Ever since the snow storm had hit the city of Saint Louis and forced the cancellation of all the buses, the little bar just off from the main concourse had been filled to overflowing with weary travelers trying to forget why they were here and how much longer they would have to stay before they could get on with their lives. Normally business would have been slow at this time of night and she wouldn't have begrudged him his right to sit and stare at his drink, but on this night she was filled to capacity with a line snaking out into the concourse.
She placed the towel back on its hook and sidled around the bar, determined to at least hurry him along so that others could claim their respite from the storm. As she approached she saw that he was younger than she'd first thought, not more than twenty five. His face was slack and his eyes remained fixed on the drink as she approached. If he ever smiled, he'd be handsome. She thought.
He must have been aware of her approach for before she could speak he asked her. "Do you have a stop watch?"
This flustered her - being so unexpected. She had to ask him to repeat himself. "Pardon me?"
"I would like a stop watch, please." Still he had not looked up at her. "I'm trying to see how long it takes the bubbles here to climb up the sides of the glass."
"I'm sorry. I don't happen to have one on me. It's not usual entertainment equipment for a bar."
Her attempt at sarcasm-humor went unnoticed. He shook his head sadly from side to side as if he'd expected just such an answer. "Did you know." He continued. "That there are exactly 375 bubbles on the walls of this glass and every time one rises up another replaces it? Also, this glass has several design flaws that are influencing the placements and sizes of the bubbles." While he spoke, his hands clenched and unclenched and beads of sweat dotted his forehead.
Katheryne looked at him askance. She had the impression that he was like a block of nitroglycerin with condensate running down its sides. The slightest jar could set him off. "I don't have a stop watch." She said gently. "But I know someone who may. You just wait right there." She backed away carefully but he never seemed to notice her going. She was not willing to bet that he hadn't though.
He was still staring fixedly when she returned with a forty-ish man in tow. The man had a slightly unrulely mop of hair above a prominent nose. His features were craggy and the corners of his eyes were creased. His look said that he'd seen it all before and that little would surprise him. He took in the watcher and nodded, indicating that she should return to the bar which she did gladly. He waited until she was gone before he reached out and put his hand on the top support of the chair across from the watcher. "Is bubble watching a single spectator sport or is there room for two?"
The watcher waved a hand negligently in the air and the other took that for assent for he seated himself across from him. They sat silently watching the bubbles rise for a couple of minutes. "Fascinating." The other observed. Did you notice that they are never completely round and no bubble is identical to any other?"
The young man nodded. "I'm glad that you see that. Most people would say they're just bubbles."
The older man shook his head. "And they'd be quite wrong. Those of us who've spent many a night staring at the dregs of the bottle could tell them that. By the way." He extended his hand. "My name is John Hemmingway, manager of this station as well as a conisouir of bubbles."
The young man took the offered hand limply in his own. "Mine's Bobby." He dropped the hand and said morosely. "It used to be Fun Bobby, but that was when everything seemed so much simpler."
The older man steepled his fingers and peered at Bobby over them. "I hope you don't mind a more personal observation and you can feel free to tell me to shut up at any time but I think you're suffering from problems that we both have in common." He glanced from the glass and over to the bar where Katheryne avoided meeting his eyes.
"And that is?" Bobby's eyes still followed the trails of the bubbles up the sides of the glass.
"Besides having been unsuccessful in love recently, we're both former alcoholics."
For the first time the eyes came up and focussed on something besides the glass. "How did you know that? I haven't said more than one word to anyone since I arrived here on my way to visit Uncle Mark."
Hemmingway smiled slightly. "There're some things that you don't have to say to communicate." He gestured at the glass of warm beer. "Your pose here with the object of your temptation before you is both classic and one that I know too well. As for the affair of the heart? That was a lucky guess." At the other's raised eyebrow, he protested. "Hey, give me some credit for being lucky."
"I'm glad somebody's lucky. Lately mine's been all bad."
Hemmingway leaned forward slightly. "Care to talk about it? I know it's a cliche but it actually does help and, besides, it's not like I'm a stranger for believe me I've spent the last few years staring at that glass, wondering if this was the night that I'd stop counting the bubbles and start in drinking again."
Bobby considered this for a minute before he nodded. "Why not. It's not like I have any place to go in a rush." He tapped the sides of the glass with his index finger, sending a flurry of bubbles up the side. "However, I warn you to be prepared to be bored. I'm an incredibly boring person. At least that's what everybody keeps telling me."
