A Tapless Shoulder

by Mark McCann

  “Don’t pretend I don’t know you,” he said dramatically like he was on a stage.

  “Are we going to have a big moment here, you and I?” I laughed. “Look, I know, that’s why I said it like I know you,” I was trying to silence him with his own theory.

  He glanced at me, “Don’t pretend to know what we’re talking about when we don’t know what we’re talking about.”

  I was seized by twitches and brain lapses, and then all activity dropped their connections. “What does… does that even – look, don’t try to stump me with your reverse-engineered Jedi mind tricks.” I held my hand to my forehead like I wanted to pull myself away from it all. “There were two of them. Okay, just listen: one, I didn’t know what was going on, and two, there were two of them. How perfect is that spot for the part about there being two of them, it’s almost confusing, so listen because I’m going to explain: two of them and two of us means it could have been two on two… or one on one, I guess, as in one each. Do you get what I’m saying here? I swear, Nate, the longer I’m in your presence, the farther my mind is from making sense.”

  “Yeah, but you saw, man, I didn’t need your help, it was no problem,” he said like he had moved a couch all by himself.

  “Nate, by the time my mind caught up to what was even happening; you were already playing ‘fight night’ with the second guy. So yeah, you had it under control, but we’re not kids anymore, we’re adults, and I have kids, kids I’d like to see again and therefore need to limit the number of things I do that might make me die. Katie would kill me if I died. Seriously, knives and guns; remember them, you don’t start fights with guys with deep pockets; it’s the fifty-seventh rule of fight club. And those guy’s pants were probably falling down, weren’t they?” I paused and thought for a moment, “Maybe they were showing you their magic trick, which was a small bandana holding up their stupidly oversized pants all from just their back pocket, and the other guy was like, ‘Yeah, look, I can do it too.’” We laughed, and then I hit him in the shoulder, “Man, just take your time, send out a memo before being so hasty, and have your intentions include me as a contact, especially if the subject is going to be… fucked. That’s all I’m asking.”

  He laughed and jumped back in his head, “I’m pretty sure I broke that first dude’s nose, man, like pretty quick. I was freaking pissed, eh?” He seemed quite impressed with himself, glancing over at me to see if I agreed.

  “Yeah,” I yawned and nodded. “It certainly looked broken. You pummelled him alright, both of them. So, wait, let me get this straight,” something had occurred to me. “You literally punched out a couple guys; over them just going, ‘hey, be scared of us,’ which, okay, yeah I get it, that I get, and that’s fine, I mean, there aren’t any gangs around here, at least not punk ass shit like the baggy brother boys back there, but I mean, how else are we going to know they are, at the very least, a duo if they don’t have some sort of uniform, right? Still would have been better if I had known what was going on, but, hey, we’re past that now, doesn’t matter, but, what was I going to say… oh, yeah, so you were all over that, right away, but yesterday, you got a phone call that sent you packing, man, sent you packing. What? Like, okay, that’s fucked. TWO GUYS versus ONE phone call. That just doesn’t make any sense to me. Nothing scares you, then this, it doesn’t make any sense.” I looked at him with high hopes for his answer.

  “Those guys were bums back there man, fucking dumb kids practically. They were old enough to get what they got though, but that call, man, it was someone older than us, I don’t know, it just messed with my head.” He looked at me, then back at the road, “And there was that laugh.” He added, “that crazy laugh in the background, so it wasn’t just one guy that has it in for me: it’s two at least, and it was like horrible, it was the worst laugh ever, it was fucking scary, man.”

  “Oh brother,” I said, exasperated by this point, “remember how they called me too, I only heard one drunk dude; Charlie or Pete I’m guessing. Or, shit man, I bet you it was Rock On Johnny. When’s the last time you talked to him? I haven’t heard from him in ages, I bet this is his way of saying, ‘hey fuckers, I’m back.’ Seriously, man, this has him written all over it.”

  Nate was making a face that the night’s shadow didn’t want me to see. He gave me a quick look, said “No,” like an answer to all this wasn’t what he wanted after all. “I just, I don’t know, man, I know I know the voice but don’t know the voice, and Rock On’s voice is one I know I would know.” He was tapping the steering wheel like it helped him think. I made a face that said, ‘you don’t know how many times you just said know,’ and turned my attention to the far-off dark of the night out beyond my window. I felt so very tired again. “I don’t know,” he continued, “I think it could be the mob, you know, the gruff-sounding guys and the death threat, and the gruff guys, I don’t know, maybe.”

