Page 100 of Guitars and Cages

He slung an arm around my shoulders and clanked our glasses together. “Don’t worry about it. Look, at least now you know where you stand. So fuck him. Our old man ain’t so bad; what the hell did we need Morgan and his bullshit for? We’re good, you and me, so who cares what he thinks?”

Cole drained his glass and I sipped mine. I cared, but I knew he didn’t get it. He didn’t hate our old man the way I did. Hell, Cole had always looked up to him. Me, I’d looked up to Morgan.

He hugged his arm around me tighter. “You know what you need?”

“A refill?” I quipped as I finished my glass.

“Yeah, that too,” he laughed as he refilled it. “No, you need to get laid, and so do I. Let’s go down to the strip and pick up a couple hot little chicks and have fun.”

“Dude, I’m not in the mood for trolling for half-drunk pussy staggering home after last call. It ain’t fun getting slapped in the morning like the last time I went looking for chicks with you.”

“Then turn on the charm better next time, little brother. Come on, I haven’t had a piece of tail since I left Mexico.”

I smacked my hand to my head and dragged it down my face. Of all the dumb-ass ideas, he wanted to stagger around looking for drunken chicks to pick up. I groaned and killed my drink. Then I took the bottle from him and took another long drink from that as well. “Fine, but the bottle stays here. Our luck we end up in jail by the end of the night for public intox; I don’t wanna add open container to it, too.”

He groaned at that and took the bottle from me.

“What?”

“Morgan’s pissed at you. He’s pissed at me, too. We get drunk and locked up and ain’t no one gonna come bail us out.” He moaned, clearly unhappy. “We’re stuck here. We gotta stay in.”

I laughed at that, and felt pretty damned relieved. At least he wasn’t too drunk to see how that could end up being an issue.

“This sucks.” Flipping through channels on the TV, he paused at some kind of runway show, ogling the woman walking down the catwalk in a skimpy low-cut top. She was pretty fucking hot, that’s for sure. He groaned and changed the station, drinking some more.

I sat in the other chair as we passed the bottle between us. I wouldn’t have minded having someone to curl up with tonight, either, only as hot as that chick on the TV had been, my thoughts were more on a certain stubborn, blue-eyed photographer who I wouldn’t have minded wrapping myself around.

“I miss her,” Cole said out of the blue. He was leaning back in the chair, slumped a little to the side, his eyes half-closed as he spoke. “Ain’t just the sex, either, man; I miss the way she used to feel sleeping in my arms. I miss her jasmine shampoo and her shea butter body lotion. I miss the way her accent would get even thicker when she was mad at me, and the way she’d stomp her little foot, her eyes flashing and her hands on her hips as she’d launch into a blistering tirade in Spanish. She was so small, Asher, like barely five feet, and I could touch my fingertips together around her waist when I picked her up. I’d never treated anyone so careful when I held them, but her, I wanted to cherish her, I didn’t ever wanna hurt her.”

“Why didn’t she leave him?” I muttered. I was getting pretty drunk now myself.

“She was afraid,” he replied, and I could hear the sadness in his voice. “She didn’t trust me enough not to bring her back here and then ditch her for another woman. She didn’t want to leave Mexico. All her family was there, her life was there, and if she left with me she’d never be able to go back if I ditched her. I tried to tell her I would never do that to her, but she kept pointing out that men wandered and cheated and lied. I begged her, I pleaded with her to come with me, but she said for me to go, she didn’t want me to get killed over her.”

“You really loved her.”

“Yeah, don’t sound so shocked about it.”

“Sorry. It’s just that—hell, Cole, I never would have thought you would want forever with anyone.”

“Yeah, well, forever wasn’t meant to be.”

“No shit.”

He laughed then, a bitter, drunken laugh. I could tell he was almost out. “What do you know, kid? You’ve never loved anyone and I doubt you ever will. You’re lucky that way.”

Yeah, lucky, I thought to myself as I tipped the bottle back and drank some more. I heard Cole begin to snore, so I went ahead and finished the bottle. Still, oblivion didn’t find me, and I sat there until the sun came up, thinking about my life, the relationships I’d wrecked, and the people I’d lost.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Cole was still passed out in the chair by the time I decided that sitting there wasn’t doing me an ounce of good. I thought about going to the gym. Maybe the exhaustion of a good, hard workout would let me forget everything for a while. The thing was, I needed more than just a workout, so I finally decided to get my ass in gear and do something productive, if only to stop the past from haunting me. I went into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee before taking a shower. I tied my hair back from my eyes and dressed in my best pair of jeans and flannel shirt, and then took a quick glance at myself in the mirror. I looked presentable. It would have to do.

I headed down to the docks, determined to find a job doing something—anything that would pay, since I doubted Morgan was going to let me come back to work for him. It turned out to be much harder than I thought. The first thing I was asked for at every place I stopped was a union card. I didn’t even know what the hell that was, but I soon learned. In order to work down on the docks I needed to be a part of the Longshoremen’s Union, and that wasn’t going to happen in a day, or even a week, to hear them tell it.

Dejected, I went and bought a newspaper, sat on a park bench, and slowly read my way through the “Help Wanted” ads. It seemed like every goddamned job in the paper asked for experience, or a degree, or some sort of certification or license. There was clerical stuff; I assumed that was some sort of an office job because there was a list of programs that a person was supposed to be familiar with if they wanted the job. I couldn’t even type, so that was of no help to me.

There were ads for chefs and ads for servers, but I didn’t know shit about working in a restaurant and I could barely cook anyway. I saw one ad that looked promising; it was for a temp service that hired people to work at different factories. I was good with my hands, so I found my way to the agency after a couple wrong-way bus rides and some crisscrossing of the city.

There were about twenty other people in that agency when I arrived, all of them filling out applications. The lady behind the desk gave me one, too, on a clipboard with a pen attached. I sat down, slowly and carefully filling it out. My writing wasn’t the best, but I wanted it to at least be legible. It’s not like I had much to write, anyway. Job history, that was a fucking joke. Maybe I could have put Morgan down, but I didn’t dare; he’d prolly tell them what a fuck-up I was.

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