Street scene

Twelve-thirty a.m.  Guy pacing the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from the Squire, the bar at this end of the village.  Short guy, blockily built, with a big gut.  Dark hair and a mustache.  Wearing an aloha shirt, shorts, and boat shoes.   He's yelling into his cell phone.

Guy:  They left me!  They fucking left me!  The fuckers left me!  I'm alone here!  I'm alone on the sidewalk!  Just me!  Because they fucking left me!  (Listens to whoever's on the other end.  Doesn't hear what he hoped to hear, an offer to come pick him up.)  I'm walking then!  I'm gonna walk!  In fact, I'm walking now.  (And he is.  He's set off down the street at a brisk pace, shouting as he goes, as if the person he's talking to can see him.)   I'm walking.  I'm doing it.  I'll walk the whole way.  (He expects whoever's on the other end to be shocked at the idea and that guilt will propel whoever it is to jump out of bed, grab the keys, and run for the car.  It's not happening.)   You hear me?  I'm walking!  Ok?  You happy?  Goodbye!

Clearly the kind of guy you'd want to leave behind at the bar, but also the kind of guy who'd have the kind of friends who would leave you behind at the bar.  No judge of character, his own or other people's, and not good at evaluating a situation and behaving accordingly, as he now proves by wheeling around and advancing on the group of three teenage girls walking along behind him.  He hollers at them:

Guy:  Hey!  Hey!  Guys!  Guys!  You know where I can get a cab around here?

The three girls stop dead in their tracks, all three wearing the same wide-eyed look of stark terror, all three leaning backwards at a nearly forty-five degree angle, all thinking, Run! and none able to move, they're rooted to the spot by a mixture of shock and a reflexive desire to be polite, even to raging strangers accosting them in the dead of night.

Guy:  A cab?  Is there a cab around here?  Can I call one?  I need a cab.  (It begins to dawn on him that he has not gone about asking for help in the best possible way.  He tones it down.)  I need a cab, you know?  A cab?  Do you know where there's a cab stand or something?

The girls all shake their heads and, crossing their arms over their breasts and hunching their shoulders, they rush past him and hurry away down the street.  He watches them go, shaking his head.  Then it finally dawns on him that the people who'd know best how to get a lost drunk home are the people who served him the drinks that got him drunk.  He crosses the street and walks back into the bar.

Comments

[Red Tory]

I'm pretty sure there's a metaphor just begging to emerge from this story.

I've been enjoying your travelogue.

[Exiled in NJ]

Good god, you brought back Cape May, February 2003, 2am and the only bar on Beach Street lets out, and the drunks congregate under our motel window five stories down. Off season, peace, quiet,uh huh!

[Rob]

Lance,

I must reiterate my previous comments re: your blogging.

If only I could, I would want to have your baby.

[Lance]

Rob,

I appreciate the sentiment, but are you sure it isn't really Lee Marvin's baby you want to have?

Or is it Toshiro Mifune's?

[Rob]

Hey, if technology can make it possible for me to have a baby, then it can't be that hard to make all three of you the fathers. . .

[Lance]

Rob, that would be one seriously ugly kid. I can't imagine how ugly. But I'll bet the Heretik can and he'll probably photoshop you a Mifune/Marvin offspring you can frame and put on your mantlepiece.