Installment One
Geoff's Title: "Welcome to River Bend"
Steve's Title: "Gone with the Wind"
(That's been used.)
Steve's Title: "Installment One"
(Sigh.)

Lee Harris needed to get drunk. He had been in the motel room for three days in sweats, his suitcase open on the second bed, the contents still neatly folded. The rest of his possessions were still packed tightly in his car which was filled to the roof with everything he could fit into it from his eight year marriage. His music, some clothes, an autographed photo of Danny Bonaduce, and a power tool or two. When he couldn't fit anything else, he decided what didn't fit, he didn't need. He sat watching the television (a show about Jakarta, Indonesia, but that has nothing to do with this story). He had been mindlessly watching similar fare for nearly the entire three days. He rested his foot on his knee and noticed that the bottom of the white sock was grey from the hotel room floor. For a moment he didn't even care.

Suddenly, he stood. He had to do something. A shower. Definitely a shower. It was easier not to think about it if he were doing something. Go somewhere. Close, so he could walk because, he realized suddenly, he intended to get sloppy drunk. He wanted to be around music and women and noise and booze. And women. And booze. Anything to anesthetize his brain. As he moved toward the bathroom, he kicked the wheel on the bed frame with his stockinged foot.

"Damn..." he shouted through clenched teeth and hopped the rest of the way, his abused toe throbbing.

The water was hot and felt good. The cologne was strong and masculine. He took care to shave closely and dressed in the best that was clean and handy. Then he sat back down. He had used most of his energy reserve just getting ready. Maybe this town had a liquor store that delivered.

After the shower, he realized that the air smelled musty, like a locker room. Or an English kitchen. He finally stuffed a twenty in his shoe for cab fare back and bolted out of the stale room.

The evening was cool, pleasant. The sky was a clear, deep cobalt blue with traces of tangerine on the horizon, and the air was clean. Cleaner than the air in Chicago ever was. As he breathed it in, it cleansed the smell and taste of the room and the past several days out of his head. This is good, he thought. It'll be a good evening. He bumped into a street-lamp.

"Sorry," he said, then darted his head around, scanning to see if the moment had been witnessed. He then breathed in deeply and started humming. Greensleeves. His head hadn't felt that clear in a long time. The air tasted sweet, with a hint of fireplace smoke. It felt good listening to the occasional dog bark, the distant train whistle instead of the swirl in his head he had been listening to for the past few weeks. The small downtown area was quaint, and it wasn't long before he saw a neon sign that said "Cocktails."

The bar was called The Office. Cute, he thought. Hi, honey, I'm at the office. That would have been a great place for her and The Jerk to go. He stood on the sidewalk for a moment, almost turning back toward the motel when he heard a boisterous cheer coming out of the tavern. It could have been for a ball game on the television or a great pool shot or a drinking contest. The young, carefree voices that mingled with the smells of grilled burgers and fries drew him closer, and the sound of music and women and noise and booze drew him in.

When his eyes adjusted to the room, he got his bearings. On the right was a row of six or seven little round tables, on the left, a bar lined with stools. The crowd was young. There wasn't much neon. A chalk board hung on a post behind the bar with drink specials; that night's were lemon drop shooters and buck shots for a dollar each. There was a television on, a show about Jakarta, Indonesia, but that has nothing to do with this story, and young men and women everywhere, hormones raging. Loud music emanated from the juke box and several couples were dancing in a rhythmic frenzy on the floor between the tables and the bar.

Good. The atmosphere felt good.

There were only two unoccupied barstools and they were at the other end of the bar. Lee sat down on one and felt grateful for the elbow room provided by the other. When he turned on the stool, his elbow knocked a cocktail napkin off the bar. He leaned down to pick it up.

"What'll you have?"

He sat up quickly, bumping his head on the bar as he rose.

"Son of a ..."

"Careful," the bartender said, pointing to the "Cuss Jar" that was filled with quarters.

