A Boob

Shawna grabbed my wrist and towed me over to the bench seating that stretched along the front wall of the bar and she sat us down in the corner near the entrance partition. I settled myself down next to her, sliding off my jacket.

"I like your shirt," she chuckled. "I bet that's an authentic, not like these fucking posers, buying their new-vintage band t-shirts from Bluenotes... what assholes," Shawna said, gesturing vaguely at the younger patrons of the bar.

I glanced down at my t-shirt. A literal lifetime ago, I'd taken Carolyn to that 'Stones concert. She knew how to party and party hard back then, let me tell you.

"Can I get you something, sir?"

I looked up from my t-shirt at a busty young waitress with a braid in her hair. She smiled at me expectantly.

"Oh. Yes, a sleeve of Rickard's, please," I requested automatically. The waitress nodded and left. I looked at Shawna again and she took a swig from her bottle of Budweiser.

"I'm thinking about moving to New York. You know, work really hard and then make it fuckin' big on Broadway. People will only really know my name if I get my shit together in New York City. Vancouver just... it... God, I wanna go to New York," Shawna said, in that slurry but forceful sort of way people talk when they're drunk and deciding their future.

"Really?" I said casually, looking away from her at the table.

"Have, have you ever been to New York?" Shawna asked me curiously.

"Mhm," I hummed. "Twenty years ago, I... I lived there," I admitted with a nod.

"Really?? Oh my God, what was it like?" Shawna wanted to know, her voice getting all silly and breathless. "Awesome, right?" she added with a smile.

I shrugged, still feigning casualness and licked my bottom lip, looking away from her again. "Yeah," I decided to say. "Yeah, it was good. Hard living, you know, if you don't come into it with a lot of money, but good times."

"What were you doing there?" Shawna asked. "Teaching?"

That made me burst out laughing. I looked at Shawna, guffawing heartily at her and she grinned and took a gulp of her beer, still smiling over the rim of her bottle.

"No, I wasn't teaching," I laughed. I gestured at her. "I was doing what you want to do. I was trying to make it on stage," I said and then shrugged and held up my palm. "Well, not on Broadway, necessarily, but I wanted to be a professional pianist and singer. I'm classically trained-"

"Shut up! Are you really? Wait, you mean, like, opera stuff, right?" Shawna interrupted.

"No, no not specifically opera," I said. "It means, you know, going through the Royal Conservatory curriculum," I said.

"Royal Conservirfatory?" she slurred, messing up the word and blinking over her slip. "Ugh. Con-serv-a-tor-y," she said as clearly as she could.

I chuckled at her. "Yeah. You know when people talk about being in a certain grade for piano? Like, oh, I'm in grade seven piano, and I have to play scales and recognize intervals-" I explained, my hands moving about to punctuate my sentence.

"Ohh! Ohoh! Right, right, no, I know what you're talking about, yep," Shawna said with a big, epic sigh, closing her eyes and patting my arm.

I smiled at her.

She opened her eyes again and propped her elbow on the table and leaned her chin on her fist, bringing her face much closer to mine. I could see how long her eyelashes were and the flecks of amber in her dark brown eyes.

"So... then... why'd you leave?" she wanted to know, unable to conceive of a reason for someone to leave New York.

The waitress returned with my beer and I looked away from Shawna, grateful for the interruption. I took the beer from the girl, the action awkward since she was about to set the glass down on the table. The girl chuckled and placed a coaster under on the table.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome," she said lightly and then walked away. I took a gulp of beer.

My father died. He had had a heart attack and I came home for the funeral. I ended up not going back to New York and staying with my mother. She had been fifty-one when dad died, dad was fifty-two.

"Hey," Shawna suddenly interrupted my thoughts, yanking me back into the present. "Your finger is na-ked," she sang the word 'naked' suggestively, pointing at my bare left hand cupping my glass.

"Oh... yeah," I said, not overly relieved to have changed the subject from my leaving New York to leaving my wife. I thought of the wedding ring in my jacket pocket.

"What's the dealio? Your wife call it quits?" Shawna asked, her joking trying to make the subject as light as possible for me. It wasn't really working. She took a drink from her bottle.

"Um, no, I actually-" I said.

"Hey, do, do you have any kids??" Shawna interrupted me.

"No-"

"Oh. Why not? You'd make a good dad, you know," she said with a grin.

"Uh..." I hedged, but nothing and no one came to save me from this question. Shawna stared at me with shining eyes.

