Aid

HIGHER POWER

     “Sonny.”

     The small man didn’t move.  His ass was firmly set on his bar stool, and his face was firmly planted on the bar.  His skin was pale, and his clothes hung off his rail-thin frame.  Even hunched over like he was,  it was easy to see that he was swimming in an ocean of cotton and polyester.

     Sonny Larson, barely breathing and fast asleep at the bar, looked like a skeleton dressed up for an appearance in a house of horrors attraction: a literal bag of bones.

     “Sonny, wake up!”

     Sonny did this time, but it wasn’t from being yelled at.  It was from the shock of a hard slap that came down on his right cheek.  The sting of it burned.  He cursed under his breath as he sat up on his stool rubbing his face.

     Then he realized; he felt it.  That meant he was sober.

     Sonny swung his heavy head around, taking in where he was.  He was sitting at a beautiful wooden bar that stretched on endlessly in both directions.  The liquor display on the back-bar then caught his bleary eye.  It was a montage of all his favorites: Johnny Walker Blue, Grey Goose, Bombay Sapphire, even Pappy Van Winkle.  Wow.  He’d only had that once in his life because of how rare it was, but he remembered it was the richest bourbon he had ever tasted.

     Memory struck Sonny then, like a flash of lightning.  He knew this bar.  Back in his drinking days, it used to be one of his favorites.  He loved how quiet and homey it felt.  It was one of those rare places where he could feel both alone and not alone at the same time.  It was the bar he would always visit when he wanted to celebrate really good news; and conversely, it was the place he could drown his sorrows when he got really bad news.

     Another memory emerged from the hazy fog in his head then: Margie.  He felt ashamed.  She should have been the first thing he thought of when he woke up, but she wasn’t.  Now she flooded his brain like a tidal wave.  

     Seven years ago, he promised to stop coming here for her.  He did it too; staying strong through Margie getting sick, through the treatments, through the highs and lows of inconclusive test results.  Then, yesterday, Margie got some very conclusive test results, and Sonny couldn’t take it anymore.  So here he was.

     On the stool next to him, a tall, red-headed Irishman sat down.  He had fair skin and radiant eyes.  Sonny looked into them now, and they looked back at him with a sad, sober expression.

     “Hey Ken, ya found me,” Sonny said.

     “Second place I looked,” Ken replied.  “Shoulda been the first.  Stupid of me, to expect a husband to be at the hospital with his sick wife.  Why didn’t ya call me?”

     “Cause as a rule o’thumb, yer sponsor is the guy who’s gonna try to talk you outta drinkin,” Sonny said with a sneer.  “And I needed a drink.”

     “I know what it feels like to…”

     “You don’t!” Sonny cut him off.  “Ya went to the hospital.  You talked to Margie.  You know the diagnosis.  Good for you.  You have the facts.  But whatever demons you got that make you wanna drink, this aint one of’em.  You have no idea how I feel.”  

     Sonny picked up the empty shot glass in front of him and looked around for a bartender.  There was no one behind the bar.  

     “I begged God to save her,” Sonny continued.  “Swore I’d stay sober if he’d just save her.  Seven years Ken…I did my part.  But yesterday, he stopped doin his.”

     “Ya can’t make a deal with God,” Ken instructed.  “For God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with men’s hands.”

     “I don’t need your bible verses,” Sonny replied, coming off more sad than surly.  “Your god aint my god.”

     “You know it’s not about that,” Ken said with an air of mild frustration.  “It’s about the higher power.  Don’t matter which one ya follow, it’s bigger than you.  It’s the dealer at the blackjack table; and ya can’t cut a deal with the dealer.”

     “Shut up Ken,” Sonny said, pushing himself off the stool and leaning over the bar.  He turned his head in both directions, but still no one was there.  “Excuse me?  Can somebody please top me off?”

     “What if God does come through for ya?  D’ya ever think of that, you selfish son of a bitch?” Ken attacked, his controlled voice commanding a quiet, forceful fury.  “She’s not dead yet.  But she’s scared Sonny.  Real scared.  Why aren’t you there?  Holdin her hand?  Why is THIS the first place you came when you got the call?”

