To the Dogs or Whoever - Part II

[snooter]

In the kitchen, Andy is slumped at the table, looking greenish. His mother is making waffles, batter dripping over the edges of the iron. There are fat strawberries in a white bowl, and what must be bacon folded into a stack of paper towels, grease stains leaching through. Molly drops to a seat at the table and helps herself to orange juice - a fucking glass pitcher of orange juice, Jesus Christ. Sid stands in the doorway until everyone is staring at him.

“I should take a shower,” he says.

“Where were you?” Andy asks, glaring at him.

“We went for a run,” Molly says. She kicks Andy under the table, and he kicks her back.

“Guys!” Andy's mother says. She looks at Sid, and waves him toward the stairs with the spatula she's holding. “Help yourself to the shower,” she says. “It's all yours.”

Sid wants to stand outside the kitchen and listen to what they'll all say about him, but then again he doesn't. He goes upstairs and strips free of his borrowed clothes, realizing only when he's standing under the water that he doesn't have anything clean to put on when he gets out.

Leaving the bathroom with only the too-small towel wrapped around his waist makes him feel subject to arrest. He looks up and down the hallway, startled when he hears footsteps on the stairs and relieved when he sees that it's only Andy.

"Which way is your room?" Sid asks. Andy is grinning, but he looks deathly, his hair matted and his eyelids heavy.

"This way," he says. He puts his hands on Sid's hips and pulls him forward like they're going to make out right here in the hallway.

"You're delirious," Sid says. Andy's cheeks are flushed, hot to the touch, and he smells like maple syrup. "You're really sick, aren't you?"

"I dunno," Andy says, sniffling. "Sorry I was a jerk. Molly told me you guys bonded."

"Oh, yeah. We braided each other's hair."

Andy rolls his eyes and pulls Sid toward his room. Sid digs through their bags and dresses while Andy flops back into the bed. Normally Sid kind of likes it when Andy is all feverish and helpless, just for the excuse to be the adult while Andy plays the kid, but now he feels terrible. It's his fault Andy is sick, from the rain and the booze and the stress of last night.

"What are we doing today?" Sid asks, already starting to feel antsy.

"I think I need to sleep," Andy says. "Mom wants to go see this art exhibit in the city. You should go with her."

"Alone with your mother?" Sid scoffs. "At a museum?" His cooperation with this attempt at normal human relations will only go so far.

"Molly will go, too," Andy says. "I bribed her."

"With what?"

"Promised her she could come visit us this summer." Andy moans and rolls onto his back. His eyes are all gummy and sick-looking, and Sid wants to stay here and watch him sleep, but he knows that's not what Andy wants, and Sid owes him one.

"Fine," Sid says, and Andy smiles.

"I'll show you where the brandy is tonight," he says.

"You don't have to," Sid says, too sharply. He doesn't need to be paid off for making an effort, though, if he's honest: yes, he wants to be. He leans down to kiss Andy's forehead, and lingers there with his face hovering over Andy's, feeling like he should make some sort of formal apology for the condition he's left Andy in, but Andy looks pretty content, curled up in bed, still in his pajamas, exempt from this field trip. Andy has never been big on art, at least not the kind that hangs in museums or gets inked onto Sid's skin. Andy thinks rock formations are art. They spent three days in Arizona back in March, just wandering around looking at boulders. Sid sort of loved it, not for the rocks but for the way Andy got excited over them, and attempted to explain their intricacies, and got sunburned enough to need Sid to rub aloe on him back at the hotel.

"Have fun," Andy says as Sid heads out of the room, his chest tightening with dread. He turns back to give Andy a withering look, but he's already wrapped himself around his pillow and closed his eyes.

The rain is gone but the clouds are still hanging around, and Sid daydreams about those days of blinding sun in Arizona as they drive into the city. The streets remind him of soggy newspaper, and of first arriving here with his father, still confused about where his mother was exactly. Molly is reading from a brochure advertising the exhibit they're going to see.

