We went to Cues, yet another night. Marc had fun but Sean and I were bored. Marc sat off at the bar and talked to some bleary drunken chick while Dusk and I sat in the back. There was nobody at the pool tables but we weren’t in the mood to shoot anyhow. The girl Marc talked to wasn’t all that bad looking, but to me she seemed like a waste of time, especially compared to Sammi. I remember how bored I felt that night and I remember Sean seemed even more bored than I was.
“You know what?” he said. “I’ve been thinking about not coming here anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s becoming a drag,” he sighed. “A real fucking drag.”
Around this time Marc had been seeing a shrink. The shrink, a woman, according to Marc, was very attractive. I don’t know how on earth he got hooked up with a pretty woman psychiatrist because the few times I’d gone for a “head change” it was always the dull, standard male with the white rimmed glasses and the stiff suit. He always would pretend to be a normal guy by either eating a hamburger or acting miffed about something his wife or kids said, but it was an act to make myself feel better. Either way, back to Marc... This lady shrink had prescribed him medication, pills I’ll refer to as Marc’s even-pills, their purpose to “even” him out of all his anxieties. Marc was taking them twice a day.
We all went out to a restaurant. Sammi picked us up at the Cavern. It was her idea to go. Sean and I felt pretty wrecked. The night before had dragged but still we’d drank plenty of beer. We even had a few shots of BUSHMILL’S Whiskey.
The restaurant was close to where Marc lived. It was a pretty big place with a lodge-like atmosphere and dim lighting.
Sean and Sammi talked while we waited for a table, sitting side by side on one of those padded wait-benches. They were like brother and sister hanging out, or cousin and cousin...
Marc disappeared the moment we walked in.
After five or so minutes when I was beginning to ponder his whereabouts, he appeared - which he always does when you start to wonder about him. He came out from the counter area holding proudly what they call a “goblet” of beer, which was a very large glass shaped like a fish bowl and practically the size of one. Connected to the “fish bowl” was a stem and saucer at the bottom. He held the goblet walking over, and then stood in front of us, his belly protruding out and it was facing us, as his head was turned as he was scrutinizing the restaurant.
I noticed he was acting strange around Sammi, which was somewhat normal for him. A better way to put it is: he acted strange whenever Sammi was around. He didn’t talk much, even less than the particular nights at the Cavern when he’d purposely keep quiet.
He scanned the restaurant and when a hot waitress or hostess would pass he’d tap Sean’s shin with his foot. Sammi, being next to Sean, would notice this. It was sad the way she acted “catching on.” But she wasn’t really catching anything, since Marc was throwing the ball right at her face.
If Sammi got all pissed off or maybe at least a little bit jealous it would’ve made sense. But she would smile and shake her head and act like it was nothing.
Sammi and Sean had been joking around before, but when Marc had started the foot tapping the jokes coming from Sammi had lost some of its naturalness; it now seemed somewhat forced. Sean would catch this too and pretty soon he and Sammi weren’t talking at all.
We waited in silence for our table…
Marc lived in this little condominium where his mother had raised he and his brother, Robert, both; by that time Robert had moved out and was living and was living down the street with his girlfriend (who also lived with her mother).
The entire downstairs of Mrs. Sandoval’s condo belonged to Marc. There was a room through a door in the family room, once a small garage, which was Marc’s exercise room. It seemed there was nothing but junk in boxes in there. You couldn’t even see the weight bench because of all the junk. Also there were newspaper headlines tacked up on the walls, articles about Marc Sandoval while he played for the local high school football team, and a cabinet row of dusty old trophies from yesteryears weightlifting tournaments.
The living room of the condo, connected to the kitchen and blocked by a gut-high white partition, was a mess, but a different sort of mess than the exercise room. The exercise room was an abandoned mess, the living room a lived-in mess. Marc, when he wasn’t at the Cavern, would either sleep on the couch or on the floor of the living room. He had a bedroom upstairs but would rarely, if ever, use it.
