An Amber Night

Jim Prescott sat alone at the bar, staring into his glass, nearly drained of the rich, amber liquid. He picked it up, swirled it around momentarily, then drained it. He motioned to the bartender for another. He sat waiting, wanting nothing more than to drown out his thoughts and feelings. He wanted to escape. Though the dive was plenty full of other patrons for a Wednesday, Jim felt isolated, alone. This was good, he thought to himself, this was right. He should be alone, cast out to sea, and stranded on an island made of sand whose grains were his mistakes. He chuckled at that, nearly guffawed in fact, thinking about how the island would be boulders instead of the fine sand you’d expect amidst turbulent seas.

“Did I miss the joke?” A voice interrupted his daydream.

“Huh?” Jim responded.

“You were just having a nice chuckle, and I figure since there ain’t no one else around you must have told a funny joke I missed.” The stranger said.

The interruption brought Jim back to attention and only when he began to nearly taste the smells of cigarette smoke, spilled beer, and sweat did he realize he was staring at the stranger, his mouth agape. He closed it. The bar patron wore plain jeans and an off-green t-shirt that was as simple as the man himself. Small tufts of auburn hair stuck out from under a taupe cap that sported a cartoon beaver wearing its own red cap. This seemed his only defining feature and Jim thought if he removed the cap, this is the guy that would show up in the dictionary under the word “man”.

“Mind if I take a seat?” the stranger asked.

“Uh, sure I guess,” Jim said.

The man nodded and did so. The bartender brought Jim his straight bourbon.

“That one is on me and I’ll have the same, sweetheart.” The man said to the bartender, sporting a too-wide smile that revealed yellowing teeth that, aside from their color, seemed immaculate.

“You call me sweetheart again, and you’ll be wearing the drink. Now let’s try that order again with a lot less misogyny, mister.” The bartender replied. Jim nearly smiled at this. The absolute incredulity of the interaction amused him.

“Shoot, I’m sorry ma’am, I didn’t mean offense. May I please pick up this man’s drink and get one of my own if it isn’t too much of a bother?” the man said.

Jim had the impression the man sincerely meant this apology, as though he had been taught to speak a certain way his whole life and was still adjusting to more modern ideas.

“That’s much better. If you keep being respectful and treating me like a human being, you may just graduate from ‘ma’am’ to Becky.” She said, turning away without so much as a smile.

“Boy, a swing and a miss, huh? The name’s Frank by the way.” Frank extended his hand to Jim, and he met his grip.

“Jim.”

“Well Jim, it’s a pleasure,” Frank said. “To what or whom do I owe the pleasure of drowning our sorrows together on this auspicious evening?”

Jim eyed the man quizzically. He couldn’t quite put his finger on Frank. The whole of him felt out of place. He seemed so plain and yet something about him gave Jim the feeling of seeing a tiger in a crowded intersection. Both the tiger and the intersection were normal enough, but they were never meant for each other.

“You name it, I’m drinking to it,” Jim said.

Becky had returned with Frank’s drink. He gave her a polite thanks and stuck with ma’am and she went about tending to other patrons.

“Well, I’ll be damned if that isn’t a slight depressing, Jim. But I suppose people don’t end up in this fine establishment because of their dance parties and premium cocktails.” Frank said. Garth Brooks droned on the juke.

“You got that right.”

They raised their glasses and gave each other’s a slight tap before taking a sip. Jim felt the burn of the bourbon in the wake of the liquid, waited a moment, and tipped back the rest.

“You wanna talk about it? No better therapy than bar therapy, you know. Who knows, maybe I can help, or at least feel so bad for you I pick up another round.” Frank said.

Jim did want to talk. He felt comfortable with Frank. Maybe it was the whiskey, maybe he had finally come to a place emotionally that he didn’t care what a stranger thought of him, or perhaps it was just Frank’s nondescript appearance. Whatever the case, Jim began speaking without realizing it.

“You ever hear of Rock Bottom, Frank?”

“Sure, heard of it, maybe even visited it once. You visiting it now, Jim?”

