Teddy Wayne - Loner

When we reached your destination, the rain had stopped. Our cabs pulled up in tandem at a curb that, according to the on-screen map, was on the Lower East Side. I paid with my debit card but had trouble swiping it cleanly, and by the time I was done you’d disappeared into a bar on the corner. A squat man with an imperious stomach guarded the door. I could wait until you departed, but at that point you might be headed home. And I was tired of waiting.

I sauntered up to the bar’s entrance, scratching the back of my neck and checking my phone with blasé distraction. Slouched on a stool, hands in the pockets of a puffy jacket, the bouncer barely lifted his eyes from his own phone. “ID,” he mumbled.

“I left my wallet here last night,” I said. “They’re expecting me.”

He yawned and blinked wearily. “Can’t let you in without ID.”

“My friend got his stomach pumped because he was here last night,” I said. “We had to leave right away, and I’ve been in the hospital with him all night and day. I’ve got a flight tomorrow, and if I don’t get it—”

He released a bored sigh. “Make it quick,” he said.

My first time in a bar — and a New York City bar, at that. But it wasn’t what I had expected from a Manhattan establishment, nor was it the kind of place I would’ve guessed you’d haunt. Bad eighties music shrieked on a jukebox; retro arcade games blinked and blipped against one wall; the floor was sticky with beer. A number of ironic moustaches and earnest beards among the male clientele; the women seemed intent on marring their looks with conscientiously frumpy clothes and eccentric glasses.

I pretzeled into an opening at the bar, but the bartender kept fielding orders from whoever was next to me. After the third such slight, I managed to interpose a request. She cupped her hand behind her ear.

I held up two fingers. “Vod-ka so-das!” I hollered, and scanned the crowd for you while I waited. There was another room in the back. You had to be there.

The bartender served me my drinks and asked if I wanted to start a tab. Low on cash, I said yes and gave her my debit card. I chugged one of the drinks and took the other to the back room, shaky from the booze on an empty stomach and a day of standing guard in the rain.

And there you were. Yes — that was your head; I could pick out that compound of colors in the stands of a stadium. You sat on a stool at the corner of a high-top table with two girls, your back to me. I bushwhacked through a thicket of twenty-somethings, the last leg of a grueling obstacle course. The day had worn me down, but I suddenly felt helium-filled, it had all been worth it, who cared if I woke up with a cold tomorrow. I stifled a keyed-up laugh as I reached out to tap your shoulder. You twisted around and the scar on your forehead shot up in surprise.

“I thought that was you!” I said. “Funny bumping into you like this.”

You glanced at your two companions before looking back at me.

“So, how was your Thanksgiving with good ol’ Larry and Margaret?” I asked.

“It was fine.” You fingered the straw in your drink. “How’d you know their names?”

“It came up the last time we hung out, after the Harvard-Yale Game,” I said. “You were pretty inebriated,” I added chucklingly, to explain your forgetfulness to the two other girls.

You squinted at me before responding. “What are you doing here?”

“Meeting up with some old friends,” I said. “I’m early.”

You took a long sip.

“Did you get a chance to”—sotto voce, though the other girls were now talking among themselves—“talk to the Ad Board?”

The straw still in your mouth, eyes on mine, you nodded once.

“Good,” I said. “You’ve done the right thing.”

“Where d’you get that sweater?” you asked. (Where’d Jew get that sweater, it sounded like.)

I looked down as if to remind myself of what sweater I’d worn that day. “Christmas,” I said. “I got it for Christmas last year.”

“Veronica, who’s your friend?” one of the girls you were with cut in.

“This is David,” you said. “He goes to school with me.”

The friend translated for the third girl, who couldn’t hear. “From Harvard!” she shouted.

“We’re in the same dorm,” you said.

“I used to date her roommate,” I clarified, bellying up to the table.

You stood up and offered me your seat. “We were actually just about to leave, if you want to claim this table for when your friends get here.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But they won’t be here for a bit. You guys should stay another round.”

“Unfortunately, we really have to go.” You buttoned your coat. “It was great running into you.”

“Stay for one more,” I said. “It’s on me. I insist.” I leaned over the table and made eye contact with your friends. “What are you guys drinking?”

“Scotch and soda,” one answered.

“Gin martini, extra dirty,” requested the other.

I looked at you. “I’m good.” You sat back down.

“I’ll get you a vodka soda, just in case,” I said, tapping the table as I left.

Back in the other room, it again took a while to get the bartender’s attention. “Close out your tab or keep it open?” she asked.

“Keep it open,” I told her. “The night’s just beginning.”

Four drinks was too many to carry in one trip, so I guzzled my own and cradled the other three against my chest as I began the perilous journey back, bracing for impact from rogue elbows, from men stepping back for full-bodied laughter, from women’s swinging bags.

When I arrived at the table your stools were empty. You must have gone to the bathroom together, as girls are wont to do. Better to stay there, I reasoned, than wander around the bar and lose you.

Ten minutes later I took out my phone and wrote you a message on Facebook:

Got the drinks. Where are you?

“Sorry, these seats are occupied,” I told a party of women who attempted to take your stools.

After a few minutes, when you still hadn’t shown, I surrendered the table to the glaring women and relocated your drinks to a ledge on a nearby wall, in unfortunate proximity to a speaker. “Sweet Caroline” came on, to cheers from the patrons. I wrote you again:

I had to give up the stools and moved to a wall.

I started sipping the scotch and soda.

The wall with an exit sign.

The densely packed room and the alcohol and the long day and my waterlogged clothes coalesced in a queasy, moist heat. “ So good! So good! So good! ” a man bellowed in my ear.

You probably didn’t receive Facebook notifications on your phone; that would account for why you hadn’t responded to the one I sent from Applebee’s. I wrote you at your Harvard e-mail:

In case you didn’t get my Facebook messages am with our drinks against the wall with the exit sign.

I polished off the martini. Your vodka soda I refused to besmirch with my lips and carried with me as I made my way to the front room, digging a thumb inside my jeans pocket and rubbing the piece of your belt. The stitched initials gave the weightless silk a feeling of tangibility, of something that could be held and corralled.

You’d ditched me.

My attempt to blunt my anger by drinking your vodka soda was a mistake. Vision juddering, a medley of liquors roiling inside me, I lumbered to the men’s room. I made it just in time, barging into the graffiti-tagged stall and kneeling in front of the scummy toilet seconds before my body rejected the poison. I cleaned myself up, hailed a cab back to Penn Station, remembered I’d left my card at the bar, apologized profusely as I handed the driver my remaining cash, and missed the last train by three minutes.