blurring_the_edges_23_shifting_gears birdmad Almost as if she has secretly been keeping tabs on you, Zoe does the unusual and calls you less than a week after the crash-and-burn with Elena. It's a Thursday night and there is no overtime scheduled at the plant for tomorrow, so you have taken your paycheck and done the grocery shopping already, including an occasion to use your fake ID and buy a bottle of Cuervo 1800 tequila. You mix yourself a couple of drinks in front of your mom, who doesn't seem terribly disapproving, in fact the only guilt you feel is that you feel rude for partaking while she can't because of her chemotherapy. The 1800, unlike some of the other Tequila you've tasted, goes down smoothly enough that you take it neat in a chilled glass, with just a little spritz of water almost like it was a good scotch. If you could afford it, you would go to that new upscale supermarket they just built up on Central and Camelback. According to Jimmy K, the liquor selection on their shelves is top-notch. Of course once your mom has gone back to her room, you take a couple of deep gulps from the other occupants of the small, modest liquor cabinet. After all, it's here, somebody has to drink it, no? Your dad's co-workers at the shed are, socially, not unlike the people you conduct your illicit businesses with. Every Christmas, one of the trucking companies and a few of the secretaries around the shed would go all out and buy a bottle of some generally good shit. The boss and the secretaries seemed to buy along their own personal tastes - a collector's bottle of Jack Daniels here, Seagram's VO or 7 there, the occasional Crown Royal or the Cuervo Gold. The trucking companies stepped it up a little in quality, a bottle of some obscure but phenomenal brand of 12 year old Scotch, a Chivas Regal bottle, and the grower's association and some of the big farmers would either send a case of the season's best, or occasionally go a little better still. A one of the big farmers down in Mexico sent up four very nice bottles at Christmas time a year before he got sick, some small brand of tequila_blanco that came in a very fancy bottle and lived up to its packaging in every way, a bottle and glass set of Presdente brandy, a Curvoisier VSOP, and a very tasty orange liquer with a sweet initial taste and a very orangey bite to it, like that funny sting you get from the peel when you eat orange slices. This all struck everyone in the house as funny since your dad hardly ever brought himself to drink any of it. This was largely due to an incident at a party one summer where the entire company celebrated the end of a spectacularly successful season and were on their way to the big four-week summer break. Forgetting his lunch, your dad got beer-drunk on an empty stomach and promptly found himself heaving all over the place. Your mom had to go pick him up and when she brought him home, he had avoided doing the technicolor yawn in the cab of the little blue Datsun pick-up truck but couldn't avoid painting a yak on the juniper tree out in the front. Other than the minor inconvenience of cleaning it up, nobody had any real complaint or judgement around the house about the matter except your dad himself. He seemed squirrely for a few days until he had swallowed the last of his embarassment over the moment, and after that never even drank himself beyond a good light buzz except for one other time at your grandparents' 50th anniversary when he, the current Parish priest, and nearly every one of your male relatives of legal age to do so got nice and toasted. Even the musicians your dad hired to entertain his in-laws managed to be wobbly by the time that night was through. So, here you are, slightly drunk, fillng the little hole in your heart with a little bit of booze to blur the edges of the pain. "We're coming up on your birthday, aren't we Alex?" "In a couple of weeks, yeah, why, Zoe, what are you getting at?" "Well, someone kinda told me that any plans you might have had in the works for that weekend are off the calendar now." "Not entirely true, we're doing the usual family get-together here at the house and i think i might hit that Art Show that's they started doing a couple of years ago the same week every spring, downtown." "That sounds like fun," Zoe says, with a tone that can only mean she's up to something disturbingly sexy, "can Tricia and I tag along?" You weigh it out in your mind: the one you love and want more than anyone and anything in the world just shot you down deader than Elvis because even for all the griping she did about him to you, she prefers her erstwhile ex over you, in the name of helping Zoe, you've already committed yourself to what amounts to an act of prostitution, you are less and less sure that you have any business ever saying a sentence involving the "L-word" ever again since the three times you have been moved to say it have all ended badly. You put your drink down and say "Sure, why not." If Tricia had laid her hands on you the way she did that long-ago morning on the balcony of Eric's apartment, she would have palpably heard the sound of a small door somewhere deep within you swinging shut. 030424 ... She You are beautiful, Birdman. 030425 what's it to you? who go blather from