“Visiting? I’m Rock Bottom’s best resident. The mayor of the damn place, in fact. I wake up, shower the stink off me, scrub my mouth every way imaginable to cover up the stale taste of last night’s visit to this very bar, and go to a job I hate with every ounce of my being. I do this every day, five days a week, eight to five, rinse and repeat, Frank.”

Becky arrived with another bourbon, placing the lowball on a new cocktail napkin that read, “My favorite drink is the next one.” Jim chuckled. Becky went about her business.

“So why don’t you quit, Jim? You hate it so much it’s causing you this much distress, seems you’d be better without it.” Frank said.

“So, you’ve heard of Rock Bottom, but never heard of bills, eh?”

Jim looked seriously at Frank for a moment before his face cracked into a smile and they shared a quick laugh.

“Seriously though, Jim, what’s keeping you there? Lots of jobs to pay the bills out there. Why stick around?”

“Well Frank, I’m a 42-year-old college dropout who’s been doing the same work for twenty-odd years who is also just now realizing he’s been throwing his life away for a career he hates. Not a ton of job prospects out there for lifetime salesmen that aren’t in sales. You ever come to a point in your life when you realized you were doing something just because it was expected of you, Frank?”

“Funny you should ask that question, as my career path is also somewhat… limited. We aren’t here to talk about me, though are we?”

“I suppose not, I guess I’m just looking for validation.” Jim took a sip.

“Then validation you shall receive!” Frank said, taking a sip himself. “Jim all sorts of people make late in life career changes, surely it wouldn’t be impossible for you?”

Jim’s face darkened, his gaze drowning in the sea of his glass, the sounds of the jukebox fading in the background of his mind.

“Jim? You good, buddy?”

Jim blinked and returned his attention to Frank.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just drifted off there for a second.”

“So why not look at other options? Go back to school or take a class or something?”

“A few years ago, I suppose I would have, but after Tina left, I guess I just stopped caring. I figure, why not stew in my sorrows every day until I either drink myself to death or just decide all of this,” Jim gestured vaguely with his hands, “isn’t worth it anymore.”

There was a silence for a moment. Jim was staring at the bar counter, unwilling to meet Frank’s gaze. It wasn’t every day you casually reference suicide and certainly it was even rarer to do so to someone you just met. But here it was, on the table for all to see. The ugly, fetid stench of it hung in the air around them. Jim felt disgusted for even giving voice to such a thing.

“That’s pretty heavy stuff. Tina your wife?”

Jim relaxed, realized he was holding his breath, and let it out in a single, long sigh.

“No, not my wife, my girlfriend. For nine years at that. Partner would probably be a more accurate term. We went through every up and down imaginable together. She was the only thing that made any sense to me most days. When I loved my work and life, she was right there loving it with me. When I started struggling, she was right there supporting me. I did the same thing for her. I never even conceived that I could live without her.” Jim laughed, “Hell, I guess I’m really not, am I?”

“Sounds like you two had a pretty great thing going. Why’d she leave you? The drink? You cheat or something?”

Jim shot Frank a glare before letting it slide from his face back into the wan sadness it had arisen from.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to be so blunt. You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want.” Frank said.

“No, it’s fine. I suppose there’s no real point in getting defensive about it, right? I mean, you are my bar therapist after all, and this is what I’m paying you for.” The two men laughed, clinked their glasses, and shared a sip.

“She left me over the drink, I guess. I mean that was really the root of it. When I tell you we supported each other in everything, I really mean everything. When I drank, she drank, and vice versa. We never had kids, so who did we need to be responsible for, you know? At first, it was just a couple of drinks in the evenings with dinner. That escalated to drinking throughout the evening. Then there was the first drink after work to unwind. Eventually, we woke up one day realizing we were putting away a bottle a night easy, if not more. That’s when she decided to quit, and I, of course, agreed.”

“I take it that didn’t stick for you?” Frank said, eyeing Jim’s glass.

“Proof is in the pudding, as they say.” Jim said, “But it did stick for her. It started well enough, we scaled back, drinking on weekends or on social occasions. That went decently for a month or so, but then I started having that after-work relaxer again. I just couldn’t stand coming home and not having it. Tina, however, moved to the other end of the scale. She stopped drinking on weekends entirely. When we went to a party or bar, she would order tonic water and lime to make people think she was drinking something. She said people asked fewer questions when they thought you were drinking than they did when you abstained. Isn’t that funny, Frank? Because when she told me that I realized that I do that exact thing to people.”

