CHAPTER 2: AFTERSHOCK
"Between scotch and nothing, I'll take scotch. Somebody said that once," Jack commented thoughtfully. His second scotch so far at this bar, fourth in two hours counting the two he'd had at lunch. He was starting to feel the slight relaxation and simultaneous slowing down of his thought processes that accompanied a few stiff drinks.
"Somebody with brains," the heavyset man sitting next to him at the bar replied.
"Somebody with an inadequate bar," Jack countered. They were silent for a moment.
"It's a bitch," the heavyset man proclaimed.
"What is?"
"The boss, the wife, the kids... whatever."
Whatever. Yeah. "I'll stick with the whatever," Jack looked into his glass quietly.
"You some kinda smartass?" the heavy man asked after a beat.
"No, you?" Jack replied, and they looked at each other with semi-joking hostility, then simultaneously decided not to take offense at each other and grinned.
"Mike," the heavy man held out his hand and introduced himself.
"Jack," Jack returned his handshake firmly.
"Haven't seen you here before," Mike commented.
"My oversight." Jack paused for a moment. "And you're absolutely right about it being a bitch." Especially today, he thought but didn't say.
"Tell me about it," Mike agreed. "I worked construction for thirty years. Paid two mortgages in Queen's. Three kids in school, one with a mouthful of new teeth. You tell me," he pointed to his newspaper, "How come this Duchess o' York broad can't make ends meet?"
"It's un-American."
"And the little kid, he's gonna grow up to be king. What the hell is that?"
"Get a job!" Jack said derisively.
"Damn straight, Mister! My old man, he laid carpet for fifty years. Died with a hammer in his hand and a nail between his teeth."
"Never had a vacation," Jack ventured.
"Not even Sundays."
"Eight in the morning till eight at night."
"Seven to nine," Mike went one better.
Yeah. That's the way it used to be. Nobody asked them to take a beat, nobody asked them if work was all they thought about. If they buried themselves in work because they had no emotions, or whatever Liz had said.
"My old man he walked a beat for thirty-five years," Jack told Mike.
"Cop? No crap."
"Noblest profession in the world."
"To cops," Mike raised his glass. Jack clinked their glasses together.
"To working your butt off."
Working your butt off. Nothing wrong with that. There were many worse things you could do with your life than work, work, work. Mickey Scott, for example, there was a man who didn't bury himself in work, and how did that help society, or help Scott himself?
"Who's working their butt off?" another heavyset man, somewhat younger, greeted Mike with a nod as he swung himself up to a barstool.
"My old man and his," Mike explained. "Bud, Jack, Jack, Bud," he introduced them with a vague gesture. Jack shook Bud's hand.
"Yeah? What'd your old man do?" Bud asked Jack, signalling to the bartender for a drink. The bartender, apparently familiar with Bud and his drinking habits, poured him a beer.
"Cop," Jack answered.
"No kidding," Bud answered, taking a swig of his beer. "Good for him. My cousin's a cop."
"Yeah?"
"Lower East Side, beat cop. Man, you should hear his stories when he's had a few too many."
"Yeah?"
"Make your hair fall out. Where'd your old man work?"
"Chicago, South Side."
"I got family in Chicago."
"No kidding. What part?"
ooo000ooo
"So'd he ever kill anybody?" Mike asked a while later, as Bud took his turn at the dartboard. Their desultory talk of Chicago had turned to talk of the merits of Cubs v. Mets and then to the merits of Chicago v. New York in terms of entertainment, safety, and general pleasantness of the people. Mike had somehow segued them into a game of darts, and somehow they'd gotten back to talking about cops again.
"Thirty five years, what do you think?"
"Skag deserved it," Bud declared, finishing his turn at the dartboard. Not bad. Better than Mike, anyway. Jack stepped up.
"A lot of people south side of Chicago deserved it," Jack concentrated on the board. It had been a while, but it was good to see that some talents didn't disappear over time.
"Double or nothing," Bud challenged him as he finished his turn.
"It's my game!" Mike protested.
"You tapped out, remember?"
"That's why I'm gonna kick his butt this time."
"Maybe later. I'm getting thirsty." Jack removed the darts from the dartboard - all in the centre. Dad would've been pleased. "On me."
