The Lucky Ones

I am drunk.

I am very obviously drunk, and it has become a worrying constant lately, but I like to think that it is just the next logical step. Which it is, in all honesty. Step one: exorcise your demons by writing them down on paper. Step two: publish it and watch as old wounds open again when people praise you for it. Step three: lose yourself in an alcohol-induced haze to forget that you thought that step one and two were ever a good idea.

I glance at everyone attending the party and feel a strong dislike for my life. I just wish I could be anywhere but here. I wish I were home, but home is so far away that it could be in a different galaxy. Even though I’m surrounded by people, I’ve rarely felt so alone.

“Another one,” I mutter at the bartender.

“This one’s on me,” she says as she sits down to my right.

I look at her. I should be going home. She smiles, and I smile too. She is wearing too much lipstick, and her eyeliner has something aggressive to it. But even despite that, she is beautiful. Even though in the state that I am in, beauty is not exactly what I am after. Every distraction from my thoughts would have been welcome. The fact that this distraction is attractive is only a bonus point. But, yes, she’s beautiful. And no, it’s absolutely not worth it.

But I need a distraction, and she has a nice figure and a pretty face, and anyway, I’m too far gone to think about the consequences. Her mouth curls into a cute little moue when she speaks, and sometimes she gazes in the distance, as if she were in deep thought. It’s very obvious that she’s posing, but in the end, so are we all.

It’s absolutely not worth it, but I am drunk, and she says she admires me. Never underestimate what admiration can do to a man.

I’m not sure if she’s mentioned her name. If she did, I don’t remember. To me, she’s just the bird who laughs at my jokes and who shamelessly flirts with me, despite the wedding ring that is clearly visible on my hand when it rests on her thigh. She’s the bird who will drink with me until we’re both too drunk to care, who will push her hair back when she leans towards me, an invitation to do more than just talk. She’s also the bird who will probably ruin my marital life, or what is left of it.

“I absolutely love the way you write,” she slurs.

I don’t like that everything in my life now seems to lead back to that goddamn book, as if everyone I meet has read it. Really, it’s not worth that much. It shouldn’t even be the hit that it is. It used to mean a lot to me, but the moment it started meaning something to others, the moment others started identifying with my words, I felt robbed. If I had known that my story would stop belonging to me, I wouldn’t have sent it out there in the world. I wish people would understand that.

I try to change the subject, but she insists. “I just absolutely love… I love the way you say things,” she says again, smiling. She is intoxicated, yes. And I am in the process of getting properly smashed, but it’s the least of my worries.

“Oh, yes?” I say, and I order some champagne because what the Hell, I feel like it right now, and that damn book is paying for it anyway. I shouldn’t be drinking more, I’ve drunk enough and I’m already losing my grip on reality, but like I said: what the hell… “Tell me what you like about it?” I ask. I’m encouraging her to flatter my ego. It makes me feel better.

She bats her eyelashes. The move is exaggerated, but because of the drinks, I don’t even find it ridiculous.

“When you talk about love,” she says seductively, leaning towards as she whispers, as if to tell me a secret.

Her lips are close to my ear and I can smell the alcohol on her breath as she breathes in my neck. I want to fuck her, and at that point I realize that it’s probably going to happen at some point. But right now I refrain. Not because I have a wife and a toddler at home, but because I want to hear more of her praises.

“Yeah,” I say lamely. “These things come naturally to me.” They don’t. There’s a lot of work behind it, but that sounds lame. “I’m glad you like the book.”

“Liked it?” she shakes her head. “I loved it! I could identify with it so much.”

I feel nauseous. “Oh, yeah? You know, that’s exactly why I wrote it. To make people think about their own lives.” It burns my throat to say such lies. But I’ve mastered the art and she doesn’t notice.

Her eyes twinkle. “And the epigraph,” she continues, “when you know what happens in the story, it’s so… it grips you so much.”

I feel uneasy. She talks about it as if it were a work of fiction, and doesn’t seem to realize that these things happened. They’re not just a story. They’re my story. As for the epigraph… The words were not mine. For all my creativity and all my work, I could never have written something like that. I found the quote scribbled down in a letter that Fern never sent. Just a sentence from a letter that I have long since burned. I had thought I had forgotten all about it, until the day I sat down to write this story, and these words naturally came back to mind, as if they had never been forgotten after all. The memory of this makes me feel uneasy, and perhaps that is what pushes me further.

“I’m flattered,” I say, falsely modest. Modesty has never been one of my qualities. But I’ve learned to fake it as soon as the book came out. People love you better when you’re sensible and modest than when you’re broken and haughty.

She bats her eyelashes again. “Some parts made me cry,” she says, “and I don’t cry easy. But that story… it made me all teary-eyed. You are… You’re a great writer.”

“Stop flattering me,” I say. Continue flattering me I think.

“I mean it.”

I order some more champagne. We continue talking about my supposed talent late into the night, but the words that we exchange are not really what matters.

I still don’t know her name, but it doesn’t matter either. What matters is that she goes down on her knees in the men’s washroom later that evening.

The rest, as they say, is history.