A Cop and a Gangster Walk Into a Bar
Things look different on nights when big decisions are made.
Sparkly.
Like stars in an old, black and white movie.
It really was a beautiful night. Pure snow decorated the streets and rooftops, quietly, unassumingly. It was one of those nights that could make you temporarily believe that there was a wizard behind the curtain. That things weren't just a messy string of brutal accidents and heinous crimes.
I'd been on the force for nearly a year now, and in that time I'd seen things I'd never even considered humanly possible.
Humanity was a loosely used term, these days.
My first day on the job, I'd arrived all bright eyed and bushy tailed, and chock full of juvenile optimism, a naïve craving to change the world. But that lasted the whole of five minutes. Then I'd gotten my eyes showered with pepper spray and my tail hacked off with a chainsaw.
My optimism, however, was the one that took the biggest hit.
They'd warned me that the NYPD would suck all idealism right out of me, but I'd been too young and stupid to listen. Now I knew exactly what they meant. It's scary how fast you can grow up, when you're forced to see reality for the gritty bitch that she really is.
A gritty bitch with teeth large and sharp enough to tear holes through your soul.
Still, not everything was grim. I had my gang of cynical fuck-ups of the flashing blue lights variety to fall back on, share gallows humor with – Alex, Mickey, B.B. – useless fratboy asshole that he was, Rex.
I had Michelle.
I smiled to myself, thinking about her. A bright ray of sunshine penetrating the bleakness of humanity's ugliness and of paperwork's oppressiveness.
One person can make all the difference, just by being there. Just by existing.
I walked along the street, the cold winter air biting into my skin like a rabid piranha fish, causing me to give the occasional shiver. My jacket failed to provide suitable protection from the chill, but I didn't feel like I needed any. It felt nice, refreshing. It connected me with the world.
I'd never been to this part of town before, except on patrol. I stuck out like a sore thumb, or ideally, a severed one, a veteran of a bloody thumb war. The looks of various passer-bys hinted at that. But I didn't feel like spending the night with the usual pack.
I needed a fresh perspective.
When I saw it, I stopped in my tracks. It was your regular 'I'm in the middle of nowhere and proud of it' type of place. A crooked neon sign winked at me from above the door, flickering unsteadily, trying desperately to relay a broken code. When the words stabilized for a second, I could finally read them, an illuminated message from above.
'Gog, Magog, and Big Hairy Dog.'
It made as little sense as life in general.
It was perfect.
I shuffled my way through the snow, eventually reaching the door. It was a thick, wooden one, old fashioned to the extreme - belonging everywhere and nowhere. It stifled all sounds from inside like a silencer in a perfect murder, covering up, or maybe creating, a mystery. I had to apply moderate physical pressure to convince it to budge even an inch. It exhibited stubbornness that could put the toughest of our usual suspects to shame. In the end, though, I managed to get even it to crack – not literally, as that would probably have guaranteed me a quick ticket back into the snow, perhaps with a bloody nose to keep me company.
The door opened with excruciating reluctance, producing a grating creak clearly just to spite me, and revealing the hidden insides of the place in all their seedy glory.
Mystery wasn't the right phrase after all. Ambiguity, in my opinion, was more suitable. Concentrated, bottled up ambiguity, enough for the entirety of the bar residents to share.
The interior was composed entirely of shadows and dusty surfaces, playing off each other silently, like in a pantomime, sans the face paint and the inevitable urge to choke the mime. Also present was an antique jukebox – an obvious necessity in this sort of place. At the moment, it emitted the sort of torturous music that fit better in the elevators of huge, soulless buildings.
Clientele-wise, it was a little like the United Nations, with representatives from all over the globe housing the shaded tables and bar. Only, in an inverted reflection to the UN, these people actually pretended to do nothing as cover for their real activities. They all had patented blank 'Who, me?' expressions they could ignite with a single blink. Some probably also had magically changing names, no permanent address, and holding cells reserved just for them.