“We all like to be validated, Jim. It ain’t just you, you know?”

“I suppose. I just never thought much about it until then. Anyway, Tina had been able to cut off the booze completely. I wanted the same thing, or at least I told myself that every morning when I woke up with dry mouth and a hangover. By the evening though, I was reset and ready to go again. Like I said earlier, rinse and repeat.”

“So, Tina got tired of putting up with babysitting you?” Frank said. His tone was full of knowing empathy instead of judgment and Jim appreciated him even more.

“Not exactly. I think if she had just had to haul me away from bars, put me in the bed, and occasionally hold my metaphorical hair back, she would still be around today. I made it hard on her Frank. I made it hard on her like you wouldn’t believe. Every night asking her to have just one with me, or to take a sip of mine, or telling her a beer barely counted. She had worked so hard to stop herself from drinking, and I was a daily threat to that. I guess I felt guilty drinking alone. Felt like that was what made you an alcoholic or addict or whatever.”

Frank nodded. Though he wasn’t looking at Jim, Jim knew he was paying close attention to his story.

“So, one night, I come home from a day of fake smiling at customers, coworkers, and my boss, feeling like shit about myself, feeling like shit about life, and feeling like having a drink. I tell myself I’ll just have one tonight, just one and that’ll be fine, that’ll be enough.”

“But that’s just a lie we drinkers like to tell ourselves, huh?” Frank said, examining his glass.

“Truer words, Frank,” Jim said. “I have that drink, and then of course that drink decides to have a drink of its own. It spirals in the usual way and before I know it, I’ve tied one on, right and proper.”

“It didn’t stop there though, did it?”

Jim looked at Frank, who was returning his gaze, the barest hint of a gleam in his eyes. An understanding that seemed to stretch past the knowing of experience and straight into the realm of mind-reading.

“Well, if you know the story so well, why don’t you tell it?” Jim said.

“It isn’t mine to tell,” Frank said, eyes still intent on Jim.

Jim wasn’t sure what was happening, but he suddenly felt a compulsion to finish. No, not a compulsion, a need to finish. The type of need that follows baser human instincts. The type of need to run when being chased by a predator, or the need to swat at an insect that’s landed on bare skin. Jim ran and Jim swatted.

“So, I’m stumbling to the kitchen to make myself another drink, since I hadn’t passed out yet, you know? Tina asks me for a glass of diet Coke while I’m up. She must have had so much faith in me, Frank, to think that I could safely fetch two drinks while in that state. She had to have genuinely believed in me. How did I repay this apparently misplaced trust? Well by spiking her drink of course!” Jim raised his glass in a feigned celebration. He didn’t smile. “That was the end of that. Nine years of love and partnership and I lost the only good thing in my life. The only person who was constant and supportive, who never gave up on me. I lost it all because I didn’t want to drink alone. Because I couldn’t be bothered to just take her one request of me to heart. She didn’t even take a sip of the drink, didn’t have to. She could smell it before it touched her lips.”

“What’d she say?” Frank asked.

“I think that was the worst part of it all. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me, betrayal written across her face. She looked so damn sad, Frank. Up until that point, I think I was smiling. Like I was pulling a prank on her or something. Smiling and thinking, vaguely, that she would take a sip, give me a finger wag, and then we would laugh and go on drinking the night away. Instead she just… cried. She cried while she packed a bag. Cried while she called a friend to stay with. Cried when she turned and gave me one last kiss on the cheek.”

“Damn, if that ain’t a way to leave things,” Frank said.

“She didn’t say it, but I think even at that moment when I betrayed her trust, that she didn’t feel hurt or betrayed, that she felt sorry for me. She couldn’t stay and take care of me anymore, she had to choose herself over me, and I think that hurt her more than anything. Thinking back on it, I never deserved someone who cared for me that much.”

His eyes dropping to his drink, Jim realized just how thirsty he was. He tipped the glass up and let the whiskey burn its way down his throat. Becky returned and Jim politely asked for another, though at this point the interaction was nothing more than a formality between them, as they both knew he would be having another. The drink takes a drink and all that.

