Better by John O'Brien

Author:John O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2011-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

… Timmy. But i speak too soon, for as announced to me by the concentric ripples on the surface of my drink, the front door has opened and is even now being slammed. I turn—my own afternoon version of quickly—on my barstool and find myself face to ass with the Sport himself, Timmy, bending over to retrieve his dropped ball.

Standing and about-facing, he catches himself on a strange little feminine gasp. Evidently he did not expect to find me here. “Billy!” he says, remembering to grin. “How’s yours hangin’?”

Absently I look down at it, but my view is obscured by my pants. I attempt to sense it, to feel how it is hanging, but this proves surprisingly difficult, and I wonder if alcohol has benumbed me or if indeed there really is something wrong with it.

“I’m not sure,” I answer truthfully, and not without some concern. “How is yours hanging?”

“Yeah.” Timmy’s eyes go wide, his cheeks inflate, shoulders shrug: how ’bout that? “Well, I gotta go to my room for a minute,” he says, looking at me hopefully.

“By all means. Don’t let me hold you up.”

He doesn’t, and I return to my drink.

I bet Timmy loves this place. I bet he’ll retire here, be around for a million years after I’m gone. Free beer, women—of course he loves it. Women tend to like him too, though to me he has always been pretty much a supernumerary, a spare pea in the pod. I remember when I first met him. He asked me something about the Lakers—basketball, I think—and was gravely disappointed when I had nothing to say on the subject. In fact, that’s about what I said. He asked me who I liked on the Lakers, and I said, “Basketball … right?” He looked confused for a minute; he was probably waiting for me to crack a smile and confess that professional basketball was my life. But when he saw that I really was uncertain about which ball it was that the Lakers tossed around, he looked over my shoulder, told me that it had been nice talking with me, and walked away.

Timmy is many things I could never and would never be. He is not at all disturbed by himself. He is always satisfied with the first available answer to any question that he inadvertently stumbles over. He is the sort of man who a woman in her waning twenties might marry. A match made in a 7-Eleven, she there for milk, he for a microwave burrito. He might grunt on his way out the door, bewailing a forgotten Slurpee through bean-caked lips. She would be at first surprised that he had spoken to her, then perhaps smitten, and, in a rush of maternal response, run back for the melting Slurpee while Timmy holds the door open and the Iranian clerk in the red and white smock wishes he had access to the air-conditioning switch. Months later and none too soon, the broken bride would stand at the altar wearing a most unnatural color.

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