While this wasn't quite my usual hangout preference, I felt I knew it inside out.
I made my first step inside, letting the door slam shut behind me – interesting, how quickly and effortlessly it managed that. It felt a little like entering a saloon in a classic western, when all the looks suddenly lock on the fresh arrival (fresh meat?), all narrowed eyes and paranoid glances. Not letting the collective stare unnerve me, I put on my best 'I don't exist' act, and went straight for the bar. That approach seemed to work, and I felt the eyes being lifted off me pair by pair, conversations reigniting, until I was all by myself again.
Well, not entirely by myself. I now came into a visual collision with the bartender. He could have easily been Gog, Magog, or the hairy dog, or even all three – his weight would have no trouble supporting that assumption, and it was mostly muscle, not fat. The steely look he gave me seemed permanently integrated into his expression, a self-inflicted tattoo. It was rather charming, in a furious warthog sort of way.
Warthog- that rhymed with Gog and Magog, too.
I ordered a beer, and got a dirty look in exchange, clarifying that beer wasn't the popular choice, here, nor was it the recommended one. Still, I stuck by it. You have to stick by your principles, even in a hostile environment. My mother had taught me that, though those weren't the exact words she'd used, nor was this the situation she'd envisioned, I assumed. The beer arrived, eventually, in the form of an unopened bottle being forcibly slammed against the wooden surface of the bar. I smiled my somewhat cynical thanks at the furious warthog, and was shot with crystallized disdain beams from his eyes in return. It was a fair trade.
I settled my gaze on the bottle in front of me. A beer with no bottle opener. Great. A Gordian Knot. Too bad I'd left my sword in my other pants.
Before I had a chance to practice my crafty improvisational skills, a cool breeze making a convenient stop on the back of my neck interrupted me. It told me that my favorite door had been just opened again, though no jarring creak escorted it. Maybe the creak really had been a special gift reserved for me. I looked over my shoulder, finding some comfort in being just a part of the staring mob this time around, instead of being the visually lynched party.
Said party, currently entering the bar, was a young guy, roughly my age. His lengthy, narrow frame was covered by black jeans and a turtleneck sweater to match. He was even less weather-appropriately dressed than I was, and seemed proportionately less bothered by that fact. Essentially, he projected the visage of a man who wasn't particularly bothered by any fact.
I corrected myself then. He wasn't entering. He was making an entrance. It was subtle, but evident nonetheless, to a practiced eye. I could spot it in the confidence-projecting posture - almost cocky but not quite, in the casual yet precise stride, in the blinding grin he'd paused to flash to the habitants of one table. He knew the effect he was going for, and was achieving it with minimum apparent effort.
He wasn't getting the welcome I'd gotten, not even close. Instead, some heads bobbed in quiet acknowledgement, others formed smiles and grins, and the rest turned away quickly. Too quickly.
A frequent visitor, then.
He paid the jukebox a visit, looking almost personally offended by the vanilla flavored noises it was making, and punched in a number of his own. A jazzy tune started to roll – Ella Fitzgerald performing 'Mack the Knife'. A little clichéd, but it certainly beat the prior "music". Adjusting his walking rhythm to that of the music, the newcomer headed for the bar, eventually coming to mount the chair next to mine. He leaned his forearms on the bar, thus arousing the attention of none other than my favorite warthog.
"Still alive?" Warhog's voice was gruff, but to my surprise, it carried a hint of affection. His gaze softened somewhat, too, melting down from iron to barely even aluminum.
Curiouser and curiouser.
The newcomer replied with an offhand shrug labeled 'beats me', and with another one of his disorienting grins.
It was truly intimidating, although intriguing to a scientific degree, to observe as Warhog attempted to imitate the same grin. He gave up quickly, to Mother Nature's great relief, settling for a jagged, grim smirk that looked more like a stitched up wound than a facial expression. "What can I get ya?"
"Vodka martini. Stirred, not shaken," his voice contained a pronounced edge of a Russian accent.
