by Ren Hamilton
“Thanks for remembering so accurately.”
Shep gave him an exaggerated smile. “And you think I don’t listen.”
A thought nagged Patrick, a thought better left silent. “What about Joey?”
“Huh?”
“You set us up on kind of a double date. Did you forget Joey is meeting us at the bar?”
Shep laughed loudly, and dismissed Patrick with a wave. “Please, Obrien. Joey can find his own girls.”
Monty’s Bar and Grill was a sprawling, dimly lit room with dark wood walls and a shiny oak bar that ran the length of the building. A smoldering fireplace in the corner gave the space a cozy, rustic look. Tables and chairs took up one side of the room, while pool tables and other games like darts and foosball occupied the rest of the area. Musicians unpacked equipment on the ramshackle stage in the corner. A mix of young collegiate types and bikers with interesting facial hair dominated the pool tables.
“Obrien, if it’s not a personal question, what is your first name?” Kelinda asked once they’d settled at a table.
He and Shep looked at each other, and Shep laughed like a hyena. “Oh, man. What a couple of rude bastards, huh Obrien? We never even told Kelinda your name.”
Patrick offered her his hand. “My name is Patrick. It’s nice to formally meet you.”
She took his hand and laughed, a wonderful sound, like bells tinkling. “It’s nice to formally meet you, Patrick.”
“Can you believe that’s his name?” Shep said to Kelinda. “I mean, look at him. Patrick Obrien. Could he get any more Irish? He’s like a caricature of himself.”
Patrick shook his head. “I can’t believe after ten years you’re still making fun of my name.”
“That’s how Patrick and I met,” he explained to Kelinda. “It was freshman economics class, back in college. I saw Patrick walk in, this brawny redhead with his lacrosse stick slung over his back. He looked like a Celtic warrior.”
“Oh please,” Patrick said.
“He did. He sat down right next to me, and when the teacher got to his name on the roster—”
“I hear this punk next to me laughing,” Patrick cut in. “I couldn’t believe this hippie scrub had the audacity to laugh at me.”
“You should have seen his face. I couldn’t stop laughing, and he was turning colors he was so mad.”
“Yeah,” Patrick said. “But then I got my chance to laugh when the teacher got to his name on the roster. Go ahead, Shep. Tell Kelinda what your full name is.”
Robin snickered.
Shep jumped to his feet and puffed out his chest. “I was born Melvin Eugene Shepherd.” He took a little bow and sat down. Robin and Patrick clapped.
Kelinda smiled at Shep. “Melvin Eugene?”
“Ultimate nerd name,” Patrick said.
“Fuck off,” Shep said and downed his beer.
“I thought I was done with Melvin Eugene Shepherd after that, but fate had other plans, unfortunately.”
They were all busy chatting and laughing so raucously that no one noticed Joey standing beside the table until he spoke. “Well, that’s a welcome sound. I haven’t heard anyone laugh all day.” The four of them looked up, and shifted in their seats, guilty that Joey had found them whooping it up right after his father’s funeral.
“Pull up a chair. I’ll get you a beer.” Shep bounded up to the bar. Joey dragged a chair over and sat.
Patrick frowned. Something was wrong. Joey looked awful. And Joey never looked awful, even when he tried to. His pale blue eyes flicked back and forth like he was seeing things that weren’t there. His black hair had come unslicked, and a few rogue strands hung in spikes over his left eye. He was still in his black suit, but it seemed he’d pulled the jacket on upside down. His arms were in the sleeves, but the collar was down at his waist. A trail of mustard smeared his cheek, and his white dress shirt had come un-tucked on one side. He seemed heedless of his condition, staring at his fingers as though they held some fascination.
Patrick turned to Kelinda. “Why don’t you girls go start a dart game. We’ll join you in a minute.”
She nodded. As the girls left the table, Joey’s cousin Robin leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Patrick saw his own concern mirrored in her eyes. Shep returned with Joey’s beer in a frosted mug, and placed it in front of him. Joey immediately drank half of it down, then he looked at his two friends.
“You okay, buddy?” Patrick asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
Patrick’s attention was diverted by the sight of a short, stout bald man entering the bar. It was Henry Donnelly, Joey and Patrick’s boss at Parker Investments. “Holy shit. Is that Donnelly?”
