12. Laurie and Fred Catch Up.
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The Anchor
Laurie took a last drag outside and exhaled into the night air; the smoke blossomed into a cloud of glowing red, courtesy of the Palmer’s historic sign high above.
She squibbed the cigarette under her sneakers and peered through the glass brick into the hotel’s ground floor dive, The Anchor. She could make out only blurry silhouettes inside, so she pulled open the dented brass door and walked in.
Blinded at first by the harsh glare from the old cigarette machine, she looked deeper into the bar and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. As they did, she made out velvet-lined booths to her left, half-populated by couples, limbs desperately intertwined. Fred wasn’t among them.
She walked to the bar, a half-circle with a wall of dimly lit bottles behind, and took a stool at the far end. She examined the two drunks at the other end of the bar—judging by the empties on the counter, they were each at least half-a-dozen deep. Both were in their 50s, in collared shirts with loosened ties, clean-shaven and pasty with an above-lip dampness that reminded Laurie of her dad.
She ordered a tequila sunrise from the hefty, smiling bartender, then listened to the two drunks rant about the approach of Y2K.
“Been storing up cans of beans!” one shouted to the other, though they were seated adjacent and the bar was quiet. “We’re gonna eat ‘til our farts blow down the doors!”
“What do you think’s gonna happen?” the other yelled back with a hearty laugh. “How do broken computers mean you can’t get beans?”
“It’s all about supply lines!” the first shouted back. “All the supply lines are on computers! No computers, no beans!”
Laurie felt a presence behind her and a meek tap on her shoulder.
“Sorry I’m late,” she heard, and there was Fred. “It was a longer drive than I’d remembered,” he said.
“Fred. Fred. Freddie,” she said, as she went in for a hug. “It has been some time,” she whispered in his ear.
The last time they’d seen each other was that frantic summer a decade ago. They’d been friendly in their high school years, overlapping in each others’ social circles but never on a daily-phone-call level of connection. That changed the summer before college, when everyone was playing makeout musical chairs in the hopes of staving off future regret.
They’d first made eyes at the Watson twins’ graduation pool party. The week after, they kissed at Gary Yurtz’s BBQ, and were essentially inseparable over the next month of last hurrahs. Then their respective paths simply diverged. He stayed in the suburbs for a community college track while she moved across the country to get her Bachelor’s, then a Master’s.
A few months ago, alone in her studio apartment one night—and, admittedly, after a few drinks—she’d sent him a catch-up email that concluded with her AOL Instant Messenger screenname, CrookedRain_69. The next day, her desktop computer dinged with a new message from FryedChyken00. They traded messages, and when she mentioned a trip back home, he’d suggested this joint for a catch-up drink.
“What are you having?” he said as he sat on the stool.
The past decade had been kind to Fred, Laurie thought. His skin was clear, the new beard suited him well, and his nerdy wire-framed glasses were gone. His frame was fuller than the twig she remembered, but not out of shape. Just more like a man.
“One more tequila sunrise, por favor,” Laurie said to the bartender.
Fred held up two fingers and the bartender got to mixing.
“So, what brings you back?” he said. “Been keeping the town nice and warm for you.”
“I can see that,” she said. “Haven’t seen the family in a while.”
“Of course,” he said.
As the bartender returned with their orange-tinged drinks, Laurie began to breathlessly relate to Fred all the facets of her new life. She was handling accounts for a production company out west, but didn’t love it. Working in Hollywood wasn’t as glamorous as you’d expect, but she did meet Robin Williams once. “Very nice guy,” she said, before dipping into her wallet for a photo of her cat Snickers. Fred made a requisite “aww,” and she put the photo away.
“God, these are such sad bullet points,” she said. “What about you?”
Fred turned to the bar and glanced at the mirror behind as he took another sip. She saw a strange weariness in his eyes. It was then that she put together that there was something different about Fred. That casual ease that she’d remembered, that had shown itself in their IM conversations—it had all but disappeared.
Fred finished his sip and turned back. He told her how his parents had taken a gamble on a city apartment as an investment, but after a few years, decided to kick out the tenants and take it for themselves. So now, he lived on his own in their old three-bedroom house back in the suburbs. Hank and Jessie came by almost every night.
“Remember those clowns?” he asked.
“I haven’t heard those names in forever,” Laurie said. “How are they?”
“Same as ever,” Fred said, finishing the drink and tapping the bar for a second. “Same as ever.”
He told a few stories of their exploits, but his voice was joyless and monotonous. As if he’d rehearsed them. As if he’d repeated them to himself over and over.
“The end of the world I say!” one the Y2K drunks shouted. “The end of the world!”
“Wanna bet?” yelled the other and reached into his wallet.
“You know, I think about you a lot,” Fred said quietly. The voices of the drunken wagerers faded into the background.
“What do you think about?” she said.
“How things could’ve been different if you’d stuck around,” Fred said.
“Oh, I was out of here no matter what,” she said. “You know this place couldn’t contain me.”
She placed an arm around him and gave his bicep a squeeze. She felt him tense up, so she unraveled her half-hug.
“Anyway,” she tried.