"It's the other way around," I responded instinctively, a pop culture demon choosing to spontaneously manifest at that moment.
"What can I say?" the newcomer mused, turning his head in my direction lazily. I was getting the feeling that there were quite a lot of things he could say. He gave a lopsided smile, "I like to stir things up."
I smirked at that, using that moment as an opportunity to make a brief close-up study of him.
He was handsome, with a laid back manner that implied he was well aware of it. His face was defined by a sharp, strong jawline and clear-cut, angular features. A neat mane of blond hair adorned his head, a halo of a sort. Also prominent were the brown eyes that provided shelter to a perpetual devilish twinkle. He seemed like he wouldn't have trouble fitting in anywhere, from a nudist colony to a cannibal village, and yet, he still had the air of an outsider about him. One, perhaps the only, thing we had in common.
A calculating look in his eyes suggested that he was in the process of making a similar assessment of me. Then his drink arrived, making, unsurprisingly, a much smoother landing than mine had. It also came in form of an actual martini glass, as opposed to two unopened bottles. Shameless favoritism.
"Thanks, Hobbs," he tossed another grin towards Warthog, who, it turned out, was possibly a renowned British Philosopher when he wasn't busy growling at people. Warthobbs? Tempting, but I decided against it. Good old 'Warthog' worked just fine, and if it ain't broke - ... "What would I do without you?" the newcomer mused dramatically.
A scoffing snort that invaded the realm of animalism was Warthog's only response. The newcomer's grin mellowed, settling into a feather-weight smile. He wrapped his fingers around the glass, raising it to his eye level and conducting a careful visual scan before bringing it to his lips. As he sipped the drink, he sent me a narrowed glance from the corner of his eyes, then shifted it to the still unopened beer that embellished my bar space. His brow sprung up significantly, conveying a 'you can't be serious' message. He put his drink down, pulling out another mouth bending expression – a wily smirk this time, from his arsenal. Placing an elbow on the bar, he maneuvered himself closer to me and muttered conspiratorially, "You can't drink this."
"I can't?" I raised a single brow as I fixed my gaze on him, thinly reflecting his smirk, "Why's that?"
"For one, it's not polite, in a place like this," he explained helpfully, making a general 'here' gesture with his hand. He lowered his voice for the next sentence, leaning even closer in, "Also - I have nothing against beer, really, but Hobbs," he motioned his head at Warthog, currently busied by the important task of glaring down a pack of young punks on the other side of the bar, "he carries a grudge for it - mile deep," extracting a breath through his teeth, he went on, "Long story – Bottom line, whatever that is," he glanced at the bottle briefly, "I wouldn't put my money on beer." He straightened up, smiling in a relaxed fashion, "Are you beginning to see my point now?"
"Vividly," I replied, now feeling lucky for having failed to MacGyver myself a bottle opener.
He drained the remains of his drink in a one long sip, placing it down with a somber look. Following a moment of stillness, he stated, "You're a man of few words."
"I say what I need to say," seemed like a decent answer. After all, my head was kind enough to fill in the blanks, usually in a way that didn't quite fit into a casual conversation.
"Interesting. I say what I want to say," he rebounded without skipping a beat. Well, that much was obvious. He wasn't exactly what you'd call verbally economical. Giving a narrow-eyed, accusing stare to what may or may not have been a beer, he proceeded to demonstrate, "Look, it's never too late to start over - get a real drink. We are real men, after all, aren't we?" the pathos of this statement had its tongue stuck firmly in its cheek, but I still had to snort at it. He went on, not bothered in the least, "Also, when in Rome, you know," pausing in search for another handy cliché, "Life is about compromises. Come on, what do you say?" He slapped his hand against my back with the casualness of an old drinking buddy. Not awaiting my input, he carried on with a child-like enthusiasm, clearly on a roll, "On me. Hobbs!" he called out. Warthog wrapped up his ongoing staring contest with a look of pure scorn, then stomped over to our corner. "Do me a favor, get a serious drink for me and my friend here," the road to friendship had apparently taken a few shortcuts when I wasn't looking. "The good stuff."