Joey glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, yeah. He showed up at my Aunt Betsy’s house. He was talking my ear off and I was dying to get out of there, so I told him he could meet us down here if he wanted to. I was just kissing ass. I didn’t think he’d really come.”
Patrick’s mood sank. They could feign cordiality, but Henry Donnelly was still their boss, no matter how many beers he drank with them. Joey and Patrick’s eyes followed as their boss ordered a drink at the bar. “Should we wave him over?” Patrick asked.
Joey laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. He’ll find us. He was like a leech on me at Betsy’s, chewing my ear about work bullshit. The guy is shit faced. That’s got to be like his fourth Manhattan. And you know what else? He never even said he was sorry for my loss.”
“You’re kidding me!” Shep said.
“Nope. The guy is such a pecker.”
Patrick sneered, lifting his glass to his lips. “Unfortunately, we work for that pecker.”
Their little bald boss had found them. He pulled up a chair without being invited. “Hey Henry,” Joey said. “Shepherd, this is Henry Donnelly. Henry, this is our friend Shep.”
Henry shook hands with Shep and slapped Patrick hard on the back. “Mr. Obrien!” He was visibly drunk. He pulled his chair in and focused all of his attention on Joey, his own personal little cash cow. Patrick glanced over at the dartboard. Robin was shooting. Kelinda caught his eye and waved. He wanted to go over there, but he couldn’t leave Joey alone with Henry Donnelly. Unfortunately.
Henry babbled in Joey’s ear about the stock market. “Let me tell you something, Duvaine,” he slurred. “You kids today don’t think about the future. You’re all going to be left out in the cold, my boy. Out in the cold.” He took a hearty swill of his Manhattan. Patrick could smell his liquor breath from across the table. It had to be just about killing Joey.
But Joey didn’t seem bothered. He calmly sipped his beer, nodding occasionally as Donnelly blew his toxic breath into his face. Patrick was amazed by Joey’s control. Joey Duvaine, man of steel.
He’d barely completed the thought when all hell broke loose. Joey slammed his beer mug onto the table with a resounding crash, causing the entire bar to go quiet for several seconds. The band stopped tuning their instruments to peer toward the sound. Shards of broken glass went everywhere and cold beer ran off the table onto Patrick’s lap. Henry Donnelly’s mouth was frozen into a perfect circle of surprise. “Shut up!” Joey screamed into Donnelly’s face. “Shut up, shut up, just shut-the-fuck-up!”
Joey’s voice bellowed through the bar. Patrick caught a glimpse of Robin’s dart go too far to the right and bounce off the wall as she looked over her shoulder. A smile formed at the edges of Shep’s lips. “Here we go,” he whispered to Patrick.
Joey stood and grabbed his boss by the collar, lifting him until he was on the tips of his shoes. Sweat ran in streams down the drunk man’s bright red face. “Joey, what are you doing?” Henry squeaked.
“Think about the future?” Joey screamed in his face. “I’ll tell you about the future. Thirty years! That’s how long my dad worked his ass off. Thirty goddamned years. He planned for the future. Do you know what it got him, Henry? Dead! That’s what it got him. Dead!”
With this said, Joey dragged his boss across the dirty floor. Don
nelly was like a giant sweaty rag doll in Joey’s arms. His shirt came un-tucked, exposing his white belly. People cleared a path as Joey maneuvered his flopping body around bar stools and tables, finally stopping just inside the front door. He hoisted the frightened man up to his face, and looked him in the eye. “My father is dead. You never said you were sorry.”
In a quivering voice, Henry said, “I’m sorry, Joey.”
Joey smiled pleasantly. “You should be,” he said, then promptly kicked open the door and tossed Henry Donnelly out onto the sidewalk. The door swung shut with an echoing bang, followed by an unnatural silence in the crowded bar.
After a moment of staring at the closed door, Joey turned and shuffled back toward their table. When he’d nearly reached the pool tables, he stopped, running a hand across the top of his head in a clumsy attempt to smooth his fallen hair back. He took off his jacket, pulled off his tie, and tossed them both to the floor like they were so much trash. He walked a few more steps then stopped again. He unbuttoned his white dress shirt, removed it, and threw that on the floor as well, leaving him naked from the waist up.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Patrick asked, panicked.
