Little Baby Faulkner

9

Katya drank like I drink. Or maybe like I do drugs. She sent herself to the hospital. Nik would get the call. Katya, poisoned with alcohol, out in a coma at Miami Valley Hospital. This would be on an evening when Nik has invited her over for a quiet evening. Katya had come over, flaunting her sexuality in Nik's face, then she'd suggest some wild sexual deviance. When Nik turned her down, Katya would storm out, slamming the door to Nik's apartment. Then Nik would wait for the call.

Then I would hear the same sad story from Nik about how Katya did this, Katya did that. It seemed like a luxury problem to me but I'm sure that's how my endless alcohol stories strike Nik: me, lying face down in the parking lot beside Inferno, Baker holding my hair. To me that story's hardly worth telling. To Nik, it seemed an eventful night. To Nik, all his Katya stories were just part of his life. To me, they were beauty bordering on vanilla, all of them involving Katya drinking in Dayton while Nik stayed home—he knew what they'd be doing if he went out with her. They'd be drinking together except Katya at three times the rate. Nik would have one glass of wine. Katya would take the rest of the bottle. That such a person worked as a bartender..it was par for the course. She kept it reasonable while she was behind the bar. As soon as the place closed Katya jumped to "fun side" and she drank herself into a position where she could not: keep a secret, talk intelligibly, drive. That's when Nik's phone blew up. A hundred messages a night. The end of this assault by Katya was either that Nik would drive her home, or on especially fun nights, that he would tell her to walk the five blocks to his apartment. Of course she would try to drive it. Nik knew this. It was that hour of the day that turned Nik's hair gray.

When Baker picked me up I was sitting alone in front of Pacchia. Nik had gone to the Jazz Room. Baker reached over and opened the door.

"Get in, Kimosabe."

"You know what makes me feel comfortable?"

"What," Baker says.

"Being with Nik, then being with you. Nik's life is kind of formal and high class. When I'm with him, then with you, I feel like someone lowered the air pressure. I can breathe out."

"I know exactly what you mean," Baker says, mimicking Morpheus.

I didn't tell her that went both ways. What Baker possessed in the way of low-brow animal fucking tourism, Nik made up for in being an equal—he always had money to spend. And, being that I always had money to spend, and Nik was one of my friends who had a real job, Nik could introduce me to exotic drinks and restaurants like no one on Baker's level could—yes, it really was like that.

"We going to your parents' house?"

"You always call them my parents. That's my aunt and uncle's house."

"Did I say parents before? Why didn't you correct me?"

"A girl gets tired of correcting you on a years-old fact that you've been messing up forever."

I look at her for signs of tears. Her eyes leave the road and I see her face turn sour.

"I'm just kidding!" She slaps the steering wheel. "We're almost there! And don't ask me where we're going. It's bad luck. Like seeing the bride in her wedding dress before the wedding day!"

"I don't think it's like that at all."

"I know you don't think it's like that at all. That's 'cause you have too firm a set of metaphors. You think if an analogy is in any way loose that it doesn't fit at all! Everything with you is tight and rigorous. Fuck that, man!"

I shake my head and prefer to keep my responses to her loose metaphors to myself. Anything I say there will likely be returned to me as evidence that Baker is right. I mean the girl is always right, huh?—The girl is always fucking right.