Page 9 of Blue Umbrella Sky
The little smile that had flickered around Jorge’s full lips vanished. “Shut up, man. You don’t know nothin’.” He lay down on his cot, drawing his knees up to his chest, away from Billy. He was skin and bones, and it made Billy, even in this fucked-up, inebriated state, want to take care of him—not in a lecherous way but as a father might, even though he was far too old to be his son.
The boy, after a moment, began snoring softly. Other than that it had grown quiet. Somewhere, one of the cops was talking on the phone, arguing with a girlfriend, Billy guessed, because of the many “baby, babies” he used and the oft-voiced refrain, “You just don’t understand.”
The wee small hours…. Billy turned the words over and over in his mind as he lay on his back, hands behind his head. He’d sung the song earlier that night to a drunken crowd at a little bar called Roosters, on Western Avenue in the far north neighborhood of Rogers Park. Billy had just been hired to play the piano and sing, his first gig in more than three months, and he’d started off last night, a Monday, with optimism. He’d done covers of Coldplay songs, Ed Sheeran, even a little K.D. Lang, never reaching too far back in time to confuse the sparse—and thirtysomething—patrons.
He’d started off with Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” and the self-reference made him maudlin. And when Billy got maudlin, he got drunk. A misguided lass, called herself Betsy, with dark hair, darker eyes, and a zaftig body, had sent him numerous bourbon and Cokes when she found out that was his poison of choice, drawing her chair near Billy’s upright piano as though staking her claim. In her blowsy muslin top, heavy silver jewelry, and fashionably distressed jeans, she gave off an air of desperation that reduced her somehow. Even if Billy had been straight, he thought he would have been put off by her. But she was generous with the drinks….
After he’d loosened up with three or four cocktails, and Betsy had moved close enough to place a possessive hand on his jean-clad knee, Billy had looked at her, smiling, and said, “Sugar, you’re sweet.”
Her smile widened.
“But I am as gay as a picnic basket.” He played a few chords of “I Will Survive.”
Betsy, smile gone, didn’t get the reference. She withdrew her hand as if he’d told her he had leprosy. Or AIDS.
Billy continued playing the gay anthem in a slow, plodding way—making it almost a melancholy tune, a dirge. “So, if you were hoping maybe we’d hook up later tonight, once I finished up my starring appearance here at this fine establishment, you’d be barking up the wrong tree. Woof! Woof!” He realized he was speaking too loud and too precisely—a sign he was getting quickly to the point of being overserved—and snickered. He took his hands off the keys and jerked a thumb at his chest. “This boy here—he prefers sausage over pie, if you get my drift.”
Betsy’s warm features flattened, going all thin and horizontal. She stood up. “I was just trying to be nice to you,” she hissed. “I don’t care what you like!”
She started away.Oh, sister, but you do. You really do.As she walked away, Billy launched into Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do?” and sang it out, too loud and a little off-key, not that anyone would notice in this joint. Half the laminate tables were empty. The other half were filled with middle-aged men, hoping for a gal just like Betsy. Billy was confident she’d find her Mr. Right, or at least Right Now, tonight.
He stopped midway through “What’ll I Do?” and, for Betsy, launched into “Someday My Prince Will Come.” He couldn’t sing because he was snickering and eyeing Betsy, who was on a stool at the bar, doing her best to shoot daggers with her eyes.
With the fog in his brain, Billy did have the presence of mind to chastise himself.You’re being mean. She didn’t do anything to you other than show some interest.
The shame Billy felt made his face hot.
Even though Betsy no longer plied him with drinks, the bartender, a cute bearded redhead, was only too happy to make sure his cocktail glass remained full. By the end of the night, Billy was hopelessly drunk and could no longer find any melody hidden among the black-and-whites. He could barely sit upright.
When the lights came up and the few patrons left stumbled outside to find cabs, or God forbid, drive themselves home, Billy was hunched over the piano, just about asleep. A line of drool ran from his lower lip to the keys.
The ginger bartender reached under Billy’s armpits and lifted gently. “C’mon, buddy. You need to get yourself home.”
Billy leaned back into the bartender’s chest, still aware enough to notice the firm pecs under the Cubbies T-shirt. He stumbled a little, but with the bartender’s help managed to stand upright, as long as he held on to the edge of the piano for support.
“You want me to call you a cab?”
“No. I want you to call me lover boy.” Billy smiled.
The bartender did not. He looked away from Billy as though he were something he’d scrape off the bottom of his shoe.
Billy’s anger rose, sudden, a horde of bees buzzing inside his head. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. You’re the one that kept sending me drinks all night.”
The bartender—and his name, Kenton, came to Billy suddenly—smiled. “And I was the one that forced you to drink them? Held a gun to your head?”
Billy, who when sober might have had a snappier comeback, simply stared at Kenton, swaying a little. After a moment he said, almost too softly for his own ears, “Yeah, could you call me a cab?”
Kenton shook his head. Billy realized the point of relying on this guy for kindness was past. “I can call you what you are—a talentless drunk.”
“That’s not very nice.” Billy sat down suddenly and hard on the piano stool. “How about one for the road, then?”
“Get out of here, man. And don’t come back.”
“Seriously?” Billy asked. “And on whose authority do you speak?”
“Mine. See, I not only bartend, I own this joint.” He groped in his pocket and pulled out a few crumpled twenties. He put them in Billy’s hand and then closed Billy’s fingers over them. “There’s enough there to get yourself home and whatever you think you ‘earned’ here tonight.”
“Fuck you.” Billy tucked the bills into his pocket. He wasn’t drunk enough to forget that, between his behavior and the cost of all the bourbon he’d guzzled, he was lucky the guy didn’t askhimfor money.
