A Tapless Shoulder

by Mark McCann

  “SEE, SOUND LIKE A JOKE TO YOU?”

  He was shouting like it would help me hear him. I knew I wanted that moment back. “WE’RE BOTH GOING TO DIE!” He was up out of his seat – maybe it helped him to yell, maybe it was in case he needed to suddenly run.

  “It was a wrong number,” I said nonchalantly and with a nervous laugh.

  “WRONG NUMBER, MY ASS,” he surged forward, “THEY WERE YELLING, EVIL YELLING, I COULD FREAKING HEAR THEM!”

  “Okay,” I said, “it was just really loud drunk talk, but now you are yelling, and our waitress here is wondering if maybe you could not be yelling.” I motioned to the baffled waitress, who stood nearby holding the beer we’d ordered, but didn’t dare come closer. He looked at my hand, and then in the direction it was pointed.

  “Sorry,” he said meekly to her, and sat back down. He looked at me pensively, “Are you freaking or what?”

  “Yup,” I said confidently, “my freak is like a half degree above my calm though, so it’s like, you know, imperceptible to the eye, but, whoa, man, am I feeling it.” I shut my eyes and made the face I thought I would make if I had peeled a lemon and squished it against my teeth.

  I was trying to think out loud for Nate’s sake of who would or could pull off something so absolutely bizarre, and bizarre may have been putting it strongly; needless, yes, something so absolutely needless fit the bill much better. Everyone we knew seemed unstable at that moment or so appeared, especially from where we were sitting. Nate’s hands were on his head and he looked like a lost child staring in the direction he’d last seen his parents. I began to laugh.

  “You heard him, man. I really don’t think it’s a joke.”

  “Yes, I heard him alright; it was a loud garble of nonsense. It has to be a joke.” I shrugged. “You need to calm down, hold yourself together, and realize someone is just fuckin’ with us, and who knows who else by now. I didn’t understand a single word of it, except maybe the word ‘noodles,’ but that doesn’t make sense, so I don’t think I even heard that. You’ve threatened people; you ever mention noodles?” I laughed. “I don’t know, angry drunk talk about noodles, it gets me every time. Besides, you were phoned yesterday: well, look at that, they’ve moved on. You’re in the clear, man, happy up,” I said in an attempt to bestow a revelation upon the man.

  Nate shook his head, “No, I don’t know, man.”

  “Seriously, this is just stupid, it was a stupid prank and we’re acting like little girls, and when I say, we, I mean, you, you are acting like a girl, and not even a present-day girl,” it made me feel better to make fun of him so I continued, “but more like a girl from back in olden times. Because, shit man, seriously, the girls today would have yelled some sort of smack back into that phone, you know, like, fuck with me and I will fucking shoot you right in the fucking… parent – something like that.” I nodded my head like it was true. “That stuff messes people up, losing a parent… to being shot.”

  I thought about it for a moment longer but he wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying, or the fact that now I was no longer saying anything. What he was doing was looking around the room as if someone was going to get up and start tip-toeing towards us. “Jesus, Nate,” I shook my head, “if you had to guess who would do this as a joke, out of everyone we know, who would you guess?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t think someone’s just messing with us,” he said earnestly, “it’s like me and you and like you said; who knows who else, but we are all going to die, and we don’t even know why, we have no idea.”

  “Yeah, okay, I know, but if you had to guess, it would be…” I waited for him to fill in the blank, “it would be…” I added again and waited.

  He appeared to be thinking about it, and if he wasn’t; he was an idiot for a moment longer, before finally saying,

  “Frankie.”

  “There, was that so hard? That’s what I was thinking too. Who knows with that fucking guy, eh? He’s a few… planks… short a bridge.”

  “A few planks short a bridge? WHAT is that? What the hell – what is that from? Your grandma’s dad say that or something?”