"Discover splendid tapestries, painted portraits, altarpieces, stained glass, exquisite illuminated manuscripts, and monumental sculpture made to express the power and prestige of the kings of France and their court." She turns from the passenger seat and grins at Sid. "Sounds like your kind of thing."

"Sid, you really didn't have to come," Andy's mother says. She seems irritated with him, maybe because he skipped breakfast, which he's regretting now.

"No, it's okay," he says. "Sounds good." Molly snorts.

"I hope they have princess crowns," she says. "Sparkly ones."

The museum is crowded, which reminds Sid that it's Sunday. The one off day that he shares with Andy: if they were home they'd be falling back asleep after a first round of half-awake sex, and in an hour they'd either have each other again or get up to eat Toaster Strudels. Andy would want to go to some state park to look at rocks or birds or just talk Sid's ear off about how being out West in the wilderness makes him feel like a settler or a gold rusher or a cowboy. They'd have lunch at a place with decent beer and Andy would put his head on Sid's shoulder while they stared up at a ball game playing on the bar television, and Sid would get that panicked affection-in-public feeling before letting the thrill of holding public claim to Andy replace it. Back at the apartment: a nap, then the gin, the porch, the sunset, Andy in his lap, the plans for their someday backyard. Today, instead, he's filing past pictures of pale-faced royals, thinking about returning to the house and submitting to Scrabble.

"Were you raised with religion?" Molly asks when they're standing in front of a stained glass window featuring a bleeding Jesus.

"Not really," Sid says, though he was, and their church was the liquor store on the corner of Sycamore and Fifth, where his father was among the most devout parishioners. Sid preferred to worship in basements like Jimmy's, melting his mind away on dirty mattresses while the television played sitcom rerun sermons.

"We weren't raised that way, either," Molly says. "Maybe that's why Andy's all science-y. I think it would have been kind of nice, though."

"I always said you could go to church with your friends if you wanted to," Andy's mother says. Molly shrugs.

"I didn't like the going to church part so much," she says. "Just the believing part."

Sid and Andy have never really talked about this. For Andy it seems like a non-issue, and Sid's general feeling has always been that whatever order the universe may or may not have is none of his business. His personal beliefs about it aren't going to change whatever's true. He does think about his mother sometimes, and could get behind the idea that some part of her isn't just gone forever.

"Look at this," Andy's mother says when they're stopped in front of a huge tapestry that's hanging from the ceiling. "See anything familiar?"

"Huh?" Molly says. "Where?"

"Keep looking," Andy's mother says, smiling. Sid laughs when he sees what she's talking about. Toward the bottom right there's a very symmetrical little tree with a snake wrapped around its trunk, almost identical to the one on Sid's right arm, just under the sleeve of his t-shirt.

"Oh, cool," Molly says when she sees it. She puts her finger against the one on Sid's arm. "That's Adam and Eve's tree, right? With the apple? Why'd you get a tattoo of it?"

"'Cause that's whatever the girl at the shop wanted to put on me," Sid says. "They show me what they're gonna do before they start, but I always let them pick. I wouldn't know what to ask for."

"That's brave," Andy's mother says, but he's sure she means something else. Uncreative. Pointless. Fake.

"I did design one of them," he says, and he points to the back of his neck, the little skull. "Well, I mean, sort of. It's based on this t-shirt I wore all the time when I was a kid."

"I remember that t-shirt," Andy's mother says, without needing to look at the tattoo. Molly leans up onto her tiptoes to examine it.

"Oh, yeah, the skull," she says. "Cute."

Sid snorts, because cute wasn't what he'd been going for. It was the first tattoo he got, simple and small enough that Andy had no objection. Andy has a habit of tracing its outline with his finger when he's deep in thought. The feeling always makes Sid shiver a little, happily, and he does now, thinking of it.

