“Yeah,” said Bert.
“You get to feelin’ sick, you holler,” the driver instructed, adjusting the rearview mirror so he could keep an eye on his passenger. The man looked sick. Sort of yellowish around the eyes.
At the airport, Bert went to the men’s room and put cold water on his face. His insides seemed to be all up and down, like a roller coaster. When he opened his eyes, he stared at himself in the mirror, only to be reminded of Benita, the way she sometimes looked, when she didn’t know he was watching her. This same sort of dazed expression. Sometimes she’d stand beside her spice rack, leaning against the wall with her nose over an open jar of anise or cinnamon sticks, her eyes shut, her forehead wrinkled. Once or twice he’d opened the jars and sniffed at them. The smell was nice, but that’s all it was. It didn’t make his mouth water. It didn’t excite him any. He couldn’t fathom why she stood there the way she did, sniffing at … at what? It made him angry at her, but then, most things she did made him angry at her.
Now he had that same expression on his face. So, what was he sniffing at? The possibility of going somewhere? Doing something? It had been a long time since he’d gone anywhere, done anything. He tried to think about the going, the doing, but it was hard. Thinking was hard, lately. Just lately, he assured himself. Just this last little while. It wasn’t that he was stupid. Bert was absolutely one hundred percent not stupid. He was as smart as anybody, but just this last little while, it was hard to concentrate on anything. It could be the weed. When he was out of money, sometimes he moved a little weed for a friend of Larry’s. Not usually, not enough to risk getting caught with it, but now and then it was okay, just so he didn’t get in a pattern. Except, lately, he’d been using more of it himself, and maybe that was what made it hard to think.
After several vague moments spent standing, head down, not moving or thinking, he worked up the energy to go buy the ticket. Lucky him, the flight was leaving in twenty minutes. No baggage to check. All he had was the shopping bag. The money was in his wallet and most of the clothes were on his back. At the newsstand, he bought a canvas airline bag to put the extra shirts in, and a sports magazine, and some mints because his throat was so dry.
He only had a one-way ticket. Maybe he should have bought a roundtrip. Then again, there was no point in wasting the money. He’d have plenty of money when this was over. As he went down the concourse, he passed the first bar with only a slight swerve of footsteps in its direction. He hesitated at the next one, but the plane was leaving too soon for him to stop. As it was, he was the last person to board. The plane was half empty, so Bert had a window seat with an empty aisle seat next to him. The flight attendant came by and reminded him to put his seatbelt on. He fumbled with it, hands trembling again.
Then they made an announcement about beverage service, and his hands steadied, he licked his lips and tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. He couldn’t wait for the flight attendant to get to him, and he shifted in the seat. His skin felt itchy. Like it had ants crawling on it.
A voice spoke from the empty aisle seat next to him. “Not one drink, Bert. Not one. Or we throw you out of the plane and watch you fly.”
He couldn’t see anything in the seat. His eyes confirmed vacancy, his hand, tentatively reached, encountered nothing. As frightened as he could ever remember being, he turned his eyes away, put his head back and, for the next several hours, pretended to be sleeping.
When he arrived in Washington, the voice guided him to a taxi, and the taxi to a hotel where Bert found a room awaiting him, all paid for. When he got into the room, he took his jacket off and stretched out on the bed, just for a moment, before going out on a foraging trip. The money he had left was burning a hole in his pocket. He thought about it. There was a bar downstairs. He’d seen it on the way in. He tasted the beer he was going to drink, feeling it sliding down his throat, feeling his body loosen and swim, all the tight muscles letting go …