What Makes A Man? (7)

-7-

What Makes A Man?

 

What makes a man spend his whole life in disguise?
I think I know
I think I might know

-City and Colour

 

                The sunlight bled across the pavement in filament strands; bending corners into shadow, sinking tracers into sleeve leave veins, and scribing jewel sonatas onto dirtied window panes and sheet metal.  The city smelled like damp stone and the gutters were still bloated from last night’s rain. A pipe organ breeze swept the streets in broom strides while strangers and friends, familiar faces and hung-over bodies began to rise with dawn to the steady routine and occasion of a waking life.

                Aden had left Shoshanna’s apartment earlier as the sun blossomed over the cityscape.  His hands pocketed, his footsteps no longer a sandpaper shuffle, and his thoughts, for once, pillow light.  But as last night became only a repeat in memory, his mind fell into old habits and he began to tread the asphalt in a fence state of euphoria and self-betrayal.

                What am I doing, he thought, letting myself go, for what?  I want to get out of here soon, travel, break free, and write.  Instead, I’m stapling myself to some pocket dream.  She’ll only fall through like all the rest, let me down, or I’ll let her down.  It’s too much right now, it’s all too much.

                He rounded the block to his district and tried to distract himself with the creek bed rush of morning business.  The coffee shops smelled like Thai bean roast, the farmers shucked corn on tarps and traded words in hanger wire conversation, and the traffic wailed with old brake pads and abused horns.  But the external wouldn’t etherize his gurney thoughts.

I don’t even know what I feel anymore, what I felt last night, it was real, too real.  She’s beautiful, she’s edgy, she’s an outlier, God, she’s everything I could want and everything I don’t, we’re the same but we’re so different.

                What was it then? Why was he doubting? Aden wondered.  He was afraid when it came down to it.  His past lovers had always left him; they’d learned who he could be at times, what he could become when the depression set in, and it was always more than they could bare.  How, even if she understood, would Shoshanna be any different?  

                He was never meant to love, to fall in love, he’d told himself again and again.  The road was all he had, only his words stayed with him, and there was no place in this world he was comfortable settling down in and nothing and no one he could settle for.

                But was that by choice?  Partly.  It was also simply who he was and to compromise was to deny his own sense of being.  He couldn’t bargain in a world scarred by conquests, Holocausts, and war; a world that ran on money, oil, and commercialism.  He also felt like he was born in the wrong time, that he should have been born in the saloon days on a wagon train to Sacramento, but it was an aimless thought and pointless to sulk about.  Still, he was more comfortable in cold water and bitching and the displacement of blame gave him reason to dismiss his lack of going anywhere.

                “Hello!”

                Aden looked up and found a Korean boy leaning out of an apartment window waving to him with a little more enthusiasm than he cared for.  He caught sight of the Yankees cap on the boy’s head and fell his stomach turn to stone. 

                Look at all of them, Aden thought.  They all import and buy and live off western everything.  Hollister, Nike, iPhones, Hollywood, McDonalds, MLB- all impersonal, inhuman entities, why?  Because they’re icons of synthetic prosperity, capitalism, some expectation of who and what we should all be invented in plastic frames by pigs worming the rest of the world into funding their yacht trips to Curacao?

                And what was Shoshanna in all this? 

God, I’m an idiot, I should have stayed in the café and wrote, but instead I had to go off chasing some girl…

                He was torn, between believing in love and believing that it was only hormonal, an inability to deal with being alone, a desire to be accepted by someone else, and some fairytale charcoaled on TV by actors and actresses paid to amuse and entertain.  He wondered why he ever told Cale it once existed, why he ever let himself imagine it did, and why last night he let himself fall so easily.

                His past two lovers were only fleeting infatuations anyway when it came down to it.  He was still young then and caught up in the idea that love was forever, that it was some unexplainable attraction at first sight between two strangers, a sanctuary in the storm full of moments walking in glass rain or lying in half-dead autumn fields under the stars.