For a time, Jim and Frank sat in silence, or at least the inner silence one achieves while seated at the counter of a dive bar with the other regulars who are partaking in the holy sacrament. Drinking to Dionysus, hoping his blood will wash away their realities. The Olympian obliges, for a while. After some time (who knows how time passes in the mind of a drunk), it was Frank that broke the silence.

“If you could wish it all away, would you, Jim?”

The question puzzled Jim. It wasn’t so odd at face value, but as it hung in the air he realized it was the phrasing that bothered him. Sure, it was odd for a stranger to ask another if they wished to change the past. Though Jim supposed Frank was probably his closest friend at the moment, so maybe that was a moot point. No, it was asking him if he “could wish it all away…” that was the most perplexing.

“Are you asking me if I want to kill myself, Frank? Because that’s what I’m currently attempting to do with this.” Jim held up his glass.

“No, no, no, Jim. I would never want that for you. I mean, if you had one wish, just one chance to go back in the machine to change one thing, to sort of ‘rewrite’ yourself I suppose, knowing that all you’ve done since that point would be erased from the book, would you?”

Now, this was more standard bar talk and Jim settled some.

“Of course, I would, Frank. Abso-fucking-lutely I would. I would have left this job to pursue something I give a damn about instead of just looking for a paycheck. I’d take this whiskey, and every other bottle of the devil’s poison I’ve ever touched and throw them off the fucking Hoover Dam. I’d never even thought about bringing that damn bottle anywhere near Tina’s drink that night. God more than anything that’s what I’d change.” Jim’s eyes began to show the thinnest gloss of tears.

“Which one?” Frank asked.

“What?” Jim replied. The whiskey taking his ability to comprehend the conversation slowly but surely.

“Which one of those would you change? Y’know, if you had to pick one and only one?”

“What kind of question is that Frank?” Jim demanded.

“Do you remember how I told you that my career is limited? Well, I wasn’t exactly honest with you. You see, what I do ain’t really a career. It’s more of a calling, so to speak.”

The alcohol was starting to hit Jim a little harder than he anticipated. He had to focus on Frank and only Frank to make out what he was saying. Frank was grinning, but not the kind, empathetic grin he had previously shown. This grin was full of teeth and wild anticipation that Jim couldn’t understand. An animalistic display of fangs, ready to rend and shred.

“Jim, I can help you. It’s not just a coincidence I sat down next to you in this dive on this fine evening. I was sent here, just for you, to grant you a single wish.”

Even through his drunken haze, Jim was awed at the outlandishness of this statement. Why him? Why would he deserve a wish? What made him so special? Surely Frank was trying to pull one over on him. That had to be it. It was just a joke and Frank would give him a hardy laugh any minute now.

“It’s not a joke, Jim.”

This startled Jim to a pseudo-alertness. Was Frank reading his mind? No way. No way that was possible.

“What are you, some sort of genie?” Jim asked.

Frank let out that hardy laugh Jim was waiting for, but there was no good nature behind it. It was hollow, devoid of any sense of humor. That laugh held the type of apathy a person can only acquire through years of cynicism. Jim knew that from experience. This was more, though, and it scared Jim. Why should he fear the prospect of having a wish granted? Even if it were real, wouldn’t most people be thrilled?

“Jim, I said a single wish. I’m not some blue hack inside a lamp you have to find in the desert. I came to you, remember?”

“So, you’re like, a fairy godmother or something?” Jim said.

Frank laughed that awful laugh again. “Or something, Jim, or something. So, what’ll it be? Untold riches? Fame? A new career? Do you just want to have Tina back? You can have any single thing you’d like, just don’t try to play me with one of those ‘I wish I had…’ games where you list of a bunch of shit. This is a good, old-fashioned, single wish. If you can call such a thing old-fashioned.”

Jim still couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but the alcohol was starting to take him, and honestly, he didn’t see what the harm was in voicing a wish anyway. It’s not like any of what Frank said was real. He was just some asshole in some asshole bar doing asshole things to a drunk. So, Jim thought hard about what the root of all his problems was. He swam through his thoughts and memories, diving deep in the golden haze of whiskey, searching himself for what he thought would solve all of his problems. He remembered Tina,

“I wish… I wish I had pursued something meaningful instead of this shit job.” Jim said.