  I turned my full attention back toward him, “Really, the mob? What the heck have you been up to, Nate? Like, tell me you are a little confused and you just mean a group of people from the mall you pissed off or something, that kind of mob.”

  “No, I mean, like the Mafia, for no reason, man, I haven’t done anything, I swear. Plus they called you, so it’d have to be, you know, something you had done too.”

  I laughed, “Nate, I believe you could turn an entire country against me without me being aware of it. Maybe you used me as a reference or something. Who knows? Like, seriously, I don’t understand that, um, line of thinking, but thinking is too strong a word; not quite that, anyway, I don’t get it, not at all. And who the hell says ‘gruff guys?’ Gruff? Didn’t we go to school with a McGruff? Or was he a big talking dog that told kids not to do drugs? Or am I thinking about something from The Simpsons?” I stared off for a moment as if trying to remember, but when it occurred to me I wasn’t trying to think of anything anymore I picked up another thread. “The mob, I don’t get that guess, Nate. What? So, okay, I think I’m getting there, you think the voice sounds like a Tony, and you think for no reason besides maybe some influence from television that Tony is a mob name and there you go, the mob is drunk dialing our cell phones. Sheesh, those buggers, eh, and their gruff ways, when will they learn?” I rubbed my eyes, they were beginning to sting. I should have been sleeping, I thought, warm in bed next to Katie. “Geez, Nate that is so dumb it hurts this eye,” I said and pointed to my right eye. “Do you see this? It’s closing up and everything. Gruff guys, gruff guys. Man, look at my eye, I think it really is closing up and you don’t care. How are you going to fix it? Just suddenly get unstupid?”

  “Of course it’s closing,” he nearly shouted, “you’re friggin’ squinting.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  The confusion had taken its toll and it seemed to have made us both silent; we had fallen beneath the brunt of it now. Our laughs were falling short of leaving us feeling good. Nothing had been figured out. We were taking stabs in the dark, and it was only dark because we had shut our eyes. I hadn’t anything more than he did, though. I was just trying to apply reason to an unreasonable situation, while he was sticking with the unreasonable for all of it.

  “I think I’m going to write a book about you, Nate and the Holy Shit; I like that because it reads a couple different ways. Yeah, and I picture it, Nate; all lowercase, then AND THE HOLY SHIT,” I yelled rather than simply saying it would be capitalized, that way he got exactly what I meant.

  He laughed. He liked when people yelled. I thought a bit of joking around could do us both some good, and it seemed to, but it did nothing for how tired I felt.

  I shook my head, “You’re like a two year old, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I mean, you know, you’ve got that… outlook, maybe.” I started to say, “Yeah,” but was overtaken by a yawn. I considered just stopping there and keeping my mouth shut, which would likely have been followed by my eyes. But I had gained some momentum that I thought shouldn’t be squandered, plus I liked to talk about my kids, it was
like adrenaline, and, as if another reason was needed, it was simply fun to laugh too. “My two year old just baffles me sometimes with his simple logic, with that innocence and fresh perspective we… I’ve long since lost. He’s curious, right, well yesterday I gave him his breakfast, and he looked at it and then asked me, ‘What’s toast do?’ I laughed but mostly because I didn’t know the answer, I was like, ‘Um… it gets eaten, hopefully, by you. It fills you up, it tastes yummy, and it… becomes poo.’ You know: it was like a ‘step back, assess and guess’ moment; and that’s it, that is time with you. Aw man, it was just too funny. And it might not be as funny when it’s with you, not that funny, and maybe more awkward, you know, since you’ve got thirty years on him, but it’s good, still good man. Actually, I should probably love it, because, you know, really, he’s going to grow up on me, whereas you; you’re not. Nope, you, my friend, are here to stay… as you are, and that’s… not horrible.” I smiled toward him, hoping he’d come join me on this plateau where things seemed a little brighter.

  Nate didn’t look at me, he hadn’t for a while, and I thought of all the faces I could have been making at him that entire time.