                Naivety.  It was only gossamer naivety.  Now that he was older he was beginning to see what love really was.  A contract unto death by two people afraid of walking through their prison life alone, wanting that square house on a square block, that square family and that square retirement fund, that square- everything.

                  Aden lingered before his apartment complex; he needed to bleed all these thoughts before he went inside to handle Cale and his wreck.  Cale couldn’t know what had happened last night, but Aden by now wasn’t too worried, he swore to himself that it wouldn’t happen again.  That was it.

                He sat on the curb, pulled out his damp notebook, and tried fanning it out best he could.  Thumbing to the driest page he could find, he grabbed his pen and reached in his other pocket for his cigarettes.  But instead of his pack of lights he found the soaked copy of The Wuthering Heights.

                What a book to meet over, he thought.  And who would have ever guessed it would have come to this?  How, after two decades of living apart, of not knowing the other even existed, of decision after decision every second of every day, of all the uncontrollable factors in life, even up to last night of them simply happening to be in the same café at the same time, of happening to chase after her, of happening to run into her cab, did he and Shoshanna really manage to meet so precisely? 

                Aden couldn’t think about that right now.  He didn’t want to.  It wouldn’t only pit himself further into this duel of who he thought he was, what he thought he believed, what he thought he knew, and what was unraveling before him and what had already unraveled for him. 

                He wanted coffee straight, scrambled eggs, and toast.  Something, anything routine and mechanically human to keep his thoughts from careening off the tracks any longer.

                Aden pocketed the book and notepad, headed through the carport, and up the stairwell.  He tried easing himself inside as best he could, unsure if Cale was still asleep or even here.

                “Been gone a while?”

                Aden hesitated in the hall and fumbled for an answer.

                “I was at the café writing.”

                “Long night of writing.”

                “Yeah.”

                He walked into the living room and found Cale sprawled out on the couch with a blown face and bottle of soju by his side.

                “What did you write about?”

                “The usual.”  Aden shot-gunned in generality.

                “What’s the usual?  You rarely read me your stuff anymore.”

                “You rarely ask.”

                Cale snickered and reached for the bottle.

                “Maybe.” He sat up and took a swig. “I’m rarely interested.”

                “Yeah.” 

                Aden knew he was going through hell, but he wouldn’t become a scapegoat for his misery.  He hung up his jacket and headed into the kitchen.

                “I’m snatching a cigarette.”

                Noted Cale as he clambered over to Aden’s jacket and fished through his pockets.

                “I don’t have any.”

                “Don’t have any?  You just bought a pack didn’t you?”

                “I left it at the café.”

                “Left it at the café.”  Mocked Cale as he pulled out Shoshanna’s book. “Or traded it for some read, hm?”

                “No, left the pack, bought the book on bargain.” Aden lied and started fixing coffee.

                “What’s the world coming to when a book like that is put on bargain…”

                Cale collapsed onto the couch and silence fell in dime drop seconds to the ticking clock, Aden’s fumbling hands, the groan of the coffee machine, and the wind as it beat the curtains like kneading dough.

                “I should have listened to you.”

                Cale broke the awkward silence, but Aden had no idea what to say.  He’d known Cale for years, but he’d never known Cale in a situation like this.  Cale had always drifted from one girl to the next, always playing the skeptic when it came to love, but after he had found Aurora it had changed and Aden honestly never thought it would end, not like this, so suddenly and without any real reason. 

                “It’s not your fault Cale.”

                “Course it is, it takes two to fall in love and fall out of it.”

                Aden thought about his last love and disagreed.  It took both of them to fall in love, but she had fallen away so easily and he, even after all these months and meeting Shoshanna, was still in love with her.  It may end, but it stays a scar forever.  Maybe she’d never really fallen in love with him to begin with, it was just him who fell in and out.  Damn that and damn love.

                “You two have just hit a bump that’s all.”

                “We’ve been hitting bumps for weeks, Aden, we just kept ignoring them.”

