|
This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Some Things Are Universal” Down in the Dirt v208 (6/23)  Order the paperback book: 
|
|
| |
A Day Doesn’t Go By That I Don’t Have Regrets
J. M. Garcia
Marge has lacquered on the eye makeup thick as asphalt and her false lashes are long enough to catch an updraft. The wrinkles in her face could carry rivers and her arms have the lean, leathery look of someone who used them at one time for more than serving drinks. I don’t know her age but she’s somewhere north of fifty.
She shakes my empty Budweiser bottle and gives me a fresh one, popping off the cap and looking inside it at the picture of playing card. I win a free beer if I guess what it is. Next to me at the bar, this guy we all call Jimbo, watches.
“Ace of spades.”
“King of diamonds.”
“Shit.”
I give her three dollars.
“Bad luck,” Jimbo says.
“Another Budweiser?” Marge asks him, in that scratchy voice of hers, leaning forward over the bar that we get a good shot of her cleavage. She takes his empty bottle and gives him a fresh one.
“Put it on my tab.”
“I got this one.”
“On my tab, Marge,” Jimbo shouts, slamming the bar. “I don’t your help.”
Jimbo got laid off last week. He managed this little pizza joint but the owner shut it down. Wasn’t doing enough business, I suppose. I don’t ask. I don’t need his problems any more than he needs mine.
“Raise your voice again and you’re done,” Marge says. “I got this one.”
I’m in The Hitching Post, a bar down the street from where I live in Willow Hill Heights Apartments. I’ve got a one bedroom and a little kitchen with a microwave. The brown carpet’s the kind that gets dirty just by looking at it.
The other night, I’d just popped open a beer when I heard someone knock on my door. I go see who it is and there’s this gal, no more than twenty-five, in a gray sweatshirt and jeans tits out to here.
“I live above you,” she goes, “and I locked myself out. Would you mind calling the front office?”
“Sure,” I told her. “Come in.”
I got my phone and called the after hours number. Some guy answered and I explained the situation and he said he’d be right over. I set the phone down, picked up my beer and faced her.
“You drink,” she said.
If I’d been deaf I still would’ve heard the scolding tone in her voice. I don’t know what’s gone on in this gal’s life that she’d say a thing like that but I didn’t need it.
“Someone’ll be here in a minute,” I told her. “Why don’t you wait in your apartment?”
She left without a word, not even a thank you. I sat down. I smelled her, smelled her perfume. Like a field of flowers. I was pissed off but I liked that smell, the way it filled the apartment, and the way she looked. I closed my eyes smelling her and then nodded off. When I woke up, the smell was gone and my beer was warm. I couldn’t do anything about her but I could get another a beer and I did.
Marge bums a smoke from me. I give her my lighter and hear a motorcycle pull into the parking lot. A rangy looking dude walks in, wind blown and sunburned but not from some Miami Beach vacation, faded tats up and down his arms, long gray hair limp around his shoulders. He squints until his eyes adjust to the light. Fiftyish. Sagging in the middle like the rest of us, arms large but fleshy. Maybe he worked construction back in the day. He starts coughing, reaches into his pocket and takes a hit off an inhaler.
“Don’t die on me,” Marge says.
“Give me a Miller draft.”
Marge pours a beer.
“Your bike’s in my parking space,” Jimbo says.
The biker turns to him.
“You have a problem where I parked?”
“No,” Jimbo says. “I could give a shit where you park.”
Jimbo stares at the mirror behind the bar and watches the biker sit at a table.
“Harley’s are crap bikes,” Jimbo says. “Leak oil and the handlebar bushings ain’t worth a crap. Barely any room to get a torque wrench on the drain plugs. Like a fashion statement to own one of them. That’s all it is. To impress a girlfriend. A hooker’s cheaper.”
He laughs. I hear the biker push his chair back. He gets up and stands next to Jimbo. Jimbo stands. They stare hard at each other and then the biker doubles over and coughs once, twice, three times. He raises his head and wipes his mouth with the back of a hand. I hear his breath rattle in his throat. He walks out still coughing. We hear the loud, low-throated sound of the Harley’s engine as he turns out of the parking and onto the road.
“He should trade his bike for an oxygen tank,” Jimbo says.
“You’re through,” Marge says.
Jimbo smirks, sits and picks up his beer.
“Finish and go,” she says.
About five minutes later, two motorcycles turn into the parking lot. The biker walks in and goes directly to the dartboard followed by a second, younger guy with biceps the size of footballs. He struts through the bar, showboating his body. He stops at the pool table, runs his hands over the billiard balls and keeps walking until he stands beside the first biker and tells Marge to give them both beers. Miller draft.
“Six bones,” Marge tells him.
He takes the beers without paying.
“You brought your bitch,” Jimbo says.
The older biker stiffens. He coughs and takes a deep breath. Without a word, the second biker moves to the pool table, picks up two balls and approaches Jimbo. Jimbo slides off his stool. The second biker keeps moving toward him, his hands curling around the pool balls. Jimbo smiles, cocks his arms and crouches.
“Jimbo,” Marge says.
He ignores her.
“I’ve never had to call the police and don’t want to now.”
Jimbo and the biker circle each other.
“I’m calling, you hear me,” Marge shouts, “I’m calling!”
She grabs her cell phone and knocks over a Jack Daniels bottle, and Jimbo half turns at the noise, and then realizing he has taken his eyes off the biker, ducks and steps back but he doesn’t duck low enough and step back far enough and the biker nails him on the left side of his head, blood spurting from his ear, and he collapses to the floor. He tries to stand but his knees give out. He shakes his head and pulls himself up by a barstool. Blood gushes down the side of his face and neck. The biker lets him stand and they start circling each other again. Marge screams at a dispatcher, and the first biker watches and Jimbo leans on one leg like he’s having trouble keeping his balance and I look at a stool next to me and think, Throw it, but I don’t move, heart racing, knowing I could pick up the stool, looking at my hands, seeing them grab it and crack it over the biker’s head, but I don’t move, and the biker hammers a fist into Jimbo’s face, and I hear the stomach-turning crunch of bones breaking in his nose.
Jimbo screams and collapses on the floor. He shoves himself backward with his heels, saliva dripping out of a corner of his mouth, blood spouting from his nose, eyes wide but unfocused. The biker stands above him and raises a foot above his crotch. I look at the stool and try to will myself to pick it up. Marge hurls her phone, hitting the biker in his right eye. He drops the pool balls and covers his face and stumbles backward, the shrill sound of a police siren somewhere far off coming toward us.
“Cops’re coming!” Marge screams. “Get out! Now!”
The first biker walks to the door, starts coughing and reaches for the wall. He takes out his inhaler. The second biker stands beside him, holding a hand over his eye. Still coughing, the first biker gives him his wallet. The second biker takes some money, pockets it and hands the wallet back. He kicks open the door and goes outside. The first biker follows him. I hear them roar off, the fading noise of their engines mixing with the rising wail of the police siren.
Marge helps Jimbo to a stool. She scoops ice into a bar rag and presses it against his nose until he holds it himself. Blood covers his shirt and forms streams down his chin. She packs another rag with ice for his ear.
“Get out of here,” she tells me. “I’m shutting down once the cops get here.”
I go outside and turn around and look through the window and see Marge holding Jimbo’s face. I should’ve picked up that fucking stool. I just wanted to drink and get a glow going and not think but I should’ve done that much. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t have regrets. I run my hands through my hair and walk toward the lights of Willow Hill. Maybe I’ll see that gal. The one who locked herself out. Maybe she’ll come to my door again. I’d take her in my arms and hold her like this was the one moment we’d ever have because it would be.
