Mark Gilleo - Sweat

With Who Wants to be a Millionaire on the TV, Jake dug through the stack of mail and pulled out a half-dozen, late-arriving condolence cards. He flipped through the stamped envelopes and answered the questions on the game show playing in the background without looking up. He set aside the bills for the gas, electricity, water, and phone without opening them. The bill from Georgetown University Hospital loomed large on the corner of the table, and Jake reached for the envelope cautiously as if it were booby-trapped. It seemed heavy to the touch. Jake sighed, opening the multiple-page invoice slowly, squinting as if it would ease the pain of the six-figure debt announced within. Three hundred twenty-two thousand dollars and change. Jake thought about the sum, shook his head, and reached for his beer.

He had five hundred twenty-seven dollars in his personal bank account, another forty in his wallet, and a ten-year-old Subaru station wagon in the driveway with a full tank of gas. The balance of the medical bill was out of his league. Way out of his league.

They had survived the last six months of his mother’s life on loans taken out against the equity of the sixty-year-old home. Jake wasn’t responsible for whatever balance the sale of the house wouldn’t cover, but he would be left with nothing, his mother’s life insurance policy long since cashed out. But he would need to come up with money for the bills and the monthly mortgage until the house sold. Not to mention whatever money he needed to live. Uncle Steve offered to help, but Jake couldn’t force himself to take money from an out-of-work roofer who was barely getting by.

The only thing certain about the future was that he would be facing it alone. He was looking for work and an apartment near the university, but things were slow on the job front. Before his mother had passed and reality set in, he had made a pact with himself to hold out for what he had taken to calling “meaningful employment.” No more working until two o’clock in the morning in the service industry. The race between dead-broke and waiting tables was one he wasn’t sure he’d win. After an eighteen-month hiatus, rejoining the Masters program in English Literature at American University was the only real plan he had. Three months of summer vacation and then ten months of serious studying until graduation.

He needed cash. School loans would come in September and provide enough to make it through the fall semester, but that was still three months away. If he limited himself to frozen TV dinners and skipped lunch, he would be broke in two weeks. He could forget about paying the mortgage for July. The prospect of a long hot summer made him sweat. He had exchanged the burden of taking care of his mother with the burden of taking care of himself. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

The refrigerator was barren and the thought of having a few more beers leached into Jake’s brain. Ten minutes later, he made the responsible decision to get drunk. It had been a long time since he had sucked down dollar drafts for Happy Hour at McFadden’s. And if he drank enough tonight, his stomach wouldn’t be in the mood for food tomorrow. With the money he would save by not eating tomorrow, he could afford a beer or two. It had been a year and a half since he had tied one on. He could use the temporary break from himself and his life.

He made some calls looking for drinking recruits, pounded out a few text messages, and then made the eight-block walk to the bar. ***

Jake showed his ID to the doorman and walked un-accosted through empty space to a stool at the bar. Georgetown, George Washington, and American University were on summer vacation, and the pub business in downtown D.C. was feeling the usual summer pinch. For certain bars, the influx in summer tourists just couldn’t make up for the weekly binge-drinking student crowd.

Jake ordered a draft—each glass was selling for seventy-five cents until eight-thirty. He had already saved a quarter from the usual one-dollar Happy Hour price. He downed his beer, called over the bartender, and saved another twenty-five cents.

Maroon 5 played on the sound system and echoed off the walls of the empty bar. Jake realized it was the first time he had ever breathed clean air in the maze-like, three-story establishment. McFadden’s was relatively new, a modern steel and concrete watering hole in the midst of some of the nation’s oldest bars—joints with missing mortar and cracked walls. McFadden did what most bars trying to simulate old age did—they put in wood-paneled walls, threw antiques around the room like a blind interior decorator and, for a finishing touch, turned down the lights. Jake had once been a Thursday night regular, right after his evening class on nineteenth century authors. He looked around the bar and missed being a student, missed the carefree lifestyle that was now a distant memory.

“I’m Matt,” the bartender said, introducing himself. The bartender knew the first rule to pulling in the tips, in the absence of a perky set, was to establish rapport.

“Jake. Nice to meet you.”

“From around here?”

“Born and raised.”

“Not many of those around.”

“No, not too many real Washingtonians left,” Jake answered. “It’s quiet in here tonight.”

“It’s summer. Most of our customers are GW students. It’ll pick up a little later. It’s still early, my friend.”

Jake looked down at his watch. Five minutes after eight. Twenty-five minutes until the seventy-five-cent drafts bumped up to a full dollar. He ordered another.

“Drinking alone this evening?”

“Depends if anyone feels like coming to look for me. We’ll see.”

“No shame in downing a few by yourself,” the bartender answered. He was in the wrong profession to point out any of the AA telltale signs of alcoholism.

“Yeah, well, it’s been a bad year,” Jake said, without elaborating. He wasn’t going to share his life story with a bartender. Drinking by himself was one thing; weeping into his beer with his head on the bartender’s shoulder was something else entirely. A man does have his limits.

The bartender didn’t press for details. When a customer says, “It’s been a bad day,” he tended to ask. When a customer says, “It’s been a bad year,” he didn’t want to know. He brought Jake his third beer in twenty minutes.

“Redskins fan?”

“Absolutely. Hard to grow up around here and not be one.”

The two fell into football chatter, the kind of serious emotional banter that is the glue of the male social infrastructure.

“Snyder ruined the team,” Jake said. “A billionaire businessman with no more football knowledge than you or I.”

“He did do one thing right.”

“What’s that?”

“Hired the hottest cheerleaders in the league.”

“Unfortunately they can’t catch for shit.”

The conversation continued through the return and departure of Joe Gibbs, stupid draft picks, free agency, the upcoming schedule, and predictions for the playoffs.

“No one looks better on paper than the Redskins in April.”

“Amen to that,” the bartender answered, pouring a beer for another patron at the far end of the bar.

The quiet mood of the bar was broken with the entrance of eight twenty-something ladies in a bachelorette party. The group of well-accessorized and fully primped females filled the gap around the stools between Jake and the bar’s only other patron. A brunette from the group ordered eight lemon drop shooters, and the young ladies threw them back with synchronized gusto.

The bartender looked at Jake with a raised eyebrow and a smile. “Looks like you have some drinking competition.”

Jake laughed a little and tried to eye the females without staring.