  “It’s a saying, I don’t quite know if I’m the first to have said it, but I don’t think so. And, um, my grandma’s dad would be my great grandfather. Look, who cares, I was going to call Frankie, and tell him to fuck his doodle or… something, but now I’m going to tell him the job’s done: there’s a plank in Nate’s very ass-like face. And by plank I mean this fork because I’m all out of planks at the moment. And it went in easy, I’m not suggesting anything here, I’m just saying.”

  “Yeah,” he said like I just wasn’t burning him, “but it didn’t sound like Frankie at all, it was more like, I don’t even know, a deeper voice, older, someone serious,” Nate trailed off. The circumstances had a strangeness to them that also made everything seem ordinary. Why Nate, of all people, I thought, and why today, and why me? I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and scrolled down to Frankie’s number. Nate had to fidget with everything and eventually picked up the salt and pepper shakers. He held them together clumsily, rubbing one against the other, but just slightly; if they were dolls I’d have thought he was making them kiss. The phone rang three times before Frankie answered.

  “Frankie,” I said, “what’s up, man? Yeah, no, nothing, hey, did you just call me earlier, I mean, you know what I mean?” I tried to sound casual yet stern, like it wasn’t actually a question if it had been him. I heard his sincerity and bafflement and I’d known Frankie a long time and knew undoubtedly that both were genuine. I made a gesture to Nate indicating we were of course mistaken.

  “Never mind, man, gotta book, talk to you later. What… yeah, see you then,” I ended the call. “Okay, so yeah, I don’t think it was Frankie.”

  “I told you man,” Nate said.

  “I know,” I replied like saying each word was painful. “I also know never to be your partner in crime: I lean on you a tiny bit, and you name, Frankie. Nice. Look, it doesn’t matter, like I mean, what can we do? There is nothing we can do. So I say we go forward like nothing happened. It didn’t happen. Here I am, here you are, and that’s that… and maybe ‘yay for beer.’” I was holding up my glass.

  He looked at me for a moment then asked, “Cool if I crash at your place tonight?”

  “No,” I shook my head, “you have to sleep in your own bed tonight, okay, it was just a bad dream, it’s over now,” I reached across the table and tussled his hair. “I love you.”

  “You’re an asshole,” Nate said and sighed like he was finally tired of me making fun of him.

  “Dude, my wife hates you.” I said confident that was enough information on the subject.

  He looked surprised. “Katie? No she doesn’t,” he said as if saying so magically made it so.

  “Oh, fuck, that’s right; I just say that to everyone. Yeah; every time my dad left the room I told my mom he hated her. I just, I don’t know, I love to throw that shit out there, just trying to add… more hate to the world, it’s something I do, keeps it interesting, you know; reactions and shit.” I shook my head and did an impression of what I thought I would look like if I were amazed.

  “Man, whatever,” he stated quite dramatically as though we were both insane but he wanted all the attention, “remember, last September, at Rock On Johnny’s, like, everyone was there, and I ended up talking to her for like an hour. Man, remember?” He looked at me like I was the one completely oblivious, and because of that I couldn’t not laugh at him.

  “Is ‘retarding’ a word because I swear that’s what you’re doing right now, right before my very eyes.” I was bewildered and nearly frightened by just how far from reality he seemed. “You mean you talked to my sister for like five minutes, and even she called you a total douche bag because you dumped a beer on your face every time you took a drink. Ring any bells? NO? WHAT? That’s weird!” I was amazed, again, at the complete lack of brainpower I was dealing with, it had become painful, and I
wanted out. What on earth was I doing there I thought, again to myself. “I have to go, so come on,” I said, “let’s go,” I clapped my hands together; “we’ll share my wife.”

  Nate told me he would likely end up at his parents’ for the night and would call me later to see if anything more happened to me and let me know if anything further happened to him or, adding a footnote on his behalf, if he just thought of something dumb to say. I no longer cared. This was an overdrawn moment absent of common sense and I should have been ashamed of myself for not having realized that sooner. I should have welcomed the absurdity of it all. Nate said he would give me a lift home and as we were walking to his car my cell phone rang: unknown caller. I didn’t bother answering it. Of course they didn’t leave a message.

