Page 4 of Sublimate
I didn’t know that bars did that anymore. It must have meant he was a regular here and I thought that was a lucky thing. He probably knew other customers inside who could help him find his wallet.
Roy’s looked a little dingy on the exterior but I was happy to note that it was clean within. I noticed right away that my shoes didn’t stick to the floor and I tested the tabletop when we sat down, but it had also been recently wiped. He had held the door for me—he had opened it and then had expected me to go in first, which I had. Then he had let me choose a booth that was on the other side of the room, where the cold wind wouldn’t blow on us when people came and went. I noticed that especially because Kolter liked to sit right next to the exit. He was always worried about getting away from the fights he started.
Nolan hadn’t said hello or greeted anyone by name, as I would have expected if he frequented this place. And now that I looked at him, I thought that he didn’t look too good. He was still very pale, which was obvious even though this bar wasn’t glowing with light. He had put his hands on the table and I could see them trembling, and his blue-grey eyes were ringed with dark circles of exhaustion. On the positive side, now that his hair was dry, I noted that it was light blonde and that really would hide the grey as he aged. If he was worried about that.
But I was more worried about the sickly aspects of his appearance right now. “Are you all right?” I asked, and then repeated my earlier question. “Are you on something?”
“I’ve had a lot of alcohol. No drugs.”
“Well, it’s good that you’re sober enough to tell me that,” I said encouragingly. “And I’m glad you’re not high.”
He held up his hand and a waitress came over. “What can I get you?” she asked, and he did order another drink. I got a Coke.
“I’ll be driving and my boyfriend would be able to smell liquor on me,” I explained. I checked my phone, but there was nothing from Kolter. He could see my location if he happened to wake up and check…
“Why does he care if you drink?” Nolan asked.
I thought for a moment. “If I knew that he was out at a bar with another woman, I would be upset,” I said. “Of course I would think the worst, that he was cheating.”
“Is that the worst?” He shook his head.
He was right. There were things that were a lot more terrible. “No, it isn’t, but cheating is pretty bad. It either means that he cares about sex more than he cares about you, or that he never cared about you at all. Of course, there are exceptions.”
“Like what?”
“Like, if he was on a spaceship and they had lost control of it and were heading into the sun where they would burn up. Then I would understand having sex with someone else. Or, if a snake had bitten him and the venom was creeping up his body and he just wanted one last time, I would say, ‘Go for it.’ I wouldn’t want to be the woman sleeping with a guy dying from a snake bite, though.”
“Those are very specific scenarios.”
“There are other ones but they all surround certain death. Also, it’s not just about a bar. I mean that Kolter, my boyfriend, wouldn’t only be mad about me coming here and drinking. He cares if I drink at any time. He gets mad about a lot of stuff.” I sighed. That had been a problem tonight, for example. I had asked him about the water bill, which I shouldn’t have done. Another thing he didn’t like was my questions.
Nolan seemed to take that in.
“Do you have a girlfriend? Or a wife?” I added. I wouldn’t have wanted that woman to get upset that I was in a bar with him, but if there was someone waiting for him, then he could call her for a ride.
“I was engaged.”
“Really?” I got excited, because here was the thing: I thought it seemed so cool to be engaged. There was the whole commitment aspect which did appeal but mostly, I just loved the word. Didn’t it sound classy somehow? Like you’d be wearing beautiful clothes—a long, flowy dress, maybe—and you’d be standing in a flower-covered field. And you’d have a sparkling ring that you would take off and drop into a little dish next to your bed when you put on expensive lotion.
But then I realized that he had said “was,” so it was over. “What happened?” I asked. “Did you break it off?” That also sounded classy to me, classy but unfortunate.
“She did,” he told me. “She broke it off.”
His relationship issues were a shame, for a few reasons. First, they probably made him sad (break-ups usually did, and endingan engagement would have been worse), and second, there was no woman to call for help right now.
The waitress brought our drinks and he picked his up and knocked it back. Completely. He drank a glass of whiskey like it was a shot, and I stared. “Was that a good idea?” I questioned.
“No. No, it wasn’t.” He put his face in his hands.
“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong? What’s going on?” I asked. “Did you just end your engagement? Are you still pining after her years later? Or are you losing it about something else?”
“It’s something else,” he told me, and I waited instead of jumping in with all the questions I had. “It’s everything. I have no idea where I had told that driver to take me tonight. I remember being in a car but the next thing I knew, he was saying that the ride had just shown up as canceled on his app. He said that if I wanted to go any further, I would have to pay him directly, and then I realized that I didn’t have my phone and I didn’t have my wallet. I started walking.” He looked at his empty glass and directed his next question to it. “What am I doing?”
I was the one who answered. “I don’t know,” I said. “So, you don’t have your phone, either? How are you going to get home?”
“I’m not sure.” The giant drink had put more color into his face, which made sense to me. Didn’t dogs carry whiskey in mountain rescues? But I also knew that he didn’t need any more alcohol. I thought for a moment. “Do you have money at your house?” I asked, and he also had to consider.
“Cash? Why? Are you thinking about robbing me?”
