It’d been five days with Buttons and Jules, so by now my liver knew what to do. Buttons was on her 2nd Cosmopolitan before noon and the only thing that kept Jules off-pace was the number of times he had to step outside to field a call. He bought us outrageously rich meals; so we got drunk, sober, and drunk again several times that slow afternoon. The tension of spent energies and frayed nerves imbibed our mood and spirited our purposeless conversations, while the impending flight next morning lingered in the back of our minds. The more we recalled of the past week the more pitched towards the future and its obligations we became. ‘Til we were neither here nor there, but in a kind of intermission.
For reasons unknown, Buttons and Jules stayed at (3) hotels in the (5) days they were here; but their one and only bar was O’Reilly’s. We met there at some point everyday, so by now Buttons knew every regular’s name and they knew her as well. Buttons and Jules. From out west.
We’d met-up around 11:00, but my story here doesn’t begin (or end) ‘til about 3:30 or so. That hour where you’ll note those first few workers slowly trickle-in from the job to anesthetize themselves before the crowded train ride home. Before their arrival, time had passed in purposeless, languid fashion. We’d been on tourist time. Leisure time. Or what you might call real drinker’s time, but the on-set of these commuters and their defined goals, placed us in harsh juxtaposition to their mechanized routine and worldly forces larger than ourselves.
We’d been talking about Dave Douglas--actually, that’s not really right. We were talking about bitches.
“I know what you’re saying Lodo. You don’t like a real uppity bitch. Like that one last night--am I right? Like her shit doesn’t even stink. Well you know what? It does!! Right? Putting on airs with us...”
“With you Jules.”
“With everybody!” he responded with that jab of his index finger into my chest. “You saw it.”
“Well now sweetie you did say ni__er about ten times in 20 seconds,” Buttons interjected with a laugh into her highball.
“I was saying they call him ni__er! Those military establishment assholes. They were saying let’s freeze this ni__er out! Not give him a chance. Listen...”
“Not so loud Jules,” I interjected. “Let’s not re-hash it again.”
“Its them bitches that start everything,” he said only slightly softer as he pinched at Buttons who swatted him away. “Her man and I got on just fine. You saw it Lodo. He said I was right.”
“Oh really!” Buttons responded incredulously. “Are you kidding me? When was that? Did you hear that Lodo?”
“I don’t remember him saying anything to you Jules.”
“He said 'it was the way you said it!' You don’t remember that Lodo? He knew what I meant.”
“No, I remember that. Okay. He knew what you meant Jules. So what? That chick knew what you meant too. That’s not what got them upset. ...I think you just made them nervous really.”
“Oh you betcha Lodo!” agreed Buttons. “That’s exactly what it was. You dropped the F-bomb a bunch of times too sweetie.”
“Not them. Her,” answered Jules. “He was fine. We shook hands.”
“Yeah Jules, I remember,” I told him, “but he didn’t say anything to you. He just stared.”
“We shook hands Lodo! What else is there to say?”
I had no response to that.
“...Whatever,” Buttons eventually said as she gestured for another round.
“No--not whatever,” Jules answered back. “You can tell.”
Jules took Button's hands in dramatic fashion as though to demonstrate his point before he turned back to me.
“...Hey Lodo, you know how me and this girl met?”
“No,” I answered as the bartender placed our drinks before us and cleared our empties, “but I’ve got time.”
* NOTE: Due to the length of this post, I'm gonna split it into another part. Part 2 in a few days.
** ADDITIONAL NOTE: All pics contained herein were stolen off Google Images and are used simply to enhance the story.
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