     Sonny turned his head to face his accuser.  His eyes were brimming with tears, and his breathing quickened as the storm that was his grief finally caught him up.  “I…love…her.” 

     “Not enough,” Ken replied, without any hint of sympathy.

     “You’re right,” Sonny said, looking at the Irishman in the eye.  “I don’t deserve her.  Never did.  She met a drunk kid from Brooklyn and married him.  Before her, I thought I was a good guy.  Deep down, ya know?  I thought…but she stayed with me.  Through everything.  She showed me what bein good meant.  And I tried to be good to her.  For her.  I swear to god, Ken…I tried.”

     “I know ya did, Sonny,” Ken replied, softer than before.

     “I got sober for her.  I tried everything before, but nothing took.  Then one day, we find out she’s sick.  That was it.  God help me, her disease was my good luck charm,” Sonny recounted as his eyes glazed over in memory.

     Then his eyebrows rose.  His head followed after that, then his shoulders, chest and torso.  He went from slouching to sitting straight up as if he were a marionette being lifted string by string.  Sonny’s gaze looked past Ken at the empty bar all around him, and he remembered that last day being in here, before he gave it all up for seven years. 

He saw the dingy tables and shoddy chairs filled with the ghosts of the guys who played weekly poker games.  Fatty Chuckles was about to lose his weekly paycheck.  Every week, he lost his weekly paycheck.  Sonny never knew how he could afford to come back.

     Sonny moved from there to the row of faded banquettes behind him.  At the center banquette, Lucky Smythe was passed out with his fly unzipped.  Nothin new.  Lucky was one of the bar’s oldest rats.  He’d been going there since before Sonny’s time.  He was also the only Brit in the area, or the country as far as all the girls who came in were concerned.  He always managed to charm one enough to start fooling around with him in a banquette; and he always managed to get too drunk to finish the job.  He’d pass out, the girl would leave in a huff, and Lucky would be back the next night, regaling the bar with the details of a tryst he must have dreamed.   

     Sonny turned around.  There, in front of him, was the back bar with its glowing spirits. That sight was the final nail in the coffin of his sobriety that night.  What once was a welcome collage of white, black and amber that freed him up to be himself: who he thought he was: now just looked like row upon row of glass convicts behind aluminum bars.    

     “I can’t…live without her,” Sonny realized.

     “I got good news for ya, brother,” Ken offered.  “You don’t have to.”    

     “Whaddaya mean?” Sonny asked.

     “She’s gonna be ok.”

     Sonny was stunned.  His mouth was wide open, and his eyes were desperately searching Ken’s for any sign of the truth of what was just said.

     “Don’t fuck with me,” Sonny finally blurted out.

     “I’m not,” Ken reassured.  “Doctor said whatever she had, she don’t no more.  Called it a miracle.”

     For the first time since getting that dreaded phone call from the doctor a day ago, Sonny smiled.  He stood up.

     “I gotta see her,” Sonny enthused.

     “Sit down Sonny,” Ken instructed.

     “Thank you,” Sonny replied, looking down at Ken as though he hadn’t heard what Ken just told him.

     “Ya can’t see her,” Ken lamented as he exhaled a long breath.  “Sit down.”

     “Why can’t I see her?” Sonny asked, towering over Ken defiantly.  “She’s my wife.”

     “Not no more,” Ken said, looking up at Sonny.

     Sonny suddenly softened.  He transformed back into that marionette; with shoulders, chest and head falling, one after the other as though the strings holding them up had been cut.  Sonny fell hard back onto his stool.  “She’s leavin me?”

     “No,” Ken said heavily.  “Margie’d stay with ya till the end.”

     Sonny swallowed hard.  “Then what’s the problem?”

     “The end has come,” Ken said, looking down at his hands.  “You’re dead.”

     Sonny sat still, letting the truth sink in.  He looked at Ken without actually seeing him.  Instead, his eyes were reliving the memories from the past twenty-four hours, trying to deduce exactly when he had died.

