The Fine Art of Fucking Up by Cate Dicharry

Author:Cate Dicharry [Dicharry, Cate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781939419330
Publisher: The Unnamed Press

Chapter 12

WHEN I STEP INTO the Thirsty Camel, I am hit with a waft of beefy smoke—the residue and bouquet of the bar’s dumpster-grade cheeseburgers, sizzling on a never-cleaned grill. Standing in the doorway, I breathe in the reassuring scent of unsaturated trans fats and potassium benzoate which, I once read, is not only used in foodstuffs but for the whistle in fireworks. My stomach growls, and I realize I haven’t ingested anything other than sour white wine in a day and a half.

The bar is crowded, the atmosphere jovial; the river is expected to crest any moment and yet there is chatter, laughter, midair high-fiving, cheersing. A string of perennial Christmas lights twinkles along the left wall, and the red bulbs in the overhead pendant fixtures are dimmed, their garnet casts swirling with cigarette smoke. Clusters of people, and apparently Thirsty Camel management, are ignoring the indoor smoking ban, presumably in the name of cataclysm.

I navigate to the far wall, the one strung with lights, and as I search the heads for Suzanne’s auburn mane, the opening riff of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” that serrated Fender Stratocaster, cries out above the clamor. The crowd erupts in applause and a collective roar of approval. Cutting toward the center of the room, I bob my head knowingly to other patrons, strangers who smile and raise their glasses, throw their heads back to unleash consecrative howls. “We’re all in this together,” they’re saying. “We might as well enjoy our last few hours on dry land. Smooooke on the water, fire in the sky!” The scene is almost festive but more rambunctiously funereal—it’s not a party. It’s a wake.

The thick crowd is, as usual, a mix of local alcoholics and the deliberately, dogmatically inurbane liberal arts community, including a respectable contingent from the SVA. Hans Mueller is at a two-top near the bar with a fuzzy redhead, a woman I know to be an affiliate of the English Department, some postgrad groupie. Hans probably comes here for the same reason he attends faculty meetings: to pontificate in front of a captive audience about how much better off the SVA would be with him at the helm. I dodge his gaze and angle my way through the sea of air-guitaring drunks. Suzanne’s wild gesticulations draw my attention to a table at the back of the room where she is holding court with James, Bunny O’Brien, and Bunny’s wife, Nanette.

I elbow toward them, but stop a few feet away. James sips beer from a glass, Bunny tugs a fleshy earlobe, Nanette pushes up a plaid shirtsleeve that won’t stay. Suzanne is mid-diatribe. “…seriously, I wish somebody would please, please,” she slaps both palms on the table, “tell me how Dean Reyes is going to explain that to the regents. Forget that it’s a spectacular, groundbreaking work of emotional and experiential expression. Forget that its intrinsic creative power is, pardon me, immeasurable. The thing is worth millions, millions, in cold, hard American cash, which,

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