Amie Barrodale - You Are Having a Good Time

Mr. Thibideaux wrote that he understood what had happened and bore me no ill will. He explained that he hated this world and everyone in it. The people whom he had once considered friends had abandoned him when his father died and his money was spent, and his mother had contracted this disease. He told me he himself had AIDS, and he described the circumstances under which he had contracted it. He said there is nothing beautiful in this world, nothing wholesome, and nothing sane. He said people everywhere are like figures in a certain painting by Bosch, and the time he spent in monasteries was characterized by impassioned bickering over the smallest things — the sound of chewing, the way a certain man moved his fingers. He told me how they fired an old cook just because he was flatulent, and because he used too much salt. When you drink a cup of tea, he said, you are a party to misery, and then I stopped reading what he had to say.

I never mentioned Mr. Thibideaux’s card to anyone. I imagine that he hoped to disturb me, sending that kind of card, but I am not some flower. I have been alive for more than fifty years, and I have thought many ugly things. Miserable people often think they have a special purchase on the truth. My husband was one of those. At the moment of his death, I told him I was relieved. He gasped, and then everything was torn away.

In the morning, I wrote an email to this priest I knew. It had been a long time since I’d thought of him. I told him that I had spent the weekend with a guy I met on a plane. “But I guess I am too intense, or something.” I asked him if I could stay in his place in Paris. I said, “I know this is a lot to ask, but I feel very lonely right now, and like you are the only person I can say these things to.”

He answered immediately: “I won’t be checking email for the next month or so.” It took me a second to realize that it was an autoreply message.

The next morning he wrote: “Don’t worry. I think you will meet other boys. Be flamboyant. I don’t have a place in Paris. I used to have one in London.”

At my job, I had a desk that looked out at the tar-painted second-story roof where people from the music department went to smoke. I went out there to call the plane guy. I walked back and forth on a wooden board, and then squatted down and rested on my calves. I told the plane guy I never wanted to talk to him again. He said that was childish.

* * *

My friend Lee asked me to see a movie. We agreed to meet at a German restaurant around the corner from the theater.

Lee and I were not close friends. We had met about ten years before. At that time Lee was a computer programmer. He was also in a band. He was having a touch of success when I first met him, which made my close friend — whom Lee dated — angry. She said, “I have known a thousand bands who were supposedly about to blow up, and it never happens.” She was frightened that she would lose Lee, or that he would have all the power in their relationship. Lee did become famous, but he always loved my friend, and in the end it was much more complicated between them.

By this time, by the time we met at the German restaurant, my friend had broken up with Lee, and was dating Bill Clinton’s young press advisor. Lee’d had some real success and he was at the beginning of his decline. He knew it was the beginning of his decline, and so did everyone around him, but he tried not to accept it.

Lee and I were still friends for one reason: we often saw each other at Starbucks. We were the only people like us who went to Starbucks. At first we ignored each other. I would have been okay to leave it that way, but Lee was a descendant of John Singer Sargent, so he had excellent manners. He came up to my table one day and said, “Hi.” After that we’d sit together with our laptops when we saw each other. We had almost nothing to say.

I got to the German place an hour early. The restaurant was empty except for a guy at the bar. He was a little chubby. I could tell he was single because he was wearing white tube socks with black dress shoes. His jeans were too tight on him. I don’t mean that he had on skinny jeans, I mean that he had on jeans that were two sizes too small, and he was uncomfortable. He kept squirming, fooling with his phone.

There was something in the air. I don’t understand how it works. Everything looked brighter.

I was happy to be distracted from the guy on the plane. I had called him a couple times, after telling him I didn’t want to speak to him again, but he hadn’t answered. I was waiting for the bartender to see me. Outside, through the window, I saw an old guy stop under a tree, pull down a branch, and smell a flower. The chubby guy at the bar was looking at his phone. The bartender was on his knees, wiping something with a towel. The priest was unusual. He had told me, “Forget AA. Forget being sober. Address your emotional life and none of that is necessary.” I was four months sober. I didn’t know what was right — whether I should drink or be sober. I wasn’t into religion, but after the weekend with the guy from the airplane — a weekend I don’t know how to explain — I wanted to believe in something. The plane guy and I took hallucinogens together, as well as painkillers, and maybe the drugs made me insane, because I could almost hear the priest urging me to order a drink.

The bartender got up off the ground and came over to where I was sitting. He threw a coaster down and looked at me. I had trouble getting the words out, but I ordered a vodka martini.

“What kind of vodka?”

“Just Stolichnaya, or Stoli, or whatever.”

“Stoli.”

“Yes, Stoli. Or whatever.”

When Lee showed up, I was having my second martini.

“I’m drinking,” I said.

“That’s fine.”

“I haven’t had a drink in four months, but I don’t care.”

“That’s fine.” He sat beside me and ordered a beer. “How do you like it?”

“I like it,” I said.

He looked embarrassed for me. We were quiet. I didn’t want to go to the movie. Lee drank a beer, and we tossed a coin, and we ended up going to another bar.

I opened the door to the second bar, and a guy swung around. He had been leaning against the door, so when I opened it, his face was only a few inches from mine. I remember his teeth. He had a canine that came out at the side, and his front teeth were fine and white and flat. He had a messy beard, and he wore glasses that magnified his hazel eyes. He was striking. He had his palms against either side of a pint glass of beer. It was like the figure holding a lantern on the cover of Stairway to Heaven , or Rasputin. He was tall and square-shouldered. He wore an army jacket with the sleeves rolled, and something about him looked religious. I mean, he looked like Jesus.

“I didn’t know you were back yet,” Lee said.

“We got back last night.” The guy stepped back to let us in.

“How was it?”

“Ah, you know.”

They talked a little more like that. Then Lee remembered I was there. He said, “You guys’ve met, right?”

“I know I know you,” the guy said. “Where is it that I know you from?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “You look kind of familiar.”

I knew who he was. He was the drummer from Catholic. We had met the previous Christmas, at the same bar, but only for a little while. He was married to the singer in his band. The singer was an interesting woman. She had long, frizzy, curly blond hair and she had a tummy. She wore tight Lycra skirts with low cheap heels and strange T-shirts that looked like they came from Units. She wrote good lyrics. She didn’t seem like she loved the drummer anymore. He said, “Oh yeah, wait a second. I know exactly who you are! You’re that writer girl.”