They go to lunch at a lacy tablecloth place near the museum, and Sid is one of like three guys in the entire dining room. He gets some long looks, and wonders if the gawkers are thinking that he's too young for Andy's mother or too old for Molly. He couldn't be mistaken for a relative: they're so small, so blond, so delicately freckled. Molly's phone buzzes as the waitress is clearing their plates, and she laughs when she reads the screen.

"Got a text from Andy," she says. "He wants to know if everything's going okay."

"He worries too much," Andy's mother says.

"I'll tell him it's a complete disaster," Molly says, smirking at Sid, her thumbs poised over the little keyboard on her phone. "That you guys are fighting about politics."

"Don't," Andy's mother says, sternly. Her tone makes Sid wonder if Molly knows that Andy is the favorite. They exchange a look that tells him yes, she does.

"Andy asked us to be nice to you about a million times," Molly says. "Like usually we're these evil witches."

"Molly," Andy's mother says.

"He gets stressed about shit," Sid says. "Things, I mean. About things."

"He loves you," Molly says, cocking her head. Her mother groans.

"Quit making Sid uncomfortable," she says.

"He's not uncomfortable," Molly says, frowning. "You're not, right?"

"Uh." Sid laughs nervously. He's starting to sweat under his t-shirt. Molly is staring at him, looking wounded, like why wouldn't he want to hear that Andy loves him?

"We should go," Andy's mother says. She balls up her napkin and tosses it onto the table. "Tell your brother everything's fine. He'll get an ulcer if he doesn't hear from you."

The ride back to the house is painfully quiet at first, but then they all sort of sink into it and it becomes relaxing. Molly has the radio on Top 40, and the insipid love songs make Sid think of Andy. This happens at the club sometimes, during a boring shift, the hard-thumping music about wanting to fuck making Sid imagine Andy's heels digging into his back. Andy still listens to the mp3s that Sid emailed to him in middle school. Sid remembers when they split up in high school, the first time he downloaded something Andy would have liked and couldn't send it to him. No amount of Jimmy's product could get that out of his head.

When Sid slips back into Andy's room he's asleep again, his cell phone lying on the mattress beside him. His skin isn't as hot as it was earlier, but he still feels a little clammy when Sid bends down to kiss his face. Andy moans but doesn't wake, and Sid goes over to his desk to kill some time on the laptop. He searches "purple leaf tree" and clicks on an info page for the Purple Leaf Plum, which looks like he one he remembers from his old backyard. Apparently it grows edible fruit, something he never knew. He does remember making "poison" by squeezing the little plums into a jar, and threatening to make Andy drink it while they played some stupid game about a captured spy. He spreads his legs under the desk at the thought of their shared fondness for role play, which has taken on a whole new dimension in recent years.

Purple leaf plum is a fairly fast growing tree. Unfortunately, it also has a short lifespan - 20 years on average. Figures. If Sid counts back from the very start and doesn't subtract the hiatuses, Andy has been his captive for about sixteen years. He scrolls down the page, past watering instructions and average height. Remember the short lifespan when planning your garden.

He takes off his shoes and gets into bed with Andy, feeling defeated. Andy sighs and flops his arm across Sid's back, still mostly asleep. There's some noncommittal thunder happening outside and regular household noises from downstairs: a drawer closing, a television commercial blaring before being silenced. Sid listens to Andy breathe, and tries to keep his eyes open, to watch him sleep. Andy's eyebrows are creased, his lips parted. He looks like he's solving math problems in his dreams.

Sid dreams about trees shedding their leaves. A tiny purple tree grows on his leg, and he knows he'll die if he doesn't catch every purple leaf that falls from it, but there are so many, and they're falling so fast. When he wakes up, the thunder has grown more serious, and Andy is at the laptop, checking his email and blowing his nose.

"Feel better?" Sid asks. Lightening flicks through the clouds outside, and the power goes off for a flash, the electronics in the room reviving with an irritable thump.