                Complacency in love can be an utter tragedy.  Aden had slightly noticed it winding down; he’d also noticed the two of them doing nothing really to fix it.  Their relationship had slowly become an external show on Facebook, simply a status, and their conversations dragged on aimlessly, with the two of them rattling off whatever just to fill in the silence.

He wondered if it was the world today that was strangling the depth of love and complicating it unnecessarily.  With all this texting and social networking nonsense relationships were becoming confetti.  Everybody you knew could tap into your personal life and whatever you slapped up on the web.  Consequently, it all becomes some bid to satisfy what you think everyone else’s expectations are or create some secondary illusion of who you think you and what everyone else wants you to be.  A Facebook status is a social weapon, a bid for approval, to make some statement, to post a problem as if it’ll just go away because you dished it out there for the pixel community to see, without ever really facing it as a human.

Forty years ago relationships were internal, rooted in patience, in really sitting down to pen your heart into a letter for your lover or converse over the phone and at least hear laughter or pain.  Now it’s all plastic communication; we can hide our feelings. 

What is an LOL?  What does it mean when we can simply shoot it through the screen and bend it however we like without the other person knowing what we really feel?  And with texting, Skype, and all this instant communication there’s no patience, no true reflection, and nothing tangible to hold onto.  The envelope doesn’t smell like her, the writing doesn’t look like his; it’s all flat font and bleach screens.

                “It’ll get better, don’t get so down about it, hold on, but hold on loosely.  Every rose has its thorns.”

                “Alright Sting over there giving me advice through lyrics.”

                Cale grabbed the bottle again and took another drink.

                “You know damn well what he wrote about was true.”

                “You know damn well he wrote it because it’d sell.”

                Aden fixed his coffee and sat across from Cale.

                “And you should know damn well from last night that that won’t fix anything.”

                “I’m drinking to drink, not get drunk.”

                “Right.”

                Cale set it down, sat up, and faced Aden.  He was pale, sick as all hell, and could feel himself breaking under the weight of everything.  The buzz would do nothing to safeguard him from the pain, only dampen it and permit him a few hours of cowardly solace, but he’d do it anyway, like the rest of us, despite.

                “I can’t go on, Aden, I can’t.  I lose her I lose everything, you know that.  I dropped it all for her, I fell hard, I thought and I still think she’s it, I do.”

                “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.  Be easy on yourself.  Give her time, give yourself time, pool over what should be said, not what you think she wants to hear.”

                “I just don’t know what to say, I mean I do, but I don’t.  And what if I wait too long or not long enough?”

                “You’ll know.”  Aden found himself saying. “Don’t think about it too much, you’re only going to shred yourself.  It’ll be alright.”

                But Aden didn’t know if it was true.  He’d let his past loves slip away so easily, imagining himself every time making a romantic bid to save it from ruin, but the fantasy only stayed in his head.  He wondered, then, if maybe Cale should go home and go home now.  What was a man anyway if he didn’t fight for what he truly believed in?

                “Should I go home?”

                Aden caught his glance and tried to turn away.  What, Aden, what was a man if he didn’t fight for what he truly believed in?  But what if Aurora really did need time, what would Cale’s return do, only make matters worse?  Would she feel guilty because he gave up being abroad to come home to her?  Should she feel guilty?  Love should never be a matter of guilt.

                “I don’t know Cale.”

                “I don’t know what to do anymore…”

                Aden wondered what he would do.  If Cale went home to her, it would be that ideal affair, the charmer returning to sweep his almost lover back onto her feet.  But in a world like this was it unrealistic.  She still had school and they couldn’t be there together physically.  It wasn’t fair, Aden thought, a move like that was painted in Hollywood films to sell and it set destructive expectations for what a relationship should be.

                “I think if it’s meant to be, it’ll be.”

                “This coming from you.”

                Aden drew back as Cale leaned forward and raised a brow.

                “Yes, this coming from me, don’t beat yourself up over this.  Let me take a shower; we can go grab breakfast or something.”

                Aden took another sip, left his phone and notebook on the coffee table hoping Cale would flip through all his passed stuff and think he penned it in the café, and then left to shower.