"Five to two you been in a joint like this before," Bud said.
Yeah, many many many times. This was almost exactly like the pubs his dad used to spend way too much time in. The pubs he'd spent too much time in as a kid too. That was something you didn't see so much any more, little kids in places like this. There was something to be said for progress. "Well, we had a board in the basement. I was probably three when he first put a dart in my hand." Good old Dad. Real son of a bitch, but he had his good side too. "He picked - he had these big thick hands, I sat in his hands like they were a chair and tossed darts till I fell asleep."
"My old man didn't do squat for me," Mike said.
"When I was about eight he took me down to 'is pub. He put a sawbuck on the son and heir, you know, Sonny against anyone in the room?"
"And you whipped their butts," Bud guessed.
"Three... in the men's room door," he said with a flourish. Bud and Mike laughed. It was pretty funny, as an anecdote told decades later. It hadn't been funny at all at the time. Dad had been livid. He'd shouted at Jack for hours for humiliating him in front of his friends, and tanned his hide, and locked him in the basement to practice until there was no way he would ever lose again. Jack had hated darts with a passion for a long time.
"Eight years old, what do you want?" Mike said.
"I spent the next three weeks in the basement. I haven't lost since. In my family, losing was not an option."
Still wasn't. Dad wasn't around any more, but there were some lessons he'd internalized. He supposed Liz Olivet would find this all highly interesting. Whatever. She wasn't here right now, thank god.
ooo000ooo
Here was one thing he didn't miss about not spending time in these bars. The music. This was one of those pubs that time passed by, music-wise. There might be a few patrons here who could hear The Clash, or the Stones, or The Doors, and feel nostalgic... but looking around, he rather doubted they'd be in the majority. The few younger guys would probably roll their eyes at 'old guy' music. The ones his age would think of the rich kids who protested against Vietnam while they went off and fought there. And the older ones would think of snot-nosed college kids pissing on everything they held dear, defying everything and everyone with youthful bravado.
So Jack just tuned out the bad music and reflected that he should be grateful that at least they didn't have muzak versions of sixties tunes. That really made him feel ready for retirement. The first time he'd heard "Light My Fire" in a grocery store, he'd felt like throwing the bag of oranges he was holding at the speakers, if he could just find them. He'd idly considered searching through municipal by-laws to see if there was any way of stopping the outrage. Could there be something under noise pollution regulations? Defacing public works of art? Anything?
ooo000ooo
Mike wanted to play pool, so he and Bud ambled over and played a desultory game. Jack just observed. He wasn't very good at pool. Dad wasn't really into it, so he'd never really been pushed into it. Somebody had once explained to Jack that all pool is, is geometry. Angles. If you could do math, you could do pool.
Jack couldn't do math.
Well, that wasn't quite accurate - he could, he just wasn't very good at it. He'd done his required math courses in high school, then avoided it like the plague. It had been a horrible struggle, too. He'd sought out a tutor and studied long hours, determined to not screw up his average and damage his chances for college scholarships. It had been torture. No easy grasp of concepts, like in the social sciences. No confident knowledge that he would pass and get good grades even if he never cracked a book, but just needed to work a little in order to get the top mark in his class. No, math had been a monumental pain in the ass from beginning to end. He'd actually been afraid of failing. Never even come close, but the fear had been there. What would Dad have done if he'd actually failed?
Didn't matter that much. His lack of mathematical talent, that is. Didn't affect his choice of career - he'd been interested in the humanities, in law, from a very early age, and he'd simply avoided subjects in which he didn't have much native skill.
How much of that avoidance had been Dad? How much of his natural inclination to avoid situations where he couldn't do well were part of what was ingrained in him from childhood by Dad? How many incidents like the one with the darts had he endured before he'd internalized the lesson that losing was not an option?
You don't like to lose, do you? Claire - and others, including David Silverman this morning - had teased him on occasion. Why? What would it possibly matter if, for example, Mike beat the crap out of him in a stupid pool game? He'd beat Mike at darts - beat Bud too, for that matter - and neither one of them seemed to mind.
Mike grinned, chalking up his cue, and teased him again. "You sure? Not even one game?"
"No, I don't play," Jack said again.
