Marie’s Riptide
There are no saints anymore, only sinners and those who try hard to be as sin-free as they possibly can. Marie said this just as James Samuels, twenty-seven years old, not sober, ill from an undetermined source, and on the outs with his girlfriend Robin, walked in the door. It was part of her bartender’s shtick, aphorizing and philosophizing.
Marie’s Riptide was a 4 a.m. bar frequented by a mixed crowd of geezers, youngsters and frat boys, smack in the middle of nowhere. At the end of the bar Robin’s mother-surrogate was Ruth yukking it up with some equally disgusting old dude. As usual, he took note of the smell of the place. Rank urine and shit was the undersmell. Sizzling hot food on the grill was a sort of middlesmell. Perfume mingled with crotch, underarm and neck reek rested right on top.
Nina Testagrande was sitting alone at one of the small tables on the side. Probably she had just insulted some guy who’d left her there to pay the bill. She had on her usual face, pale with cupid lips and shaved eyebrows. When she saw James come in she smiled and asked him to buy her a drink. She reminded him of the poem she had written for him.
I don’t write those for just anybody, she said sweetly.
Not tonight darlin’. I’m short.
LeAn, someone he knew quite well, was sitting nearby on a barstool. She winked and patted the one next to her. She was one of those women whose bodies stay unbelievably ripe after thirty, even while their faces do not. She had on tight, low-rise jeans that made a little pillow of her butt, and a green t-shirt that read Tank Girl. Frosty white lipstick coated her mouth. James sat next to her. He could smell the coconut lotion she used. Once she felt she had snagged him, she turned back to her conversation with the woman next to her, patting him on the leg now and then, as if he were a part of it.
He reached for one of the hard-boiled eggs that nested in a wire basket on the bar. Near that was a gallon jar of pickled pig’s feet floating in a beet-colored brine. He ordered a beer and a shot of Jack Daniel’s. Then he asked Marie if she would change the channel so that they could watch the Ali thing. A special about his life. James wanted to watch it.
Okay, only for you, sweetheart.
Marie wore a high, white bouffant and possessed a heavily-lined Polish face that broke out into an unbelievable smile now and then. This was one of those times. She liked her young men to come in and brighten up the place. Or maybe she just liked her men young.
Satisfied?
Ali was in the ring with Joe Frazier for the last time. A few guys at the bar mumbled in approval.
Ruth said to Larry Begley, the guy she had been hitting up for drinks for the last hour, I know the boy that just came
in.
Uh-huh, Larry said.
He was seriously intoxicated. He couldn’t keep up with Ruth, and now he was worried she was going to lift his wallet.
Slowly, he rose to put on his coat.
Gotta go, he told her.
So soon?
She was not looking at him. She was looking at James, who was watching a fat, bloated Ali lighting the torch at the Olympics. For a moment there was a curvature at the edges of his mouth, a pouty sign of the old master. Then Billy Crystal was on the screen, weeping, talking without cracking any jokes about how crucial the man was.
James got up to leave as soon as the show was over. On his way out he came up behind Ruth, who was leaving as well. Was he going her way? If so, could he help her home? She didn’t know or didn’t care that James was not the
help-old-ladies type.
You’re Robin’s friend, right?
Yeah, you live at the Jackson too I thought that I recognized you.
I sure do. One floor below our dear Robin.
Yeah. I actually was thinking of going over to beg a place to sleep from her. I’m tanked. And I don’t feel so well.
Can you drive?
Yeah, I can drive there. So where’s your car?
Tom the manager was snoozed on his newspaper. Ruth rapped on his cage. Tom! We’re goin’ in!
Jimmy watched Ruth’s dented, lumpy shape shuffle towards the elevator. She had no rear, just an enormous pumpkin-shaped body perched on stick legs with a rise of Marie-like orange hair on her head which also cascaded down into a tangle of burnt sienna and black. If he hadn’t been so drunk he would have seen that she had pinned some other hair there, not her own.
Maybe it was stupid to go to Robin. Why go? He knew he was supposed to apologize, should have done it days ago, but he had no real memory of hurting her. It is not something he was proud of, or even wanted to think about. More and more often bad choices were being made. It all started when he put his fist through a friend’s kitchen window about a year ago. The shattered glass cut her puppy. Who would want to do that? She screamed and screamed until a bunch of her neighbors came out. Then, the next time they saw one another they pretended it hadn’t happened.
He felt love for Robin, but could hardly tell her. She wanted him to be her family now, and would not listen when he tried to explain that he couldn’t take care of anyone other than himself. What was he supposed to do? Her only solution to her problems was to attach herself to him and to talk, night and day, about the relationship. Squeezing and wringing dry until there was no point to things. He was not the right man for the job. And then she made him angry. Too angry. He couldn’t control himself always; wanted her to shut up. Just shut up. Just shut the fuck up.
