A Night of Defiance

A Night of Defiance(Abel M. Bolanos) Ernest twirled his cell phone on the table while I sucked on a cigarette opposite him. Ernest didn't like to be called Ernie; he thought it made him less of a man. Ernest wore girl pants. After having called half the people we knew that night, still no one had heeded our call. He picked up the phone, hesitated and put it back down. I had my back rested up on the wall at the end of the booth, and my legs outstretched on the rest of the seat. I ashed my cigarette in the glass ashtray decoratively set in the middle of the table. Another cigarette rested there, it hadn't been touched in quite a while. Ernest liked to leave his cigarettes just sitting there for some reason, like incense or something. I'd steal the ashtray, if it had some sort of inscription on it, like the name of the restaurant or something. But as it had nothing, it was just a glass ashtray, I left it sleeping on the table, cradling our ashes like bags of valuables.

Ernest picked up the phone and called the next one on the list. Out of the corner of my eye I saw our short frail server struggling to carry one plate that contained our cheese sticks. We don't usually get anything to eat, and just drink coffee, but that night we were feeling adventurous.

It was pouring outside.

In the booth behind me there were two girls. I got a blowjob from one of them two years ago. We never got each others name. She came into work one time with her mom, and we both instantly recognized each other. I work as a waiter at another restaurant. We felt as if we had seen an old friend that we wanted to hug and with whom we wanted to reminisce. Now, we couldn't say anything too obvious, since her mom was there, but at the same time her mom saw the instant recognition in our faces, so we had to say something. Well, since I didn't know her name, she introduced me as a friend of a friend's that moved from her school. Then I turned to her mother and gave my name. Then she turned to me and said "Wow! When I saw you I told myself 'Julie'," or Julia, or Jules, I don't know, nor do I particularly care, "That's_____ that moved a while back." This was the first time we knew each others names. As far as attractiveness went, great legs, great ass, no boobs. But whatever, my first blowjob was fun, although I don't remember much of it. Now, there she was sitting in the booth next to me, and I could go and talk to her, maybe get her number as well, now that I knew her name, but I just didn't want to.

Ernest was chatting away in the background, "No, right now it's just me and him...oh, ok...yea, no alright.... Alright then I'll see you later."

Our server asked us if we wanted anything else in a squeaky voice that came out of a face that had quite obviously never been shaved. My old best friend and I tried to pick a fight with this server when we were 10 years old, and he was 8. We didn't know who he was, but we wanted to feel cool. He didn't remember that, and I only knew because he looked exactly the same.

He walked away awkwardly, and pulled out a wedgie.

"Billy's not coming," Ernest informed me. This did not surprise me. "He says he's got shit to do." Everyone else we called who couldn't come was different. Billy wasn't coming because of me. No one would say anything, but that's what it was. Both of us handled our situations irresponsibly. Not a day goes by that I don't locate that shatterpoint in my life, and wish I could go back and prevent it all from happening.

From afar I saw a woman, across the glass barrier that separated the future cancer victims, and the pussies.

What did it matter when you died, or of what? I always thought that if I were diagnosed with some chronic illness, I'd go out with a bang. Maybe I'd go on a killing spree and get gunned down by the police or fall out of a plane. Or something.

My life was well on its way to ending by now. I took the cup of marinara sauce and poured some into a small plate that had been laid out in front of each of us. I poured just enough so that it would last me for three or four sticks. There were ten. The marinara sauce moved slowly, like textured blood, or something.

I saw a Lady next to the Woman I saw earlier. And I grabbed a cheese stick. I dipped it in the marinara so that it dripped when I brought it up, and bit into it. I could feel the fried goodness seeping into the cracks between my teeth. The Lady was connected to the Woman; I'll explain this later. I knew her too, both of them were two important shatterpoints in my life, like hairline fractures running down my spine.

The Lady, I met first. We didn't speak anymore. Billy and I barely spoke anymore. The Lady and I didn't speak anymore. But for a while we were in love. People told us we were crazy to say we were in love. There was nothing special we shared, she and I. Nothing unique to say, "Yea, we have that for ourselves, no one will take that away." There was nothing that both of us could say, "I wouldn't have done it," or, "I couldn't do it," or, "It wouldn't be the same," without her. And so on.

After a while I hung up on her and she didn't call back. It was a symbol of my susceptibility to ordinary human error. I thought I was in love. I looked at her through the glass and noticed that she wore tight, form-fitting jeans. She'd never worn tight jeans, because they made her look attractive. I looked down and lit a cigarette. Then looked up and saw myself in the glass, but when I pulled the smoke in, and the cherry lit up excitedly, I focused on her again. She wore a lavender tank top, and tan skin. She must have been out for hours at a country near the equator. Almost burnt, but not quite. Her bright blond hair came down just above her shoulders, and it parted to the side.

Ernest talked incessantly about some new chick he had his eye on.