                “You must have come to something big in that café last night.  Never thought I’d hear you say stuff like that.”

                Cale called after him as he disappeared down the hall.

                Something real big, Cale thought as he reached for Aden’s notebook and thumbed through the pages.  He paused on the last few and read through them, but it was all the same typical Aden jargon- wet cynicism, black satire, anger in words.  Maybe he was just saying it to comfort him.  But unlike himself, Aden had gone through two rough break-ups, one a sudden shatter, the other a falling away that he always thought never should have happened.  Maybe he did know, maybe he had figured it out, and now thinking back on what he could have done, maybe that’s what was really grilling Aden underneath it all.

                Cale set the notebook down and leaned back just as Aden’s phone started to buzz.  He passed it off momentarily until curiosity took the better half of him.  He just wanted to know who the hell was texting Aden so early in the morning.

                Cale unlocked the screen and opened the new message.

                I don’t know if books are healthier than cigs in the end, but I figured you’d enjoy the surprise.

                Shoshanna… 

                Cale couldn’t believe it.   He took another swig and tried coping with nail laughter.  Here he was, blown off his pedestal and stripped to the bone and Aden was off messing around all night.  He was a b*****d of a friend if there ever was one, refusing to come home for him, letting him shatter it all last night when he was blitzed out of his mind, and now this.  To top it off, Aden was the reason he ever ended up in Korea pitted in te first place.

                Cale tossed Aden’s phone back on the coffee table and grabbed his jacket.  He didn’t want to be anywhere near him.

                “I’m leaving Aden.”

                “Wait, let me finish.”

                Aden called back through the bathroom door.

                “No, you just started.  Besides, I’ve got to get to the café and trade in my cigarettes for a girl and a book.”

                Cale lingered at the door, eager to hear the blow strike and Aden try and conjure up some pathetic excuse.

                “Cale, wait, I was going to tell you.”

                “Was.” Cale scoffed. “No need to now.”

                He stormed out of the apartment, down the stairwell, and fell into the street.  The roasting garlic and spiced kimchi caught him head-on as he trudged down the sidewalk toward the main street and morning market, his fists stuffed in his jean pockets, his eyes like Three Mile Island.

                Can’t believe him, he goes out and collides with some girl at a café, probably falls head over heels like some gimmick tween, then has the balls to come back here and pass on love advice as if he has any idea. 

Cale knew Aden’s first love blossomed out of wet dough.  It was that cute relationship full of holding hands, matching wardrobes, and long walks to nowhere wasting words over some dream city they built for the future out of sand idealism.  And his second love, all in all, was nothing more than two body bag druggies who decided being f**k and smoke buddies constituted love.  Both were lattice-vine relationships on the edge of brush fire.

                Starving, tipsy, and wanting someone just to vent to, Cale decided to ring another friend who’d taught with him in the same school for the past few months. 

                “Caliban, it’s Cale.”

                He mumbled through the phone.

                “Can you meet for galbi in a half hour or so, been a hell of a night.”

                Caliban agreed to meet him at the usual galbi place on the edge of the district.  It was a joint frequented by both Koreans and ex-pats, popular for its traditional dishes, centuries old décor, and gravy-faced manager who spent various periods of his life in Paris as a busking artist, in New York City as a dock loader, and between Tokyo and Bogotá as a smuggler.   

                Although Caliban was really only tolerable in small doses, Cale started hanging out with him more and more as Aden’s cynicism grew.   Aden, however, couldn’t stand Caliban; the surface reasons being his cockiness, blanket obsession with whatever was trending, and elephant horn loud mouth.  Cale figured that if he was with Caliban, Aden might stray from chasing him down.

                That b*****d, he kept on.  He had always been there for Aden, during his father’s tragedy, his breakdowns, his breakups, and when Aden decided to leave for Korea Cale was one of few who actually supported him.  Now this?  His best friend had pulled the slab out from under him and his lover had set the rope, what more? 

                Cale dropped by a convenience store to pick up a pack of cigarettes and coffee to wipe out the nasty half-drunk hangover combination. 