Hemmingway leaned back in the chair. "I stand warned. So, tell me, how did you get the name "Fun Bobby?"
"That was the start of all my troubles. Originally, it was one of those sarcastic names that kids give one another back in high school. You know the type, "shorty" for the tallest kid and "stretch" for the shortest."
Hemmingway frowned. "Let me guess. Yours was the opposite of 'fun'."
"Yeah. Except mine didn't go away as I got older. The others all outgrew theirs but by the time I graduated I was still known as Fun Bobby, the one you deliberately don't invite to the senior parties because he'll bore you to death.
"When I got to college, I thought I'd get rid of it but it followed me. I spent a miserable, lonely two years until the night some of the fraternity brothers decided it would be a good joke to get old Fun Bobby plastered up. I found out later that they were betting that it's make me even more boring and depressing. Instead it did just the opposite. I was the hit of the party and so impressed some young lady that I got laid." He smiled grimly. "So you can guess what happened next."
"You found it easier and easier to take that drink that you needed to really be Fun Bobby." Hemmingway replied. "Keep on. I'm not bored yet. That is unless you plan to tell me about every party and not get to the romantic part."
Fun Bobby waved a hand negligently. "Well, that leaves out the next three years. However, they're not important. What happened two months ago was."
"And that was?"
He sighed. "A young woman whom I'd come to care about became concerned about my drinking. She showed me that I was drinking not only for parties but any time I was with other people. She made me realize that I had come to depend on alcohol to answer all my problems and that it was going to kill me. She also let me know that we would no longer have a relationship if I continued. So I quit." He paused and stared out at the entrance to a bar where a beefy cop and a short female cop were arguing with an elderly man carrying a shoeshine box under his arm.
Hemmingway shook his head. "You say you quit. Just like that? No pain? No craving for a drink? If that's the case, you're one lucky fellow."
Bobby grimaced. "It wasn't that easy. If you've been where I am, then you know about the cravings that never cease. The raw burning and churning in your gut that's linked to the fire in your brain which keeps saying over and over again. 'Just one drink. All you need is one drink. No one will ever know.' The shakes that come and go when you least expect it. And the dry cottony feel in the back of your throat."
The altercation between the cops and the shoeshine man broke up and the two cops headed for the lunch counter to claim their free doughnuts and whatever else they could shag off the young man who ran it. The shoeshine man wandered into the bar.
Hemmingway nodded. "Been there and done that. However in my case, I was further gone than you were. I actually had the DTs and for weeks afterwards I kept seeing things like leperchauns. Damned things never did leave me any pots of gold. It sounds to me like you stopped in time. I busted up one marriage and lost two others while I was drunk on a bender that lasted from March 1965 to June 1985. I woke up to find out I had kids that I didn't even know about. No. I still say you were a lucky fellow. You didn't wait for it to get really bad before you did something about it."
Bobby stared at the table. "I don't feel lucky. I lost the girl I loved."
Hemmingway's face filled with concern. "What happened?"
"I expected her to lose interest in me when I began to revert to what I'd been, but she didn't. She stuck by me and she was the only reason I made it through those first horrible weeks. Everyone else turned away from me. Some muttered that I was Bobby the Bore now and that I should bring Fun Bobby back. Damn it!! I'd come to depend on the boose so much that I couldn't even be as boring as I'd been. I was worse. I talked about things like the texture of paint and the patterns of a light switch. I gave a monolog on not being able to find a hammer at night in the Village. I felt like I was going insane."
"Don't be concerned about that type of behavior." Hemmingway said. "It passes. It's like you're seeing the world through eyes that are no longer blinded by alcohol. Every little detail and every sound that was muted by the drink now comes through in a glorious fanfare that says 'Hey you've been ignoring me for years! Here I am! Look at me!' And you do. Believe me, you do."
"I wish somebody could've told her and her friends that. Her friends avoided me like I was a leper and poor Monica, she was bored to tears. I think by then she wanted to drop me as bad as her friends did, but she felt an obligation to stand by me."
"Didn't anybody tell you about the AA, Alcoholics Anomonous? They would have supplied support and classes to help your girl friend understand what to expect and what you'd be going through." At Bobby's puzzled look, Hemmingway sighed. "Without their help I wouldn't be where I am today. Ten years without a drink and still counting. Here." He reached into his wallet and extracted a card which he handed to Bobby. "Call this toll-free number and they'll put you in touch with the chapter nearest you. They even provide a buddy to help you get through the tough times. Actually you both support each other."