"Sort of," Andy says. "I'm in the mucus phase now." His voice is thick with it, and he looks like he needs to go back to sleep. Sid pulls himself from the bed with a groan, wishing that he could stay there until morning himself, but he should probably try to be sociable. He wonders if Andy's offer to show him the location of the brandy still stands.

"Who're you talking to?" Sid asks. He stands behind Andy and rubs his shoulders, watching gchats pop onto the bottom right corner of the laptop's screen.

"Greg," Andy says. Hearing this is like having a small knife gently inserted into Sid's side. "He says the weather's great there."

"The weather's always great there. Are your plants still alive?"

"Of course. And the storm's kind of romantic, right?" Andy tilts back in his desk chair and puts his head against Sid's stomach, grinning up at him. He's trying to look seductive, maybe, but mostly he just looks like he needs another tissue. Sid leans down to press his face to Andy's cheek, hugging his shoulders.

"Your mom's mad at me," Sid says, though he knows this will just give Andy that ulcer she was worried about.

"What? No, she's not. Why?"

"I got you sick."

"You did not."

"I did. The rain, and Jimmy's fucking basement. I don't think he's cleaned it in ten years. Crawling with germs."

"Well, whatever," Andy says, almost losing the whatever in a cough. "I'm fine. Mom's making chicken soup. Sounds good, right?"

"Sure."

They go down for dinner, Andy barefoot in his sleep pants and t-shirt. It's still early, barely four thirty, but the dark of the storm makes it seem like dinnertime. Molly is lighting candles in the dining room, and Sid spots what must be the brandy on a side table, in a crystal decanter. Nobody offers him any.

"Poor thing," Andy's mother says when Andy slumps over to watch her stir the soup. "Do you need anything? I got you Gatorade and ginger ale, they're in the fridge."

"Thanks, Mom," he says. "I'm okay. Just - my throat's starting to hurt a little."

"Oh, Andy. And on your vacation."

Guiltily, Sid slips into the dining room. Molly is at the window, watching the trees whip around in the wind. He stands beside her and waits for her to make him feel better about everything, because that seems to be her role here.

"I have to go to school tomorrow," she says.

"Sucks," Sid says.

"Yeah, it does. But after we should go to Pizza Planet, you know? I haven't been in a long time."

Sid snorts. "Me either," he says. "Andy might be too sick, though."

"Then me and you could go. Please?" She tugs on his arm and he looks over at her, remembering what it was like to be sixteen and bored out of your mind. He'd at least had Andy. He remembers Andy cursing and pulling him into the hallway near the bathrooms at Pizza Planet once, lest they be spotted by his sister. Sid has no memory of her at that age, whatever age it was - eleven, twelve? - but he imagines what they must have looked like to her: grown up, appealingly disobedient, off having a good time without her. Her friends would lose their shit if they saw him pick her up after school, one inked-up arm hanging out the window of her mother's mini-van.

"Don't you have a boyfriend or anything?" he asks. He's never wanted to fuck girls, but it's not like he can't tell that guys who do must give her a lot of attention.

"No." She seems offended by the suggestion. "Boys at my school are dumb."

"Every single one of them?"

"Yes, every single one."

"Fair enough. We can go to Pizza Planet if you want. If your mom will trust me to bring you back in one piece. And if Andy doesn't, you know. Need me here."

Molly swats his arm. "You're so cute," she says.

"Quit saying that."

Bolstered by her admiration, Sid makes it through the dinner without incident. There are grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches in addition to the soup, plus another salad. Andy's voice is increasingly hoarse, but he's in good spirits, leaning against Sid's shoulder while Sid tells a story about the first apartment they lived in when they moved out to L.A.

"There was this coyote that used to come in and drink from the pool," Sid says. "I would get up when Andy left for class and go sit out on the porch, and almost every morning I'd see him. He was real timid, skinny, nervous - I don't know why I thought they were supposed to be scary or whatever. I guess I was thinking of wolves."

"We called him Roadrunner," Andy says. "He was kind of like our pet."

"I'd leave bacon and stuff out for him," Sid says. "We got in trouble for that, actually."

