I went to the bar
after my shift
at the dry cleaners
to watch TV from a stool
the way I usually did
on Friday night.
Downing three beers
and two shots of Schnapps,
I went to slump
by the jukebox,
a bottle of Stroh’s
wedged between
my knees.
“Better sit up.”
A guy stood in front of me
saturated with colored light,
his Sears perma-prest shirt
tucked in his Wranglers.
“Here. Take this.”
He handed me
a glass of water
and said his name
was Mike.
I told him
to leave me alone.
“You’re a mess,” he said.
“Are you always
like this?”
I said he was full of it
and tried to get up,
falling down instead.
He righted my chair
and helped me to sit.
When the bartender said
I had to go,
Mike offered
to walk me home.
I awoke the next morning
in my tiny room,
tangled in covers,
a fly buzzing overhead.
My shirt was buttoned
and my pants zipped,
but my shoes were off.
A note was taped
to my clock radio,
scribbled in pencil
and ending with
a smiley face
and a phone number.
You seemed OK, it said.
So I left.
Call if you want.
Mike.
Sitting up,
I rubbed my temples,
thinking yes,
I remember now,
I remember him,
how he sat with me
and fed quarters
into the jukebox,
how he said
it wasn’t good
for girls to get
so drunk.
I didn’t remember
much beyond that,
except how he said
he was from up north,
that he was down here
majoring in English.
I remembered nothing
about what I told him.
Nothing about
getting cut off and
kicked out.
Nothing about
how he walked me home
along Michigan Avenue
to my boarding house,
my memory nothing
but a painful dimness
pierced by morning sun.
“It’s the brown bottle flu,”
Mom always said
when I was little and wondered
why she and Dad
never got up on Saturdays,
why she told me
to go away,
to go watch cartoons,
while she and Dad
lay sprawled and half-dressed
on a sunken mattress,
their arms flung
over their faces,
the curtains drawn,
a scatter of aspirin
and toppled beers
on the nightstand.
I stayed in bed
until a bit past noon,
my body a sweat,
the birds twittering
in distant elms.
I got up and fished
a couple dimes
from my desk,
then pocketed Mike’s note
to walk to the payphone.
“I usually don’t
get that drunk,” I told him.
“I’m not like that.
Really.”
Mike paused.
I twisted
the phone cord.
“Hey,” he said.
“It happens.”
I tried to remember
what he looked like
but couldn’t.
“Thanks for
walking me home,” I said.
Mike talked quiet,
his words round
and inflected.
“It’s OK,” he said.
“You just needed someone
to take care of you.
At least last night.”