"Carolyn, my, my wife- well, we wanted kids when we first got married but around that time we... found out that she had cancer-"

"Oh no," Shawna whispered very quietly.

"Yeah. She was sick on and off for a long time. Carolyn's... she's a fighter. She never let it, you know, really bring her down. But, um, she did lose one of her..." I gestured at my chest, even though, of course, I had no breasts to speak of. "And, with the chemo and everything we just, we decided it wouldn't be fair to risk trying to have a kid," I said.

"Oh my God," Shawna breathed, washing her beer-breath over my face. "Is... is she ok?"

"Oh yeah," I said quickly. "Yes. She beat it. She's been in remission for over five years," I said, a warmth spreading through my chest.

"Wow," Shawna said. "That is amazing."

"Yeah," I said and took a drink of my beer. I had not told Carolyn's story like that, in full, to... to anyone. I mean, at that time, it was really just me and Carolyn in our lives, looking after Carolyn's struggling body, so I'd never talked to anyone else about it. I hadn't had the easiest time reconnecting with my old friends when I'd come home from New York, seeing as I'd come home for the premature funeral of my father. When I'd met Carolyn about three months later, she just became my whole world.

"Hey you know what you should do, Thomas? You should come with me to New York!" Shawna suddenly exclaimed.

I blinked and looked at her. "What? What would I do in New York now?" I laughed.

"You could, um, be like my private voice instructor," she said suggestively.

My heart pounded at the thought, but I kept up my chuckling."That's not really much of a life for me," I pointed out, picking up my beer to take a drink. My mind was racing a mile a minute, mulling over the notion of my fantasy turning into a reality and devoting all my time to Shawna. I was surprised to feel more nervous than excited-

"Sure! We could totally do it," Shawna said and shook my wrist.

I felt each of her fingers acutely against my skin; she'd never touched me before. I suddenly felt jittery and a bit panicked. I took my wrist out from under hand.

"Excuse me I just- I have to use the restroom," I said, standing up.

"Ok. Don't drown," Shawna quipped, picking up her beer bottle.

I hurried through the bar, snaking around the other patrons, and ducked into the dimly lit bathroom. I didn't go into a stall or walk over to the urinals. I went and stood in front of the mirrors. I braced my hands against the counter and looked down at the sink. I was having a difficult time breathing, my chest felt a bit tight.

I heard a toilet flush and then glanced over my shoulder when a stall door banged open. A young, blonde guy wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert t-shirt walked out of the stall. He came over to the sink next to me, turned on the faucet and ran his hands under the water for a second. Then he turned off the tap, shook his hands in the sink basin and then wiped them against his jeans. He ran his hands through his hair, admiring his reflection for a moment. He glanced at me, doing a quick double take when he saw that I was already looking at him. He looked at my chest.

"Awesome t-shirt, man- uh, sir," he said with a crooked grin.

A laugh escaped out of me. "Thanks," I chuckled.

The kid gave me a thumbs up and then strutted out of the bathroom. I kept chuckling after he was gone. I paused and then looked up at my reflection. I blinked at the mixed up man looking back at me. He was hiding behind band t-shirts and contact lenses that made his eyes itch.

I ran my hands through my hair, looking at the streaks of silver in the mirror. I blinked when I saw the reflection of my left hand. It looked wrong without my wedding ring. Maybe I just wasn't used to it... but, to be honest, it felt wrong, too.

I sighed and then chuckled at myself. Once I started chuckling it built up into full-blown laughter. I scratched the back of my neck and shook my head at my reflection.

You dumb bastard, I thought, staring into my own eyes. Are you really going to try and rewrite the past?

I chuckled once more and then looked away from my silly reflection. I walked out of the bathroom and back over to Shawna. She smiled at me.

"Everything work ok?" she teased.

"Shawna, I'm sorry, but I have to go," I said, collecting my jacket from the booth and sliding it on.

"What, really?" Shawna said, sliding over in the booth.

"Good luck in New York. Take care of yourself, Shawna, ok?" I wished her. I took out my wallet from my jeans' pocket and selected a ten dollar bill for my and Shawna's drinks. I dropped the money on the table.

"You're leaving?" she asked, trying to stand up, but having difficulty.

"Yes," I said, hoisting my jacket up on my shoulders.

"Oh. Well... bye, Thomas," Shawna said, waving at me.

"Bye Shawna," I said and then hustled out the door of the pub.