                “Hello Cale.”

                “Hey.”

                Kim was the cashier, a Korean girl a little younger than Aden and himself.  She’d worked in the store since she was thirteen trying to stow away enough cash to get out of Korea and go to school in the States.  Usually Cale piped beyond the small talk with her, but this morning he wasn’t in the mood.  Besides, she was a pitiful thing, that same desperate Korean girl he saw everyday with ink pad eyes wanting some foreigner with a pretty face and a cut jaw and Polaris eyes to carry her far, far away.

                Tragedy, he thought, all these people fixed on some great dream, some idea that the States or the UK or wherever might be greener than their side of the fence.  Good riddance.

                Cale paid, snatched the pack of cigarettes off the counter, and drifted down the street.  He reached the galbi place a few minutes before Caliban and grabbed a table for two in the back.

                “Hey Cale.”

                Caliban was a stocky guy with close cut hair, drab green eyes, thin lips, and a light paste of freckles.  He always wore his VT lanyard around his neck with every key imaginable and a practiced look as if he stood in front of the mirror and sculpted it into grunt perfection. 

                “Cal.”

                They shook and Cal stripped off his running jacket and sat.

                “Hell of a night?”

                “Absolute hell.”

                “What happened?”

                Cal asked.

                “Aurora broke up with me.”

                “She broke up with you? Why?”

                “Hell if I know really.  Swogogee fine?”

                “Yeah.”

                Cale called the waiter over and ordered swogogee beef and water.

                “Hite jooseyho.” Cal asked.  The waiter grinned but complied and brought over two bottles of beer and water.

                “Kind of early, don’t you think?”

                “Your love’s gone to s**t and you already reek of soju.  You deserve it.”

                Cale nodded and waited as Cal popped open the beer and dished out the water.

                “So what happened?”

                Cale took a drink and pooled it over in his head.  It had fallen into ruin, that was all he really knew, and he was too sloshed to remember much of the conversation.  All he knew was that he was still caught in a railed state of shock, unsure of where the fuse line even began.  A few weeks back, months, from the start?  He didn’t know.

                “It’s been falling apart for a while now I guess.  We just started talking less and less, there were periods where she wouldn’t say anything at all, she said she’s been busy with school and all but every damn weekend she’s at a party or she’s doing this or that.”

                “Mm.”

                Cal took a swig and waited for Cale to go on.

                “You know, it kills me, after all this, all we’ve been through and I’m so close to coming home and she just gives in like that, so easily.”

                “What did she say when she broke up with you?”

                “She said she just needed a break, she couldn’t do it anymore.”

                “Break.” Scoffed Cal.  “Sorry excuse for a permanent goodbye.”

                Cale didn’t want to hear that.  A break was one thing, he could understand if that’s what she needed, but to pull the plug completely and not even have the gall to come straight out and say it!?  He never thought Aurora would be the type of girl to play around the edges like that.

                “I don’t know. She’d say so if it was permanent.”

                “A girl is a girl is a girl.  They all play it out that way.”

                “I suppose.”

                “You suppose?” Cal leaned in.  “It’s true.”

                “What do I do now?”

                “Let her go Cale, screw her.”  Cal waved his and slouched back on the floor.  “She’s not worth the time and effort, not if she’s going to do you in like that.  Drop her and move on.”

                Cale was growing agitated with Cal.  He wanted to vent, not be lectured to by some hack who had no idea what love was.  Cal spent his withered years sleeping with every random girl willing to sell herself out for a night of loose, worthless pleasure.  Besides, he couldn’t move on, he didn’t want to move on.

                “I’m not interested in moving on.  I want her back.”

                Cal laughed and clanked Cale’s bottle.

                “Drink up and listen.”

                “Right.”   Cale took a swig and looked away.

                “Make her feel desperate, don’t say a damn thing to her, act like it’s all nothing.”

                “Desperate?  It’s not all nothing and I’m not treating this like some game.”

                “It doesn’t matter how you want to treat it or how you feel about it, it’s all a game.”