Shep sat back smiling with his arms crossed in front of his chest. “I believe he is snapping, Obrien. That is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Patrick looked on, astounded. Shirtless now, Joey walked a few more feet and stopped just short of the last pool table. Two large bikers with full beards had stopped their game. They stared at Joey curiously. Joey looked at each one of them, then dropped his pants, kicking them off along with his black tasseled shoes. Dressed only in white briefs and black socks, Joey tried to proceed on. One of the bikers blocked his path.
Patrick felt himself rise from the table. He looked down, somewhat surprised to see that he was standing. It seemed his loyalty to Joey outweighed his desire to see him in a fight. Joey was acting like a fruitcake, but he was their own fruitcake, and nobody was going to lay a hand on him as long as Patrick was around. He started to move when Shep grabbed his wrist.
“Hang back, Obrien. I think he’s got this one.” Shep sat back relaxing with a beer as though this sort of thing happened every day. It did not.
“Those guys are gonna kill him!”
Shep pulled Patrick into his seat. “Let him be. If he gets into trouble, you can jump in.”
Joey faced the considerably larger man, his perfectly sculpted naked torso glistening in the hue of a giant Budweiser light. The biker shook his head. “I just gotta ask. What in the hell you think you’re doin?”
“Yeah boy,” the other biker said. “What in the hell are you standing there naked for?”
“You want to know what I’m doing?” Joey asked sweetly. The bikers nodded. Joey jumped up onto the pool table, scattering the bikers’ game balls in all directions. Some fell into the pockets, while others rolled off the table onto the floor.
“Oh, Christ,” Patrick said, and stood again.
Standing in the center of the pool table, Joey had the full attention of the bar patrons. He looked around the room, pointing a finger at the curious crowd. “Do you all want to know what in the hell I think I’m doing?”
“Tell us!” came the shouts from the crowd.
Joey held his hands up to quiet them, a half-naked politician giving a speech.
When the bar volume dropped to near silence, he screamed, “I just quit my job! And I’m never wearing a suit again! I’m never wearing a suit again! I’m never wearing a fucking suit again!”
The crowd went wild, clapping and cheering for Joey, who walked a circle atop the pool table with hands clasped above him like a prize fighter. Patrick looked at the two bikers, and to his shock, they were cheering and clapping with the rest of the crowd. He glanced at Shep, who gave him a shrug. “Anyone else would have gotten their ass kicked,” Patrick said.
“Sit down, Obrien. You’re making me nervous.”
“I’m making you nervous? Joey just stripped in the middle of Monty’s.”
The band chose that moment to spring to life, and Joey jumped from the pool table to dance in front of the stage. Patrick stared at him, shaking his head. Joey thrashed about like an underwear-clad maniac. Around the bar, a number of businessmen were ceremoniously stripping out of their own suits. The act was contagious. Everywhere, patrons were removing their clothing. At the pool table, the two bikers resumed their game clad only in leather boots and underwear. One of them was wearing boxer shorts with little cartoon pigs all over them.
Taken up by the moment, Shep tore his shirt off and ran out to dance with Robin, who’d joined Joey on the suddenly crowded dance floor. Patrick spotted Kelinda ordering a drink at the bar, and went to join her. Like him, she had chosen to remain dressed. He wasn’t sure if that pleased him or not.
They stood alongside each other, watching the lunatics dance. Kelinda’s smile dropped suddenly, and she looked up at Patrick. “My God,” she said. “What happened to Shep’s back?”
Patrick glanced at the dance floor where Shep danced shirtless under the blue lights. Patrick was so used to Shep’s enormous scar that he barely noticed it anymore. The terrible scar on Shep’s upper back had been a gift from his birth father, whose name he’d inherited along with several million dollars when the bastard finally died. Shep was eight years old when his mother left his father, a wealthy landowner in Texas. The man became bitter and hostile after his wife left him alone with their eight-year-old son, a child he never wanted in the first place.
According to Shep, his father beat him regularly for being ‘bad luck’. He would tell Shep that his very existence was bad luck, and that since he’d been born, bad things had happened, including his mother’s desertion. The final act came when his father tied him to a pole in the stable and branded his back with a red-hot horseshoe. He made sure the horseshoe was upside down so that “everyone would know the kid was bad luck.”