Funny, I didn't recall inserting a yes in there. Or anything else, for that matter.
He must have been a fan of the silent brand of agreement.
Warthog slowly passed his hard gaze between us, flashing a raw of disturbingly oversized teeth as he finally locked it on my bar companion. "Think he can handle it?"
"Would I ask if I thought he couldn't?"
Warthog's laugh resembled a long, thunderous growl, containing enough bass to belong in a heavy metal concert. I stifled the urge to perform a daring stage dive, or at least give him the Devil's Horns. He probably wouldn't have found it particularly amusing. He bent down, submerging his massive body under the bar for a while, eventually reemerging with a large, label-free bottle containing a colorless liquid in one hand, and two shot glasses in the other. He poured the first two shots, but, in an act of generosity that unnerved me a great deal, left the bottle to us, "Help yourselves."
"You're my favorite bartender in the whole world. Have I even told you that?" my bar companion, for whom I still couldn't find an appropriate moniker, grinned charmingly. It must have been a special talent of his, injecting such a vast amount of irony into false flattery that it managed, against all odds, to come out as a genuine compliment. Not just a talent, I amended - a superpower - because Warthog actually tried on another smile. It didn't fit. Somewhere on the other side of the globe, an earthquake shuttered the land.
The Chaos Theory was destructively effective.
Warthog was then hailed by another unfortunate visitor, and had to withdraw his overpowering presence. Once the coast was clear, I muttered to my bar-mate, "I bet you say that to all the mammoth-sized bartenders."
"Oh, but with Hobbs, it comes from right," he placed his hand on his chest, over his heart, "here." He let out a melodramatic sigh and slid into a brooding expression that lasted the whole of a second before dissolving into a lopsided grin.
"I don't doubt it," I veered from him to my new drink, giving it a long, hard stare. The kind I'd normally award a criminal whose crime I could not yet pinpoint.
"It's vodka, not cyanic acid." He must have traced the doubt still lingering on my face, adding encouragingly, "It's good," and giving a tilted nod for emphasis, "Trust me." Something about the way he uttered those words, along with the slight smirk he concluded them with, led me to believe that he employed this phrase regularly, and rather lightly. Contradictorily enough, he did inspire trust, even in complete strangers who really should know better.
Vodka had never been my first choice in drinks, but I didn't want to offend him. Jumping head first into the water, I sipped it all down. I promptly arrived to the conclusion that the water I'd jumped into was located in the shallow end of a swimming pool, and that my head served as an interesting foil for the pool floor. I wasn't an expert, but I could tell this wasn't standard Vodka. The alcohol percentage in this particular liquid must have beaten the percentage of unsolved cases scattered over B.B.'s desk. The expression my face contorted into caused Warthog, passing by us again solely to get a first row view of my torment, to bark out a single laugh.
My bar buddy, who possessed a little more tact, simply broke into a wide hybrid between a smirk and a grin. You'd think that he'd get tired of those at some point, but he seemed to run on an endless supply. "I knew you'd like it."
"Like is not strong enough a word," I muttered back once I'd managed to separate my metaphorical head from the floor and swim back to the surface.
He picked up his own shot, and, throwing his head backwards, gulped it down. His expression as he lowered the glass remained in the area of irritating nonchalance. "More?" he suggested, tugging his lips up in a provoking smile.
"Why not?" I was in a vaguely suicidal mood. He poured the next round and this time we drank in unison, but the end result remained the same. The recoil was still ten times harder than my Beretta's. I had to shake my head a few times, rapidly, like a dog attempting to dry up. He, however, appeared as dry as my sergeant's sense of humor. A silence stretched out, and my mind made a sneaky turn towards the contents of my jacket pocket. A thought I'd been attempting to dodge for the last hour or so.