The bartender was tall, with wavy jet black hair, ice blue eyes and a handsomely rugged face that would have been the pride of any movie star. Great, Lee thought. How am I going to meet anyone with him in the room? Well, it would certainly be a good place to watch people.

"What's popular?"

"Strawberry Colada."

"Gin and tonic," Lee said. "Tanquerey."

"Right up," the bartender said.

"Want to see my ID?"

The bartender regarded him briefly with quiet amusement.

"Sure," he said. He could indulge a customer for a better tip.

After scanning it, he picked up the Tanquerey bottle with a flourish and poured it backhand into a highball glass. Lee paid and tipped him then got settled in and took a whiff of the environment. It was energizing. A combination of college cologne, spilled booze and sex. Several people were already four sheets to the wind. Everyone was drinking slammers and whammers and shots, and it was a nice change from the stuffy bars in Chicago. Even though he was much older than most of the crowd, he didn't feel very much out of place. :-) (Stop it Steve. Sorry.)

From his vantage point, he could be the observer, keep one eye on the television, one on the room, and one on the reflection in the mirror behind the bar, a straight shot of the blond girl with the exposed midriff. She was already several shooters into her evening, twenty one or two, five feet four, fairly long, straight blond hair parted in the middle. She wore snug blue jeans, a tightly fitting cotton top, light blue which matched her eyes, and had alabaster skin. She was pretty. Her laughter made her prettier. Being young, her drunkenness and freedom made her even nicer looking, almost innocent. A clean hippy. If she sat next to him, he probably would end up with her. She probably wouldn't end up alone in any case. There was an equal chance of her going home with someone, throwing up, or both. She was amusing, refreshing. He wasn't ogling her, really, it was nice to see a young bright-eyed, fun person letting it all hang out. Okay, he was ogling her.

He still sat, drinking his third or fourth gin and tonic, observing, watching. He liked the theater of it; bits of conversation, not rehearsed, not forced. The best kind of theater. He sat, invisible, enjoying the show. Once in a while, while looking at the young blond girl's reflection, he would catch his own reflection and it was a strange wake up call - after nine years with someone - to see himself sitting in a bar alone. He had gone to bars without Beverly, but not with the possibility of going home with someone. It was odd. He hadn't gone specifically to meet or pick up a woman. He had money, and the bar had booze, and his main objective was to drink and drink heavily, but if the possibility of sharing his bed presented itself, he wasn't going to shy away.

A few gin and tonics later a girl sat down on his "elbow room" stool, the last stool at the bar. She looked like the college aged girls, but had a maturity that made it look as though she probably wasn't in college. The bartender asked what she wanted. He acted as if he knew her. He was much more charming to her than he had been to Lee, which shouldn't have been surprising, but that made Lee feel somehow left out.

Lee sat facing forward, nursing his drink. He'd been out of the loop for entirely too long. Not only had nine years passed, but times had changed. A lot of things were going through his mind. If he did meet someone, he needed condoms. And he hated condoms. Condoms were like taking a shower with your socks on. He'd never been a great pick-up artist, but had done okay before he met Beverly. What flirting skills he had had waned.

The bartender brought her the drink.

"Thanks, Headline," she said.

He watched the woman out of the corner of his eye. She looked very much like the girl he had been looking at in the mirror; tight jeans, close fitting top, except, he realized, she was a woman. His mind swirled with things to say. He was about to offer to buy her a drink, but thought that it might make her feel like a cheap hooker, so he said nothing, almost ignored her. He tried to decide if she'd sat there because he was there or if it was because it was the only seat available. At least he knew he smelled good. She wasn't drinking shooters, but something brown in a high ball glass. When she moved forward, Lee noticed the skin, now exposed, at the small of her back. It was smooth and young and slightly tan, and he liked noticing it. He didn't stare, just noticed it. Okay, he stared. He hadn't noticed the small of any woman's back except Beverly's for a very long time, and it felt good.