Clearly not too bright, he sent little Shep to school the next day with his bleeding wound still oozing through the back of his shirt. Shep’s teacher spotted the wound and sent him to the school nurse, who promptly called the authorities. Shep spent the next seven years in what he called ‘foster home hell’ until the Duvaines took him in at age fifteen. He still wore the horrible scar between his shoulder blades, a puffy, discolored mound of flesh in the shape of an upside-down horseshoe.
Patrick explained all of this to Kelinda, urging her to be discreet and never bring it up to Shep.
“That is so sad,” she said, her blue eyes solemn. “Robin never mentioned that.”
“Yes, well, he doesn’t like people talking about it, as you can imagine.” Kelinda nodded and leaned into him a little closer. Her hair smelled like musk, and Patrick found himself wishing he’d brought his own car. He was about to say something grossly unoriginal, like ‘can I take you to dinner sometime’ when Robin came out of nowhere and shoved him into the bar.
Patrick gave her a dismayed scowl. She glared back at him like a blonde pixie from hell, her tiny nostrils flared with anger. “Hey!” he shouted. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“Why didn’t you stop him, Obrien? You shouldn’t have let Joey do that to Henry Donnelly. He’ll be lucky if getting fired is all that happens to him!”
“I wanted to stop him but Shep held me back. Why aren’t you giving him hell?”
“Because Shep’s an idiot. You’re supposed to be the responsible one.”
“Don’t worry about it, Robin. Joey’s fine.”
“Joey is not fine,” she said. “I wish everyone would stop saying that. Joey is all fucked up. And now he’s probably going to have assault charges filed against him. Come on Kelinda. Let’s go.”
Robin stormed off toward the door, stopping to speak briefly with Shep. Kelinda looked at Patrick, her eyebrows raised. “I guess I have to leave.”
“I guess so. Can I call you?” To his delight, she wrote her number on a cocktail napkin and handed it to him. He watched h
er walk away, admiring the way her long brown hair swung back and forth with each stride.
At the pool table, Shep was kneeling before Robin in a humorous attempt at begging her to stay. It didn’t work. She walked out the door with Kelinda in tow. Patrick grinned as he watched Shep pretend to stab himself in the heart with a pool stick, making the bikers laugh.
It looked like Shep wouldn’t be needing that bag he packed after all.
Chapter Three
In spite of its notorious pollution content, the Charles River was a vision at night with the city lights dancing on its glassy surface. Cambridge twinkled on the horizon, a hook of luminosity staring them down from across the watery lane. They sat out under the stars on Joey’s balcony, sipping a disgusting concoction Shep whipped up as a nightcap; Patrick thought it was a mix of vodka and red wine, but he wasn’t sure. It was Joey’s idea that they all stay the night at his apartment, since nobody was getting laid, and none of them were in any condition to drive. Patrick suspected he didn’t want to be alone.
“I have no family,” Joey said after a long silence. “That is so messed up.” He swirled his nasty nightcap like it was fine cognac.
Shep leaned over Patrick to look at Joey. “That’s not true. You do have family. You have us.”
Joey stared down at the river, looking like he wanted to jump into it and drown himself. “No, you’re just sugarcoating it. I appreciate all you guys have done for me, but you’re not family. My family is dead.”
Patrick thought then that perhaps he preferred the vacant, unfeeling Joey to this new voice of doom version.
“I am not sugarcoating it!” Shep said. “We’re your family now. Isn’t that right, Obrien?”
It was one o’clock in the morning. Patrick wasn’t sure he was up to playing nursemaid, but he tried. “He’s right, Joey. It might sound corny, but we’re your family.”
Joey looked messy and waif-like in the oversized sweatshirt. When it came time to leave the bar, he’d refused to put his suit back on, holding fast to his proclamation that he would never wear one again. Patrick begged Trent the bartender to give them something out of his gym bag for Joey to wear. Trent didn’t mind. He knew he’d see them again. “I appreciate the thought, guys,” Joey said, “but things are bound to change between us. The beauty of family is they have to stay in touch no matter how much you piss them off.”
