THE FOREVER THING BRIDGE 2
by maven
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Constant c Productions and Amblin Television in association with Warner Bros. Television, NBC and probably a slew of other people have prior claim. Anyone you don't recognize comes from my imagination.
RATINGS DISCLAIMER: Sex = a same sex relationship but otherwise PG, Violence = PG, Language = AA.
CONTINUITY DISCLAIMER: To be precise canon up to Rampage and then alternative universe. This is a segment of the Thing-verse, a chronological list can be found at the site.
BLAME DISCLAIMER: Sharon Bowers. I didn’t even watch the damn show until she started writing it.
FEEDBACK, COMMENTS AND FLAMES: Email at maven369@sympatico.ca
The bartender, a college student I'm sure, asks me silently if I want another so I nod and a few seconds later it appears. She's obviously new at this because I'm pretty far gone and a more experienced server would be thinking about cutting me off or at least slowing me down. But I have maybe another fifteen minutes before Carla's shift so I resolve to toss this one back and get another before she arrives.
I sense a presence behind me and play the game. She'll be younger than me, she'll offer to buy me whatever I'm having but will order a white wine instead of joining me drinking Jack Daniels. She'll beat around the bush for five minutes before checking my status and, when finding out that involved she'll press just a bit to find out if I'm involved or if I'm INVOLVED. I look up, smiling into the mirror to check out my guesses and get the jump on the seduction process.
Fuck.
"What do you want?"
"That's your pick up line?" she asks, sliding onto the stool beside me.
"No, that's my stay the hell out of my life tonight line."
"Smooth. It'd work on someone less sophisticated than I."
"Doubtless," I say and see that Carla has arrived and my window for another drink is most likely closed. "Fuck."
"Please tell me that's not your pick up line."
"No, that's my because I was talking to you Carla arrived and she's not going to serve me."
"Why isn't she?"
"Because I'm drunk and she's going to cut me off. Shhh, here she comes. Pretend I’m sober."
"Hey," Carla says, coming up to us, "long time no see. The usual?"
I'm just about to congratulate myself on my acting abilities when I realize she's not talking to me.
"No. Um, got a Cherry Coke?"
"No, but I can fake one with grenadine," Carla says. "How long have you been drinking Cherry Cokes?"
"Coming up on five years."
"It looks good on you." She finally looks over at me. "What about you, Kim?"
"I'll have another."
She thinks this over and I know she’s going to say no. "You two know each other?"
"Yes."
"No."
"If it's yes I'll serve you as long as she gets you home."
"I'll get her home."
"Safe," Carla specifies and I feel an eyebrow rise in surprise.
"As houses."
"Okay, then," Carla says and the bottle materializes and I finally get my drink. I take a slow sip, savouring it because I know she’s not going to get me another one soon.
“So,” I say, “you’ll get me home safe, Short Stuff?”
“As houses, Stretch.”
I let a few minutes tick by, nursing my drink and refusing to meet Abby’s eyes either directly or through the mirror behind the bar. Two questions run around in my head and finally one blurts out.
“How’d you find me?”
“Called Christie.”
“And how is Christie?”
“Pissed at me.”
“Why?”
“It’s apparently 3 A.M. in London right now.”
“And you woke her?”
“Noooo,” she drawls and I catch the small thread of humour in her voice.
“Oh? Oh!” I say, a light bulb going off. Figures. “She always did hate being interrupted.”
“Hmm. Well, so did her date. However, the date is more pissed at Christie then me.”
She’s enjoying telling this story way too much and I decide to humour her. Anything to delay the real reason she’s here.
“Why is that?”
"Christie told her that you were more important than some bint whose name she won’t remember in two weeks.”
“That’s my Christie, soul of tact.”
“And then some. Anyway, she gave me a short list of bars you go to when you’re… when you’re like this. I got lucky on the first one. She does love you, you know.”
“Who Christie? Yeah, despite the fact that she ran like a coward to England, I know she does. Just the wrong amount.”
“Wrong amount?”
“Too much to stick around and not enough to stand seeing me like this. So she grabs the chance to work out of the country on the theory that when she gets back I’ll be okay.”
“And will you?”
“God knows,” I say, shrugging and taking another sip. “So, is Kerry checking out the list from the other end?”
“No, she got stuck at work and won’t be home until around one. She doesn’t even know that you’re gone let alone that I’m looking for you.”
“So what’s the story? Why are you looking for me?”
“Because Kerry had a rotten day and I don’t want her to come home and have to worry about you on top of it all.”
“Why’d she have a rotten day?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Sure I do,” I assure her but on a part of me doesn’t. I loyally squash it down.
“You don’t want to know,” she repeats.
“Abby, I’m a grown woman and a doctor. There’s nothing you can tell me that---“
“Female, mid thirties, spontaneous abortion in the second trimester.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed.”
“How umm, how is she?”
“The patient or Kerry?”
“Kerry.”
“The patient is fine. The patient will survive.”
“Abby.”
“How am I supposed to answer that, Kim? She did her job and she got a save. She was professional and she didn’t let her personal life interfere. She put on her stoic face and soldiered on. She threw up in the can and then signed on for another half shift. Which one of those matters to you?”
I’m taken aback by her anger and feel myself withdrawing. My inner shrink, lately elusive and now making an unwanted return, suggests that I’m disassociating. I focus back on the now, on Carla and Abby catching up. I find a fresh drink in front of me.
“Med school? Dr. Abby. You going to give free advice to old friends?”
“Sure,” Abby says, voice light. “Eat right, exercise and take a vacation twice a year.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. But you won’t, no one ever does. And that’s how we all are able to pay off our student loans.”
Carla laughs and heads down to look after a newly arrived group at the other end of the bar.
“You know her?”