Occasionally one of them would say something. Not a conversation, really, she would say something, or he would say something, and she would laugh. He wasn't planning on what next to say. It was almost as if they were both observers at the same play, just sharing the watching. Beverly had always called him the sardonic observer. Now he was sharing that with a stranger. Fuck Beverly, he thought, then handed the bartender a quarter for the "Cuss Jar".

As the bartender set another drink in front of Lee, he turned to the woman.

"Going to be in the next play, Kim?"

"No," she said. "I'm stage managing this one."

Lee asked her what they were talking about and she handed him a photocopied piece of paper.

"The Willow Lane Theater proudly presents," it said, "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds, Directed by Miss Agnes Livingstone," then went on to list the cast, dates and times and a phone number to call for reservations.

Lee lost count of how many drinks he had. He just kept pulling out crumpled bills. Give him a twenty, give him a five. He had plenty, and didn't have to worry about spending it all because of the twenty in his shoe for the cab ride back.

Eventually he had to pee. He still hadn't bought her a drink. They'd still said very little to each other. A small joke, a comment about another patron, a laugh. The observers observing each other. He really had to pee. And he hadn't yet gotten the courage to offer her a cocktail.

"If you save my seat," he said to her with a small smile, "I'll buy you a drink."

She returned the small smile. He stood up and suddenly the gin gave him an uppercut to the jaw. He didn't want her to see that he was that bombed, so he steadied himself and very carefully wended his way around the bar through the crowd to the bathroom. Of course there was a line. By the time his turn came, he felt like his entire midsection was going to explode in a cascade of painful embarrassment. He stood leaning against the wall at the urinal, trying to steady himself, hoping he didn't pee on his shoe or fall on the bathroom floor. He still wavered, but managed not to attract too much attention. There were, of course, others wavering just as much as he was and some of them were peeing on their shoes.

There was a vending machine on the wall that dispensed cologne and condoms. Hey, you never know, he thought and pulled out a quarter (dropping several pennies on the floor and a quarter in the urinal) and put it in the machine. Better to have a condom and not need one than vice versa. And she had sat down next to him. And he did smell good. There were several interesting choices from "glow in the dark" to "ribbed for HER pleasure". He selected one, pulled the lever and was rudely sprayed in the face with cologne. Damn, he thought. And it's Brut. It had to be Brut. How could they call something so sweet "Brut"? He reached back in his pocket, which was empty of coins, then saw his last quarter in the urinal. Leaning against the wall, he stared at the quarter. Even the word "urinal" was objectionable. Lee wondered if anyone would notice if he reached in to retrieve it. He wondered if he would ever be able to scrub his hand clean again if he did. He wondered why he didn't travel with tongs. He thought about getting change from the bartender. Or a fellow patron. But she would hear him asking the bartender, and he wasn't about to go up to a strange man in a public toilet and ask for change for the condom machine. Sighing deeply, he pushed away from the wall.

He washed his hands, and left the room, staggering back through the crowd. As he made his way, he worried at the possibility that she would be gone, or that someone else might be sitting on his stool. Someone who looked even better than the bartender. He was really drunk, and not very good at this. He only had one shot. Even if he did smell good. Her or nothing. Except for a big jar of Vaseline and a handy-wipe named Betty. He focused hard. She was still sitting, sipping her drink, with her hand lightly resting on his bar stool. He puffed his chest slightly when he saw that. I still got it, he thought, and tripped over his own shoe. As he steadied himself, he caught sight of two young women looking at him and giggling.

"What're you looking at?" he asked and they burst out laughing.

He made it back somehow, thanked her for saving his seat and bought her the drink.

"Thanks," she said. "I'm Kim."

"My name is Lee," he said. "Lee Harris."

"Oh, last names?"

"Sorry," he said through the haze in his head. "I haven't done this in a while."

She smiled.

"Okay," she said, realizing he probably wouldn't even remember. "Anderson. Kim Anderson. Like Loni."

"Nice to meet you Loni."

She laughed.

"It's Kim," she said. "The Anderson is the 'like Loni' part."

"I had a teacher named Loni," he said, not sure if the words were coming out in the order he intended them to. "He..."