"Kicked out," Andy says, smiling.

"How have I never heard this story?" his mother asks. Andy laughs.

"'Cause you thought I was living in the dorms at the time," he says. "I mean, I guess technically I was. My stuff was there. Some of it."

"Well, that was three thousand dollars well spent, then," Andy's mother says. She winks, smiles, but Sid gets the impression she's actually kind of pissed. Andy goes quiet, and his mother gets up from the table, bringing her plate into the kitchen.

"Ooh, you're in trouble," Molly whispers, grinning. Andy balls up a napkin and tosses it at her.

"I didn't realize it cost that much," he says, muttering.

"I think it's really sweet," Molly says, her voice still low. Water is running in the kitchen, plates clattering into the sink. "You guys just like knew. About each other. You know? You're so lucky."

Sid and Andy look at each other. Did they know anything, that day they drove to California together? Just that it was what they wanted. Sid had been terrified, almost certain that as soon as Andy got there and met the other smart kids he'd start trying to come up with polite ways to tell Sid to go home. Three years later, part of him is still waiting for that day to come.

"Maybe when you have your house, a coyote will come drink out of your koi pond," Molly says. "Though I guess he might also eat the fish."

"You told her about the koi pond?" Andy says, grinning. Sid shifts in his seat and glances at the side table, at the brandy.

"She asked about the tattoo," he says. The fucking koi pond. Andy has already picked out what kind of rocks he wants to line it with. Special ones, from the desert. They can collect them on a weekend, when they have the pick up truck that they will of course have to buy, for rock-related activities. Andy's got an itinerary for every day of the rest of their lives, and the problem is that Sid wants it all to come true. It means too much to him, more than even Andy could understand, enough to make him feel like he's being vivisected as Molly and Andy joke about how they might coyote-proof the pond.

After dinner there is television. Sid makes an attempt to help with the dishes and is shooed away. Molly sits with a Geometry book open in her lap and stares at the TV, pinching her bottom lip with her thumb and forefinger, her eyes glazed and her expression fish-like. Andy falls asleep on Sid's shoulder, wheezing loudly near his ear.

"I'm going to take his temperature before he goes to bed," Andy's mother says after Molly has gone upstairs. She approaches with the thermometer, and Sid isn't sure what to do: hand Andy over to her? Take the thermometer and offer to do it himself? He ends up awkwardly shuffling aside while she nudges Andy awake. Andy groans and squints at his mother in confusion.

"Mom, geez," he says, but he takes the thermometer and sticks it in his mouth. The three of them are silent while it takes its reading, Sid pretending to be interested in the TV, Andy hunched miserably with the thermometer sticking out of his mouth, and his mother with her hands on her hips, her face stern and tired. The thermometer beeps and she takes it right out of Andy's mouth.

"A hundred and three," she says, shaking her head. "Not good."

"I just want to sleep," Andy says. He stands feebly and Sid gets up to help him, but his mother is there first, slinging his arm around her shoulders.

"I'll take him up," she says. "You get some rest. You'll sleep better down here, without him coughing and wheezing on you."

"Sure," Sid says. He gives Andy a look that's meant to be goodnight, love you, feel better, whatever, but Andy is too out of it to catch it, half asleep again as his mother helps him out of the room.

On the couch, in the dark, Sid watches the ceiling as the second floor of the house gradually goes quiet. The storm was brief and the rain is gone, every noise from upstairs in stark contrast to the silence of the street outside. Andy coughs, Molly calls goodnight to her mother, faucets are turned on and off. Sid can hear the last light switch when it's finally flipped off, the creak of someone's mattress, then nothing. At home, there would be traffic sounds, neighbors' doors opening and closing, music from the street. Sid would lie awake with Andy curled up under his arm, and he'd think about how he would be at work on a normal night, miserably watching people file into the club. He always feels so lucky on Sunday nights, standing guard while Andy sleeps. But maybe he's fooling himself that he's doing Andy a favor, keeping him safe. Maybe he's just got him trapped, like one of their games as kids, pinned down. He keeps hearing the number one hundred and three in his head, in Andy's mother's voice.