Ruth paused in the hall. It felt like they had been walking for hours. In the paltry light of the hall he saw her beckon him with a flick of her wrist and some kind of outrageously flirty smile. The whole scene was dark, frozen, as if they were caught in the gooey varnish of an old Dutch painting. He studied the cartoonish outlines of her loose face; the big nose, the
sucked-in little jaw. But at that moment he understood her allure, and he wanted nothing more than to sit and talk to her about things, stuff, all of the nonsense in his head. She seemed, because she was so obviously no one, to be something, everything.
He was tired, and his head felt light and fluffy, like he was already asleep. Ruth had her hand on her key. Robin lived one flight up. He’d make it. There was a click tick tick of the elevator going back down, then metal slamming into metal as it hit the first floor. Inside the room were dog smells and many other untold odors. A pile of soiled laundry and a thick orange paste of tar and nicotine sweetened the deal.
You want a shot? She asked this while pouring.
He asked Ruth if it was okay to light up. Filterless camels. She was greedy for one. They cupped the flame and then looked for the first time eye to eye. Hers were not the monster’s orbs he’d been assuming they were, but a couple of translucent cerulean marbles surrounded by folds of flesh, like a pretty little girl in too many ruffles. Again, there was this sense that he could talk to her.
I hope my girl will take me in.
Ruth shook her head no.
She shouldn’t. I told her not to. I told her you were no good. You heard what Marie said. She says it all the time,
There are no saints anymore. Only the likes of you.
She was smiling, and it made him ill to look at the yellowish teeth thus revealed. What large dentures you have, my
dear.
I feel sick.
If you’re gonna throw up, please do it in the toilet.
He went in there and lord, what a mess it was! First her mess, the gobs and gaggles of products, cosmetics, adult diapers, dog pads, enema boxes, dirty laundry in the tub, towels smeared with animal poop, used tissue, big bras, empty pharmaceutical containers, and so on. And then his contribution: a Mexican food fest filled the unflushable toilet.
It won’t flush! He said when he could.
You have to lift the lid and pull the bulb. It’s broken.
Now the racket woke one of her dogs, and it came to sniff at the contents of his recent deposit. Getthehellouttahere, he whispered, while menacing it with his boot. It whimpered but stayed put, as if to guard the contents of the utterly disgusting room. James grabbed the chain and yanked, causing a hurried flushing that spattered some stuff around. He grabbed a half-okay towel and dabbed at himself.
At least it was clear why he’d been feeling so whacked. Now it was better. Probably a poison had been added to his midnight burrito. But it was all gone now. Well, no. Once more. Okay. That would be it.
You all right? Ruth asked when he came out. Yeah, I’m fine. He sat down again.
Okay, good, ‘cause I have something to say to you. That girl, She pointed up, and all the loose white flesh on her underarm gobbled like Thanksgiving, is precious. You should treat her nice. She loves you.
I have no idea
what you are talking about. Yes you do.
You don’t know me.
Yes I do! And I get the whole picture. Know why? Because I have lots of time to kill. Know why else? Because I’ve seen it all; the two-timing, the disappearing, the humiliation. But let me tell you: that’s not the way a real man behaves.
And that is when he started crying. He told her things he didn’t even know he was thinking. He told her that he loved Robin, but that there was something wrong with him, he didn’t feel like himself lately. Blackouts, strange blackouts where he did not know what he was doing or saying kept occurring. He knew words were coming out of his mouth, because he could hear his own voice and see the expression on the other person’s face, but beyond that, nothing. And the violence; he had no clue about it, none.
Ruth nodded as if she understood everything. Drugs, alcohol, they were what was to blame, she said.
Yeah, but everybody drinks.
Not in the same way, she said.
His head was so fuzzy, like someone had scoured his brains.
Ruth poured herself a drink but did not give him any. Outside the sky was turning a weak, blue-gray. The birds were up and calling out their morning songs. Ruth set her mug down and snuggled into the chair, as was her custom. An old orange afghan was tucked in around her waist. Time to sleep, she said, and was soon snoring.
Then he was walking down the hall, the dog panting behind him in the doorway. He pushed open a door leading into the stairwell. There he found a blue recycling bin and was sick again.
Deborah Pintonelli is the author of Meat and Memory (poetry), Ego Monkey (stories), and several novels. She has won awards from the Illinois Arts Council, PEN Midwest, the National Association of Arts and Letters, and is a 2018 recipient of an Acker award. Her stories and essays have been published by Gargoyle, Conjunctions, Ikon, Tribes, Autonomedia, Criminal Class Press, Chicago Literati, Literary Orphans, Vida, and Sensitive Skin. The essays “Darkness and Light” and “Leaving Her” have been used worldwide on online teaching sites about the essay. She is included in the anthology Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, and included in anthologies by NYU Press, Autonomedia, Thin Ice Press, and Arbre a Cames Editions.
She lives in New York City.