The boat creaked gently against the dock as the sounds of the ocean continued, indifferent to the happenings within that aging fiberglass vessel. Bonny lay unconscious in a cocktail of stomach bile, salt-water rum, and canned haddock. A seagull alerted the world to its presence. As the boat swayed, back and forth, back and forth, Bonny’s mind swirled, trying to escape into itself. It ran deeper and deeper, hiding into the deepest confines of its own forgotten lore; in memories that neither Bonny, nor his mind, nor whatever god so unfortunate to look down on him could be certain were real. As his mind drifted deeper into some uncertain realm and as his breath became shallower with each passing second, the uncaring, unflinching ocean produced a violent hand that slapped the side of The Sweet Veronica, jolting Bonny back into the world of the living.
He sat up and shoved his back up against the wall. Slamming his head back, he moved his mangled, black hair out of eyes, picking out bits of now pickling half-digested haddock. He looked down and found the bottle of rum floating in a pool of his own creation and picked it up. There was about a third of the bottle left. He inspected it closer and found little chunks of some identified objects floating in the bottom. He took a swig. Breakfast. Energized and with this back still firmly against the wall, slid, step by step, until he was standing on tenuous ground. With both feet somewhat planted, he looked around the small cabin with a prideful grin. Despite his best efforts, the previous night had not prevailed. Bonny had lived to see another day.
Stumbling out of the cabin, Bonny made his way onto the deck, a modest but not by any means prudent space, just large enough to host four or five business associates from time to time. Taking a few steps, he collapsed onto one of the deck chairs. He stared up at a static blue sky, frozen in an uncertain time. In fact, Bonny had no earthly idea what time it was. Too unmotivated and far too hungover to move his head, he stretched his eyes as far down as they would go in an attempt to catch a glimpse of his wrist. He felt boiling lava pour behind his eye sockets. He relented and flopped his arm above his head. He was greeted by a bare wrist. “Robbed, lost, or traded”, he thought to himself. He patted his thighs for a moment until he felt that familiar brick and was momentarily appreciative that he wouldn’t have to go through the process of having to recover a lost phone once again. Or at least having to explain it to his wife, Heidy, for the third time in two months. 1:07pm. Contrary to what every fiber and every instinct in his body was telling him, he knew it was time to go home.
Bonny casually wandered around the marina parking lot while he drank out a flannel covered flask from J. Crew that his brother, Thomas, had gotten for him as a wedding gift. Veronica, his first wife, hadn’t found nearly as amusing as either brother. He ran his fingers across the leather stitching and thought about his brother for a moment as the Florida sun beat down on the back of his neck. He continued to pace up and down the long aisles, occasionally looking up and pretending to look for his car. He thought about his brother’s boisterous laugh and his nearly off-putting crooked smile. It had always perplexed him how any woman could find Thomas attractive, let alone the amount that did. “It was that damn personality.” he thought to himself, as he took a long sip from the flask. God how he missed that personality.
Bonny checked his phone again. 2:44pm. He finished off the flask, put it back in his wrinkled linen blazer pocket, and got into his freshly dented BMW 3-series. He drove away having noticed the dent – that was nothing new – but having failed to ignore the large splatter of blood right beneath the tire. He called Heidy as he drove, swerving slightly as he reached for the glove box, recalling there were at least two or three nips stashed away under the registration somewhere.
“Hey honey, I’m just coming home from the airport now. I should be home in probably a half hour”, he mumbled as he tried to crack open the tiny bottle of Captain Morgan with his teeth.
“James. You need to come home as soon as you can. We need to talk. Some men came by the house last night…listen, we need to talk. Please, just come home.”
She hung up before he could respond. Bonny felt a tightness in his chest. His wife’s panic had radiated through the phone and began consuming the car. His mind raced with fantastical stories of what she possibly could have been talking about. Who was at his house? What did they need to talk about? Why would she just hang up like that? Are they still there?
He looked at the car clock. He told her 30 minutes. He was about 15 minutes from home. He could make it there in 10 if he sped. There was still time to stop at the liquor store.
Bonny heard that familiar crunch as he pulled into the liquor store parking lot. “They make these cars so damn low”, he thought to himself as he got out to check the damage, assuming he had run over the cement parking stop. Much to his surprise, however, he had managed to pin a shopping cart to a lightpost. Bonny hopped back in the car, backed it out a little bit, hopped back out, and moved the cart, quickly inspecting the damage. Shopping carts don’t bleed. He put his hands up behind his head. He felt that tightness in his chest move towards his head as any rational thought was replaced by the swaying of the ocean. He tried to remember the previous night. He closed his eyes, shutting out that still unmoving blue sky and welcoming back the darkness of night. He pictured meeting Rebecca on his boat. He remembered the feeling of brushing the hair off of her neck. No, no. Earlier than that. How did you get there? When did you get there?