"You look," he frowned to himself, as if in deep thought, snapping his thumb against his middle finger, then against the forefinger, then pointing the latter at me, thoughtfulness evaporating into a 'Eureka!' shouting expression then neutralizing as he finished the sentence, "troubled."
"I'm going to propose to my girlfriend," I wasn't sure why I let that bit of information spurt out without so much as a warning. Maybe it was the alcohol, taking the expressway to my brain. Or maybe I'd underestimated how badly I needed a fresh perspective. Enough to spill my guts to the first stranger to cross my path, apparently. However, he didn't feel like a stranger. Strange. "Tomorrow."
He kept his face blank for a moment, just watching me, before curving his lip upwards into an easy smirk. "Congratulations," he offered, almost hesitantly, his tone more suitable to offer condolences. To correct that effect, he quickly injected, "What's her name?"
"Michelle," I couldn't help but smile a bit, as I said her name. It was my face's natural reaction.
"I knew a Michelle once," he remarked, sliding his thumb against his chin until it reached its pointy end, then joined the rest of his hand in forming a momentary fist. "Don't think she's the one you're talking about, though."
"No?"
"No," his tone took on a wistful, storytelling quality, "That Michelle was middle aged hooker – no heart of gold – but she did have two golden teeth. Or maybe three," he knitted his brow, "I can't remember. You'd think that's the sort of thing you'd remember. Good times, though," he tilted his chin upwards as he glanced at me, "Not your Michelle, I gather?"
A chuckle performed an extraordinary escape from my throat, shaping an involuntary response to his question.
"See, I told you."
I took out my wallet, swiftly locating a photo of her. It was the one I'd taken after our first date, during which I'd somehow managed to get slapped twice and be rewarded by a drink to my face, but still finish the night with a kiss. She looked like an angel, even though the lighting wasn't quite luminous, thanks to my inspiring photography skills. I slid the photo in his direction, "That's my Michelle."
He placed his thumb on the edge of the picture, leaning forward to analyze it from a close range. "She is hot," he evaluated, matter-of-factly, "I mean, a real-" he paused, sending me a cautious glimpse. Whatever he was about to say, an inner censor managed to stop him in the nick of time. "No offence."
"Why would I be offended?"
He gave a light, diplomatic shrug, "I don't know. People tend to get offended over the silliest things, sometimes." Filling up the glasses again, he exclaimed, "Let's drink to Michelle, then." I couldn't say no to that, and thus two more glasses were emptied. A pause, then - "Do you love her?"
"Yes," I felt a defensive wall automatically slide into position, "Of course I do."
He raised his arms in mock surrender, "Just asking. People get married for different reasons. It's rarely love. Usually it's security."
"Security isn't bad," I countered.
"Security is overrated. And it only really exists in people's heads," he snapped a finger against his temple, "It's a control mechanism. Security in exchange for freedom is always a poor trade." Sliding his gaze heavenwards before returning it to me, he concluded, "For love, that's a different story."
"Have you ever been…" the word forming section of my brain blanked out briefly, replaced by a shady alcohol trail. This created an odd pause before the question's completion, "in love?"
He appeared to be taken by surprise for a moment, and then released a dry laugh, "Yes," he poured another round and immediately took down his shot, producing a dull thud as he placed the glass down. Shrugging dismissively, and adjusting his tone to match, he proceeded, "Didn't work out. I doubt marriage and I would get along, anyway. The whole 'Till Death Do Us Apart' business, it's a little over the top." I started shaping a response, but he beat me to it with a spontaneous display of bluntness, "Show me the ring."
"How do you know I have it with me?"
He didn't grace this with a verbal reply, instead raising his eyebrows to radiate a simple message - 'Come on'.
Fair enough. I reached into my pocket, wrapping my hand around the small box. It felt warm to the touch. Slowly transferring it onto the bar, I carefully pried it open.
