She shook the high-ball glass around in back-and-forth circles, swirling the brown water in tiny whirlpools. She inhaled the scent with a deep breath and thought of ice keeping the fruit warm in the winter. She placed the glass on the counter and sighed, moving her finger around the glass’s lip, gently, intimately, with reminiscence. Apple juice just isn’t quite the same as whiskey. Bourbon whiskey. But she had quit the Brown Water Society long, long ago. The seduction was still in her bones and even when she tried to play make believe with apple juice, that primeval lust grew within her like a demon child, sucking her life and displacing her soul. What could she do? She watched her phone like a teenage girl waiting for a call from the boy she first thought she loved, and thus slept with. It was dark. The phone. Like a dead street lamp at the neighborhood park. He hadn’t said he would call, but he hadn’t said he would kiss her either. Particularly since they were married, with children. Not to each other. But Eros, that pudgy ass-hat god, shoots his arrows where he wills and then it’s only the ticking of time and circumstance. He hadn’t said he would call. But hotel rooms are lonely, when you’re alone. She nearly dropped her juice drink when the phone rang out loud, bright in the silent dark room. It was her husband, calling to say good-night no doubt. So sweet. She didn’t answer. She continued to swirl the juice around in her glass and continued to watch the dark phone lie dead on the table. He hadn’t said he would call but hope is just as seductive as lust. Her keys jangled when she grabbed them, leaving her phone behind, starting the car to drive to the nearest liquor store. Enough was enough. She sped from the hotel to the store and back, not for the phone but for the Michter’s. There was a missed call when she returned. From him. No voicemail. She removed the battery from the phone, tossed it across the room and poured her first drink of bourbon in two decades. She swirled it again, and inhaled the sweet scent again, and smiled. So much better than apple juice. Even the scent felt warm. She woke late the next morning with a jarring headache behind her eyes, pain pounding again and again against them like multiple jack-hammers. She put the battery back in her phone to call her husband and apologize for missing his call, tell him she was on her way home. Her phone rang. It was him*. She sighed and poured a late morning drink. She answered and said, Hi.

* – Yes, ‘It was he’ is correct, but him makes more sense in this context. I.e. – wrong. (but it sounds/feels right)

The woman stared outside her kitchen window hand washing dishes with a day-dreaming smile on her face, lost in the ‘cross-the-street green with him and his children playing in the warm spring day in the light rain. She had watched them play and rubbed the plate for so long the blue flowery design might have rubbed away. She laughed when his three-year-old son tackled his eight-year-old daughter, rolling on the ground, little droplets of rain summersaulting off the blades of grass and their hair. He was sipping a beer and laughing the way sad fathers laugh when their children are having unadulterated fun – the sort of laugh where perhaps this time it’s ok to be purely happy: this time, time and its past-obsessed attendants don’t matter. Time and memory can’t heave their weight on his eyes. This time it’s about the brief timeless moment of his children erupting in laughter. She saw this and looked down at her hands without noticing them, smiling in some made-up nostalgic way, remembering a past that wasn’t hers – only one she wished were. She stood there for some time washing the same plate, listening to Norah Jones Pandora, day dreaming about how she thought life might be. His daughter fell on the sidewalk and skinned her knee. He kissed it, smiled and rubbed her head. The woman was flushed with emotion, tears damned up in her eyes. She stopped washing the plate, for a moment. She heard a faint sound in the background. She heard her name, turned to see her husband home early from work. She removed her hand from the plate, smiled at her husband and said, Hey honey; how was your day? Her husband kissed her on the cheek and said, Great – can I help? He took the dish from her hand and finished washing the rest himself.

In the late summer of that year* the honeysuckle was strong, filling the light-wind air with its blessing and bliss. The bourbon was cheap but sweet matching the taste of the honey summer air. I inhaled a barrel of that honey air and smiled at the fireflies playing hide-and-seek with each other and the neighborhood children. The children carried small mason jars with breathing holes punched in the top with an ice-pick, still useful for some things besides murder it seems. They laughed as they chased the flying lamps. A true smile is as slippery and fleeting as any truth, there and gone – like lightening. And in that flash truth burns and entices like a mythological Siren. I tried to smile as true and long as I could, to smile with my eyes, to smile with my cheeks, to smile with my lips, to smile with my soul. Even with a late summer scene like a multi-dimensional painting, honeysuckle and cicadas, fireflies and giggling children, green grass damp with a late afternoon sprinkle, dogs without leashes, streets with people not cars, BBQ and grills competing with the honeysuckle and jasmine, a lantern-yellow low rising super moon – even then a smile can only be as true as a recurring dream. She must have seen the sentimental look in my wet eyes as she looked at me with a sardonic smile of her own and said, I think you’ve had enough bourbon. It was as if she had snatched all of the jars of fireflies from the hands of the children and smashed them in the street, stomping on the cicadas, stomping on the children’s joy, throwing water on the grills. Truth left me like a tired prostitute having been paid in one dollar bills and quarters. I stared her in the eyes for for a few seconds of scorn and anger before saying, You’re probably right. I finished my drink, turned away from her, walked over to the table and poured another, giving a toast toward her before taking the next pull from the red cup. It was indeed cheap but sweet. And true.

