shitshow on the roof. Randi and Dominic are Off Again thanks to last night,
when the two of them had a fight after Dominic crawled into bed with Randi
while he was coked to the eyeballs. Then he called out because Randi would have
been managing him tonight. Can you say three-year-old? “Why do I keep doing this to myself?” Randi
says, and I attempt to give her some good advice. As always, the reason I know
it’s good advice is because, if someone gave the same advice to me, I wouldn’t take
it.
ME: Repeat after me.
RANDI:
Repeat after me.
ME: Men who don't want you are a waste of time.
RANDI: Men
who don't want me are a challenge.
ME: Chasing a loser makes you a loser.
RANDI: Chasing
a loser is better than being alone.
ME: Beating your head against the wall gives you
a concussion.
RANDI: Beating
my head against the wall is foreplay.
ME: (throwing his hands in the air) I give up.
RANDI: Quitter.
She offers me a cigarette. I haven’t had one since April 9,
2002, and I’m not about to start now. “You’ve changed, then,” Randi says.
“That’s unique, Wells. We never change. We never learn. None of us. We're all
programming. We just repeat the old mistakes and achieve the same old victories
and we think we're dumb or we think we're smart and it has nothing to do with
intelligence. It's just the way our brains are wired. It's just what we can't
stop doing.” “That's pretty depressing, Randi,” I say, and she shrugs. “Nah,
it's just how I'm programmed to see the world.” “And how do you see it tonight?”
“Tonight?” she says. “Well, tonight, I’m trying to figure out if I’m on the
Titanic or the Poseidon.”
This leads to a very interesting analogy about the Naughty
Pine. Is it the Poseidon, where the passengers (the staff and the regulars) are
going to help each other survive once the disaster hits? Or is it the Titanic,
where nobody thinks the ship will sink until it does, and everyone who’s not in
a lifeboat freezes to death in the icy Arctic waters of a Naughty-Pine-less
world? “But the good thing about it being the Titanic,” Randi says, “is that
it’s the absolute end of something. It’s like the reverse of You Can’t Fire
Me—I Quit—it’s I Don’t Have To Lift A Finger—This Disaster Will Do It For Me.”
“Which means,” I point out, “that you don’t have to change.” “Of course I'll change,” Randi says, “the bar will be gone in a month.” “That’s not changing,”
I say, “that’s dealing. If you’re waiting for your job to end before you
actually break up with Dominic,” I begin, but that’s as far as I get, because
on the word “Dominic,” Randi takes the chip off her shoulder and swats me in
the jaw with it. “That is NOT what I said,” she declares in an Exorcist voice
that’s all gruff and demonic. I give her a look and calmly repeat and continue
my thought. “If you’re waiting for your job to end before you actually break up
with Dominic, because you think that it will be easier for you to do it once
you no longer work with each other, it’s like The Professor saying he’s going
to go on the wagon once the Naughty Pine closes. When we all know,” I say, hand
raised as she starts to interrupt, “when we all know that it’s not the place
that sells the liquor that’s the problem, but the thirst. Which will find
another bar where it can be quenched—just like you will find another Dominic.
Unless you give it up like I gave up smoking,” I want to add, but once again,
on the word “Dominic,” Randi gets all huffy. “So I’m an alcoholic now?” she
asks, and I nod my head. “When it comes to Dominic? Yeah. He’s your scotch. You
think the rest are poison, but he’ll kill you just as surely as they do. Only
he’ll do it slowly, and he’ll make you think it’s your fault. And it will feel
like a pleasure.”
She starts to say something, and I can tell it’s going to be
some excuse that gets her off the hook, so I jump in before she can speak.
“He’s the Titanic,” I say. “Not the Pine. Him. And he’ll take you down with
him. Unless you jump overboard. Grab a lifeboat, and jump overboard. He’s the
Poseidon. Everything is upside down. Nothing makes sense. But you have to get
to the bottom of it, which is the only way out. Because if you stay, you
die.” I can tell I’m reaching her, and
I almost—almost—say “And besides, the son of a bitch is fooling around with
Sunday.” But I don’t. Instead I say something that sounds kind of brilliant,
and immediately write it down afterwards.
ME: The
only people who go down with the ship, are the ones who need the ship to live.
Alcohol:
Guinness (1)
Day 8
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