  “Actually, Nate,” I said distractedly as I scrolled down to my dad’s number on my phone, “would you mind if we stopped by my parents’ place?”

  The phone began to ring.

  “Dad,” I was nearly shouting into the phone, “what are you listening to, holy crap, what? Can you turn it down? Can you even hear me?! No, I don’t, no; don’t put the phone to the speaker. I don’t care who it is, yeah, thanks, nope, I hate it. Look, I will be there shortly, do you think you can maybe not be this completely shit faced? Just, hey, hey, hey, put, hey, put your face in coffee, put, hey… fuck.”

  Chapter 7 … These Red Bandanas, And Their Coffee Blues

  We were sitting at a red light, still in Nate’s car; we weren’t sitting on the asphalt with the car behind us or anything like that. I was staring ahead, tired and oblivious. Nate was looking at a couple guys with their coffees standing at the street corner, waiting to cross the road. “You’re fucking dead,” he said as he put the car in park and got out. I looked at the open car door, and then watched him head around the car toward the two guys. I got out too.

  “What the,” I said and stopped as Nate was now already swinging punches at the second guy who was unsuccessfully trying to lurch away. This just happened way too fast; I thought and looked around for something I could understand. I actually found a couple of things: the parked car, I got that, and the other guy, or more accurately the first guy. He was holding his face on the ground, and was peering at me from beneath his hunched body. He had taken some punches in the face and ended up on the ground. It wasn’t as straightforward as the parked car, but I felt it should still count; had he been jumping about like he had just won something after being socked in the face, then yeah, he’d have been off the list.

  He wanted to speak, maybe to swear, maybe to explain, but neither came and he just continued to watch me from the safe confines of his defeated state, a hunkered crumpled pile on the ground. His coffee lay sideways, leaking slowly. I bent down and righted it where it was on the sidewalk. Apparently my primary concern, even in a violent situation, was the preservation of coffee, saving as much of it as possible.

  There was a red bandana beside the coffee, and had we not been outside, I may have been compelled to use it to clean up the coffee that had spilled. I shrugged like I was talking to myself and needed to react. I picked up the bandana and tossed it over toward the first guy Nate had knocked down. He cautiously reached out for it, and brought it toward his face, which looked to be hurting in a number of ways.

  Nate had run back from where the other guy was laying, which was on someone’s lawn a fair distance down the road.

  I shook my head, “Um, what the fuck was that? You went from ‘Oh no, someone phoned me and laughed’ to ‘that guy’s got a scarf; I’m punching his face!’”

  “They were flashing their colours at us,” he said casually, as he turned to his car door.

  “What?” I wasn’t processing this fast enough I thought, or at all. He stood at his open door and pointed to the guy, the first guy who was now walking past me toward the other guy. I stared at him as he passed. I may not have known what happened, but I knew which side I was on.

  “He fuckin’ turned to show us his bandana and then his fucknut buddy did the same!”

  I looked at Nate blankly, and tried my best to understand what he meant and then what that meant to me. I knew my reaction was underrated because it just made me feel so very tired. Evidently my answer to all of this confusion was to go home and go to bed.

  “Yeah, but we’re not in a gang, so why would we care if they are? They’re obviously idiots, dumb fucking idiots, giving suburban gangs a bad name. You should have laughed at them or flipped them off,” I was speaking as fast as I could. Cars were now zipping around us. No one had yet braved honking, but I knew there would be cars that would soon happen upon us and not understand why they weren’t to honk at the crazy man.

  “There was a time when you would have done the exact same thing,” he said calmly, and as completely accurate as that statement may have been, the problem was it did not send us on our way.

