Drunken Love by Que Son (to read list TXT) 📖

brought them together as lovers but not as husband and wife, a fate she was now willing to accept. She still had a sister back in the old country and whenever she called and talked to the sister, she always asked for news about Adam, and every time, the answer was the same: he was all right. She did not ask further and no further information about him was given. But a slow fire had been burning in her heart all these years, and it was gathering intensity: she wanted to know more about Adam; and if possible, to see him again. It was a longing that only she knew.

 

Years passed, the children grew up, the apartment became crowded. Eve and David bought a big house and worked hard to pay it off. In lonely moments, Eve sat in the garden and thought about Adam, then David would join her and smoke a cigarette with her. But he did not know and would not never guess what was going on in her mind.

 

One day she went back to Viet Nam, because she Adam was there at the time and she wanted to find him--but failed. He was one step ahead of her. After two weeks in the country, she returned to the US disappointed.

 

A gust of cold wind hits Shakespeare and wakes him up from his fantasy. The last image he conjures up in his mind is that of the characters missing a chance to see each other; no, not one chance, but two. And Shakespeare feels sick. Very sick. Not only because of the cold, but of hunger. He has not eaten anything since early evening except for some peanuts at that tavern in Brooklyn. He feels weak and the cold makes him feel even weaker. I got to get out of the cold, he says to himself, and find something to eat. He steps out of the doorway and walks toward Times Square, thinking that he might find food there. The streets are deserted. There is no traffic. It is like a ghost town at the end of time, the apocalypse. But in the distance through the small space between the tall buildings, he sees lights, color neon lights that stand out in the darkness. Pushing his frail frame against the winds and toward the lights, Shakespeare is afraid that with this cold, he might collapse because of hunger. When he gets to Seventh Avenue he finds the area empty, the only people he sees are the cleaning crews who are sweeping up after the party. The New Year Celebration has ended and everyone was gone.

 

Shakespeare walks along the avenue between the tumbled barricades and the confetti and the cans and bottles and all sorts of trash and he looks around hoping to find a restaurant. As he staggers, he sees no store open, not even McDonald’s. All is closed. And when he looks up at the ticker tape, it is near four o’clock. In another two hours, it will be first light of the first day of another year. Walking toward 42nd Street, Shakespeare gives up hope of finding food, and the sickness in his mind and in his stomach intensifies. He walks to the subway and into the tunnel, then sits on a bench, waiting for the train. He is going back to his hole in Brooklyn, not to sleep, but to find food. There might be something in the refrigerator. And he wants to stay out of the cold, and to continue with the story. He wants to finish the story before daybreak, before going to sleep.

 

Shakespeare sees no one around him. The only signs of life other than himself are the rats running on the tracks. He feels as if he is going to faint, things around him start to spin and he sees approaching darkness. Shakespeare pinches himself hard on his own arms, and the pain somehow clears up some of the cloudiness in his mind and keeps him conscious. Then from the distance, a man, looking like a homeless person, appears and comes near him and then stands in front of him. The man has a face and out of the face comes an intense, inquiring look.

 

"Hey, are you ok? Hey, you! You!" The man said and touched Shakespeare on the shoulders.

 

"Have you got any food?" Shakespeare lifts his chin, looks at the man and whispers.

 

The man, after hesitating for a few seconds, reaches into his inside coat pocket and takes out a sandwich wrapped in foil paper.

 

"Here," he says, and hands the food to Shakespeare who immediately unwraps the sandwich and devours it in no more than three bites.

 

"You’re really hungry," the man says.

 

Shakespeare feels a little better after eating, and he takes out a five dollar bill and gives it to the man.

 

"Thanks," he says. And the man takes the bill and smiles brightly.

 

"This will help, where you going?" The man says.

 

"Home," Shakespeare answers.

 

"You were at the party?"

 

"No."

 

Then in the distance, the noise of a coming train. The two men fall silent and look into the dark tunnel and see a headlight that gets brighter and brighter. The train stops and the doors open and Shakespeare steps in after saying thanks again to the stranger who remains on the platform. Shakespeare again finds himself alone. He sits, closes his eyes and again, the story comes back. Shakespeare feels that he has reached the critical point of the story, because at this juncture in the timeline, it would be gross injustice if the characters don’t meet. He must create conditions for them to see one another. He cannot let them run in opposite directions anymore. The separation had been long enough. Enough of missing and longing to see each other. And time was not waiting. Both were getting older, much older, they were in their early forties now, and had not seen each other for almost 27 years. The injustice of their situation is even more profound when Shakespeare finds that not a day went by in the last 27 years that they did not think about each other, no matter where they were and in what circumstances. Shakespeare wants them to meet, and he is preparing to do so. But how?