“Carla? Yeah.”
“Socially or professionally?”
“Mmmmm, professionally.”
“Oh.” I mulled that over. “Her profession or yours?”
She laughs outright. “Hers. I use to be a regular here, before I quit.”
About a dozen questions occur. I go for the most obvious. “Why?”
“Why did I quit?”
Not exactly my first choice for the fifteen questions my single ‘why’ referred to but it would do.
“We’ll start there. Why did you decide to stop drinking?”
She pauses, frowning in thought. “I woke up with someone who’s name I didn’t know and went into the bathroom. And found that I couldn’t face her.”
“Your umm, ‘date’?”
“No, the face in the mirror.” She sips at her Coke, swirling it to get the grenadine mixed in again. “So I decided I needed to get control. Or soon I wouldn't even recognize her.”
“Next why,” I demand.
“Why did I drink at a lesbian bar?”
“Yeah, especially one with a bartender like Carla.”
She is silent for so long I figure she’s either blowing me off or doing a little disassociating herself. “Safer. Because Carla was always looking out I could ride it longer. And gay bars because it was more likely I’d get home safe…” she trails off, lost in memory until she gives a little shake. “Less likely to get hurt if something did happen.”
I reach out and turn her, looking at her for real for the first time since she entered the bar. I make it my life’s work to help people in pain and I wonder how I could have avoided seeing it in her eyes before. But then she blinks and it’s gone.
“That was another life, Stretch.”
I shrug. “So for the onerous price of occasionally waking up with a woman--“
“Oh, I never said onerous,” Abby says and grins and I’m suddenly reminded of Maggie.
“Okay,” I drawl, “I’ve had too much to drink to be taking this in correctly. I always thought you were attracted to men.”
“I think I’m attracted to pain.”
“Oooh, I must be looking good to you right now, then.”
She smacks me gently across the shoulder. “My shrink says that pain is my new drug of choice as I use it to dull the pain now that I'm on the wagon. That I’m only happy when I’m trying to ease another’s pain and when it succeeds I need to find the next hurting person.”
“What a quack.”
“You recommended him.”
“Oh, yeah. I did. But that was so easy and it took him three years?"
"No, the pain seeking was easy. We're still dealing with the rest of the shit of my life."
"Yeah, your suddenly much more interesting life."
"Sorry I was boring before."
"I can't believe I never figured it out. Or that you told me."
"Now there's a ringing endorsement. 'Hey Kim, I'm okay with you being gay. Heck, I sleep with women when I'm drunk.' That ranks up right there with some of my best friends are lesbians."
I laugh so hard my drink threatens my nasal passages while she just sits there, swirling the cola and smiling that absent-minded smile. If the damn stools weren't bolted to the floor I'd shift it closer. "So, ever thought what it'd be like sober?" I ask when I can talk again.
"Stop that."
"What?"
"Looking at me different. Still me, despite my past."
"True, but my knowledge has changed."
"That's your problem, Stretch, not mine."
"You are one cold bitch tonight, Shorty."
"I'm not the one hiding out in a bar from her wife," she says. She blinks a few times. "Damn confusing pronouns."
"Tell you what, we go home now and you can find out."
"No."
"Then I guess I'll just stay here."
"No, that's not happening either. Here's the deal. You come home now. You be there for Kerry tonight. You let her hold you all night. Or we're done."
"Done? Define done."
"I can't be your friend, Kim. Not if you hurt her tonight."
"That's not a deal," I protest. "That's an ultimatum."
"Whatever. That's it."
"You're bluffing."
She leans in, holds my gaze for a five count. "Just. Try. Me."
As fucked up, as drunk as I am, I'm still not stupid enough to throw away my last lifeline. "Fine. But we make it a deal. Your door stays open." She nods. "And I can come down."
"Comfort, not oblivion."
"Oh, come on. Live dangerously."
"Stop it."
"Deny it."
"Kim, I'd have to be dead not to have thought about it. You're an attractive woman and at one time you were very witty with a charming and engaging personality."
"Ha! So, you'd switch teams for me?" Focus on the positive and ignore the insult.
"I'd switch fucking sports," she mutters. I'm sure I'm not supposed to have heard that but I press on.
"Come on," I say, leaning in, "she won't be home for a couple of hours."
"No, I couldn't face her."
"She'll never know and even if she did she'd forgive us."
"Not Kerry. The face in the mirror."
I close my eyes in defeat. "Abby?" I’m not sure if I’m asking some unknown question or merely hoping for more reassurance.
"You know that it would be a bad idea. You know that it won't solve anything or make it all go away."
"What do I have to do to get laid in this town?" I ask, a bit too loudly judging from the sudden silence in the rest of the bar.
“Grow up. Heal. Talk about this with someone that doesn’t love you.”
“You love me?” I ask, annoyed at how pathetic I make it sound.
She looks at me appraisingly and slowly nods. “Yeah, I do.”
“How much?” I’m moving from pathetic and into childish.
“About as much as Christie, more or less. Less than Kerry does. More than you do right now.”
I clamp down on the sob I feel. “You ever think about changing specializations, Short Stuff?”
“One shrink in the family is enough, Stretch. Coming home?”
I examine my drink. Knowing my answer. I can risk losing Kerry because some part of me knows that I can’t, that we’re bound together into the future because of our past. That no matter how bad it gets we’ll always, eventually, slowly, painfully make it back together.
But I can’t risk my lifeline.
“Take me home, Abby. Keep me safe.”
“As houses, Stretch. Always.”
The End
Next official story in the Thing-verse: The Ghost in the Bed
The unofficial version of the next story in the Thing-verse: The Story of my Life
URL: www.oocities.org/maven369/in2/erf.html
Main Page: www.oocities.org/maven369
Email at maven369@sympatico.ca