                Cale crossed his arms, rose to respond, but caught himself before rattling off words over spite rather than caution and reason.  The waiter returned with a pot of coals and set it in the table tray before disappearing into the kitchen.

                “If you want her back, why, I don’t really know, listen to me.” Cal continued. “Let her come to you, feel what it’s like without you.  Think about it, she’s got a ton of friends for backbone right now and I guarantee you they’ll all be feeding her the same bullshit, how it’s not her fault, so on and so forth.  Nothing you say will do a damn thing, she’s got to feel sorry as hell she did what she did.”

                “I just, I don’t want to put her through anything.”

                “Get off the high horse Cale.” Cal rolled his eyes. “She ditched you without any real reason, gave up so damn easily, and all while you’re hundreds of miles away in some strange place with nothing familiar to ground you, who the hell does that to someone?”

                “I suppose.” Cale sighed.

                “Best suppose.”

                The waiter returned again with bowls of bean paste, chilies, ginger salad, sliced radish, raw garlic cloves, and lettuce leaves.

                “Cale, if you beg for her back, she’ll never learn what it feels like when you’re really gone.”

                Cale leaned back, angry it ever came to this, pissed off that he just might have to play it out like some scheme.  What’s love if you’ve got to bend the prongs to kick the coals back to life?

                “Aden just texted me.”  Cal slid his phone across the table top as the waiter returned one last time to dish out the swogogee beef on the coal pit.  Cale glanced down at the screen before handing it back.

                “What do you want me to say?”

                “Whatever.” Cale shrugged.

                “Tell him you’re here?”

                “I don’t really care.”

                “Alright, I guess I’ll let him know you’re here.  I’m surprised he didn’t come.”

                Cale said nothing and he didn’t want to explain.  Although Aden was the last person he wanted to put up with right now, a large part of him wanted nothing more than to shove all the weight onto Aden and to shell him back down to his level of pain. 

                “Something happen between you two too?”

                “No.” Cale quickly shot back.

                Cal shrugged it off, flipped the meat, and continued with Aurora.

                “So like I was saying, back off completely.”

                But Cale was a ditch away.  “I should have never come here.”

                “Shoulda, coulda, woulda.  It’s all here say now.  No use thinking about it.”

                “That’s just it.  There’s all the use thinking about it.  We live in this comfortable illusion that that irrevocable choices made won’t bind us to some road.  Isn’t there a breaking point where you end up so far down in some corner pocket of your life that you realize all too late you burned all the opportunity you had to live the life you should have, the one you really wanted?”

                Cal wore a bag face, as if he’d lost Cale midway through, but he quickly hiked to the high ground and acted like he understood.

                “Like I said.  Shoulda, coulda, woulda.  Besides, she’s just some chick.  There’s plenty of fish in the sea.”

                Cale gave in, grabbed his chop sticks, and started on the food.  It was no use going over all this with Caliban.  He treated women like notches on his belt and the rest of the world like it was some corral stage prepped for his antics.  The flat kid wasn’t interested in the twine, only whether or not the fabric looked good in a strobe light.  It didn’t matter if Caliban understood anyway,  Cale knew he’d long passed the breaking point, he just never caught himself until now.  He should have never left to come to Korea, never.

                  “I think I’ve got an idea to keep your mind off her.”

                Cale looked up and caught the bronze in his eyes.  He knew the look and the tone, the same that suggested they catch a flight out to southern Thailand a few months back and cash in on the drug trade selling pot to westerners at the island full moon parties.  Cale played along with it, knowing it was all talk and no gall, and that Cal probably borrowed the idea straight from The Beach.

                Cal leaned forward and started to explain in a low volume. 

“I was talking with a Korean guy at a go-go bar last weekend who asked me if I wanted to buy any green.  I told him I hadn’t gotten my pay yet but later I might consider.  He went on to talk about how he and some of his guys were looking for an ex-pat to deal to the other ex-pats around town and if I was interested in that he could hook me up.”

