Newt Run

  Auld Drinks Alone

  Auld is walking and it's like he's been here before, seen all of this, the street and the dirt-stained snow, the orange haze around the streetlights. It isn't true – he's never been here or seen any of this, but sometimes that's difficult for him to remember. On his best days he has a hard time separating the present from the future, and now, looking ahead to the stairwell and the bar, as well as the two men in black coats and black goggles who are hunting him, he has to remind himself that none of this has happened yet.

  Every so often he toys with the idea that he might do something differently, but the truth is that his legs move of their own accord, and the street unwinds before him like the plot of a movie he's seen a thousand times before. The possibility of anything else is meaningless. Only the true future has weight, and he can feel it pressing down on him now, a constant, physical burden that leaves his shoulders tense, and his back tight and aching.

  Lately this pressure has gotten so bad that he can no longer sleep. He lies awake for hours, his mind churning restlessly over the same useless details, half-remembered conversations or the disconnected fragments of past and future events. He tries to fight his insomnia, turning first one way, and then another. He considers drinking warm milk or reading, getting up to exercise or take a hot bath, but in the end he does none of these things; Auld's sleeplessness exists in that hard, definite future, and so he takes to the streets, moving from one bar to another and drinking himself into a pleasant, thoughtless haze. This is not healthy, and he knows it. At best, he is in danger of becoming a kind of high-functioning alcoholic, but as the future exists whether he likes it or not, Auld consoles himself with the knowledge that he has no other choice.

  Now he is approaching the stairs. At their foot is an iron door, covered in posters and hand-bills for independent rock acts and local DJs. The cool metal of the door's handle helps to place him in a certainty of time, relegating his foresight to the back of his mind, and for a moment at least, reducing the drumming pressure of what's to come to a dull, toneless whisper.

  The bar is deserted, the small dance floor empty. Along the left-hand wall is a long counter of polished wood. As Auld enters, a large man with a thick beard and tattoo-covered arms emerges from a store-room in the back. He carries a crate of beer to the counter and sets about stocking the fridge. Smoothly, Auld slips behind him and helps himself to a beer.

  With the stolen bottle in hand, he moves to sit down at a table by the door. He finishes the beer quickly, and returns to the fridge for another, and then another after that; the third beer is almost cold. Next, he decides to switch to liquor, and unnoticed by the bartender (as if Auld is invisible or the bartender himself is blind), he succeeds in pouring a double shot of rum over ice; taking a slice of lime from a bowl on the counter, he squeezes it into his glass and heads back to the table.

  The door at the front is opened and three men enter the bar. Their arrival seems to trigger something, and by the time Auld has finished his second glass of rum the bar is almost full. At some point a DJ must also have arrived, and a heavy flood of bass pounds thickly through the place's outdated speakers.

  Feeling like another drink, Auld threads neatly through the crowd. Next to the bartender is a young waitress. She is short, and Auld thinks she must be pretty, although in his current state he doesn't trust himself to judge it.

  "You know what I saw earlier?" the bartender is asking her.

  The girl shakes her head.

  "I was down by 2nd Bridge and a girl comes out of this store, her arms loaded with shopping bags. The thing was this girl was thin. I'm talking bone thin. Her legs were like sticks. She was wearing black stockings and I couldn't believe they made them that thin. Maybe they were kid's stockings."

  "Damn," says the waitress.

  "Seemed like the bags were gonna pull her arms out of their sockets."

  A woman in a leather jacket asks for a beer and he gives her one. The waitress is polishing glasses.

  "I had this friend back in university," she says. "When I met her she weighed something like 95 pounds. She was borderline anorexic all through high school, but when she got to university something changed. A switch flipped I guess, or she had a meltdown or something and suddenly she couldn't stop eating. She ate all the time. She'd polish-off whole bags of cookies and down like a liter of soda a day, and the messed up thing was that she knew she was doing it. She said she could see her body getting fat, and her skin getting oily and breaking out, flab hanging over her jeans. But she insisted she didn't have a choice, that she couldn't help it. She had to throw out all her old clothes and she started wearing these baggy track suits all day. Felt bad for her, but what could I do?"