  “I was thinking the other day, because, painfully, that is what I do, damn you,” I said in a raised voice as I shook my fist skyward, “Uh, where was I? Oh yeah, so I was thinking that we are farthest evolved when we are in deep thought. I think that makes sense. Okay anyway, my point is: sometimes I feel like yelling at you, ‘Get out of the damn tree!’” Nate began to laugh, and I didn’t have a reaction.

  Still smiling he said, “Remember that time when you really were yelling at me to get out of the tree?”

  “Yes, I do, you were on mushrooms and we were at my parents’ by the lake for my family reunion.”

  “Yeah, but, man, that was a great climbing tree.”

  “Yeah, I know. You kept telling me that when I kept telling you to get out of it. The only reason I gave a crap at all that you were up there was because you had fallen out of it twice already.” I began to laugh, “Man, it’s not even funny, but, holy crap, when you fell straight down, and used your face on that bottom branch like it was your hand, I thought you were done, just fucking done.

  “Yeah, that really sucked.”

  “Yeah, big time, how many stitches did it end up being?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Right, but really, you’d seemed way more bummed when you dropped your hamburger in the hot tub earlier.”

  “Yeah, that sucked too.”

  “Man, that was nuts. My dad had to replace the passenger seat in their car; there was so much blood on it.”

  “I know; I paid him for it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, man, of course.”

  “Oh,” I paused and mentally cast a few lines way back in that direction, “I don’t think I knew that. That was cool of you.”

  Chapter 8 … The Boobiest Boobs

  We finally arrived at my parent’s house. Nate was going to go to an uncle’s after he dropped me off at home, which was to be our next stop. It had been a while since I’d last seen my dad, so I wanted to just stop in and say hello, see how he was doing, and to see if he was doing anything he shouldn’t have been. I left Nate waiting in the car; he was on the phone anyway, trying to sort out some details about a specific blanket he wanted set out for him. I didn’t know what that was about, nor did I care to ask.

  While I walked up to the front door I wondered if I would always refer to it as my ‘parents’ house’ when it was technically just my dad living there, since mom had died. I believed I would. I also believed that it hardly mattered and I shouldn’t try to float away when my feet worked so well on the ground. I was giving up on procrastination and distraction… at some point, in the near future. It was just a matter of time. I had told Nate I’d only be a few minutes and he’d said “Good luck with the old man.” He thought it was hilarious. He had no idea.

  I walked in, went straight to the stereo and turned it off. My dad stood smiling at me. It looked like a breeze was trying to start a fight by pushing him around. I didn’t know what to say to him. Then I heard giggling, followed by stumbling, as a woman came careening towards me from down the hallway with a smile and two unopened beer bottles in each hand. She stopped just shy of running into me and said, “Hi,” much louder than anyone needed to hear. My eyes were on the four bottles; I almost expected them to keep going on without her. She half turned to my dad, and said carefully, “Here you are, baby,” handing him a bottle before giving me one. She then opened one for herself and stared at the remaining bottle. She looked at me, then my dad, then me again, and then the bottle. Yup, there it is, I thought.

  My internal dialogue stayed speechless, while my mouth clearly stated, “What the fuck,” with no intention of it being a question. She wore a top that was too small for one of her breasts, never mind both. It looked like someone with shoulders for a face was trying to climb out of the neck of her shirt, and I felt compelled to help.

  “Um, could you,” and your friends, I thought, “please excuse us for a moment, I just need a second alone with my dad, um, just maybe wait in the kitchen, just for a second, maybe, please, just go with those,” I ushered her quietly as her back was now to me.

  My dad burst out laughing as we both watched her use the wall as an aid to get back to the kitchen. “You thought I wouldn’t catch that, eh?” he said and maybe tried to flick me with his entire hand, something only a drunk could botch.

  I shook my head. “Dad,” I said, “What has gotten into you? Like seriously, what are you doing?”

  He stared at me, still smiling, and then said, “Isn’t she something?” It was as if I hadn’t said anything at all.

  “Dad, you’re not in college, you are an old man. What, why aren’t… okay… you should be doing crosswords, and old man stuff, and I don’t mean that meanly. Remember that stuff though, the stuff you once did? Not cahooting with what’s her name.”

  “I don’t think that’s a word. Pretty sure you mean, cavorting, maybe,” he corrected me.

