“Yes, very serious.”
While I was sitting there a giant Scottish man sat next to me. He tapped me on my shoulder and said, “I'm Liam.”
I looked at him confused and said, “I'm Benny Baradat.”
Liam was a large Scottish man about 6–5 and 220 pounds. His skin was pale and reddish. His hair was short and combed with precision. He had grown up in Scotland and gone to college there. His parents sent him to America for his master’s degree in computer science.
Liam said, “I'm Lyndi and Petra's friend.”
“Oh, they told me about you.”
“Oh, what did they say?”
Lyndi talked about how awesome he was and Petra said he was dumb, so I said, “Oh, they said there was a Scottish guy they hung out with.”
“Yeah, that's me. Are you fucking Petra?”
“Am I what?”
“Fucking Petra?”
I did not want to talk to the giant Scottish man. I went to New York City to get my picture taken and be interviewed, not to talk to giant red blotchy Scottish men, I said, “What do you do?”
“I work for Citibank. I'm the president of their IT department.” He said it with an extreme sense of pride like he had done the right thing in life. He had made the right choices and lived up to his obligations. He said it not knowing that middle-America had lost total respect for anything or anyone involved in the banking industry. The only people who still had respect for such people were silly girls with lawyer dads who got turned on by foreign accents like Lyndi Wood.
“I work at a steak house.”
The Scottish man looked at me like I was a fucking dumbass and said, “Lyndi said you got your picture taken for a pretty big magazine.”
“Yes, they took my picture.”
He moved in close and smiled like we were buddies, like two guys hanging out watching soccer and said, “So tell me the truth, did you fuck Petra?”
“I slept next to her in bed and she held me while I cried and talked about my mother.”
The Scottish man said, “Oh, that's strange.”
“That's how I roll,” I said.
The Scottish man got up and went somewhere else that was not near me.
I looked at Jason and said, “Why the fuck would a European come here? They have national health care and free college and all kinds of good shit.”
“I think they come here for our money.”
“Our money was loaned, it's leveraged. It isn't real money.”
“Nobody cares if the money is real or not. I don't care.”
“Neither do I. As long as I'm holding a bunch of twenties and a couple of fifties. I don't care if there is any truth to it. I just wanna spend it.” I said, “I had a credit card when I was 20, it was for 7,000 dollars. I don't know why they gave it to me. I think because my parents made a good amount. I spent 5,000 of it in three months. I didn't care. It just felt so good to be buying things. It feels so good to just get things you want.”
“Hu is giving me 1,500 for my poetry book.”
“That sounds good, what you gonna buy?”
“A new snow board.”
“I've never snowboarded. There's nowhere to snowboard for several hundred miles of where I live.”
I got up and looked for Desmond again. Still there was no Desmond. Petra walked up to me and said, “Are you having a good time?” I looked at her and thought she was pretty, after I was done thinking about how pretty she was standing there, I said, “The music is really loud and nothing is happening.”
She said, “Both of those statements are true.”
“There's some giant Scottish man here that keeps asking me if I've fucked you.”
“That Scottish bastard.”
“I told him we didn't.”
“It's none of his business. He's supposed to be fucking Lyndi Wood.”
“I don't know. We should go soon. Desmond isn't here. Hu and John and Jason aren't talking. They are all sitting there staring.”
“I'll finish my drink and we'll go.”
Twenty Two
We came out of the club and Hu introduced me to someone he called Brad. He was a medium sized Asian man. He looked strong and jolly. I didn't understand the jolly. He wore glasses and looked like a good guy. I shook his hand and said, “Hello Brad.”
He said, “My name isn't Brad.”
“Hu says your name is Brad.”
“No, it's Andrew.”
“No, you're fucking with me. Your name is Brad.”
“No, seriously it's not. My name is Andrew.”
I looked at Hu and said, “You lied to me. His name is Andrew.”
Andrew or Brad said, “Yeah, that's my name.”
“I'm very sorry, can you ever forgive me,” I said laughing. I was drunk and not taking anything serious.
“Yeah, okay.”
Andrew seemed really happy. I was stunned by his smiling. He seemed to be smiling and looked fresh-faced and American. I looked at Hu Chin and thought he looks Asian, all miserable sad and hardworking. Andrew looked happy and hardworking like a protestant. I wondered if Andrew was a protestant. So I said out loud because I was drunk and didn't care about anything, “Are you a protestant, Andrew?”
Andrew looked at me like I was nuts. I assume he was contemplating how huge of a racist I was or something.
He said, “Yeah so. Asians can't be Protestants?”
“I don't know. I guess so.”
“I don't go to church or anything, why would you ask that?”
“I don't know, I'm drunk.”
He looked at me like I was a huge asshole…
Andrew said to me, “Asians aren't supposed to smile?”
“Asians are usually miserable people, getting up every day, sticking to their morals and the work.”
Hu Chin couldn't stop laughing. He sat on the stoop laughing hysterically.
Andrew told Hu about a restaurant we should go to. Andrew really liked restaurants and literature. Hu told me that one day Andrew would be the next James Wood. He was not the kind of man that sat around depressed or drinking himself into a stupor. He was the kind of person that while reading he would fill a notebook with notes on the text, research things he found in the text, read biographies and had a passion for finding out what the author meant. Andrew had a brain for literary criticism, he was a good dude, and we all had to find our place in the great republic of literature.
John, Jason, Petra and Lyndi Wood joined us outside. John Walters said he had to go. John said in a drunken tired voice, “My girlfriend wants to rub my balls. She likes my balls.”
I gave John a hug and he walked down the street in another direction.
Everyone was pretty drunk. We walked around with the snow falling and no one caring about anything. We were looking for an Asian restaurant to eat our final meal together. Jason was leaving on a plane and I was leaving on a bus the next day.
We found an Asian restaurant that was still open. We entered it. They looked pissed because they all wanted to leave and go somewhere else besides work. We fucked up their lives. They sat us down on the second floor. We were loud and acting drunk. I kept screaming at Lyndi Wood, “Look up irony on your phone?”
Lyndi Wood would yell back, “I just did.”
Jason would yell, “Do it again!”
I yelled at Petra, “I'm not eating any sea weed, you eat the sea weed.”
She yelled at Hu Chin, “Umami.”
“What the fuck is that?” Hu Chin said.
“It's a new taste,” Petra said.
Lyndi Wood yelled at me, “Irony is a discordance between what is said and what is meant.”
“What the fuck is a discordance, a discrepancy?”
“There's dramatic irony, which means that the characters don't get it, but the audience understands it.”
Jason yelled, “The audience understands nothing.”
Hu Chin yelled at Petra, “I don't believe there is any taste called umami, you're making shit up.”