Sitting on a stool, in a bar I’d never been to before, next to a theatre I will never go to, she by my side. We used to be an item, a long time ago, a life-and-a-half ago. Two months ago. All this time without hearing a word from her. So I figured we were through, for better or for worse. But then, out of the blue, she calls me and we agree to meet.
And here we are again.
Will I still feel the spark? Does she still like me? Are we still a 'we’?
I don’t know what to say. I want to ask her a million questions, but somehow I feel it might be taken as a faux pas if I asked her who she's been fucking and why she stopped answering my calls. There will be time for that later, surely. Meanwhile, we're trying to have a conversation, but I feel we are like bad actors who have forgotten their stilted lines.
“And so what did you do last weekend?”
“Ah, yes. Beer is good.”
“I need to buy some more cigarettes.”
I keep staring at my soggy coaster. I have the impression it probably is drunker than I am, the lucky prick. What does it mean when you get jealous of a tiny piece of cardboard? I’m not sure, but it can't be good.
I look at a small chalkboard advertising the specials. Or at least I guess that’s what it is. I am, after all, a stranger in a strange land. A local-fucker, for all intents and purposes. Sure enough, she’s a local. All legs and breasts and lips. Only, they’re not mine anymore. But I shouldn’t think about that. I shouldn’t think like that. I have to salvage the friendship.
I have to, don’t I?
“What does it say there?”
Of course her monologue about me not yet speaking the local language follows and, of course, my feeble excuses follow that. Ah, yes, just like Abbot & Costello we are, our routine. We shan't forget that anytime soon.
Finally, she tells me it means wild pear liquor. I look at it again. Of course. I know the word for pear. And I've seen the word for wild before. There's a big park with that word in its name. Proudly, I share my finding.
She looks at me, exhales her smoke, has a sip of beer and proceeds to tell me that the park’s name is about a woman. A wild woman. She tells me that all women who have that name are bitches.
“Come again?”
She repeats: “All women who have that name are bitches. That's a fact.”
And like a ray of light from God above, like absolution, benediction, salvation, and exorcism all rolled into one, it hits me: The girl I am sitting next to, the girl I have been lusting after, the girl who gave me the best head in the world and who fucked my brains out for the better part of six months is nothing but an ignorant cunt.
I smile to myself and drink up my beer. I fish out a crumpled bill from my pocket and throw it on the counter, where it immediately starts doing battle with my coaster to soak up as much beer as possible. In this country, even money needs to get drunk.
I stand up and put my coat on.
“Oh, you’re already leaving?”
I don’t answer, because really: what would be the point? I just smile and brush her left cheek with the back of my hand, as a final farewell. I blink a yes to her question and turn around, leaving her staring at the chalkboard, facing her beer and her half-empty pack of cheap cigarettes, alone. Irrevocably.
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