Just a little brandy and then he'll be able to sleep. He gets up and looks around the dark living room, his eyes fully adjusted now. He feels like he can see the house's whole history, and it's keeping him awake: Christmases and birthdays and Andy running around in that cowboy hat he used to wear, his arms full of toys.

There are two crystal glasses beside the brandy decanter, turned upside down. Sid rights one of them, takes the stopper from the decanter and pours a little, then a little more. It's not like Andy's mother is measuring it nightly. And Andy drank some, too. It's not like Sid has broken into the place. He's a fucking house guest, here.

The brandy is an immediate comfort, something transcendent compared to the single glass of wine and the shitty beer at Jimmy's house. Sid walks around the dining room, examining framed pictures in the light from the street lamp through the window, and after one circle of the room's perimeter he's back at the decanter for a refill. He never drank much in high school, preferring pot or just unfiltered rage, but as soon as they reached California he understood the comfort his old man took in the stuff. There are the things that he needs and the things he doesn't want to think about, and they're too close together, but after a few beers they can coexist without heartache.

He's laughing to himself after a few more refills, wandering around the kitchen. He eats a handful of dry roasted peanuts and some Goldfish crackers. Fish, ha - there's a particular koi pond that they want to model their imaginary one after, at a Japanese restaurant Andy loves in L.A. It's expensive, a special occasion, and Sid usually brings Andy there for his birthday. Andy always gets drunk on plum wine and talks about going to Japan, visiting temples with giant koi ponts, hundreds of fish. Sid wants to tell him that the koi tattoo was picked out by some random inker, that it doesn't mean anything, but because of Andy, now, it does.

Back to the decanter, but it's empty except for a few drops. How did that happen? And with the night still young? An antsy feeling builds low in his stomach until he's at the front door, lacing up his boots. He'll walk to the liquor store, buy their finest brandy, replace what was left in the decanter and drink the rest himself. It's a great plan. He's proud of himself, smiling. He closes the front door quietly behind him, not wanting to wake anyone. He'll be like this magical, brandy replacing elf. No one will ever know.

The streets have the quality of being not rained on well enough. They were promised a storm and given only some noise and lights and a sprinkling. It kind of pisses him off, and he aims for the puddles, stomping through them. His head feels kind of loose, not screwed on, like something he's only borrowing, but the town is like an old friend now. He remembers that fence, that tree, that sewer cover - must be the one where he first kissed Andy, yeah, that's the one. The first bar he finds is O'Shaunessey's, the Midwest suburban version of a real dive, and there's actually a live band playing covers, which makes Sid laugh. He goes to the bar and orders gin, because that's the only drink that's ever made him happy, there on that porch with Andy in lap and their stupid fake never gonna happen plans.

"Gin and tonic?" the bartender asks. She's cute, a girl, the kind of girl he'd want to fuck if he wanted to fuck girls. And why didn't he, why doesn't he? It was Andy, all Andy, his fault. He showed up and was so sweet between Sid's legs when they were kids, when they were just pretending to be the adults they wanted or didn't want to become. Andy ruined Sid for anything else, made him a slave, but Sid is the one who's going to be a secretary at best, which is funny, because he wasn't designed to belong to anybody.

The bartender is listening to something: him, talking about this? Sid laughs and orders another. The bartender's hair is that shade of orange that brown becomes when you try to make it blond. When she comes back with a fresh drink she puts her elbows on the bar and her head in her hands.

"You ever see anyone in here who looks like me?" Sid asks. He can feel how hard and drunkenly he's squinting, and it's funny. "An older guy?"

"Not really," she says.

"That's funny. My dad lives here, in this town, and he's like, an all-state champion drunk, last time I checked."

She shrugs and straightens up. "Where's that boyfriend of yours now?" she asks. "Back in California?"