  That only flustered me more, “Well it’s cahooting when it’s with Hoots Magloots there!” I said angrily. “Like, holy shit, Dad, you can’t or you shouldn’t be this ass-backwards drunk. It really sucks that Mom is gone, but come on, are you going to be just a bumbling one-man party or, look, I don’t know what advice to give to you. I know it’s hard, I know I’m not one to say, oh don’t drink, don’t party and whatnot, but there’s… other things you can do, there’s people who can help you if you need help with whatever. I want to see you happy and carefree and having fun … again, but in like an old man sort of way, you should be dragging yourself around half-assed, you know,” I tried to laugh, “all stiff, hard to move around, and things. But, like… well, her, Dad, come on. Is she a hooker? She was heaving them at me as if to say, ‘don’t not look at these, these things that are practically bouncing off you.’ When things bounce off you, Dad, they nudge you, and if someone nudges you, you look to see what’s going on, like, hey, what is that, oh, it’s all your boobs.” I paused, and shook my head. “Dad… is she a hooker?”

  “So she’s had a bit to drink,” he said in her defense, and to my disbelief.

  “What? Dad, I didn’t say anything about… what are you talking about? Can’t you hear the words I’m saying? She’s a hooker, isn’t she? So now you’re, whatever it is, buying or paying hookers?”

  He blinked, took a drink, and blinked again, this time keeping his eyes shut for a second longer.

  “Dad, you are hammered out of your face—” I began to say, when he interrupted me by practically yelling.

  “Hammered out of my feces,” he boomed with laughter and stumbled backward to the wall, which he apparently took to mean it was time to drop to the floor. He fell like he couldn’t get himself out of the air to the floor fast enough and somehow didn’t spill any beer. I shook my head, first at the fact he was literally that fall-over drunk, but second at how be
er seemed unspillable in his hands. If I even think, Oh, I should have a beer, somewhere someone spills theirs; it’s a bloody curse.

  “FACE, you drunk, I said face, Jesus, just forget it,” I turned from him and rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands, and then slowly dragged them down my face, resigning from any more attempts at communicating with him in this state. I turned back, took the bottle from his hand, and took a drink, then another, before finally setting it empty on the coffee table. The boobs had ventured back into the room. She sat in my dad’s recliner. That’s my dad passed out on the floor, I thought before returning my attention back to his guest, but she was a blurry photo, and just her breasts were in focus. I rubbed my eyes again. She was sipping at the top of her beer as it fizzed up and over the lip of the bottle. So much of each breast was showing that I did not know how I was not staring at any nipples.

  “So how do you know my dad?” I asked trying to pretend I found it easy not to look at them. I had had an easier time undoing the most difficult of bras, I thought fittingly.

  “Look kid,” she said in a voice much, much, deeper than I had noticed earlier.

  I stepped back in a manner akin to that of my dad’s earlier stumble, but where his was alcohol induced, mine was just bad form. I turned away and then back, my head swinging like the weight it suddenly felt. “Holy,” I paused and paused some more. “Shit,” I said quickly, purposely interrupting her, afraid of letting her say anything more… ever. My head felt like it was still gaining weight, and the floor felt like it was dropping with the walls of the room like an elevator. I stood as still as I could like a stake in the ground, and did my best to hold the weight of my head directly over the centre of my body, figuring that was the best way to keep me from falling over. “Are you kidding me? What the hell? You’re a guy. You’re a woman, but you’re a guy. I mean, okay, are you a guy? You are a guy.” I said shocked and awed, as the name LOLA sprung to mind. I nearly asked if it was his name. Aloud I added quietly, “Um, distract much, hey there, Boobville, you can visit but don’t ask to meet the mayor.” I couldn’t believe it. I turned back to my dad, who was asleep along the base of the wall, and then returned my hands to my face. I turned back to face his guest or to let her… the guest… look at me look at my hands. “Um, my dad’s just going through a rough time right now, well, not right this minute, I can hear him snoring from here, but, um, like, when he’s not passed out, he is missing my mom and that, uh, so, like…” I stopped there, at a loss for words. I looked down at the dark hardwood floor my mom had picked out. It was in dire need of a polish, and I gave it three taps with my right foot. I made a mental note to offer my dad my buffing services, and found I wanted to doodle while I was making that mental note.