He shrugs and wipes a glass and watches a baseball game on TV.
It’s been nine days since I lost Siena. I’ve been sober for a grand total of a few hours, mostly in the mornings. But that doesn’t last long. I’ve got a mountain of vodka bottles beneath my bed, and I suspect I’ll die beneath their bulk someday soon.
This place is a real dive. There’s cigarette smoke in the air like a haze even though smoking indoors hasn’t been legal in years. I don’t mind it at all. I welcome the extra poison in my body. Regulars sit in small groups and pound back beers—real gritty guys, landscapers and construction workers, men with dirty, callused hands and a reason to get hammered after a long day of exhausting physical labor. I don’t fit in with them, but that’s the point.
I catch the eye of a particularly drunk guy. He’s got a thick beard, a fleshy face, and a big gut. He’s with a few buddies and they’re attacking a pitcher of cheap beer like its water. He looks back and frowns a few times, and I keep on staring at him as I sip my fourth or fifth double vodka. I’m drunk, but I’m not blackout wasted—yet. I’m composed when he finally comes over.
“What the fuck do you keep staring at me for?” he asks as he leans against the bar. He flags down the bartender and asks for another pitcher as he glances at me sideways.
“You look like you got a good right hook.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “I’m not interested in a fight, man. So just leave me alone.”
“I’ll pay you fifty bucks to punch me in the face.”
He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Which I have.
“I’m not getting involved in your weird sexual fantasy.”
“A hundred. Punch me in the face as hard as you can. Two hundred if you can knock me out. Three hundred if you keep going until I bleed.”
“You’re not joking.”
“Four hundred. Knock out a tooth.” I grin at him. Showing my teeth.
The bartender returns with his pitcher. The guy takes it and leaves some cash.
“You’re fucking insane. Stop looking at me.” He walks away, shaking his head.
I sigh and gesture for another vodka. The guys last night were more accommodating. They negotiated up to a thousand and they beat the shit out of me with some reasonable enthusiasm. I’m still bruised, but I’m not hurt enough. The pain was only temporary. It didn’t clear me for very long, and I already crave more.
Siena’s face flashes through my brain. I grimace and drink. This is why I pay people to beat my ass. Every time I stop and let my mind wander, she comes back, floating like a ghost. Haunting me, killing me. Showing me what I can’t have, what I’ll never have.
Real peace. Real happiness.
I haven’t worked in days. I don’t do much more than drink and pay people to hurt me. Feliks and Jasha both tried to talk some sense into me, but that didn’t work. Galina begged me to stop. Emmie cried and sat on my bed and refused to leave me alone until I finally gave up trying to convince her to go away and went out and got hammered and let three plumbers kick me in the ribs until I spit blood.
Siena bending over in my bathroom as she pulls on a pair of panties and giving me that cute shy smile.
I wish I could cut open my brain and take that image from my skull. That and all the others. The nights we spent fucking. The days we spent laughing and reading together. The hate that turned to something so much more.
Now I’m a wreck, and I don’t think there’s a way back.
I sigh and finish my drink. I gesture for another. I hope some new guys come in soon. I have two thousand in cash and I want someone to punch me until I can’t think about anything but agony.
I’ll keep doing it until Siena is beaten from my skull or I’m dead.
A shape appears at my elbow. The bearded guy, ready to make some money? I turn and I’m about to offer him a thousand, but the words die on my tongue.
It’s my mother.
She’s wearing black slacks and a black sweater. Her hair’s tied back in a twist, and she’s scowling around the bar like she’s about to get rabies just sitting in this stinkhole. I don’t know how she found me, and I suddenly desperately wish I was anywhere else in the world. My mother doesn’t enter places like this, and I feel guilty for making her step foot through that door.
“What are you doing in here, Maxim?”
“Drinking,” I grunt at her. The bartender returns with my vodka. Mom frowns at my drink and asks for one of her own. The bartender shrugs, pours, and pushes it over.