Bobby took the card. "I wish I'd known about them before I dumped Monica." He grinned ruefully at the surprised look on Hemmingway's face. "She didn't leave me, I left her. And do you know what's funny? I did it because I found that I deeply cared for her. That I maybe even loved her. She became so bored with me that she started getting drunk so she could stand being near me. After what I'd been through I was not going to subject another to that, especially the woman I cared for."
"So how did you do it? I mean how did you 'dump' her?"
"Shine?" A voice interrupted them. They both looked up to see the elderly gentleman with the shoeshine box.
"Not now, Oscar." Hemmingway told him.
"If not a shine, then how about having your nose hairs trimmed? I've a special on that, today."
"Oscar!"
"I bet the shine sounds better now." The old man wandered back off towards the front of the bar, trailing an odor of stale unwashed body and cheap wine behind him. The two cops entered, trailed by the lunch-counter man who was shouting that those were the last two free doughnuts that they were getting.
Hemmingway shook his head ruefully. "Oscar is our resident wino. The perfect example of where you end up if you let the problem run your life. Now what were you saying about dumping your girl, Monica I think you said."
Bobby tore his eyes away from Oscar and shrugged. "I decided that she'd be better off without me. So I told her that I noticed that she was having a problem drinking. She tried to deny it, but you can't fool one who's been there. We're too good at denial ourselves. I told her I couldn't handle her problem and mine at the same time and it would be better if we separated until we both got our lives under control." He shook his head ruefully. "She made only a feeble protest and after she shut the door I thought that I could hear her shouting something about being free." A tear formed at the corner of one eye. "That really hurt. It was then that I realized that I might be in love with her but she'd never been with me. She'd been in love with the imaginary man, the fun one who didn't even exist."
The altercation between the two cops and the lunch counter man had gotten louder. "Don't you have something important policewise you should be doing instead of mooching off of me!" He shouted.
The short female cop considered this. "Don't we have a duty to report to the city health inspector about unclean conditions at food service places that we observe during our daily duties?"
"Yeah." The fat one replied. "I think I saw some bug tracks on my doughnut."
"You aint pulling that on me." He shouted back. "My counter's as clean as this bar."
"Hmmm?" The fat cop turned towards Katheryne. "Come to think of it. I think I saw some bugs back here, too."
Katheryne growled. "Thanks a lot, Dexter."
Dexter sighed. "How many?"
"I think three will do." The fat cop replied.
"Three doughnuts? That's cheaper than usual."
The female cop grinned as she led the way out of the bar. "Three dozen is more what we had in mine."
"What? In your dreams." Dexter set off in hot pursuit.
Hemmingway watched them go and then spread his hands. "I don't know what to say to what you just told me, Bobby. I can only tell you that people who knew me when I was a drunk before I got on the wagon also say I'm no fun now. The sad thing about going sober is that you find out who your real friends really are. They're the ones who liked you for who you are and not the party drunk. They just wanted someone to amuse them and once you're no longer amusing, they're the ones who're bored.
"And don't be too quick to give up on your lady friend. She just didn't understand what she was letting herself in for. Give it time and work with the AA. And some day after you have your life in order, look her up and give it another try. She may surprise you. Always remember this my young friend. The day that you don't take another drink is the best one of the rest of your life."
The loudspeaker over head broke in. "This is Mahailia. I have good news, folks, the snow plows have finally gotten the interstates and entrances clear. We will be rescheduling in about half an hour. John, if you can hear me, get your lazy butt back up here."
"Life calls." Hemmingway got to his feet. "I have to get back to work. You going to be all right now?"
Bobby smiled, took the drink, and placed it on a tray on the neighboring table. He got up and shouldered his bag. "I should be. I'm having one of the best days of my life." He shook hands. "Thanks, Mister Hemmingway. I'll not forget this."
Hemmingway watched him weave his way through the crowd and smiled happily. "I think I'm having one of my best days, too."
"And that you should." Said a voice behind him.
John didn't even look up. "Is that you, old friend."
The man who looked like a dead ringer for some people's conception of Jesus Christ and who just happened to be John's companion and supporter from the AA smiled. "Of course. You did a good thing here today, John."
John sighed. "I hope so. Do you think Bobby will be all right?"
"Think so?" He moved around in front of John and upended the glass into the tray. "I know so."