Putting Out the Fires

This place is smoky and dark and the girl in front of me exudes an unmistakable, inebriated desperation. Someone has put an old Pixies song on the juke, Black Francis wailing about Alec Eiffel, and I watch this girl totter and struggle for balance. She leans into me. Well, she actually stumbles into me more than anything else. Her arm slides around my neck and she says something I don't understand; her unintelligible words drifting to me in an odorous cloud of booze and cigarette smoke. It sounds something like, “Susie's car smells like sweaty tennis shoes.” I'm pretty sure that's not what she actually said, but at this point I can't be sure and frankly don't really care.

“I test sporting goods equipment for a major, national manufacturer,” I say loudly, competing with the din.

Beside me, Jerry looks over with this big, drunken grin on his face.

“Tell her about that time in Miami,” he says. “You remember - when you were testing tennis rackets.”

I like Jerry because there are no excuses or explanations required. He's played this game many, many times before.

“I'm not very good at tennis,” the girl says.

She looks vaguely confused and starts to giggle. Her tittering laugh grates at me, and I have to end this line of conversation or I'll lose any and all desire to see this quagmire I'm getting myself into through to the end.

“There was this Russian girl, a tennis player,” Jerry says.

The girl's eyes slowly wander to Jerry.

“Russian?” She asks.

“Sure,” Jerry says. “Russia. Eastern Europe. Surely you've heard of it.”

The girl just giggles again, taking a very unnecessary swig from whatever it is she's drinking.

“Anyway,” Jerry continues, “this Russian girl - the tennis player - Morgan here gave her a private demonstration. Long story short, she ended up testing that racket in ways the manufacturer definitely did not intend.”

The girl's face is now a blank. Jerry is smiling broadly, his mouth seemingly taking over his entire head. The girl looks uneasily from Jerry back to me.

“I'm not very good at tennis,” she says again, shaking her head emphatically.

“Just as well,” Jerry says. “Her career was never the same after that.”

I decide to shift gears before this whole scene completely deteriorates. This is how this is done. You take it to the edge, the thin line that can't be crossed, and then you yank it back. Christ, I've danced this dance so many times I could do it in my sleep.

“What is it that you do?” I ask.

Jerry hears the question and loses interest, as he has never cared for the dull but necessary groundwork of this game. He turns back to the bar, motioning for another drink.

The girl leans towards me, swaying on her feet. Her balance fails her, and she lurches sideways. I steady her with my hand, and some of her drink slops on my pants. She either doesn't notice or pretends not to notice.

“I work for the government,” she says, her head nodding drunkenly to accentuate this point.

The government. It figures. No wonder we're all on a rocket ship to oblivion, what with girls like this acting as cogs in the big, administrative wheel. Jerry hears this nugget and is suddenly interested again, leaning across me and looking directly at the girl.

“I work for the government, too,” He says.

She looks at him suspiciously, immediately guarded. Maybe she's not as fucked up as I originally thought. This would change the game plan, but truth be told it might make it that much more interesting.

“I can't tell you too many details,” Jerry says. “Let's just say my work involves a lot of travel to exotic destinations. It's all very covert. You know, on the down-low.”

“Like a spy?” The girl asks, her eyes narrowing.

She's suspicious now; her brow furrowed with a determined focus. Shit. Jerry might have taken this a bit too far. Soon, I'll have to slip into damage-control mode to try and reign in this cluster-fuck. God damn him. Sometimes Jerry's lack of respect for this process borders on infuriating.

“Well,” Jerry says, his eyes moving shiftily from side to side, “more like a spook. Black-ops stuff. Look, I've already said too much.”

“A spook?” She asks. "You mean like a ghost?”

Thank Christ. This train may stay on the tracks after all.

“I may as well be a ghost, most days,” Jerry says, dramatically rolling his eyes and slamming back a drink.

Jerry loses interest again, his eyes wandering to a crowd of yuppie wannabes sequestered in a corner; probably comparing iPhone apps and discussing their car's incredible European engineering.

“I'll be right back,” Jerry says, slowly climbing down from his stool and heading in the direction of the yuppie table.

Great. Now I'm going to have to have eyes in the back of my head in order to balance the task at hand with making sure Jerry keeps his drunk ass in check. I hate multi-tasking.

The girl looks up, locking eyes with me. She smiles, and it's clear she's completely, out-of-her-head wasted. Moments like this make what I do worthwhile.

“You're really cute,” She says.

“Thanks,” I say. “So are you.”

The fact is, she's not cute at all. While her appearance is not without appeal, taken as a whole this girl is a train-wreck of epic proportion. Sloppy, public drunkenness does nothing to downplay any flaws of appearance or personality.

She sidles up to me, snaking an arm around my waist. Her face is inches from mine now. I notice that her eyes are glassy, and that she's wearing way too much makeup. She's so drunk it's almost a miracle that she's standing at all. I wonder where her friends are, the people she came with. What kind of friend lets someone alone with somebody like me?

“Take me home,” she says.

There it is. The three words I've been waiting to hear. The reason I've been dancing this dance all night. Those three words uttered millions of times in millions of bars all over the world. The three words that, no matter what language they're spoken in, still add up to the same horrible, misguided desperation. English. Japanese. Swahili. The dialect isn't important. What's important is the loneliness behind it, the lack of restraint. Call it what you will, but in the end it all adds up to regret and a spiral that just doesn't end.

A horrible cliché of a rock song comes on the juke, and it seems fitting. I look past the girl to her friends, and I lock eyes with one of them and conjure up my most lecherous grin. The message I send with that look is, “intervene”. Come on, Mary or Agnes or whatever the fuck your name is. Intervene. Be a hero.

“You seem nice,” I say to the girl. “I can't just take you home. I barely know you.”

The girl's face is a cloud. She pouts, and her grip on my waist tightens. I see her friends making her way across the bar. The cavalry has sprung into action.

In the end, this is what it comes down to. Tomorrow this girl will wake up, stomach roiling and head throbbing, and she'll try to piece together the events of the night before. This game, this thing I do, is about not letting the horrible, leering face of regret enter into that mix. That's how I rationalize it anyway, on those rare nights where guilt creeps in. The real reason I do it is because I can. That's the crux of it. I do it because I can.

The girl's friend walks up, looking at me with what borders on disgust. I let my face go blank, playing the role of lecherous, manipulative suitor. What can I say? I provide the whole package. Everyone plays their part in this. The important thing is to know and embrace your role.

As the girl's friend reaches out to guide her drunk, amorous charge from a horrible fate, I hear a slight commotion from behind me. Jerry's voice rises above the din of the bar.

“Look, all I'm saying is fuck your Volvo,” Jerry yells.

The timing is impeccable, and I slip away from the girl to go put out yet another fire.