"C'mon..."
"No, I really don't play," Jack repeated. He resisted the urge to make up some excuse like a bad back or something. It was nobody's business why he didn't feel like playing pool. It didn't have to have anything to do with a fear of losing. It didn't have to have anything to do with his father. Get out of my head, Liz Olivet.
While you're at it, you get out of my head too, Claire, with your "You don't like to lose." Was that part of why his arguments with Claire had been so acrimonious when it came to the death penalty? Not just because she was unreasonable and prone to confusing sentiment with ethics, but because he didn't like to lose?
Was that part of why he had sought the death penalty for Scott, because he knew that was the maximum penalty and anything less was losing and he didn't like to lose?
More scotch, he decided. Having more scotch was a better idea than trying to play shrink with himself.
ooo000ooo
Lots more scotch. Jack's head was beginning to swim a bit. He had a pretty good tolerance, being a regular social drinker, but he wasn't used to quite this much.
"So you on the job too or what?" Bud asked later. They kept coming back to the subject of cops, for some reason. If his head were clearer, he would have found it intriguing.
"Nothing I woulda liked more."
"Oh, what's the problem - couldn't pass the physical?" Mike teased.
"You wanna step outside?" Mike grinned at him. Jack shook his head. "Cop was good enough for my old man. But it wasn't good enough for his firstborn."
"So when are you running for president?" Mike asked.
"Don't kid yourself, if he was still around..." If Dad were still around he probably would have run for president. The thrill of Executive Assistant District Attorney would've worn off Dad a long time ago. What a pain in the ass. Still, maybe if Dad hadn't been around, always pushing him, he wouldn't have made much of himself. "Boy I wanted to wear the blues, walk a beat, carry a gun, be the toughest guy on the block, with his big, thick hands, but No he said. You Jack, you are going to law school."
"You're a shyster? Get out!" Bud was incredulous. Jack stood up. Oh. Little wobbly, there.
"Res ipsa loquitur," he intoned solemnly, and Bud and Mike laughed. "You shoulda seen him the day I graduated. Chest was out to here. He hung my diploma in his den, right above his bowling trophy." Jack thought for a moment. His diploma, which he'd earned through long hours of study and longer hours working to pay for tuition, because as much as Dad wanted to pay for everything and as many scholarships as Jack got, it wasn't quite enough... and it had hung in Dad's study until Dad died.
"He bowled too?" Mike asked, distracting him from the slight unfairness of his diploma's location.
"He could do everything. He was a superman. You know what he said the day I gave him my diploma? 'Jack, my boy,' he said, 'some day we're gonna be a judge.'"
"Nothing like making the old man proud," said Bud. Jack looked at him. Proud? Did he make Dad proud? Superman hadn't said a lot about proud. He'd said a lot about, Didn't I tell you you could do it? You finally gonna stop whining to your mother about me pushing you too hard? Push you too hard, my ass.
Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice. He turned and looked at the TV. What was Adam doing on TV? Oh, of course, the press conference. Right.
"Look at that. I know that guy."
"You know a guy on the tube?" Mike asked blearily.
"Wisest man east of the Missouri. Barkeep?" he called. "A little volume here."
The bartender turned up the volume, and Jack was able to hear Adam's gravelly voice.
"...Scott was declared dead at 12:22 am Eastern Standard Time. The cause of death was cardiac arrest caused by lethal injection." Adam looked over the crowd of reporters asking him questions and picked one.
"What's going to happen to the body?" the man asked.
"The family has 24 hours to claim it. If they don't, it'll be buried at State expense." He pointed to another reporter.
"Mr. Schiff, isn't it true when you were in private practice you wrote an amicus brief against the death penalty?" she asked.
"That was twenty-five years ago," he answered her gruffly.
"And you've since changed your mind?"
"The people changed theirs. Thank you." He left the podium and the newscast cut to a story on the city's sanitation crisis.
The people changed theirs. Of course. That was what Adam was supposed to do, uphold the will of the people and set aside his personal ideology. Jack had read Adam's amicus brief, and had been amused to see how passionately Adam had argued against the death penalty in his youth. Imagining Adam as an idealistic young man - it was a humorous mental exercise.