  "Nothing," says the bartender.

  "That's the thing."

  "You see people messing up their lives but in the end you can't do a thing."

  The crowd continues to fill out, but still Auld has no trouble making his way back to the table with his drink. He spends some time thinking about whether it would be better to starve or eat yourself to death, but finally he gives up, unsure of whether there's even any value in the question. Instead he concentrates on the people moving through the bar, and the forward press of bodies. He feels the music touching him now, the bass, as well as the dark voices in the crowd. There's a half-empty beer on the table that he must have forgotten about and he puts down the glass of rum to finish it off.

  A girl is standing near the table, smoking. She has black hair, or dark brown. Her skin looks very pale and she holds her cigarette awkwardly, as if she's never smoked before. Auld can't remember when she arrived, and he guesses that he must be drunk.

  "I know you're there," she announces. "I can see you."

  "I can see you too," he replies. The girl shudders, quickly stabbing out what's left of her cigarette in the ashtray. She isn't looking at him. It's possible that she's frightened, but again Auld is unable to say for sure.

  "You're here alone," he says.

  "No," she answers quickly. "My friend is here. She's at the bar."

  Auld turns to his rum, thinking it would be better if he left now.

  "What's it like where you come from?" the girl asks him. Auld glances at her. In the dim light, the purple line that cuts the right side of his face is nearly black.

  "It's a lot like this," he says, watching the girl frown. "Excuse me a moment."

  He stands up and walks to the bar, sliding unsteadily behind the counter. The waitress clears a path, and steps aside long enough for Auld to remove two beers from the fridge. He returns with them to the table and hands one to the girl. Another cigarette is hanging from her slim fingers.

  "I thought maybe," she begins, and then shakes her head. Auld opens his beer and raises it up for her to toast. She hesitates, and then clinks her bottle against his.

  "Do you like it better here?" she continues, setting her bottle down on the table. Auld isn't sure if she even bothered to open it.

  "I like being away," he replies.

  "That's all?"

  He shrugs.

  "I was wondering," she goes on, and then stops. Her voice is quiet. She shifts uncomfortably, hugging herself with one arm. Auld leans across the table to bring his mouth close to her ear. The girl flinches.

  "What's that?" he says, even though he knows what she wants to ask him – of course he knows. The girl shuts her eyes. The end of her cigarette smolders, forgotten, between her fingers.

  "Can you see my future?" she asks.

  Auld pulls away from her.

  "It's not really my place."

  "Of course it is," she replies, more strongly than she'd intended, and then goes on in a much softer voice: "Otherwise why are you people here?"

  Auld feels a sudden, irrational rush of anger. He glances away, and once again turns to his drink for relief.

  "What if I told you we were going to end up sleeping together tonight?"

  Startled, the girl turns to face him; it's
the first time she's looked at him directly.

  "I..." Her voice breaks around the word. "Really?"

  "No," responds Auld. "But if I said it it would happen. Sometimes the future is like that. It's better for you if I don't get involved."

  "You've got to tell me something."

  He shrugs.

  "Give me one of those cigarettes."

  Fumbling, she reaches for the pack and hands him one, along with a lighter. He takes his time getting it lit, and then inhales deeply.

  "Be careful of pipes," he says, finally.

  "Pipes?"

  "Yes. Watch yourself around them."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I don't know. It's easier to see my own future than yours. Try to understand that."

  He stands up.

  "Thanks for the smoke," he tells her.

  As she leaves the bar later that night, the girl, whose name is Iris Gordon, walks past a heating pipe just as it bursts, a blast of pressurized steam exploding across the left side of her face and her upper arm. The pipe was old, and it would have been replaced months ago if it had been located in a better neighborhood. Iris is treated at Newt Run General Hospital for 2nd degree burns. There, she tells the doctors that an outsider warned her about pipes, but since by then she is on a fair amount of pain medication, no one pays her much attention.