It was pouring outside, and I could feel the hairline fractures in my spine getting longer.

I had my eye on the Woman now. She was getting ready to leave. It seemed to me she was always getting ready to leave. Even when she just arrived somewhere, she had everything an arm's length away, ready to fly the f*** out. She was always getting ready to leave. But I'll talk more about this later.

She will kill me before this night is over.

Why didn't Bill and I speak anymore, I often ask myself. The truth of the matter is I can't give myself a straight answer, one that will satisfy the void he's left. We'd been friends since the third grade. He was the one person I knew would never stab me in the back. If there was one person I wanted covering me in a paintball game, it was he. It's funny how, one, or two, or three c***s can change a friendship so drastically.

There came a point when he was established to be the better man, one too many times. There came a time when our friendship was tested, and we both folded. There was more we both could have done. There was more we both didn't do.

There came a point when I passed him in the hall, and before I noticed I had passed him, he was gone. I felt as if a weight had been lifted, and another was added at the same time. I felt personally responsible for putting out the cigarette of our friendship at that moment, but eventually it got easier. Now it's just comfortable. It's a norm that we've both come to accept. Now, we're strangers. A decade's worth of friendship, gone to shit.

I put out my cigarette, when it got to the point where my throat burned from the fire. The cigarette is the ultimate symbol of man's superiority to nature. It's proof that God put us on this Earth to rape and pillage. The cigarette, stripped away of all connotations and associations, at its heart, is controlled fire. It is smoke we breathe in and out, controlled, the way one controls a machine. Human beings have learned to control the fire machine. Prometheus is smiling somewhere, in the midst of having his liver eaten.

The Woman put on a blue overcoat. It gave her a mysterious look, and a more voluptuous aura, if that was possible. She laid her money on the table and walked out, leaving her friend there, her friend didn't matter.

I could hear her high-heeled shoes click-clack out from where Ernest and I were sitting.

"Are you even listening to me?"

Ernest got mad when I didn't listen to him, he got even madder when I interrupted him.

"No, dude, I'll be back, I have to shit."

I slid out of my booth, and walked past Ernest, towards the exit, the opposite way of the bathrooms. I walked quickly, dodging a server that was coming my way, balancing 5 plates on both arms. I smelled tobacco with every breath I took. I just saw her walk out, and I grabbed a sucker, for later. I passed the host, which looked at me like I was a dine-and-ditcher, and I reassured him, "I'll be right back."

I pushed the door open and I saw the woman looking right into my soul. I noticed the sunglasses she wore on her head, for the first time, in the rain.

It was pouring outside. The rain felt heavy and thick. It came down straight. The way I think of spaghetti as straight, and ricocheted wildly off her sunglasses, whilst it ran through her long black wavy hair. She had been standing out in the rain for less than 2 minutes, but she looked as if she had walked out of a pool 2 seconds ago. The rain made it hard to see through my glasses, but her figure was unscathed.

"Do you really think we could have worked out?" She had to shout over the rain. It felt like a movie. It felt like the world was slowing to a halt. If I tried, at that moment, I could have counted the raindrops in the air. I could have stopped them from falling. A car drove through us, and I moved closer to her, to the point where she could feel my ashtray breath on her face.

"It's pretty nice to think that we could have been something beautiful."
I was reminded of Casablanca for a split-second. I heard a car hissing behind me, and I felt the light from the car lamps hitting our figures, and making shadows.

They were kissing.

There is something you have to understand about this Woman, Casablanca, and I. We loved each other in Paris. Then when we came back home, we drifted apart. Part of both us wanted to hold each other in the rain, for the rest of our lives, and the other part of both of us just wanted to keep the magic we found in Paris.

I once had an Asian friend, he tried to smoke a breadstick at the restaurant we were standing out of, in the pouring rain. He said it tasted like fireworks.

I pulled away from this Woman, and at first she looked at me like she wanted to cry for those nights in Paris again. Then her face changed, and I saw his reflection in her sunglasses.

The water sped up, and was now hitting us like little knives. It was pouring. The rain made it difficult to tell whether I was crying for this Woman or not. I'd never cried for a girl before, when I wasn't drunk. At some point, every man should cry for a girl he can't have. It'll keep him… sober, to a point.

She caressed my face with her wet left hand, although it was wet, I could still feel her warmth, her gentle hand leading my soul to salvation.

She looked at me and said, "Smile, man, smile."

I almost heard the controlled explosion, a symbol of our destiny to rape and pillage.

I almost felt it, but it just felt…warm.

It felt warm, like our first kiss in Paris. Ernest heard it inside, and on the floor, I heard her high heels click-clack away. The rain washed the blood into my mouth, and I wondered what it would be like to drown in your own blood.

I thought of how I always thought my life would end with smoking.

My first blowjob came to mind.

Ernest Hemingway should write a book on me, I thought. But he's dead isn't he?