Suddenly, he heard a car horn blaring at him. He opened his eyes and everything went white. The afternoon sun shocked his system as he was thrown back into reality. He blinked for a moment and looked around. Dumbfounded, he looked up and down, left and right, and finally straight ahead, at a car trying to park in the spot he was standing in.
“You dumb drunk!”, the driver yelled out their window once Bonny finally stepped out of their way.
Rubbing his eyes and recalling his initial mission, he went into the liquor store where he was greeted by some unfamiliar teenaged clerk who seemed to know him by name. He bought a bottle of spiced rum and a bottle of white, politely checked out, and went back to his car. Slamming his back against the driver side door, he slid onto the ground and stretched out his legs for a moment. The hot pavement felt nice on his exposed calves.
He looked down at his salmon shorts and chuckled. He would have kicked his own ass twenty years ago for wearing something like this but look at him now. He had it all. Hell, not only that, he had two of everything. Two houses, two cars, two kids, two women. He was a goddamned cliche. He was everything everyone told him he’d never be. Everyone except his brother.
He felt around his blazer pocket and pulled out his flask. He opened the bottle of spiced rum and poured some onto the ground. He looked up to the sky and squinted. He really wished he believed in something. Anything. He took a big sip from the bottle. And another. And another. Then he put the bottle down, opened the bottle of white rum and started filling the flask. This was a ritual he had done for the better part of 10 years. Doing it on the ground of liquor store parking lots was fairly new for him, however. He sat on the ground for a few more minutes and drank out of his flask. This time he thought about Veronica and smiled. The sun no longer felt hostile against his face as he looked up towards the sky. He squinted once again. The blue streaked with the white which with the black. He closed his eyes.
The once hot pavement was cold and rigid as it rubbed against the side of his face. Bonny opened his eyes to find the whole world on its side. His flask lay knocked over in front of his, clear liquid still slowly dripping, drop by drop, out of the small metal opening. He lifted his head off the ground and wiped the drool off of his face. He checked his wrist for the time. Oh. Right. He felt his thigh for his phone when he felt a dull burning pain. From his hip all the way down to his knee, it felt like his left side had gotten run over. “Did I get run over?”, he thought to himself. “No. No, I’d be in much worse shape.” He took his phone out of his pocket. Through a shattered screen, he saw eight missed calls and dozens of unanswered texts from his wife. 8:41pm.
“Jesus, did somebody kick me?”
Grabbing onto his car’s door handle, he hoisted himself off of the ground. Still hopping on his one good leg, he caught his reflection in the window. He wanted to cry. Gently lowering his left foot, he managed to stand on tenuous ground. With a prideful grin, he looked around the sparsely populated parking lot, as all the other old drunks shuffled around, each consumed by their own monotonously tragic adventure. He got in the car and turned it on. It made a heinous and offensive noise but he did not care. He backed out of the liquor store parking lot and called Heidy. He knew it was time to go home.
But she did not answer. So he drove faster. And he called her again. But she did not answer. So he called her again. And again. And again. He kept calling her until he made it home. But she never answered. When he turned the corner of their block, that tightness in his chest had returned. His mind was racing, with each irrational half-thought hopping from one to another. He pulled into the driveway and his suspicions were confirmed, something wasn’t right. The lights were off. The car was gone. Did she leave? Did someone take her? Is she having an affair? That little whore. She’s not taking my kids.
The tightness in his chest started to loosen. He felt his short panicked breaths broaden into heated gusts. His hands gripped the steering wheel until he felt like his fingers were going to snap. A gun. Why didn’t I just buy a damn gun. She’s not getting a penny. Not again. Never again.
And just like that the anger vanished. Veronica’s face flashed in front of him for just one fleeting second. His hands slipped off of the steering wheel and wrapped around his face. He started choking on rage fueled air in the car. He began to cry. Fighting through the tears, he looked at his shattered phone, hoping, begging, and praying into the void that Heidy had called him back.
Nothing.
Bonny took a deep break. He took out his flask, rubbing his fingers along its sides. He let his mind drift, once again, to what he erroneously designated to be simpler times. Putting the flask in the passenger seat, he checked his phone one more time. Still nothing. Bitch. He took another deep breath, wiped off his face, and called Rebecca.