Frank looked at him, gave a nearly imperceptible smirk, and nodded. As Jim’s head swam deeper and deeper into the drink, he was only marginally aware that Frank had left him. He had the vaguest recollection of attempting to order another drink, but the only thing Becky had gotten him was a cab home. Jim tipped the cabby a twenty when he meant to give her a five, stumbled up the walk, made it inside the house, and fell onto the couch. Staring up at the ceiling, his vision spun round and round, completely outside of his control. He spun into the oblivion of another drunken blackout.

Jim wove in and out of small crowds of people, making conversation, explaining different pieces and what inspired them, mostly making sure everyone was in a buying mood. He had been painting for a little over a decade since he decided against taking that sales gig. He had been in sore need of money and thought sales would be the best way to get funds going. It wouldn’t be his forever job, but at least enough to pay the bills and keep a roof over his head. Hell, it may have even given him enough wiggle room for extra art supplies.

When the hiring manager gave him a call to tell him he had gotten the position and to let him know his starting salary and commission, something had nagged at him. It was a great offer to be sure, packaged together with health benefits, time off, and even 401k. Still, Jim had felt so uneasy when he received that call, he lied and told the hiring manager he had already accepted another offer with a different company. When the manager attempted to probe him further, Jim just replied that he was more than satisfied with the other offer and said thanks but no thanks. At the time, he had no clue why he would have done that. He needed the income and certainly could have been more than comfortable with what was offered. It had just been a sensation, a sort of fight-or-flight response.

Now, a decade-plus later, he had reached comfortable living and then some selling his paintings. Things weren’t easy at first, of course. An eviction from an apartment, eating ramen as though it were the only rations he had been issued in the battlefield of his art, working temp and part-time jobs here and there to fund his art supplies. One day though, he sold his first piece to someone outside of his friends or family. Then another sold during a show to a hotel manager, who followed that up with a commissioned piece for their conference venue. Now he was painting what he wanted almost exclusively. He would rent out spaces from time to time to show off his work and invite previous clients and their friends to join, as well as assorted art critics he had become acquainted with over time. Jim didn’t think he would ever be rich, but standing in this all-white room, the downlighting cast on his labors of love, he felt rich. He felt free.

He was scanning the room when a woman caught his eye. She had dark hair that hung in loose ringlets, loosely adorning her shoulders. Her pale blue eyes fixed one of his pieces. She seemed to be alone and was transfixed on the piece. He approached her to strike up a conversation.

“I see you’ve taken a liking to this one.” He said.

“It’s good. I’m not an art critic by any means, but any painting of a man in a bar that can hold someone’s attention for this long has to be good, right?” She said, never taking her eyes from the painting.

Jim laughed and the woman finally gave him a sideways glance. He course-corrected.

“My apologies, I’m so used to critical feedback from patrons who want to display how much they know about art and have something to prove to the community at large, you caught me off guard. It’s refreshing, honestly.”

She looked surprised. “You’re the artist? Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“No, no, really. I’m glad you find it intriguing. Sometimes you like something, and you don’t need to explain why you like it. You just do. I think we overcomplicate life all too often. Every now and then you just need to paint a guy at the bar.” Jim shrugged.

The woman smiled broadly, facing the painting all the while.

“Why did you call it, ‘An Amber Night’?” She asked.

“Oh that? I suppose it’s because the guy is in a dive drinking whiskey. When I first started painting it, I knew the guy wasn’t going to have just one.” Jim leaned in, and said softly,” Truth be told, I didn’t want to name it that at all. You want to know what my original name for it was?”

She gave a smirk, as though she were going to be let in on a child’s secret.

“I originally wanted to call it ‘Frank’.”

“What?” she giggled, “Why Frank?”

“No clue! The guy just sort of… looks like a Frank, I guess. But a few of my friends in the community said it was ‘uninspired’ and ‘trite’.”

They shared a laugh at this.

“I’m Jim, by the way. Your host for this evening of mediocre art and cheap champagne.” He said.

The woman smiled at him again and extended her hand, which he took in a polite shake. “I’m Tina.”

“Well Tina, want to grab a drink?”