The Eyes Of Men: A Collection Of Short Stories

Drink Alone

Ray slumped over his drink and watched as the melting ice faded into the brown liquid. He was fading too. It was the only place, other than the TV above the bar where he could stare that didn't make him feel awkward. Like so many barflies before him, he gravitated to the warm glow of this sad environment to drown in liquor for reasons that he himself couldn't quite define. Maybe it was in search of a sympathetic ear, or an effort to relive some of the thrills that the world of drinking used to provide him in his younger years, or maybe it was just to be openly what he really was in public, without judgment or criticism.

It was the judging eyes, and criticizing mouth of his ex-wife, Jessica, that he had become accustomed to. Until recently, when she finally had enough and washed her hands of him, and of them, and of everything that they had worked to be, together.

It was just a little thing, a tiny drink was enough to topple their entire ten-year marriage. It was enough for her to make the decision to breakup their family, to rip their six-year old daughter from her father's loving arms, condemning her to a life as a child of a broken home, and him to a life of cheap apartments, and cheap frozen dinners eaten alone.

Who the hell was Jessica to make such a call? It wasn't as though he was hurting anybody. He drank responsibly, paid their bills, and went to work on time. He didn't fuck other women, or abuse his family. The worst-case scenario was that on occasion, he would stumble in late at night and pass out with his clothes on. Was that so bad that she had to throw it all away. Fuck her.

And fuck her new life, with her new fiancé—Alan, and fuck his giant mansion and his expensive cars. What a cliché it was for her to jump into bed with Mr. moneybags so soon after Ray had moved out. After all, it was the life that she had always wanted, but he just couldn't quite provide, no matter how many late hours he put in. As a junior level sales rep for a small software company, he was able to give them a decent middle-class lifestyle, but by no stretch of the imagination were they considered "well-to-do". He did his best, but it was never quite enough, and he suspected that this was the real reason that she had left, only using his drinking as a guise to appear more righteous in her selfishness.

Ray picked up his drink and swirled it around to evenly distribute the melted water with the whiskey, then slurped the remnants from the glass; the taste so familiar like a song from his youth, it made him shutter and perspire at the cheeks as it warmed his gullet.
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The humming sound of the ancient air conditioner nagged at Kristen with a high-pitched whistle laced with a low wine, like a sick animal moaning with pain. She lay on her back staring at the ceiling or rather staring through it, and through time itself, deep into her memories. She lay there tracing over her life to this point, her father, and her journey that led her to this cheap hotel room on a mattress covered in blood; Sweet's blood that had begun to turn into a dark black stain as the air oxidized the iron, and the air-conditioner mocked her with its terrible whine.

Kristen drew breath from her cigarette and let the smoke dance on her lips, drifting upwards to the ceiling seductively. She dropped her arm to her side and her hand dangled the burning cigarette over the edge of the bed, spilling ash that floated down towards the floor, where it made its final resting place upon Sweet's lifeless pimp face, collecting as a white pile on his dead eye.

Kristen had met Sweet after she had run-away from home at the age of fourteen. She grew up in a small trucking town outside of Grand Island, in a dumpy modular unit on a barren three-acre plot of land. Her father was mechanic that specialized in semi-truck engine repair. A quiet man, that drank his evenings away in front of the television. He never showed much interest in her or her mother-Janis's existence as long as the refrigerator was stocked and dinner was ready on time. That was until Kristen began to come of age early and developed some womanly features.