     “I got three shots in…” Sonny said, watching the memory of those first drinks with his mind’s eye.  He saw himself take a shot from his point of view, two empty shot glasses on the bar in front of him.  Then, like a sweeping camera move from an action movie, his point of view rose out of his body.  It settled high up, with him looking down on himself.

Sonny saw his own body keel over onto the floor, flailing.  The bartender rushed to his phone on the back-bar, and the few barflies left in the place only looked on curiously as Sonny seized.

     “Heart attack,” Ken’s voice echoed quietly in Sonny’s head.  “You died almost instantly.”

     Sonny’s eyes focused, and he saw Ken’s sorrowful expression looking back at him.             “But Margie’s gonna make it?”

     “Yeah,” Ken smiled.

     Sonny looked around him at this familiar bar.  He knew this place, and yet he didn’t.  It wasn’t the bar he had been to all those times when he was alive.  It was a ghost - a phantom - a memory.  But so was he, now.

     “I belong here,” Sonny whispered.

     Ken didn’t say anything, allowing the silence to speak for him.

     “Are you dead too?” Sonny put to Ken.

     “No,” Ken replied.  “I’m not even really here with you.”

     “Where are you?”

     “Right now, I’m outside Margie’s hospital room,” Ken said somberly.  “Pacin.  Figurin out how to go in and tell her…what happened to ya.”

     “I’m sorry Ken,” Sonny said, looking away from his sponsor.

     More silence.

     “Then who are you?” Sonny asked.

     “Jiminy Cricket?” Ken gave a small laugh.

     “You gonna stay here with me?” Sonny asked through a broken smile.

     “I can’t,” Ken answered.  “Tellin ya what happened was my last job.  Now it’s time for me to go.”

     Ken stood up.  He wiped the wrinkles from his pants, like the real Ken did.  He dipped both arms halfway into the sleeves of his big trench coat and threw his shoulders up so that the coat landed on him perfectly, just like the real Ken did.  He even tied his scarf around his neck like a tie, same as the real Ken.

     “I can’t leave, can I?” Sonny asked.

     “Afraid not,” Ken affirmed.  “You made this bed.  Now ya gotta lie in it.  All alone.”

     “Ken,” Sonny said, turning suddenly…desperately to the silhouette of his sponsor that towered over him now.  “If there’s any way for you to get one last message to…to the real Ken.  Tell him…tell him to tell Margie that I’m sorry.  I was sorry.”

     “I can’t Sonny,” Ken said sympathetically.  “I’m sorry.”

     Ken turned from his sponsee and made for the door of the bar.  With the swiftness of the wind, he was gone.  Sonny didn’t even see him go.

     The newly dead man turned back to the bar.  In front of him was a fresh shot glass, filled with an amber liquid.  

     Behind the bar, a portly man with salt and pepper hair and very red cheeks stood looking down on him.  Gus, the bartender Sonny had seen every day he visited that bar in his living days, held a full bottle of Pappy Van Winkle.  Looking up into the bartender’s face, Sonny was greeted with that comforting smile and that all too familiar nod that always meant, “one more won’t hurt.”

     Sonny picked up the full shot glass and held it up.  He was hypnotized by that beautiful golden brown.  It gave him that warm feeling of familiarity: of possibility.  It was a promise that Sonny intimately understood: if you drink me, we can do anything.

He looked back up at the smiling, reassuring face of Gus.  Gus didn’t say anything, but it was clear to Sonny that they were both thinking the same thing.

     “I’m damned, right?” Sonny asked out loud.  “Why not?”

     He looked back at the shot glass in his hand.  He held it steady, at the ready; but his hand was shaking, even while the rest of his body was completely still.  

     Sonny sat staring at the shot glass for what could have been minutes or years in this limbo-hell; and all the while, the bourbon stared back.  It reminded him of all the times he had in this place; the good and the bad.  It reminded him of why he was here: Margie.

     Sonny decided.  His hand stopped shaking, and moved to obey.