Cale half-listened while eating beef, paste, and garlic rolled in a lettuce leaf.  Funny, how Cal could easily slide off the saddle of what they were talking about before and fumble into some nonsense like this.   Cale must have simply overplayed love all along, let himself feel far too much.  It only ends up a tragedy when you feel and a comedy when you think, so screw them both and play dumb.

“I thought it over for a while, not a bad idea at all, but-” Cal danced his finger around the lip of the beer bottle dramatically before continuing.  “Dealing takes time to make money and it’s kind of risky.  They catch you and you get deported or chucked in prison.  Instead, what if we played it out as if we were going to deal for them but robbed them, took the money, and scrambled out of here?”

“We?” Cale asked.

“Think about it.  I need someone else, it’ll help you forget Aurora, and we can get the hell out of here and travel across Asia loaded.”

What an idiot, Cale thought.  The kid watched too many B-rated crime films and swallowed all these pathetic notions of some day pulling off a George Jung stunt to stuff that pillow man self of his.

“Cale, Caliban.”

Suddenly Aden showed up and sat down at the far end of the table.  He tried catching Cale’s attention, but Cale refused to look over at him and said nothing.   What passion Cale had left in getting Aurora back turned wadi dry and whatever love or like or care for anyone or anything turned to stone.

“Aden, good to see you.  You came at just the right time.”

“For what?  Food and beer?”

“Better.”

Cal grinned and explained everything to Aden while Cale kept eating, caught between the hilarity of another ridiculous Cal idea and his absolute disgust for Aden and the world in its entirety.

“Let me get this straight.  You want to con drug dealers into making them think you want to deal for them, rob them, and then just hitch a flight out of Korea.”

“Easy as that.”

“Easy as that…”  Mocked Aden.  “You live in a California basement.”

Cal laughed it off before putting up a defense.

“Come on, it’s not hard at all, they wouldn’t even expect it.  Besides, it’s not like drug dealers are in the position to call the cops on us or anything like that.”

“It’s not cops I’d be worried about.”  Aden eyed him briefly before turning to Cale who still sat silently eating.

“Cale.” Cal tapped him on the sleeve. “Cale, what do you think?”

“I’m game.”

“Good man.” Cal smiled and turned back to Aden. “He’s game.”

“Course he is, he’s drunk.”

“I’m drunk?  You spent the last few weeks wrecked out of your mind whining about the world this and the world that, this is the kind of stunt that’s right up your alley, isn’t it?  You could make your little statements to society finally, Aden, since you’re writing isn’t getting you anywhere.”

Cal picked up on the powder keg under the floorboard and tried to edge in before the levee could break.

“Drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts, right?”  What Cal thought was a humorous common say carried a far heavier underlying element for both Cale and Aden.

“Right.” Cale muttered, still avoiding Aden’s stare.  “Sober or not, I’m in.”

“Aden?”

“Whatever, neither of you are going to pull through on this anyway.”

Cal shrugged and took a sip of beer.  Cale, on the other hand, tossed his chop sticks onto the table and pitched a finger at Aden.

“Why the hell are you here?  Don’t you have some hack named Shoshanna or whatever her damn name is to meet up with?”

“Yeah, I guess I do.” Stammered Aden.  He stood and without another word headed for the door, leaving Cal awkwardly fidgeting with his food to break away from the confrontation and Cale still enraged and shaking at the other end of the table.

“Ignore him.” Cale finished his beer and picked his chopsticks back up. “I’ve got nothing left to lose and I don’t give a damn what happens.  I just want to get the hell out of here and as far away from everyone and everything as I can.”

Cal only nodded and finished his beer in suite.  While a part of him was serious, the rest was more enthusiastic about the idea of robbing a bunch of drug dealers than actually pulling it off.  Maybe Cale only seemed serious because of Aurora, but he saw that same attitude in his older brother too before he landed five years in a federal penitentiary for grand larceny.  He knew a man ungrounded, without faith in himself or the world, who’s convinced himself there is no going forward and no going back, was a warm trigger waiting for a cold let-off.