It was like opening a Christmas present and discovering you've gotten exactly what you'd wished for, only in reverse, and with the element of surprise replaced with pangs of uncertainty. This ring had been in my family for generations, and was to blame for adding many Paynes to the family tree. The diamond was small but looked like it was taken directly out of the pages of a fairy tale. I wasn't naïve enough to believe in happily ever after, but this ring was selling a very convincing fantasy.
"Family heirloom?" was his instant question.
"It's that obvious?" I hoped I'd managed to separate the sudden rush of near-panic from my voice.
"Relax, my friend," he placed his hand on my shoulder, settling into a skillful encouraging expression, "It was just a guess," he removed his hand with a newborn grin, "A lucky one." He looked over the ring, wearing the visage of a true jewelry expert. "It's beautiful," his tone was remarkably earnest, broadcasting complete assurance, "She'll love it."
For some reason, a moronic grin pasted itself onto my face. It had no ground in reality, since he didn't even know Michelle, but still, it was as if he sprayed the butterflies in my stomach with lethal gas, introducing them to the concept of euthanasia.
As he prepared for round number four, I noticed a cut positioned near the base of the thumb of his left hand. It looked deep, and recent.
"How did this happen?" I reached out and briefly slid my index finger against the cut. It seemed that under the watchful presence of high percentage alcoholic beverages, disregard for personal space could transfer from one person to another.
He furrowed his brow at me, a light crease forming on his forehead; "Ah…" he seemed to be stuck. Finally, exhaling in frustration, he placed his left hand on the bar, spreading the tips of the fingers far apart, and with his right hand mimicked stabbing a knife between them at a furious speed. "Not sure what the exact term is."
Idiot?
"So that's a hobby of yours?" I lifted a brow.
"Not exactly. It was a dare," he traced the scar with his right thumb, smiling thinly at it, "of sorts."
"One hell of a dare."
"That?" he doled out a flippant chuckle, "Not really." Another round of toxic waste consumption followed. It still felt like I was banging my head against a hard surface. He still looked completely indifferent, as if it was root beer, at worse. That is, up until the point he took on an expression that was ripped off directly from the Thinker statue. Only thing missing was a fist pressed against his chin. And he compensated by employing his shot glass in a similar position. He spoke without looking at me, his tone hanging between philosophical reflection and dubious casualness, "If a one-eyed man gave you an offer you can't refuse – would you take it?"
Even for a hypothetical question, this was a little eccentric. I tried to think up an even odder one, like 'Why did the one-eyed chicken cross the road?' Then I realized he was being serious. Or at least pretending to be. I took my time pondering over this. "If it's an offer I can't refuse, then not taking it isn't really an option, is it?"
"I suppose there is something oxymoronic about it," he admitted, taking out a pack of Lucky Strikes from his pants pocket and singling out the least lucky one. He also produced a Zippo lighter, the Godfather logo was engraved into its silvery surface, lit the cigarette up and inserted it between his teeth. "But," he began, then encountered the tricky dilemma of speaking with a cigarette in his mouth. A brief conflict of interests ensued, and in the end, the cigarette bailed. He nimbly caught it between two fingers, halting its rapid descent.
Good reflexes.
"It always looks so easy in the movies," he complained, glaring down the offending object with mild irritation.
"Practice makes perfect," I advised.
"Practice makes burnt rugs," he countered dryly.
"That too."
He drew several long drags out of the cigarette, choosing to remain silent for the time being.
"What kind of job offer?"
"A good one. Almost…" he chewed on his lower lip, took a last drag out of the cigarette and put it out of its misery on a nearby ashtray, "too good to be true."
"There's no such thing," I said. Just like nothing could be too bad to be true.
"Maybe. But I keep thinking - what if it's a contract with the Devil sort of thing?" he slid into a TV commercial voice which, along with his accent, created a peculiar and rather singular end product, "Sell your soul for a pack of cigarettes! Today only!"