  “I don’t think so, I’m fairly certain I would have put the window down and asked them what their bandana thing meant, and if they got them at H and M. Look, maybe we can talk about this over their coffee,” I very nearly shouted at him. “I’m a dad now: I don’t punch nearly enough people anymore… or anyone for that matter.” I was wondering why we weren’t in the car as we continued to shout at each other over the car’s roof, each standing with wide-open doors, on the verge of getting in. I got into the car, hoping he would follow. He did. I wondered why I hadn’t just done that sooner. “Did you see that woman in the car behind us?” I spoke quickly and pointed my thumb behind us, “she is probably on the phone with the cops because she probably thinks you went and did all that just to steal coffee or something. It’s a matter of perspective; now to her you are the bad guy because I’m pretty sure she’s not saying, ‘Oh well, they must have shown those boys their bandanas.’ No, she’s a hundred and she thinks you’re fucking psychotic.”

  We still weren’t moving. He looked in the rear-view mirror and laughed, “Yeah, but I know she’s wrong and I’m right.”

  He was laughing. My heart was pounding, and I felt like I couldn’t speak without yelling. How could he just sit there and laugh and not race us away from there? He began to wave to her. I got out, about to run, in any direction. I retrieved the coffee that had been left behind, the one I’d saved from completely leaking on the ground. It had weathered being dropped very well and I thought the old lady may as well be right. “I got the coffee, let’s go,” I said as I got back into the car and looked behind us like we were about to be chased.

  I held a hand out toward the road ahead of us in case he thought I wasn’t ready. He didn’t notice; he was examining his hand. “Holy shit, Nate, you’re a little fired up, maybe we should have cabbed it,” I studied him, wondering if I’d missed just how much he’d had to drink. “Three right? You had three?” I felt out of breath. This waiting to be arrested or whatever it was we were doing now was really doing me in.

  “Yeah, but that was right off the bat, and we were there for what? Over three hours?”

  “Oh, okay, well, let us count the seconds and talk about it longer – Jesus, Nate – let’s fucking go,” I pleaded. That did it. At last, he started the car and we were moving again. What seemed like sixty minutes had really only been maybe ten or fifteen. I pulled the tab back on the lid of the coffee; even to a pessimist, it was three quarters full.

  “You know I’m not sharing this with you, right?” I said, as I took a drink from the coffee and wished it was hotter. I made a face at it, then rolled down the window and lobbed the cup out.

  “Why’d you do that?” Nate asked rightfully.

  “I don’t actually know,” I replied, “I think being with you impairs my judgement, it’s like we’re kids again. Fucking stupid, eh? Okay, I’m an idiot; let’s go back, I’ll pick that up.”

  “You see, this is why I don’t date.”

  “What? Why? The women you date throw stuff out the window when you go places?”

  “No, man, the hassle, you know, having to do things.”


  “Having to do things; Nate, that’s not women, that’s being alive.”

  “You know what I mean, I mean, like, things you don’t want to do.”

  “Right, right, like turning around for instance. You know, the longer you keep driving the farther we have to drive back, so you should turn around now before it’s a real pain in the ass,” I declared, suddenly feeling righteous even though it was my fault we had to turn around. “Oh, and I meant to ask you, did you want that? The coffee, I mean. It was lukewarm and made me want to wretch; it’s all yours if you can get it back in the cup.” I had a big smile on my face, which then broke apart into laughter.

  “No thanks,” he turned the steering wheel sharply and the car followed, “maybe I’ll just stop and get my own.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine, nothing like some coffee after some beer after a fight,” I said sarcastically.

  “I actually would like that.”

  “Yeah, only my reflection likes that, minus the fight or maybe not minus the fight – I wasn’t included in the fact there was a fight, so I’m not sure how I should feel about it.” I was shaking my head. “What the hell – did that just happen?” I was still a little mystified by what had just happened. “You should have told me they were ‘flashing their colours’ before you got out, I would’ve, I don’t know, maybe told you not to be stupid. For once I would just like to have the chance to react like I know what is going on. I could have helped you out, not that you needed it, obviously, but two of them, two of us, I think that would have at least made a little more sense. And in a fight is the only time I don’t overthink things, which says something about violence, don’t you think?” I paused to see if he didn’t think. “I think it’s senseless, and I’m pretty sure I have to think that now, it’s a part of being a parent or a part of being married, I don’t know. Now I can’t stop talking because that made me stupid and anxious and confused and I don’t know what the hell else.”