three VINCENT part 4
I hoisted my half-empty glass out of her reach and dumped it into the potted fake ficus at the end of the bar.
Jenny you’re done. Come on.
While she could still remember her screen-lock password we set an alarm on her phone for seven. That would give her plenty of time to get her shit together, reconcile the receipts and walk the deposit to the bank in the morning.
I broke down four cardboard boxes and spread them on the floor, covered them with clean kitchen linens to create a coarse nest reeking of industrial bleach where Jenny could sleep it off. Helped her manage a controlled collapse and shut off the light overhead.
Counted out the cash total, organized the receipts and put everything in the register. I wiped the black-glass specials board clean and brought it to the bar. Wrote down totals in neon pink so Jenny could begin with known sums in the morning. I made a note reminding her that a pitcher of ice water with lemon was waiting for her, chilling on the floor of the walk-in. Sure as shit she was going to need that.
I opened the fuse box and threw the breakers, cutting power to the lights and the alarm system, all the refrigeration units and fan-cooled appliances, the POS terminals, the credit card readers the registers and the walk-in, the icemaker, the microwaves, the Easy-Bake pseudo-espresso machine and the self-serve beverage case. The contrasting silence filled my ears with cotton thick as concrete.
Seated at the bar in the dark I mixed a double Jack and Coke in a short glass and texted instructions to Jenny about how to play this power-failure ruse to Kyle in the morning. PapaTaco had no CCTV. Within limits I could bend time and the truth of this situation to keep Jenny off the hook for getting too shitfaced to drop the night deposit. But I had to be smart about it. And my instructions to Future Jenny had to be perfect.
Tell Kyle: power out 30 min, alarm & card reader wouldn’t reset. You didn’t wake Kyle to drive up since he stops in Sundays after church. Say you *took initiative* he loves that. You slept here on guard since no alarm, make sure he sees your bed on floor, good luck.
Tomorrow after praying to an imaginary bearded ghost in the clouds about shellfish, house pets and other critical life choices, Kyle would walk in to find every logic-driven display blinking 12:00. He would see Jenny’s cardboard box-spring and bar-towel bivouac on the floor. He would listen to her explanation and patiently train her to reset the alarm after a power failure. Then Kyle would trust Jenny forever.
Tell Kyle you talked to your pastor, he discussed it w/ God & all 3 of you agree you deserve promotion to Assistant Manager.
Jenny’s phone rumbled on the bar. I placed it beside her head, a winking firefly nestled in the crumpled cotton wings of a crash-landed Valkyrie on the fast track to middle management.
I quietly hustled trays and bus tubs from the surrounding shelves and ran them to the dish pit. Refolded my shirt and apron and put them away.
Tidied up the bar, smashed the Cuervo bottle in a plastic bag and buried it under burnt refried beans in the kitchen trash. Put Ramon’s tips in my pocket. Removed an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels from the top shelf of the bar and crept past Jenny like a shoemaker’s elf as her raspy breathing approached the dragging roar of a cartoon snore. Patted my pockets to ensure I had everything before throwing the breakers on. A morning chorus of beeps and chirps filled the restaurant as I pulled the kitchen door shut behind me.
Blackouts are funny. The period of time you can’t track does not necessarily correlate to your peak period of intoxication. I’ve had blackouts run in both directions on my timeline, erasing parts of the day that occurred before I started drinking. Remember musical chairs in grade school? Do they still do that or is it considered cruel? Sometimes the needle comes off the record and your brain is left standing there.
When the power comes back on it’s not like Snow White waking up from a poison-apple nap. It’s an abrupt and disturbing restoration of basic systems after a hard reboot, a running start from zero as you try to remember your prime directives and return to your mission. Sergeant Reese of the Resistance sent from the future back to a filthy ’80s L.A. alleyway, naked and groggy without so much as a dime set aside in the crack of his ass to fund his hunt for Sarah Connor.
Many drinkers who black out are overcome with a fear that the missing hours they can’t recall were spent behaving like a lunatic but that’s rarely the case. If you started your night with a couple of drinks while sorting your stamp collection or watching PBS, chances are good you stayed that course after your memory decided to quit taking notes, close up shop and hang that little sign in the window that reads GONE FISHING.
I had to go to counseling once, that’s a story for another time but the counselor I met with was very keen to hear about my blackouts. He did his best to impress upon me that this symptom of my drinking was truly significant. Troubling to the point of being dangerous, yet somehow special. A rare white rhino on the wild savanna of alcoholism.
He told me about a client who went to Hawaii for one week. The plane left Portland and when it leveled off the man had his first drink.
The needle didn’t drop back onto his record until he was flying home. An entire week of his life had been erased, a seven-day jump cut directed by tiny spark plug-sized bottles of airline liquor.
Like me this man was not a committed daily drinker but an impulsive and mercenary binger. It stood to reason he hadn’t been on a rampage or in a dead-drunk stupor the entire time he was in Hawaii.
When he got home he checked his luggage. No bloodstained clothing. Souvenirs he didn’t recall buying. Reviewed his credit card statements and pored over his hotel bill. No exorbitant room service charges, no cab rides home from strip clubs at four a.m. No massive cash advances, no escorts coming to his room charged to a Visa account cloaked under the name of a 24-hour tow company run from a post office box. He got tested for every sexually transmitted disease and came up clean. He even contacted the police to see if he’d been arrested in the Aloha State. Nothing.
There was every indication he had peacefully enjoyed himself, been a perfect gentleman as he walked on the beach, ate great food and saw some bitchin’ sunsets. But the alcohol he drank bored a wormhole between two in-flight happy hours and opened a rift in his personal space-time fabric that swallowed an entire week. It spooked him so bad he got on the wagon and stayed put. And good for him, you know?
That story didn’t scare me at the time. Sometimes I wish it had but when you’re sixteen there’s not much anyone can tell you.
©2017 J.R. Schaefers — all rights reserved.