"He?"

"Yeah," he said, "Sorry. He was a good teacher."

Sometime between then and the end of the evening, she left. He was sure there had been more to the conversation, but couldn't remember it. He couldn't remember her leaving. He couldn't remember if he had ordered another drink. He couldn't remember if he had been pleasant. He was fairly certain that they never exchanged numbers. He could barely remember her name. Loni something. He couldn't remember... He...

Then, somehow, it was almost closing time. He told the bartender he was going to go get a cab. The bartender told him to be careful.

"Got a twenty in my shoe," he said grandly, then said bye and stumbled out.

It seemed like one moment he was lurching through the front door of the tavern, and the next he was leaning against a cop car with his hands behind his back, being cuffed. It was as if they had been waiting for him. For him alone.

He tried to tell them he had purposely not driven so he wouldn't have to drive drunk, but they were zealous defenders of justice and the American way, and put him roughly into the back of the cop car, making sure he didn't bump his head. It was weird riding back there. When you get that drunk, and you get arrested, you have a lot of feelings going through your head. Of course, you're angry, because your night is pretty much ruined. But you are also darkly excited about being part of that police scene, even though you're on the receiving side of it. There's the shotgun and the lights, and the radio, and, even though you're only being arrested for public intoxication, they treat you like you're evil. Lee's sense of dark drama was fully engaged. His sense of time was not.

There were, perhaps, twenty officers at the station. They took the cuffs off him. He guessed they no longer considered him much of a threat with those odds. There were flyers for bailbondsmen everywhere. And one for an all-night pizza place. He knew his wife was, at that moment, fucking another man in another bed, and he was the one getting screwed. He couldn't even have fun right. He couldn't even be bad good. This made him belligerent. He glowered as they took his picture, took his watch and wallet, his keys, and gum. They fingerprinted him, which he hated because it was so messy. They made him wash his hands in some sludgy gunk, and he did it for about five minutes, even scrubbing under his nails, until they got mad and told him to stop.

The burly guy who was booking him handed him the phone and said he had one call. Lee squinted at the man's name tag. It said "Officer Bacon." Lee smirked drunkenly, then looked at the phone, trying to think who the hell he could call in a strange town at two in the morning. He reached into his pocket and felt a crumpled piece of paper. It was the flyer for "Man in the Moon Marigolds" that Loni Anderson had given him.

He put the paper on the counter and tried to smooth it out.

"All you'll get from that number is a recording with show dates," Officer Bacon told him. "They just did Chalk Garden. It was compelling, did you see it?"

Lee waved him off, picked up the phone and dialed.

After two rings, the other end was picked up and he heard a strange sound that reminded him in his drunken state of fingernails on a chalkboard. He had called a fax number.

"Shit," he said, and Officer Bacon presented a "Cuss Jar" filled with damp quarters.

"Fuck it," Lee said and pulled the twenty out of his shoe and stuffed it in the jar. "What's with this town?" He slammed down the phone, then picked it up again.

"Sorry, Pal. Only one."

He stared in disbelief as they led him to the small cell.

"But it was a fax machine!"

"If you'd dialed correctly," Officer Bacon said, "you would have found out about Man in the Moon Marigolds, but it wouldn't have helped you much here. I wanted to go to opening night, but I have a double shift that day. Their season is satisfyingly diverse. I go whenever I can. I acted a little before the academy. Did the Artful Dodger. 'Consider yourself at home.'"

"Who are you?"

Lee stood in the small cell, his arms outstretched, Christ-like, his hands clutching the bars. He pressed his face forlornly into the metal.

"Welcome to River Bend," he said.

Will Lee get sprung?
Will he settle in to this welcoming town?
Why the hell is the bartender named "Headline"?
Will Loni Anderson remember him?
Will Rogers?
Or Hammerstein?
To find answers to these and other conundrums, tune in to our next installment:
"No Shirt, No Shoes, No Kidding".
(Just call it "Installment Two".)
(Straight men.)

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