Fred excused himself to the bathroom and the bartender approached. She introduced herself as Barbs.
“You two doing alright?” Barbs asked.
Laurie held up two more fingers and Barbs spun around to make another set of concoctions. Laurie looked around for anything worth seeing and noticed that the wall next to the bar was covered in dollar bills. She leaned forward. On each bill was a name scrawled in black marker.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“War deposits,” Barbs said. “This place goes back to long before the war. It was one of the last stops before the boys were sent overseas. They’d have a few last drinks in here, something to fog up their nerves before what was to come, and spend the night upstairs before shipping out in the morning.”
Barbs poured tequila shots onto some ice and stirred in orange juice as she nodded to the dollars.
“Some made down payments on their next drinks, so they’d have something to celebrate with when they returned,” Barbs said. “Which is to say, what you’re seeing here are the dollars left behind by the boys who never came home.”
She set the drinks on the bar and told Laurie that these were on the house.
Laurie took a sip. This round tasted a lot stronger than the last. She turned towards the bathroom and was startled to find Fred already standing next to her, only a foot away, a strained smile on his face.
“Sorry,” he said. “Seeing you again brought back memories, but now they’re gone. Can we start over?”
They spent the next hour forgoing mentions of the past in an attempt to find some contemporary overlap. She chatted more about her celebrity sightings, some of the new movies she liked, the anthropological eccentricities of California culture. He brought up the local sports team, how his parents were loving their life in the city, and a few more recent exploits with those clowns Hank and Jessie that sounded remarkably similar to ones from the past.
Nearing midnight, a few drinks deeper, Laurie put another arm around Fred. His tension had dissolved. After midnight, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a hotel key that he placed on top of the bar.
“Interested in a nightcap upstairs?” he asked.
She said that sounded nice and closed their tabs.
They exited The Anchor’s back door into the Palmer’s lobby. The ceiling was a dim grey from cigarette smoke. A few lingerers were slumped on couches in dire need of new upholstery. It was unclear if they were guests or loiterers.
Fred placed a hand on the small of Laurie’s back and led her past the front desk, where a tall man with a pockmarked face ignored them as he stared at the time ticking away on the grandfather clock. They walked into the hallway and turned right towards the bank of elevators. When one opened, an old man in a scarlet bellhop uniform was already inside.
“Going on up, so come on in,” he said with a smile. “Hoight’s my name and elevatin’s my game.”
Laurie giggled, but Fred remained stone-faced as he pressed the number seven. The doors closed.
“Ask me how my job is?” Hoight said, breaking the silence.
“How’s your job?” Laurie asked.
“Oh, it has its ups and down,” Hoight said.
His chuckle rattled through the elevator. The bellhop faced the elevator doors, but in the reflective silver, he made eye contact with Laurie.
“You two coming from The Anchor?” Hoight asked.
“Indeed,” Laurie said.
“Best bar left in the city,” Hoight said. “Happen to see those dollar bills?”
“Barbs told me all about them,” Laurie said.
“As she does,” Hoight said.
Her eyes shifted to Fred, who stood silent and brooding. In the door’s reflection, she saw his jaw clenched, his brow strained and stretched, a vein on his forehead visibly throbbing. She glanced down and saw that his hand was tensed into a tight fist. His nails gripped deep into his palm as if ready for a fight.
“Know what I think about those dollars?” Hoight said, then answered his own question. “You can’t know if those men died in the war, or if the experience of war just changed them enough that they didn’t want to go back to their old lives.”
The elevator slowed to a creep as it neared the seventh floor. Laurie snuck another glimpse at Fred’s balled fist, now gripping so tight that his hand shook. His knuckles blared white and the rest of his curled fingers flushed bright red as his hand trembled.
The elevator stopped.
“You know they say a man can never step in the same river twice,” Hoight said. “And not only because the river’s changed—the man’s changed as well.”
And then Laurie saw a single drop of blood fall from Fred’s strained fist onto the carpeted floor.
The elevator dinged and the door opened.
Fred nodded, forced a strained smile. He stepped out and started down the hall.
“Well, goodnight,” Laurie said to Hoight. He said it back.
She saw a look in the bellhop’s eyes. There was a certain sadness, like he’d seen these same cycles repeating over and over in his life, and was always helpless to change them.
“Oh shoot,” she called out to Fred from inside of the elevator. “Left my wallet at the bar.”
Fred spun around in the hallway but Hoight was already tapping the door-close button.
“Wait!” Fred screamed through the hall. “Don’t go!”
“Be right back,” Laurie offered, and the doors slammed shut.
As they rode down in silence Laurie saw the bellhop’s face flush with a hint of some strange type of joy. He stood up straight with a sense of earned pride. When they reached the ground floor, Hoight wished her a good night and she responded in kind.
Laurie hustled through the empty lobby past the thunderous sound of the ticking grandfather clock, out through the front revolving doors, and then off to anywhere else as fast as she could.
Artwork by Tiffany Silver Braun.
If you like Tales from the Palmer Hotel, tell a friend. If you really like it, the suggested donation for the series is a one-time payment of $6.66. Venmo (@Rick-Paulas) or Paypal (rickpaulas@gmail.com).