 

It would be at least an hour before the train gets to his home station, so Shakespeare closes his eyes and imagines again:

 

It was the summer of 2004. Adam had quitted his job at a New York hospital and had been unemployed for almost two years. He was living on his savings. He did not have to pay rent because there was a lawsuit between him, Jane and the landlord. The landlord was bringing them to court on the ground that they were illegal tenants at the apartment. Jane inherited the apartment from her brother and had been living in it for almost 15 years. The reason the landlord now demanded his property back was , Adam believed, it would be more profitable to rent the place out to new tenants because then he could charge higher rent for the place. So Adam and Jane hired a lawyer to fight the lawsuit and the thing had been going on for almost a year--with no end in sight.

 

At the end of April, Adam said to Jane that he was going to Philadelphia to work and would only come home once a week. Jane had no objection, because she knew when Adam wanted to do something, he would do it no matter what she said. She did not feel too bad either, because at least he would be with her once a week, and she hoped that he would only do that for the summer. For Adam, the main reason he was going to Philadelphia to work was he could not stand another idle summer in New York. He would be severely depressed languishing in the parks and in the libraries. Besides, he was running out of money. He had contacted a friend in Philadelphia and the friend said he could live with him for the summer. Finding work would not be a problem because there was a labor contractor the friend knew who would hire Adam. He thought that this was a good time he get back to working to see if he was still able to work. He had been drifting for so long and was afraid that he had lost the work habit. He thought he must test it out and see if he still had what it took to be a useful person again. Useful to society.

 

So one day Adam loaded a few belongings into his van and drove to Philadelphia. There, the friend said Adam could take the basement which was a completed apartment in itself, with bathroom and a kitchen. The friend then called the labor contractor who said the next morning she would come over to pick Adam up for work. The pay would be minimal and in cash, eight hours a day five days a week, doing labor at a warehouse in the suburb of the city. Adam agreed. It did not matter to him what the pay was, the most important thing for him now as to get back to work, to see if he could work and get along with people again: he had been a lone wolf for so long.

 

The next morning a yellow van stopped in front of the house and Adam climbed in and found the vehicle already packed with people from teens to the elderly. The van took him to a warehouse 35 miles from the city; and there, along with others, he sorted books for Simon &Schuster. The work was back breaking--but fun. He talked and laughed with the people while working and it felt good to be around people again. People appeared fascinated with him because he looked different from a common worker. He looked bookish and frail, and did not seem to belong there at all, out of place.

 

For Adam, it was an interesting time. The labor contractor--Adam’s boss, and it was a she--had a crush on him. She was lonely, after being dumped by a live-in boyfriend of 12 years. She was a small woman, 42 years old but looked much younger, and got really nice ass and tits. She had three children of her own. Her ex-boyfriend also had his own children when he moved in with her. In fact, he had left his wife for her. Now he left her for somebody else who was much younger. At least fifteen years younger than her. As a person in the warehouse who worked for her and who was knowledgeable of the story said, it was all because of "pussies." One can't fuck the same pussy for so many years and not get bored and sick. So while fucking the wife, the boy friend was also fucking the whores and maybe his hide-away mistresses. That was why he left her for a fresher, tighter, and wetter pussy. And she was bitter. But people said that one of the reasons he left her was that she was a bitch, a real bitch. They said that she once attacked her boyfriend with a cleaver and wounded him. And Adam believed this woman was the kind of woman who was capable of such violence. She could be very brutal if she wanted to.

 

So the woman was infatuated with Adam, or at least all indications pointed that out to him. Everyone in the vicinity knew she liked Adam. She offered him this and that. But he declined, thinking that he was not there to fall for a woman who was not his type. Adam was there to work and to reorient himself. Not for romance. She might be infatuated with him--but that was her business. So he felt somewhat uneasy every time she came around and talked to him. She told him about her life, that she was a Cambodian but born in Viet Nam into