The La-Z-Boy
rocked back and forth, back and forth, from his quick exit. He walked with
vacant, bulbous eyes focused on only one thing, that bottle of amber liquid he
always had waiting in the kitchen. He poured a shot into his Old Fashioned
Glass, but left out the ice. Instead, he tipped the bottle again and made it a
double. Shaking, he carried the glass in his venous, wrinkled hands back to his
weathered recliner still rocking back and forth, back and forth.
Sitting, shaking,
staring, his black, beady eyes gazed into the swirling oblivion of his glass,
the amber liquid that would obliterate everything he didn’t want to think
about: his dad, his parents’ divorce, his latest break up, his many many
failures. The La-Z-Boy had become accustomed to his touch, just like the women
in his life. The cushions were indented, sunken in to accommodate his head,
butt, and legs. The recliner was always waiting for him to fill in the gaps he
had created.
The women were the
same, until they realized he could not fill in all the gaps that he left behind.
They would become sad or angry, and he would send them away, not knowing how to
make them happy, not knowing that it was his own unwillingness to accommodate
his soul to another that would make him unhappy and his partner unhappy time
and time again.
The La-Z-Boy
expected his touch nightly and expected nothing else. The chair could not tell
time or become paranoid when he didn’t enter to fill in the gaps. If only he
had realized that people aren’t recliners; they’re trees that must grow and
bend but still stand proud and tall alone. But he was a toxic weed that
consumed other life from the roots.
The tan, red, and
brown lines of the recliner had faded after many years with him. His pressure
on the fabric, causing the cushion to compress even in his absence, was the
only relic to prove that the man was living at all. That, and the
ever-dwindling bottle of amber liquid. A chair, a bottle, and a man alone.
***
When he was
sixteen, his daddy bought him a fancy new BMW. Shortly after, he had his first
girlfriend (no more masturbating with bags of mushed up bananas). But, it
wasn’t about money or cars or even sex really with this girl; it was about
finding someone who would hang on his every word, like it was the most unique
and insightful statement ever uttered. He had never felt important before, only
when he was making jokes like a hired monkey brought in to entertain his parents’
friends, but that first girl was different from everyone else in his life. That
first girl listened to his feelings.
After they broke
up, he convinced himself that he was an asshole. He let the guilt eat his
convictions. He convinced himself that self-destruction was the only way to
live his life. In his late twenties, he went out to the bar night after night
with people who knew him only superficially. This was comfortable for him. He
avoided questions by making jokes or witty remarks. He never really wanted to
let anyone in again.
When people saw
him more and more at bars, restaurants, his usual haunts, they began to see a
deep pain in him that he carried around everywhere. He tried to explain it away
– his dad, his job, his current girlfriend, anything except turning the lens
around. But the poison started to leak from his heart and into his veins. It
was becoming harder and harder to hide. Dark circles formed under his ever-blackening
eyes. His fingers and toes blued with each passing day. His ears and nose, too,
blued and blackened, giving him the look of a half cleaned chimneysweeper. He looked
for cures and answers in the bottoms of bottles, in between the legs of women, through
a glassy eyed stare from the La-Z-Boy and into the TV.
Nightly, he would
go to the bar ready to perform with his blue nose and his façade of jokes. The
people would laugh. He told them lines, like the one about how he had gone down
on Smurfette one too many times. “And your ears and fingers?” the people would
ask.
“She was a wild
one, that Smurfette,” he said with a smirk. Eventually, the jokes would grow
stale, the laughter would die, and the people would trickle out, leave with
their respective partners, family, or friends. Then, he would be alone on the
barstool. As he grayed and wrinkled, and the blackening and bluing bled inward
as he sat on that burgundy barstool, the employees started to take him in as an
elderly family member who needed assistance. They would make sure that he
stumbled home okay and that he found his way to his unmade bed, where the
sheets were never changed, except for when Karen, the bartender, who was only working
at the bar in Queens for the summer, noticed urine stains and stayed to wash
the tan sheets that had become brown.
***
Karen
found the place unnerving. The exterior of the building was brick and somehow
this old man lived on the third floor. He was leaning on her shoulder, his eyes
closed, drool seeping out of his mouth, as she stood with him outside of the
black metal steps leading to the green door. Karen looked up at the door and
then back again at the old man. Holding him steady with her right arm, she shook
his right shoulder with her left hand. “Wake up,” she said. “We’re here.” He
pushed her hands off of him, grumbled, and stumbled back to stare at her with
shiny beads of eyes. He hobbled up the three black steps, gripping the railing
with each struggled climb as if holding tighter would salvage some shred of the
dignity he had lost long ago. Karen watched him as he made it to the pinnacle,
let go of the railing, and turned the knob to push open the green door. A piece
of her felt that maybe she wouldn’t have to go in this time, or ever, but when
the old man fell flat on his face as he opened the door and seemed to move in
with it and then down away from it, she knew there was no chance of escaping
the reality.
Karen
took in one deep breath through her nose and exhaled a puff out of her mouth. She
jogged up the stairs to lift the old man from where he had fallen. He was frail
and thin. She thought picking him up would be easy, but he was heavy with the
irresolute weight of alcohol. She heaved him up, using the strength of her powerful
legs to hold his venous rangy body. His head lolled into the space created
between her neck and shoulder as his body leaned into hers. “Wake up,” she said
to him again, and his head and eyelids lifted for a moment to show her
thoughtless shiny beads. His head rolled back into her shoulder gap, and she
grabbed for the railing, using its sturdiness to pull them up step by step.
She
reached the top of the first flight. She stopped to breathe four heavy pants.
The old man said nothing, a lifeless sack. She looked above at the
pink-carpeted staircase, the two more flights to go, the white and black and
brown flecks of dirt and lint peppering the staircase. She looked to the old
man on her shoulder and began to trudge forward once again, gripping the
railing tighter and tighter as the load of the old man began to challenge her
endurance.
By
the time they reached the top of the second flight, a time that felt infinite
until it had indeed ended, the weight of his body merged with her own. They
were a pair of Siamese twins united by the shared strife of life, but she was
carrying all of the vital organs, all except one. She looked up at the final
flight of stairs to the white-painted wooden door with the golden doorknob. Keys, she thought to herself. She leaned
on the bottom of the railing and reached her other hand around the old man and
into his pocket. He groaned. The pocket was warm but empty. He groaned again,
and she removed her hand. As she placed her hand on the man’s shoulder, she
noticed her fingertips were blue. She tried to wipe it off on his shoulder, but
it wouldn’t budge. A dye residue from his navy pants, she assumed. Shifting her
weight into the man and holding him by his shoulder, Karen let go of the
railing and quickly reached into the man’s other pocket. She felt metal, looped
the ring around her finger, and quickly pulled her hand out of the pocket to
place it back on the railing. The key dangled from a loop around her bluing ring
finger, and on she heaved.