It occurred to him that Claire would probably think that what Adam had said was appalling. If she were here, she would probably go on about how awful it was that Adam could toss aside his own words, just like that, for political expediency. She'd probably use that quote she liked so much, "The right thing is not always the popular thing and the popular thing is not always the right thing." As a matter of fact, he'd used that quote with her once, god only knew why, and she'd tossed it back at him too many times to count. If she were here, he'd probably hear it again.
But Claire wasn't here. Actually, where the hell was Claire? He'd left her a message a while ago - hours ago, it seemed - telling her he'd be taking the rest of the day off, asking her to page him. He checked - yes, his pager was on. And it had been a few hours ago, he realized as he checked his watch. Where the hell was she?
What the hell. He ordered another scotch.
ooo000ooo
Hours later. His head was swimming with alcohol. This was a lot like how his dad used to while the time away on his days off - shooting the breeze in a pub, drink after drink after drink, not to get drunk, not to forget, just because he was at a bar and this was what you did at a bar.
Of course, as it happened, when you did that, you did end up getting very drunk and forgetting quite a bit. But that was just a side effect, not the goal of the exercise.
This was probably a lot like the bar Mickey Scott had gone to the day he'd committed the deed that got him put away. Incredible, now, to remember that he'd finished bashing that woman's head in with a tire iron, dropped the pipe, and just ambled off, leaving their battered cars and her battered body behind. Shirt still untucked from where he'd undone his clothes in order to rape her. Her body still warm, skirt still up over her face, dead and bleeding out. "No thrill" the ME had called the rape - meaning he hadn't ejaculated inside her. Jack had been grimly amused at that - the last time that bastard would ever have sex with another person, and he hadn't even finished the act.
And then the sonofabitch had just walked off to a bar and not one of the people who'd watched had stopped him.
To their (extremely minor) credit, one of them had called 911 after it was way too late to do Adele Saunders any good, and three had grown consciences and stayed at the scene, providing the cops with a description of Mickey Scott and the events that had taken place and a general idea of the direction he'd taken off. And they'd testified later during the trial.
Three fine upstanding citizens who didn't have the presence of mind or moral backbone to interfere or even call for help while they watched a man brutally rape a woman and murder her in broad daylight, but who at least didn't slink away like the rest of the cowardly miserable sub humans who watched the show that day.
Jack shook his head, making himself slightly dizzy, banishing those unpleasant images from his mind. Yuck. Adele Saunders' death was the last thing he wanted to think about right now. That case was over and done, done, done. Besides, Mike was talking and it was rude to ignore somebody who was talking. Especially somebody who was talking about... his mother?
"What I'm saying is, she was a saint." Jack chuckled. From the little bits and pieces of Mike's rambling description that Jack had registered, the heavyset man did consider his mother to be some sort of goddess. It was funny. Jack's own mother... she was OK, but he didn't revere her like Mike seemed to revere his mother. "You laughing at my old lady?"
"What kind of person would do a thing like that? No, I was thinking, my mom, she was all right, she did 'er best. She made corn beef and cabbage like nobody. She jus' made too much of it." He and Mike shared a laugh. "But it was all my dad ever wanted. You'd say, come on Dad, we're going out for a hun'red buck t-bones on me. He'd rather stay home, watch 'is ball game, eat 'is corned beef." Bastard. Set in his ways. No way to impress him, even after he'd started making good money.
"Routine's good," Mike pointed out blearily. "Find something you like, don't screw with it."
"That's what he said. And if anybody messed it up, he had these big thick hands." Big hands. Son of a bitch. Suddenly Jack was tired of glossing over his father's less savoury personal traits. "Sometimes my mother had to lock herself in the basement," he told Mike.
"Son of a bitch hit her?" Mike's face instantly became heavy with compassion.
Yeah. Son of a bitch. Good old Dad. Superman, he could do everything. Including make his life, and his mother's life, and his sister's life, miserable. Until the day he died. A son of a bitch to the very end, just like Mickey Scott.
"Ten years. I'm still scared o' those hands." A whole childhood spent in admiration and fear of those hands. Even into adulthood. He was a grown man now, and he wasn't afraid of anyone. If anything, other people, even tough cons like Scott, feared him, because they might be tough but he had the power of the law behind him, and he could hurt them worse than they could hurt him. He could even get them killed.