"You can't sell your soul," I informed him, taking up a temporary role as the Devil's advocate. Then, a few of the cases I'd encountered in the last few months flashed through my mind in rapid succession – an eight year old girl molested and strangled to death by her uncle, a teenager gang-raped by a group of her "friends", a family brutally murdered to cover for a simple house robbery. I sighed. "Just lose it."
His mouth curved into a crooked, pensive line. Our gazes collided and remained that way.
Someone with a perplexing sense of misplaced irony chose that moment to punch in Sinatra's 'Strangers in the Night'.
I snorted.
He grinned, turning away and filling another round. "I love Sinatra," he waved his arm in the jukebox's direction with a faint smile. "Those were the good old days."
I wasn't sure how qualified he was to voice that sentiment, but I kept that observation to myself.
"I'm more of a Classic Rock type of guy."
"As long as it's classic, I'm fine with it," he raised his glass, "Here's to Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll."
"And the good old days," I injected helpfully, leveling my glass to his.
We drank up, and I was almost beginning to get used to the assault on my head.
"Do you believe in fate?"
"Fate?" I repeated, measuring the taste of the word on my tongue before letting it settle into my consciousness, "As in – we're all puppets and somebody's pulling the strings?" I tried to illustrate this by placing my palms horizontally in the air and moving them around, up and down, but this only attracted strange looks from fellow bar dwellers, and an amused one from him.
"No. That's reality. What I mean is," he drew a long breath, tapping two fingers against his forehead briefly, then removing them and spreading his fingers in front of his face like a roadmap, all as preparation for the next word - "destiny," he let it hang in the air, an abstract cloud, then went on, "A path that's laid out for you – just waiting for you to grab it," he grasped a handful of air with a dramatic flair to illustrate, and then spent some time staring into the bottle of cyanic acid, eyes narrowed. He continued in a quieter tone, closer to gloom, measuring his words carefully, "But really, it grabs you, not the other way around. And you have no choice but to follow it."
"I don't know," this was a little overly demanding, as far as bar conversations went, "Seems a little far fetched. And I doubt it's that easy," I paused, letting my trail of thought catch up with my speech, "The Universe ought to be more screwed up than that." He was the one looking troubled now, so I gave him a reassuring smile, "It's just a job offer."
"And that's just a ring."
A sudden wave of self consciousness hit me, prompting me to put my hand over the box where the ring resided, snapping it shut. I let my hand stay there for a while, a weird sensation spreading through it, and then pulled the box back into my pocket.
There was certain grimness in the smile that reflected at me when I looked at him. "You can't hover too long over choices. They grow stale."
"What…" my mind was working on emergency power, and the generators were failing, but I had to ask, "What if it's the wrong choice?"
"Then," he gave me a pointed look, "you're fucked."
His words and the alcohol fused dangerously in my head, forming sparks and erupting onto the surface in the form of a laugh. An untamed, stomach-ache inducing one. I hadn't enjoyed one of these in a while. He joined in, though it sounded like he was laughing from a distance. I realized I hadn't gotten this drunk – plastered was a better word - since college. I had to lean against the bar to stop myself from falling off, and kept laughing.
"A toast," he declared out of the blue, once the laughter had settled down.
"To choices?"
"To hell with choices," he grinned broadly, "To love, freedom," a slight gap was created, but he filled it in right away, probably pulling in the first thing that came to his mind, "and the American Dream."
"To love, freedom, and the American Dream," I echoed, well – not quite, what I'd said sounded a great deal more slurred. It was the thought that counted. And it was a good thought. Almost better than the whole truth and justice ordeal.
Our tumblers clicked. The sound of glass against glass was perfect in its unique way, a finishing tune to an erratic yet strangely harmonic melody.
The road the drink chose to take down my throat wasn't nearly as perfect, though. I almost choked on it.
"You look a little green," he commented. I felt a little green, too, in all honesty. "I think you could use some fresh air," a lift of the brow later, he added, "New York air will have to do."
He took out his wallet and opened it - I could have sworn I'd spotted more than one ID in there, but I lacked in zeal or motivation to play cop at the moment.
