elizabeth gaughan
Closers
It’s past dawn by the time I drop into bed, the sky no longer streaked with twilight but cerulean and bright, the sidewalks speckled with early morning joggers and the first of the commuters heading to their 9-to-5s. It took me three tries to fit my key into the lock, an impossible puzzle of metal pestling against metal. Outside my apartment, the driver shook me awake by the shoulder—I had dozed off in the backseat of his car, hit ACCEPT on the rideshare app without checking the price. I didn’t want to look at the charge to my credit card, certain whatever tips I’d made had already dissipated into the night. But waiting for the train was not an option, pacing in circles as the sky greyed and lightened, reminding myself to hold tightly to my purse, to stay aware of my surroundings, to not look too drunk. At least Ryan waited with me on the curb, one arm around my waist to hold me upright, a half-eaten beef burrito shrunken and gooey in the foil wrapper in his hand.
He offered, again, to come home with me, but I shook my head into his shoulder. It wasn’t like that. It could never be like that. I would see him tomorrow, I assured him. I needed time to recover so I could ruin my body all over again. I would sleep all day and see him tomorrow night.
We sat on the curb, side-by-side, our knees pressed together, our arms, our elbows, our bodies knowing how to move to allow space for one another, never quite losing touch, as we passed the burrito back and forth. I chewed slowly, the fear of vomiting circling briefly in my stomach and subsiding. He pulled the burrito from my hands and took a bite, his teeth marks overlapping mine. We weren’t concerned about where our mouths had been. About where any parts of our bodies had been. Peeling back the wrapper, melted cheese and oily ground beef seeping through a splitting seam in the tortilla, he handed it to me, offering me the first bite.
Ryan got the burrito after we closed the late-late bar, appearing next to me with the warm paper bag as I gripped the edge of the trash can at the end of the street and reassured myself, again and again, that I had all my belongings, that my feet were planted firmly on the ground, that the universe, spinning around me, would eventually slow. Moments earlier, the bar staff ushered us out into the night, a PBR still chilled and heavy in my hand, following the piercing, sobering flicker of the bar lights switching on, the booming announcement of last call. Only Ryan and I were left. We thought we had time to grab one more drink. We were eager to keep the buzz going, the high that lifted at our skulls, the drunkenness we used as an excuse to put our hands on one another. Marco and José left before us, anxious to get back to Pilsen before it got too late. Marco had sobered up just enough to drive home, he explained, screaming into my ear over the music, and if he stayed for one more, he’d be too drunk again. Marco was the best drunk driver I knew. It was safer, I was certain, to get into a car with Marco than to imagine myself at a deserted El stop, shivering in my all-black work clothes, eyes clumped and watery with hours-old mascara, unsure if I would be able to grab the pepper spray out of my purse in time anyway.
And before that were the bumps in the bathroom, tiny white mountains balanced on the ridged tip of José’s apartment keys. The drugs woke me up, made me want to stay out longer, interrupted the drooping of my eyelids, the ache in my body for the softness of my bed I’d felt just moments earlier. The boys clapped me on the back, muttered joking phrases of approval. They liked this about me—that I was a girl who could hang. I joined the guys in the single-stall men’s room, tilted my head over the cracked toilet seat and inhaled. Marco watched the door as we, giggling, slipped in one by one.
I was tired, so tired, from dancing for what felt like hours with Marco and José and Ryan but mostly Ryan, his hands on my waist, his hands on my shoulders, in my hair, on my face. We both reeked, but everyone reeked. It felt so good, knowing I looked good to him, that we’d passed the point of disgusting and circled back to sexy. The guys I worked with didn’t care what anybody thought of them, didn’t care if they looked silly on the dance floor. They spun me in circles, threw their arms around strangers, jumped and sang along to the music. They were nothing like Trevor, my boyfriend since college, who—if he’d been there—would be hanging back by the bar, too focused on looking cool, trying to talk to girls, making fun of the ones he considered too drunk or too slutty or too dumb to be worth his time.
That was the second bar of the night. We arrived by taxi, the car rocking and bouncing through the streets. The second bar was only a few blocks from the first, but to walk would be to sober up, would be to confront what our bodies had become, struggling to stumble down sidewalks, the cold night wind chilling us back to real life.