And it didn't make a damn difference, because as fearless as he was around killers and rapists and other thugs and violent felons, when faced with his own father or even the memory of his father, he reverted back to being a scared little boy. Hate and love and hero-worship and repugnance and fear and envy, all tied into a knot so tight you couldn't pull the strands apart.
The knot was still there. Years after the man died. Still there.
"He smoked like a chimney. Cancer." Jack's eyes unfocussed and he thought back to John McCoy Sr.'s final days, speaking to himself. "He lay there in that hospital room with tubes coming out of 'is arms. They pumped him full of morphine so he wouldn't know how much he hurt. He didn't know where he was." What a way to end your life. Strapped down, all your toughness and ferocity taken from you, reduced to total powerlessness, helplessly awaiting your death. "This tough... he jus' lay there. He was breathing... and then he was gone."
He felt his eyes fill with tears. Hell of a way to die. For anybody. Even a son of a bitch like Dad. Even a son of a bitch like Scott.
Fuck, where did that come from. He wiped his eyes. "I dunno why I'm talking about this, I never talk about this. Let's play darts," he abruptly got up from the barstool.
ooo000ooo
He should probably call Claire again, he thought hazily hours later. He'd started alternating scotches with soda water, and kept going between soused and merely tipsy. Right now, he was somewhat lucid. Maybe. He should call Claire, figure out where the hell she was, see if they could get together, maybe later.
Oh, and go to the washroom, too. That was the other problem with drinking like a fish. What goes up must come down and what goes in must go through, he thought, chuckling to himself as he punched in Claire's home number.
Damn. Not there. Another message left there for Her Highness to ignore. Wait, she was probably wearing her pager too, she usually did when she was out of the office. Had he tried her pager yet today? Didn't remember. OK, there was the beep.
"Hi Claire, I jus' left a message for you at home but I guess yer not there." Or maybe you're ignoring me. "I been leavin' messages for a while now, it would be really nice if you answered one of 'em. Gimme a call, I 'ave my pager on, I'm at a bar called - hey, what's this place called?" he asked a nearby patron.
"The Green Table," she supplied. Looked a little tipsy herself.
"Oh, it's called The Green Table," he looked back at the woman, "Where is it?"
"Corner a twelf'n'thirdy-six," she slurred.
"An' it's on the corner of 12th and 36th," he finished into the phone, hanging up. Washroom. And no more scotch for a while. He wove his way into the washroom.
ooo000ooo
"Uh, seat's taken. Buddy's on the phone," Mike was telling somebody as he made his way back to the barstool. Mike moved and Jack grinned as he saw who was there. Small world.
"This your buddy?" the man asked Mike, indicating Jack.
"Like brothers," Mike joked.
"Detective Briscoe."
"Counsellor."
"Out of all the gin joints in all the world, etc. etc. etc," he sat himself down, then looked at Briscoe a bit more closely. "Is it my imagination or are you not exactly thrilled to see me?"
"Oh it's just that I thought that the Constitution provided for the separation of work and play," Briscoe replied with a slightly forced smile.
"That's funny. He's funny," Jack told Mike. "No work here, Detective. This is play, pure and simple, I bet you didn't think I had it in me." What is it with people like you? Liz had asked him. What did she know.
"To tell you the truth I never thought about it," Briscoe chuckled, sitting himself at the bar stool, apparently deciding not to hold it against Jack that he was here at this bar. For whatever reason he'd seemed a bit put off to see him here. Whatever. Briscoe was a decent guy.
"Barkeep, a drink for my friend here," Jack said expansively.
"Yeah, club soda with lime."
"Make it a double, on me."
"Sure you uh, haven't had enough already?"