Did Sid get as far as California, telling her everything? Andy once told him he should see a psychiatrist. Oh, what a fight. He laughs and pushes his glass toward her, a passive aggressive demand for a refill.

"He's sick in bed," Sid says. "My fault."

"You serious?"

"Sure. You ever feel like you're a virus that was sent to Earth to pretend like it was human?"

She smiles vaguely and backs off, maybe to get him another drink. He throws some cash on the bar, leaves. Has learned his lesson about giving up too much sensitive information.

The night is young. It always is when you're wasted, he remembers that. Andy looks at him askance if he drinks too much or wants to get some pot - like it's even a big deal in California, Jesus Christ - but, well. He had a thought process that involved Andy's judgment, and hmm. Not there anymore - but here's Oscar's, another bar, one his father went to back in the day, with poker tables. He slams in the door like he owns the place. No one seems to notice.

"What'll you have?" the bartender asks, and Sid asks for a beer, because he's not a drunk and drunks don't want beer when they could have something harder. He takes his time with it, staring at a TV that's playing baseball highlights.

"I like your tattoo," the bartender says. This one's a guy, not cute, but the kind of dude Sid would have fucked on an off night if he'd ever fucked anyone but Andy. "The dice?"

Sid looks down at his arm with curiosity - oh yeah, the dice, a whole cup full of them spilling down his right shoulder.

"My guys pick them out," he says, shouting over the music. "My tattoo guys. I don't - I don't know what it means or anything."

He says so loudly, and it's embarrassing, even, what, five drinks in? He orders another.

At some point, Bohemian Rhapsody comes on, and Sid talks about how it's the greatest song of all time with a drunk blond lady while some frat-like guys near the pool tables sing along. For an hour or so, he loves everyone in the bar. He asks more people if they know his father, and ignores their answers, launching into stories that he hasn't even told Andy. How his father left Sid alone in the house for five days when he eloped to Vegas with his second wife. How they were the greatest five days of Sid's childhood until they returned, with Hanna, who got to go along since her mother refused to leave her, and who came home with all sorts of shiny plastic shit and a suntan, smug as hell. Sid hated her. She friended him on Facebook last year! Why? He wanted to delete his profile in response, never wanted the stupid thing anyway, Andy forced him to do it, saying it might be good for networking with the meatheads at the gym who talk big about starting their own self defense studio, like that's really going to happen, and what is this world Andy lives in where you get handed three thousand dollars for your fucking dorm room that you don't even use, and that's Sid's fault, too, isn't it?

The blond lady he thought he was talking to is actually a rough looking young guy, or maybe the blond lady left hours ago, but anyway Sid needs another drink. The bartender is starting to look at him like he's on his nerves, but fuck him. He hates bartenders. They think they're so cool. Someone asks him to leave - a bouncer, oh God, hilarious - and he realizes as he walks out, laughing to himself, that he was saying that out loud, preaching the truth about bartenders.

He walks the streets for awhile, trying to remember what he meant to do out here in the first place. A liquor store - right, to replace the brandy. And maybe he'll pick up a six pack. Finish the night off right, sleep like a baby. In the morning he'll feel better. Not that he feels bad. Fuck this town, anyway, it never meant shit to him. Except that Andy was here, and is here, still, as long as his family is here some part of him will be, and Sid can't say the same, or maybe he can. He kicks a pile of leaves in someone's front yard. Where is he? A neighborhood? Fancy looking one, too. Well, he'll find the liquor store eventually. No hurry, really.

Except that when he gets there it's closed. Enraged, beginning to panic about how he'll replace the brandy before someone notices, he grabs the bars on the liquor store's front door and shakes them. Nothing happens. He's not sure what he expected. He stands there feeling worthless, his hands around the bars, and then he sees it reflected in the glass on the store's front door, across the street, behind him: a tattoo parlor, its OPEN sign still blazing. He smiles at his reflection. Perfect. Like a sign from God.

*

Part III