J. Kerley - The Memory Killer

“Shut up, bitch, I’m telling the joke. The bartender tells the boys to drop trou and set their penises on the bar. So one by one the boys slide their jeans to their knees, scrunch up to the bar, and lay their doodles across it, pulling them out as far as they can. Just then, a guy walks in the door, glances down the bar, and yells, ‘I’ll have the buffet!’”

Moans and groans. Fenton said, “I’m gone. Some of us have to work in the morning.” Timmons said the same and he and Holcomb filed from the booth to back pats and air kisses until it was just Billy and Patrick standing outside the booth. Billy put his arm around Patrick’s shoulder and pulled him close. His breath was dense with tequila from a half-dozen margaritas.

“So there’s this guy comes out of a bar after drinking beer for three hours …”

“I heard it, Billy.”

“Shush! Not tonight you haven’t. The drunk staggers to an intersection, unzips his fly and yanks out his wand. Just then a cop runs up and says, ‘Hold on, mister, you can’t piss here.’”

Patrick crossed his arms and waited. Billy affected a drunken voice and pretended to aim a penis at the far horizon. “‘I ain’t gonna pissh here, occifer,’ the drunk says. ‘I’m gonna pissh way … over … there.’”

“It was funny the first three times,” Patrick yawned. “Four, maybe.”

“Gawd, Patrick,” Prestwick moaned. “Lighten up while I go way … over … there and take a piss.”

Prestwick started toward the bathroom, stopped when Patrick grabbed his arm and pointed at Prestwick’s half-filled glass, sitting on the edge of the table.

“You left your drink, Billy. What have I been telling everyone?”

Prestwick affected ignorance. “Don’t lay your doodle on bars?”

“I’m not laughing.”

“Uh, lemme see … Don’t leave drinkies unattended?”

“I mean it, Billy. Never let your glass out of your sight.”

Prestwick picked up the remainder of his drink, drained it away in a single chug, set it back on the table upside-down. He shot Patrick a wink, mouthed, “Thanks, mummy,” and ambled toward the bathroom tapping at his phone to check the barrage of tweets and Instagrams and Facebook updates. He walked into a barstool, corrected, re-aimed for the dark hall holding the bathrooms.

Patrick sighed, used to Billy’s hip-swinging sashays down a sidewalk, the vocal trills for emphasis, the bottomless supply of jokes. Patrick knew that somewhere in the twelve years since they’d met in high school, he had become an adult. He wondered if Billy ever would.

At times Billy showed flashes of adulthood, of introspection, moments in which he realized that his youth and looks were a finite commodity, and though they carried him now, the passage was growing briefer. But such moments were always transient, the span of a meteor across the night sky, as minutes later Billy was ordering another round, or leaving to “comfort” an older man who would repay Billy with one or another generosity, or sometimes just a fistful of cash.

“Come on, buddy,” Patrick whispered to Billy’s retreating back. “Grow up.”

Prestwick entered the bathroom and relieved himself from two feet away, allowing him to splash his initials on the rear of the urinal. He zipped up and turned to the mirror to check the magic.

A face appeared over his shoulder.

“Hello, Billy,” the face said.

Billy spun. “Uh, do I know you, dear?”

“It’s been a long time. You are Billy Prestwick, right?”

“Now you don’t know?” Billy said.

The face didn’t reply. It just stared, as if amused.

“Yes,” Billy said. What did this thing want ? “I’m me.”

“And the man you’re sitting across from …” the face continued, like filling in a space on a crossword. “The fellow with the brown hair. That’s uh … lemme see if I can remember …”

Billy hated memory games. “Patrick, Patrick White. You know him, too?”

“Just briefly.”

Billy frowned. “When did we meet?”

“You really don’t remember me?”

“Of course I do, dear, I’m just so poor at names.” Billy also hated guess-where-we-met games. He reached out to touch the man’s shoulder but something made him stop short of contact. “Listen, dearie, great to see you again and all, but I’ve got a par-tay I’ve got to get to.”

The man nodded and smiled like he knew something Billy didn’t.

“Yes … there’s a party waiting for you, Billy.”

The man turned toward a urinal, unzipped as he walked. Billy started to wash his hands but suddenly realized he didn’t want to be in the bathroom any longer and stepped toward the door.

Patrick watched Billy exit the restroom and walk quickly to the table, his pale face frowning he glanced backward toward the dark hall that led to the bathroom.

“You look strange,” Patrick said. “You OK, Billy?”

“It’s nothing. I just saw a guy who knew me. He kinda looked familiar, but …”

Patrick looked toward the bathroom. The guy was either burrowing in for the long haul or had booked out the back door. “Probably someone you met at a party when you were drunk. How often does that happen, Billy?”

Prestwick grabbed at his bag, missed the strap, got it on the second try and slid it over a boney shoulder poking from a purple tank-top with a sequined target centering the chest. “Don’t be a nag, Nurse White.”

“Where you going?” Patrick asked.

Rolled eyes. “My gawd, Patrick … between you and the thing in the pisser I’m playing Twenty Questions tonight.”

“Someone’s gotta worry about you, Billy. Tell me where you’re headed.”

A flash of guilt was quickly replaced by a lopsided grin.

“I gotta date, sweetums. Kind of.”

Patrick frowned. “Someone you know, right? Someone safe?”

Billy shuffled through his bag, arranging phone and iPad, make-up and spare underwear. Patrick knew it as Billy’s avoidance move, and pressed forward.

“Come on, Billy. It’s someone you know, right? Not a stranger?”

“Oh, almost. He’s like a friend of a friend, just some old bear who likes to sit on his Miami Beach veranda and tell tales about the old days, Stonewall and the Castro and whatever. I’ve heard that he’s sweet and harmless and …”

“And might give you a loan you don’t have to repay?”

“I make sweet old men feel young for a few hours. I think of it as charity work. You flying back to Kansas?”

Patrick nodded to the half-mug of ale. “Two sips and I’m outta here.”

Prestwick affected a thousand-watt grin, teetering slightly in his burgundy loafers. “You’ll be running that place, one day. Head Nurse Patrick White, Queen of All the Bedpans.”

Patrick sighed. “You’re taking a cab, right, Billy?”

“My white knight.” Prestwick kissed Patrick’s temple. “Yes, girlfriend. I’m cabbing. Buh-byee!” He started for the door, but was stopped by an invisible force. Turning back to Patrick, without a word he wrapped him in a hug so tight Patrick imagined he felt the beating of Billy’s heart.

“Thank you, dear,” Billy whispered. “Thank you for caring.”

“Some of us do, Billy. We get worried about … about where you’re going. Where you’ll be five years from now.”

Billy stood back with a quiet smile verging on sadness. He flicked a comma of hair from Patrick’s forehead.

“Goodness, Patrick, so existential all of a sudden.”

“You’re smart and talented, Billy. Stop wasting it and use it to do something, go somewhere.”

Billy blew out a breath. His eyes went to the floor and when they rose to meet Patrick’s eyes, were clouded with guilt. But then, like a bright mask clasped to a penitent visage, Billy Prestwick’s face lit in mischief. He winked.