Excuse me? That was funny. Lennie Briscoe, who Jack had heard could put away his own weight in vodkas a few years back, letting Jack know he'd had a bit too much. "This is what it's all about. Coupla drinks, with a coupla guys, coupla hours..."
ooo000ooo
Maybe Briscoe'd had a point about having had enough already, Jack thought sluggishly about an hour or so later. He vaguely remembered thinking to himself just before Briscoe showed up that maybe he better stick to soda water himself, but then something had made him figure what the hell. There was poor Briscoe, on a day like today, still confined to frigging soda water and lime. Jack was lucky enough never to have crossed the line between social drinker and alcoholic, and he knew damn well, from Dear Old Dad no less, where that line lay, 'cause Dad had gone waaay past it and set up shop on the other side. Mean drunk, too. Violent, big thug. Big thick hands.
So Jack had continued to drink, and now he was really really really feeling it. Goddamn.
And you know what? He was sick of this place. Bud had stumbled home hours ago, Mike was a nice guy, Briscoe wasn't too bad either outside of work, but he'd been here most of the day and he was gonna go home. Forget Claire, Little Miss Sensitive Ethics. He'd waited for her for hours.
Had he? What the hell time was it? He tried to check, to no avail. Too drunk to really feel like figuring out what the big hand and the little hand were trying to tell him. He showed Briscoe his watch.
"What does that say?"
"Says she isn't coming, whoever she is."
"What makes you think-"
"Twenty-five years on the force." Fine. Jack stood up. "At least she's Irish," Briscoe said in a humorous tone. Jack looked up at him. Irish?
Hey, Briscoe. Ya figured it out. What the hell. Probably everybody who knew them also knew that they were sleeping together, what with his rep. It wasn't terribly professional, it bothered Adam to no end, it might bother Claire to know even people like Briscoe knew, but what the hell. Didn't bother him any. Especially not today. Jack suddenly lost his footing and had to catch himself on the back of the barstool. Briscoe put out a hand to steady him.
"Hey, hey, you know what? Maybe I better take you home."
"I don't believe there's any law against taking a cab while intoxicated," Jack put on his suit jacket. "Been a good day, hasn't it, Detective?"
"For who?"
Fuck that, Briscoe. Jack had heard from Claire that Lennie Briscoe, of all people, wasn't too sure about the execution either, but Jack really didn't want to get into a discussion of that right now. He finished putting on his outer jacket.
"Good guys pulled through, bottom o' the ninth." That was good enough for him. He gave Mike a high five and started to leave, then turned around and smiled at Briscoe. "And to hell with 'er."
ooo000ooo
To hell with her.
To hell. With her. He'd spent too much of today thinking about ADA Claire Kincaid. To hell with her. She didn't even have the decency to give him a call and let him know she'd gotten his messages.
This is why it's not good idea to sleep with your assistants, Jack. That voice in his head sounded a hell of a lot like Adam Schiff.
Because when it goes sour, it really goes sour. And then you end up spending the day getting drunk and waiting around, instead of working. And you end up wandering the streets late at night, trying to decide whether you want to sober up or just pick up some more booze and drink in the privacy of your own home instead of at a bar that reminds you just a little too much of two major sonsabitches, Mickey Scott and your own Daddy Dearest.
He shoulda gone back to work this afternoon. He shoulda just gone back to work, to hell with Liz Olivet, to hell with Claire, to hell with Adam, to hell with Mickey Scott, he should not have given that bastard the honour of making Jack McCoy miss a day of work just because he breathed his last on this particular day. He shoulda been at work polishing up the Kirksen closing - no, calling Kirksen's lawyer, first of all, to let him know the deal was off the table, then polishing off the Kirksen closing.
What was the Kirksen case about again? Was that the woman who murdered her husband because he was hitting her? No, that was one of the plea bargains he did for Claire today, Simsen or something. Simon. Simenko. God, they were all the same.
The plea bargain he did for Claire because he was trying to be understanding, he was trying to help her out, but she didn't even have the courtesy to call him back.
Kirksen. Tomorrow was the end of the case. Unless they'd called some time today to say they were taking the deal. Damn, they would have left a message at the office, and it was too god damn late now to retrieve it. And he was too god damn drunk now to understand it anyway. He better go in early tomorrow morning.
He was gonna have a hell of a hangover tomorrow morning.
He decided to try to walk it off.
ooo000ooo
Who knew how much later. Getting tired of wandering. Brain starting to realize that what he was doing was probably not wise - wandering about the streets of New York City late at night while obviously intoxicated wasn't the smartest thing a guy could do.