As the phone rang, an unfamiliar feeling began to creep up inside of him – he started to feel nervous. He never felt nervous with Rebecca. That was the whole point of having her around. She was the thing in his life that built him up, that gave him confidence. She gave him the thing that snake oil salesmen have been hocking for centuries – she allowed him to reclaim his youth.
“Hello?” a quiet voice answered after what Bonny felt like was a century.
Oh thank god.
“Rebecca. Oh, Rebecca. You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice. Where are you?”, he gushed as he reached for his flask.
“Oh, hi Bonny…I’m…I’m home. What’s up?”
“Perfect! Perfect. Look, I’ve gotta come over. I’ve done it. I’ve left the bitch. I want you, baby. I only want you!”, he said as he started backing out of the driveway.
“Sure. Yeah, okay. You can come over. I’ll leave the front door unlocked”, she replied almost catatonically.
She’ll leave the front door unlocked?
Bonny buried any doubts with each swig of rum. He couldn’t quite explain it but he was just happy that she wanted to see him. Of course she wanted to see him, because she loved him! She loved him for who he was! Warts and all! Not like that other one. Bonny started speeding. And drinking. And speeding.
Before he knew it, he was going nearly 90 miles per hour and his flask was already empty. He dangled the empty vessel above his mouth, shaking out the last couple of drops. The car took a dramatic swerve. Damn. Bone dry. He looked toward the passenger seat for the other bottle but it wasn’t there. 92mph. He leaned over further, checking the floor of the passenger seat. The car swerved again. Still not there.
96mph.
It must be in the back.
He arched his head back and saw the bottle laying on its side, right in the middle of the back seat.
103mph.
Lifting his butt off the seat and extending right arm towards the back, he reached for the bottle. His car made a violent whirling noise.
107mph.
His fingers grazed. So close…c’mon you’ve got this. Just as he wrapped his hand around the neck of the bottle, he felt his steering wheel lock sharply and spin to the left. Suddenly, Bonny’s entire world became uncertain and disorienting. As his car spun uncontrollably across three lanes, it was by the grace of an indifferent and uncaring universe that at that particular point in time there were no other cars on the road.
He continued to spin for another ten or fifteen seconds and when he finally stopped, he was miraculously facing the direction that he was headed. Breathing heavily, Bonny looked around and found that he was completely alone. He started laughing hysterically. And then he opened the car door and vomited.
Still unable to control his laughter in the face of his own mortality, Bonny called Rebecca again.
“Becks, you’ll never guess -”
“Bonny, where the hell are you?”, she interrupted, clearly more agitated.
“No, no that’s what I’m saying”, he replied, in between manic chuckles “so I was flying down Amarillo and I was trying to get…something out of the backseat, and like I couldn’t really get it, right, and the car, it’s swerving here and it’s swerving there -”
“Where. Are. You.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming. I should be there in, I don’t know, ten, fifteen minutes”, he sighed.
“Is he coming or what?”, a muffled voice radiated from the distance.
“Wait, Rebecca. Who was that?”
Click.
Still sitting in the middle of the road, Bonny sat, frozen and unsure of what to do. He looked over at the passenger seat for his flask but it wasn’t there. It must have fallen while the car was spinning out. He leaned over and picked it up off the passenger seat floor and leaned his head back against the headrest. A car finally pulled up behind him and started to blare their horn. He rolled down his window and gestured for them to go around.
He gripped the flask tightly with both hands and closed his eyes. He pictured Thomas’s crooked smile when he handed it over to him on his wedding night.
“Being married doesn’t mean you still can’t have some fun every so often. Think of me when you use it. And I’ll do the same.”, he said with a wink, as he opened his tuxedo jacket, showing a matching flask.
Bonny threw the flask back on the car floor. “You dumb bastard. You dumb dumb bastard. Why’d you leave me?”, he slammed his hands on the steering wheel. Again. And again. And again.
Another car pulled up behind him and started beeping. Bonny rolled down his window and gestured for them to go around but they continued to beep. The hell is this guy’s problem?
“Go around!”, he said, gesturing aggressively but the driver was undeterred. Taking a long swig from his bottle, Bonny got out of the car and started walking towards the bright lights standing idling behind him.
He slammed on the top of the car “Are we gonna have a fucking prob-”
Two gunshots rang out in the night. One struck Bonny in the stomach and the other right in his chest. He looked down in complete bewilderment as his life poured out of his body. He stumbled and took a couple of steps back before collapsing on the ground.
“Stupid drunk bastard,” the driver said, before speeding away.
Bonny looked up at a swirling night sky in absolute amazement. He saw the expansion and contraction of the universe, the birth and death of millions of stars. He stared straight into the void and he smiled.