We closed the first bar, the late bar, gulping down whiskey shots at last call, collecting our tower of empty beer cans and depositing them in the recycling bin as we headed out the door. At the late bar, Ryan and I sat next to each other on the beat-up couch in the back, taking small sips of our drinks, aware of the way our arms touched, careful not to let our hands brush up against each other. We were just good friends, squeezed together on the narrow furniture.
It was an industry crowd, our usual after-work spot, packed with others in ketchupstained no-slip sneakers and all-black clothing and t-shirts bearing the logos of wherever they worked, some with dish towels still hanging from their back pockets that they’d forgotten to yank out and toss into the pile of dirty linens before leaving the kitchen, everyone stinking of food and body odor and of the shots they’d snuck during their shifts, which, by late night, rose from their blood streams and reached the surfaces of their skin and sweated out of their pores. Marco drove us over after the mopping was done, chairs flipped onto tables, silverware rolled into cloth napkins, tips entered into the POS system and recorded onto a long slip of paper that rolled from the ticket machine like a tongue.
I knew we’d go out drinking well before close, but I never wanted to be the first to suggest it. It was something we all knew, collectively, as the first Saturday night diners took their seats at the bar and slid into the vinyl-padded booths. “Come out tonight, we’ll cheer you up,” Ryan said finally, as I sipped a gin and soda shift drink at the bar.
Ryan suggested we go out after Trevor came and went, after I came back inside wiping tears from my eyes.
In the alley alongside the restaurant, I rubbed my palms along my bare arms and begged Trevor to come back inside and apologize.
“I hate when you leave work with those guys,” he insisted, stubbing out his cigarette with the toe of his sneaker.
“I can’t exactly leave work alone,” I reminded him. “Late at night. Dressed like this. Muggers can tell I carry cash.”
“Just wear headphones if you don’t want people to bother you,” he said, dropping his cigarette onto the concrete.
I’d tried to tell him, so many times, that I couldn’t go a night without being cat-called, hey-sexy-ed, take-your-shirt-off-ed, need-a-ride-home-beautiful-ed, from men leaning out of car windows, from the backseats of taxis, from the other end of the El platform, from the sidewalk across the street. That my work friends, despite the drinking, despite the drugs, never pushed me too far beyond where I was willing to go, always made sure I got home safe.
“Do whatever you want,” he said, the cigarette a glowing stub between his fingers.
“They’re my friends,” I insisted. “We’re just friends. You can come out too, you know.”
“How do you think I feel?” He asked, taking his first drag. “You go out and get drunk with a bunch of guys every night? How do you think that makes you look?”
I followed Trevor out into the alley just as he was cupping the lighter to his lips. I begged him to step outside, to not cause a scene, after Ryan cut him off. How embarrassing that my boyfriend, a server’s boyfriend, was the drunk asshole at the bar.
“Why are you even with that guy?” Marco whispered in my ear, eyeing Trevor as he downed his beer. I shrugged, rolled my eyes, my skin tingling with shame. How could I ever explain it? We’d been together for so long. My parents loved him. And I loved him too, in the sense that I loved knowing he was there. I loved him because I knew to not love him would mean all I had was this job, and these nights, and if all I had was nights, I’d walk willingly into the night’s awaiting monster mouth, all sharp teeth and wet gums, and let it swallow me whole.
Trevor was getting angry at the bar. He was getting drunk. He knew we would take care of him—only charge him for every other pint, slide a shot his way as the rest of us indulged. It was bullshit, how he criticized the way I acted with my coworkers, taking shots alongside them at work, when he came in and demanded the same special treatment.
He sat at the bar, ordering pint after pint, trying to pull me toward him when he could see I was weeded. He sat there, teasing Ryan for being short, for being a bartender, for lacking a college degree, every drunk, immature insult he could think to throw his way.
I knew I’d need a drink after I stepped behind the bar, felt Ryan touch my back to pass me, and realized, only too late, that Trevor had just walked in. That Trevor must have seen how Ryan’s hand lingered on the small of my back, and how, at his touch, I didn’t immediately pull out of the way.
Born and raised in Minnesota, Elizabeth Gaughan holds a BA in English (Creative Writing concentration) and French from DePaul University and an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She currently works as an English teacher for a community college program and lives in Queens, New York, with her cat. her short fiction has appeared in Maudlin House.