But going home was. Going home and drinking until he passed out. That was plenty smart. With the clearing of his head had come some unpleasant thoughts, and it was too late now to do anything about them, and he was still too drunk to get anything useful done in terms of work, so he might as well go home and drink himself to sleep.
He hadn't gone on one of these benders in a long time, however much Claire might tease him about his drinking habits.
Claire again. God damn.
ooo000ooo
Finally. Keys... where the hell were his keys. OK. Keys. It was so tough, even once you found your keys, to put them where they belonged - to figure out which one to use, first of all, and then get it into that tiny, tiny little hole in the door.
Should he ask one of his neighbours for help?
Bad idea. Waking up the neighbours in the middle of the night to help him into his apartment.
Oh, goody. It went in. He stumbled into his dark apartment, barely catching himself on the wall and saving himself from an undignified sprawl onto the floor.
Oops, good thing he saved the bottle too, he thought to himself humorously. He'd somehow managed to buy more alcohol despite his lamentable condition; which probably wasn't right, liquor store clerks were not supposed to sell more booze to people as drunk as him. Maybe tomorrow he'd go back and let them know he was gonna charge them with... something. He'd have to look it up.
OK. Bottle's here, glasses... ah, why bother with glasses?
Because this is a bottle of scotch, not beer. You'd have to get even more plastered than this before swigging scotch from a bottle became a good idea.
Let's get to it, then, he thought to himself cheerfully as he plunked a tumbler down on the little table next to the couch and flipped on the TV, impressing himself that he neither set the glass down on the floor by accident nor tried to turn on the TV with the VCR remote instead. Not that drunk after all.
Let's rectify this situation, shall we? He poured himself a glass and settled back to watch something. Who knew what. Some sitcom or something. Not the news.
In fact, this show was just fine. It was some sort of cartoon that his nephew really liked, and his sister didn't think was appropriate for his age. The Simmons or something.
Simmons! That was the name of the woman who murdered her husband because he was allegedly beating her.
He downed the scotch.
ooo000ooo
OK, sitcom all done. He hadn't really understood all of it, but it sure was funny. And another glass had joined the first, which would make it... how many today?
About ten times what he usually drank, the way his head felt. And why?
Well, so many reasons. The number one reason being woman trouble. What a cliché, getting drunk over a woman. Jack hated being a cliché. He stumbled over to the phone and placed a call. Last one of the day. If she wanted to make amends, fine, if not, that was fine by him too. She could damn well transfer to somebody else's office, become somebody else's assistant.
God damn. Nobody picking up. Miss Sensitivity wasn't being so damn sensitive, was she? Not to him, anyway. To hell with her. He'd confront her on it tomorrow, he was sick of waiting for her today.
He left a message, vaguely aware that it was probably not a good idea to leave a message with this level of intoxication, hung up, and returned to the couch.
ooo000ooo
WHA?!
Something was making an unbelievable racket. What a horrible way to wake up.
The phone.
His machine picked up and he thought of going to the phone to get it before whoever it was left a message, but rapidly became aware that what he was feeling within his stomach and his head was starting to translate into an urgent need to...
He stumbled to the washroom and reached the toilet just in time.
Whoa. That hadn't happened in a very, very long time, he thought as he finally finished heaving. How completely unpleasant.
He settled his back against the washroom wall. Pounding headache. Mouth tasted like death.
Ugh.
This was disgusting. He flushed, then rinsed out his mouth in the sink. How repulsive. He stripped his clothes off, revolted by the bar smell of alcohol and smoke, the feel of clothing that had been on his body for over twenty-four hours. Rubbed his jaw and felt stubble.
Shower. A shower would make all the difference. He hoped.
Twenty-five minutes later, he came out of the shower, feeling much refreshed. Still somewhat tipsy, still hung over, but at least hygienic.
Blinking red light on the answering machine. Right, the message that had woken him up from a drunken slumber. He looked at the clock: 12:45am. Who would call at this hour? No, they hadn't called at this hour, they'd called about half an hour ago. Maybe that was Claire. He approached the machine, realizing that part of him felt like erasing the message without even listening to it.
Maybe he should just erase it.
Maybe that was childish.
He pressed the button on the machine.