And in the ability to stand up straight, for that matter, as I discovered when I attempted this feat.
"Hobbs, it's been another wonderful night," he produced a few bills and handed them to Warthog, who accepted them with a business-like nod, "but we must make our exit."
And that we did.
The second we stepped out into the open world, the excessive oxygen decided to target me personally.
The ground was becoming a little more vertical than usual.
Or maybe it was just me, becoming more horizontal.
He caught me before I had the chance to meet the ground halfway. "If the Cold War was a drinking game, there wouldn't be much America left."
I grasped on to him, in urgent need for leverage against the world that kept trying to pull me down.
Goddamn gravity.
Through his sweater, I could feel a familiar outline. It was familiar because I had one very much like it inside my jacket. A gun. Somehow, I doubted this suggested he was a fellow law enforcement representative. I wasn't really in the condition to care, though.
I straightened up as much as I could – which wasn't much, but enough to come face to face with him.
His head was tilted sideways in a humoring fashion, mouth curved into a pseudo-saber of a smile.
The stars were playing a silent picture against his eyes.
Sparkly.
In this under-a-blue-moon moment, I thought we were going to kiss.
Instead, I threw up all over his boots.
There's nothing like puking your guts out to bring back clarity, albeit temporarily. The first image my mind conjured up following the unfortunate incident was Michelle's, and the previous moment became just a faded optical illusion. I felt the presence of the ring in my pocket, my mind adjusting in alignment to its weight. Then I turned my gaze to his boots. Black Timberlands, probably custom made. They were good, quality boots.
Had been, anyway.
His gaze was fixed in the same direction, exhibiting mild dismay and little else.
"Shit," I mumbled, guilt making its way through my system, "I'm really sorry."
"It's alright," he sighed, amusement replacing dismay, "Not my first time. I am from Russia, after all," he gave a wry smile, "And I was planning on getting new boots, anyway," he glanced at the old ones, adding a slight frown to the equation, "Next time, though, try aiming a little better. It's all in the aim."
"I'll keep that in mind," I got a nagging sensation that next time wasn't too far ahead.
Clarity was beginning to slip away again, and I was worried consciousness might find the concept alluring, too.
"You better be heading home. Need a ride?"
"It's okay," I let my eyes shut for a second, since they were busy perceiving far too many signals for my mind to process. "I'll take a cab."
"I'll help you catch one," he offered good-naturedly, "Wouldn't want somebody to mug you out of your engagement ring. That would be an anticlimactic way to end the night."
I hadn't even considered that. For a cop, I certainly wasn't thinking very straight.
And things were becoming even more bended. Rapidly.
"Thanks," I managed to mutter, with significant effort.
Soon, a cab pulled in for the rescue. I wasn't sure which of us opened the door, or how I got in, but I ended up sprawled onto the backseat.
"What's your name?" his question echoed through my ethanol soaked mind.
"Max," Max I was certain of, but what came after, not so much. Max… Rain? Cane? Slain? Brain? Sane? No. Definitely not that. Wait - there it was - "Max Payne," I was ridiculously proud for pulling this snippet out of the only dry corner left in my mind. However, that seemed to be in vain, due to the expression of amused disbelief he shot back at me. I might as well have said 'John Doe', and gotten the same response. "Yours?" I remembered to ask.
"Bond. James Bond."
Quid pro quo.
This wasn't the first time I felt some bitterness towards my parents' naming preference. I doubted it would be the last.
The cab began driving into the night.
As he faded from view, so did the details of this strange encounter of ours, one by one. Like bubbles bursting against… something. The alcohol effectively dimmed any attempt of recollection, and all I was eventually left with was a feeling.
A feeling that maybe choices, small or big, didn't matter all that much.
That maybe there was such a thing as fate, after all.
And lastly, that I really should work on improving my aim.
Oh well.
I'd been planning on getting new shoes anyway, too.