During the Marc’s medication phase it became sort of a habit for us to hang at Marc’s. I think Sammi had wanted him around, so he finally agreed and, he’d brought us along with him. I don’t think he liked being with her at the Cavern, or alone with her at the condo, so for him this would be the perfect medium.
We’d usually hang at Marc’s on Sunday nights. One night it was Marc, Sean, David, Sammi, and myself. We sat watching TV and Marc had just, about fifteen minutes before, taken one of his pills.
“My stomach hurts,” he said, lying on the floor like a soldier who’d just been shot and, feeling death approach, was beginning to warm up to the inevitability of a pallid afterlife.
We were all around, but he still spoke only to Sammi – he had a way, when he felt sick, of tunneling-in on her. Certain times it felt as if we were merely an invisible audience.
Sammi, David and I were on the larger couch, Dusk on the love seat.
“Your stomach hurts?” Sean said. “My God that must be a lot of pain.”
Sean put Marc’s weight down a lot, and Marc never seemed to mind.
Sammi laughed.
“Fuck you Sammi!” Marc shouted at her. He didn’t even turn his head to look back.
“What?” she said, more surprised than defensive.
“Stop laughing with those donkey teeth of yours!”
There was silence… It was indeed partially true… Sammi had a slight over-bite. I’d never noticed it till he said that. I looked over and I saw her eyes instantly well up. She didn’t move nor make a sound. I saw Sean and he had his head down, concealing a grin. David stared dumb faced at the television.
“I can’t believe you said that,” she cried.
“You shouldn’t laugh at me, Sammi,” Marc said firmly. “Especially around my friends.”
“I didn’t say anything!” Her voice wasn’t hers anymore. She got up and ran up the stairs. There was silence for about a minute.
“‘Like the sands of the hourglass,”’ Sean quipped.
That day I remember it was clear, sunny and blue outside, but it seemed as if it were raining. I swear I thought I’d heard rain in that silence after Sammi ran outside. It often felt like rain at Marc’s house on those Sunday days and nights. Sometimes it even seemed to rain inside, but no one got wet.
It was a dry rain, the pitter-patter sounding like the boots of a small army marching in hell, going absolutely nowhere.
“My stomach hurts bad,” he groaned. Though he was minus his Nurse Nightingale.
Marc worried about himself a lot. He’d always imagined something wrong with him physically. It was as if he were own his expensive doll to take care of.
“Maybe it’s those horse pills you’re taking,” Sean replied.
David rubbed his face with his shirt collar. It’d been a while since I’d seen him do that.
“No,” Marc replied vacantly. “My psychiatrist said it’s Sammi. She said my stomachaches are because of Sammi. I might have an ulcer because of that bitch.”
“You ARE an ulcer,” Sean quipped.
Marc merely sighed.
Sean sat behind Marc so Marc couldn’t see him. Sean glanced over at David and grinned, shaking his head. David’s a peripheral guy. He could see just about anything that way. He answered back with a slight rolling of the eyes.
In a matter of minutes, Marc was sound asleep on the floor…
I’d noticed something about Sean Dusk. For a while I couldn’t get my finger on it, but eventually it came to me. He’d always have a “plot” going…
You didn’t feel like you were merely wasting time with him. With David you felt redeemed, with Marc entertained, but with Sean it was as if every situation became a sort of “sketch”.
You almost felt like, if you played out your part, things would simply “pan out.”
I could tell that that was one reason Marc liked being with him so much. Marc felt he had a purpose: he was a has-been actor with a great new role, as it were.
But there was a catch.
It’s difficult, really, to explain.
It was like, in the Sean Dusk’ sketches, if you followed your gut instincts and didn’t play along, or improvise, you’d be left on your own, and Dusk would be there, with his subtle yet powerful vision, to see you run off course.
Marc would run off course quite a bit. But that, like everything else, simply became part of the sketch…
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