The vodka on the table was unopened, paper seal unbroken across the cap.
There were no glasses, ice, mixer.
Max sat down.
Broadie’s eyes hadn’t moved from down, not even when Max walked in.
The eyes were clear-no booze, no tears- but were staring down at the edge of the table as though it might do something; dance, bite, open the vodka for Broadie.
“When I was a kid my parents got arrested outside a motel in Iowa, somewhere.” Broadie said.
Max said “ Your dad was always getting arrested,must have been tough.”
“Shutup,” Broadie said. “Not my dad. So what about him. My parents. My mom. Both of ‘em.”
“What did they do?” Max asked.
“Shutup. My dad was beating my mom for losing all their money at this scuzzy blind pig trucker casino…so shady they’d let people bring a kid in there. It was a couple trailers… behind a fuel storage joint.Something like that. Big round tanks o’ somethin’. When the cop got one set of handcuffs on my dad, my mom tripped the cop, from behind. They took her too.”
“What did they do with you?”
Broadie belched, and for a second looked like he was gonna sob.
“Shut the…” he started after the belch. “That’s part of the story. They just took ‘em in, didn’t question whether they had kids. Maybe the cops thought they were both too ugly to fuck…I dunno. I was playing by the pool of this dump, they just left me.”
“Scary,” Max said.
“Shutup. No. Not really. I was too young to know the word, but…liberating.”
Max just nodded, finally having made the decision to not interrupt. He stared at the vodka. He couldn’t let Broadie drink the vodka. Max looked at the unbroken seal. It was beautiful to him, comforting.
“Sometime after the sun went down I got hungry. That sucked. I was too young to know how to beg. Underneath the balcony of the motel was a snack machine. Chips mostly, hanging on these hooks. I stood there for hours like it was a fucking TV show.”
Broadie went silent and Max let him be.
Holly’s fish tank was gone.
If her fish tank was gone it was serious.
Max’s pulse bumped like he had done a line of shitty coke off the corner of a license.
The fish tank was really, really serious.
“A man came along…asked if I wanted some chips. I had heard my dad talking enough that I wondered if the guy meant more than that, but I said yessir before I could stop myself.
The guy pulled out a Crown Royal bag. Even at 11 I knew what it was. Full of change. Guy gave me 8 quarters, the chips were a buck twenty-five. Sour cream and onion. Fucking F-4 I think it was. Swear to Keith Richards. F-4. Guy walked away, I pressed F-4. Sour fucking cream and onion. The machine whirs and the chips get caught on the hook. They don’t fall all the way.”
Broadie’s lower lip trembled.
Max wanted the young Broadie to get the chips.
“I shook that machine for hours. I musta weighed about 95 pounds and I shook that damn thing. I remember the sweat stains on my Cincinnati Reds t-shirt. Kept thinking them chips had to fall eventually, right?”
Broadie reached for the vodka, his right thumbnail scratching at the label.
Max felt like he was at the hospital, hooked up to electric shit, having a stress test on a treadmill.
“I couldn’t make her love me, Max. She liked me, she kinda cared about me, but she never loved me. I shook that machine as hard as I could. But I couldn’t make the chips fall.”
Broadie lifted the bottle from the table.
Max lifted his arms in the air like he was yawning, leaned and slapped the bottle out of Broadie’s hand. It bounced once on the table then landed on the rug and didn’t break.
Max walked over and picked up the bottle. Held it tighter than anything he had ever held.
The rug had tropical fish on it. Maybe Holly would come back.
Max sat back down holding the bottle. He’d break it over his own head before he’d let Broadie drink it.
He stared at Broadie, waiting for Broadie to ask him for the bottle.
Broadie was silent.
Max cradled the bottle in his lap, his right hand clenched on it.
Broadie’s torso heaved with heavy breaths. The silence lingered.
Max was switching to his left hand to give his right a rest when Broadie said “I wanted them chips so bad.”
Max wanted to say “I know,” but he shutup, his thumb rubbing the unbroken seal of the vodka.
***
My new book is available on Amazon: 62 short stories with heart and grit and passion and realism.
Pick up your copy and a copy for a friend by clicking HERE.
JIMMY, THANK YOU FOR THE NEW BOOK. LOVE MICHAEL
DUDE!
I don't even drink and I felt that one!
Broadie's got a good friend in Max.