"I think I'm dying of a broken heart." I confess exasperatedly even before I'm in normal conversation range of the booth. He raises his eyebrows at me and continues to sip at his beer and tap his cigarette patiently along the edge of the tacky red ashtray. I dump my heavy bag, sit down across from him and pull my hair up into one of the ugly buns my mother says makes me look like a fisherwoman. He continues smoking, unaffected by my physical and emotional clutter stacked like skyscrapers onto the table. Taking this as tacit assent, I begin the narrative of my epic night alone at home with nothing but the "what ifs" and irregular phone beeps to pass the time. The funny thing is, he doesn't even flinch. Not even when I suggest that my insomnia and general mopiness is the fault of this boy in question's unqiue voodoo abilities. Eventually, I lose my train of thought, and more importantly my breath.
After many minutes of silence, he crushes his cigarette, wordlessly picks a napkin out of the holder, unfolds it, and pushes it towards me. Its my turn to raise my eyebrows at him.
"Trust me" he counsels, "this is how we all did it."
See, if you didn't know him, if you didn't know me, I doubt you'd be well acquainted with the significance of one bar napkin, laid naked across the scarred table. Actually, maybe the napkin is universal, and everyone who walks by our table, notices its creased underbelly and make a mental note to watch the festivities later.
There were days, I admit, when we would plan to inhabit that corner booth for a couple extra hours, scribble all over one napkin, maybe two, depending on how great our misery was, and in what kind of mood my driver was in. But we've passed that phase, of incoherent intoxication and heartbreak, and moved on to a slightly better 'happy-high' goal. Except today. Today there's a napkin thrown down on our table, and we mean business. He orders the first round and another pack of cigarettes. I grimace, but make no complaints.
"Yesterday night was terrible", I tell him peevishly. I push my phone across the table, indicating that it is to remain under his guardianship until I am emotionally capable again. He nods once, tucks the phone into the crook of his elbow and then crushes me with his eyes. I sigh, and elaborate only halfway "okay MAYBE I texted him, MAYBE I couldn't sleep, and MAYBE I chanted incantations I found online and did a pagan dance to the moon deity to ask for assistance." Its too dark for me to see his exact expression, but something tells me that the corners of his lips are pulled down in a sour, disgusted face. I am not perturbed, because this is how he often looks at me, when I tell him I dislike math, or that I want to be vegetarian, or when (God forbid), I tell him I'm not sure if I'm a capitalist. I'm pretty sure he would suffocate and die if I told him I often fantasize about using my economics textbook as toilet paper.
I wait until he leaves the table to use the restroom and then sneak glances at my phone and piece together the letters of the text messages the boy in question is sending me. He wants to know where I am. I flip a beer bottlecap for advice. It lands upside down, so I text back, careful to avoid typos and grammatical errors and other dead-giveaway-drunkard behavior. I'm pleased with myself. I beam what I imagine is positive energy at the man at the table next to ours and he smiles kindly at me. Or maybe he was baring his teeth in a feral war gesture that I failed to pick up on. My phone is quickly reconfiscated after the bathroom break and interrogation resumes. I do my best to hold a strong defense but his logic is swift, and he doesn't wait for me to confirm his opinion to be the smarter one.
Conversation carries on, back and forth, often bitter and sharp edged to the point where I would be in tears if it wasn't so damn funny. Eventually he coaxes me into resentful agreement that yes, I am stupid, and yes, I should get over this, and yes, I deserve to do better things with my life than mope over one boy who is obviously not spending hours shedding alcohol tinged tears for me like I am for him. Once this precarious, grudging agreement has been reached, he leans back, satisfied with his victory and pops a smile at me. I frown at him, and check the time, partially in awe, but mostly just annoyed that he can fit my emotional breakdowns into a time slot.
Like clockwork, the door swings open and the others arrive, waving cheerily. Bleary eyed, I look down at the once pristine napkin, now splayed and blotched. There are tallies of countless vodka shots, beers, cheeselings, and other incomprehensible things scribbled near the end when our handwriting wasn't quite at its finest. I sneak one last conspiratorial grin at him and stuff the napkin into the depths of my handbag just as they new crowd surrounds our table with hugs and the smell of afternoon.
Later, at home, I examine the napkin. It smells like death and has enough vodka tally marks on it to ensure my shine wont wear off till the next day. Its just a napkin, but in a way, I feel fortified. If I can survive THIS napkin, I can survive through this too. I put the napkin back in my bag, incase tomorrow I need reminding, though I know I won’t and the stench is just going to make me seem like a drunkard.
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