Between the Bar and the Lake
“I was born by the lake,” Aaron lied.
The woman he was talking with had enjoyed his performance at The Gray Owl. He had done a short acoustic set—a little Elliot Smith, a little Jeff Buckley, and one of his own. He knew she had enjoyed it, because she was the whole, real audience and the only one who had clapped vociferously and without the air obligation.
“You were?” she returned.
“Oh yeah.” Reed had slightly overheard the conversation, but decided against interfering. He was trying to be nice to Aaron and resistance was hard for him, as calling someone on their lies was one of his special qualities.
“On the island,” Aaron said.
“Really? That’s cool.”
They flirted and joked for twenty minutes, but she ended going home with her girlfriends, drunk and nearly unable to walk without a human crutch, she, too, shaky in out-of-style, wedge espadrilles.
Aaron saddled up to the bar. “Good set, bro,” Reed told him.
“Nah.”
“No, you were good.”
“I screwed up the chords on ‘Between the Bars.’”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Aaron let out a grunt.
“You pissed, ‘cause you struck out?”
“Nah,” Aaron lied.
“Happens to the best of us.”
“Does it? Never seems to happen to you.”
“—You want a beer?” Reed followed quickly.
Aaron stared straight ahead at the bottles on the wall. “Sure,” he finally said.
After Reed had delivered the micro-beer in a chilled glass and Aaron had drunk it down to a shallow pool of backwash, the two realized that they were the only ones left in the bar. It was a familiar position for both of them dating back to the “broom stick incident,” a wound that was still not completely closed up.
“What else you got planned, Aaron?”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
“—Keep drinking?”
“Yeah, prolly.”
“Do you wanna take a bottle of Johnny down to the lake out by my house?”
“Uh…Su-ure.”
Down by the lake the two men—step-brothers half believing in the promise of the future—found themselves very drunk and laying out on dewy grass with the brisk lake wind blowing over them.
“How often do you do this?” Aaron asked .
“Usually it’s with a chick.”
“So, you’re working your game on me?” Aaron joked. “Don’t you have any other moves?”
“Shut up! If I were trying to get you, I’d be negging.” Aaron didn’t understand the phrase, but didn’t bother to ask.
Drunk, they both wanted to fight, bring up old shit from the past that still lived strong in their hearts; but they had gotten to sloshed and drowsy. They passed-out—spread-eagle—in the green grass affront the shack Reed called a home. It’d be weeks before they’d talk again, not out of anything but pride and a weird facet of masculinity both left better-off undefined.
albatross base 