* – For those who may notice, yes this is the beginning of Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms. One of my writing journals is a Hemingway journal, whose cover is the original first draft of the first chapter to that book. When I find myself wanting to write but not really having anything popping into my head, I will start with those words – something usually follows. Nothing brilliant mind you, but something…

The old man asked the bartender if he could keep each shot glass he drank in front of him, separate glass for each shot – so he could keep count. The bar was mostly empty at this time, early afternoon, so she said, Why not. He counted eight glasses, he was pretty sure. This wasn’t his first bar of the day if we’re being honest. He said, One more please. She asked him to count the glasses. He counted them and saw eight again but for some reason he blurted out ten, joking but not really trying to. She shook her head and said, No. He leaned his head back and laughed. He said, No no no, there were really eight; his mouth had disobeyed his brain. She asked why that might be. He said, Because Venus is in Aquarius. She laughed and shook her head differently this time. He watched with reminiscing eyes her long blond hair sway as she laughed. Then he said, But no really; there are eight, that’s what I meant to say; and isn’t eight such a meaningful number? She looked at him, into his red wet eyes and said, Let me tell you a secret. His eyes lit up like a child’s at the pool when given a free popsicle and he leaned in to get closer to her voice. She whispered, There aren’t eight glasses; there are five. He frowned, confused and broken, staring at the glasses in a strained attempt to prove her sober wrong. He could count eight only, over and over. She rolled her eyes and poured one more, putting it next to his calloused, thick old hands and said, This is it. He said, It must be eight; it must – eight years ago today my wife died; it simply must be eight. She called Uber and he went to the bathroom, bumping into the jukebox on his way, not bothering to look around and see if anyone saw him. She added two dirty shot glasses to his others. He returned and immediately recounted. He said in a voice having grown louder over the past few minutes, I’m telling you there are eight dammit! She counted and said, You know what; you’re right; I was mistaken. He let out a long breath of relief, slunched his shoulders in his chair and finished the last drink with a glazy smile on his face.

The day was damp but rainless. Window blinds were closed. The birds stayed in the trees and sang faint songs to a slothy world. The poor homeless snails baked like bread too long in the oven, hard as petrified wood. Backyard inflatable pools limped, wilted in the cloudless morning white sun, splashes once laughter mere evaporated memories, pined-for days of mis-told stories. The anthill is still, like an abandoned factory. His children peek through the window shades staring at the fire hydrant, wishing, longing that the cap would fail, water spewing from the underground reservoir like in a stereotypical movie where they would laugh with life-gushing eyes stomping and jumping around in the unbridled stream of water. Their faces were indeed long and blue like an early Picasso, forlorn – flipped over smiles and cratered eyes. The leaves drooped from the trees like wet toilet paper. The hydrangea were not bright red but a sun-faded pinkish color. The trees and flowers both looked to all the world as if they just wanted to lean over and take a quick nap. Or long if they could get away with it. He walked outside to sit in his wooden chair, drink his lemonade and look forward to the evening when the same ritual would be performed but with bourbon. It was 8am and the southern heat was strong with the world. He watched morning and evening for the return of his wife, who understandably left – many full moons ago. Being married to a functioning drunk like him wears on you like endless water drops on the forehead. They all, person and creature alike, looked forward to the friendlier days they once all shared.

The scent of fresh cut grass enchants the world in all its nosy glory. It just pissed him off, thinking of his childhood when he had to cut two acres of thick bahiagrass with a push-mower, raising it up and slowly lowering it down for each foot of grass he needed to cut – so the mower wouldn’t die. His parents divorced couple of years prior and his ten-year-old little self bore the torturing burden of cutting all that f-ing V-shaped grass. There was no satisfaction at the end of the day’s cutting. Not the clean edged look and not the sweet fresh smell. He hated his father for that. Everyone in the world (at least the ones he knew, and isn’t that basically everyone…in a self-limited epistemology) loved that scent except him, and his father had ripped that satisfaction from him like a scorned viper. He shook his head at that memory, like a dog shaking lake water from his hair, and looked over at her as she sat looking over the grassy knoll of the amphitheatre nodding her head to the music, and he smiled. Some things had not been stolen. She looked at him with nostalgic smiling eyes on her southern face and said, “Oh do you smell that freshly sheared grass? Isn’t it just wonderful?” Ignoring the word sheared he said, without hesitation and beaming with the truest smile he knew, “It’s amazing. I love the smell of fresh cut grass.”