I transcended between dream and reality as the bus jolted and rumbled and dimmed. Wheeler's bony butt was practically on my lap for a moment or two, and I plastered my side to the window, perpetually shoving him over with my knee. I kept dreaming nonsense, about some dragon bathing in what looked like canned ravioli. I'd wake and then find myself mentally searching for the exact spot in the orange and red valley that I left off. I was just sort of perusing around a warm valley, and this dragon was dipping it's mouth in the goo and then spitting the marinara looking sauce all over itself. It never saw me. I was completely alone, I thought to myself in the dream that it might have been hell. If Cait had been with me when I woke up, I'm sure she'd relay some highly inaccurate interpretation of what it all meant. I personally found no significance from any of it, but the vividness was undeniably haunting, as usual.
The outside world began to brighten and it seemed we'd arrived in something urban. It was just after 11 p.m. I'd slept for much longer than I'd thought, which I realized with utter relief. The trip was ending, and we'd arrived in Minneapolis, just a tad behind schedule. After the various stops, less than half the passengers remained on the bus. Hot Cheetos was gone, and the Amish trifecta had also departed. The skinny tough guy and his babe still sat ahead of us, and they yawned and then giggled then kissed in the dark. "I think we're here, babe," he said.
We turned down South 3rd Street and stopped on the corner of 3rd and Chicago. The lights came on and the bus beeped and lowered. "Well folks, almost 8 hours later and it looks like we're back to Chicago," joked the driver over the intercom. Silence ensued, and it seemed that the fat nut in the back had exited the bus while we slept. We retrieved our backpack and left into a sea of parking lots. There were parking lots on every side of us, and low yellow street lights made continuous shadows down the cement blocks.
Few cars passed, and the other riders faded into cabs or cars or shadows. Wheeler and I made no plans for lodging, and we sat on a brick ledge in one of the many parking lots to contemplate our next move. The air was idyllic, and faints of summer warmth moved in a steady breeze calmly moving west. It smelled like flowers and dirt in the lot, and I took notice to the likelihood of the moon actually being full. It appeared to be, but truly full or not, it was certainly brilliant above us regardless.
"Hey, you know where the term 'lunatic' comes from?" said Wheeler, leaning back against his wrists and turning his wide eyes towards the sky.
"No I don't."
"The prefix 'luna' means moon. People are supposedly more crazy when there's a full moon. More murderers, more accidents. Even Aristotle thought so."
"You know the most useless shit."
"Depends on what you consider useless I guess!"
"So what are we supposed to do now?"
"Find a watering hole and stumble around until morning. Then we'll go to this Hackett house first in the morning," he pulled out a scribbley map with a triangle drawn over outspread Minneapolis streets. He pointed to one of the corners.
"Alright," I said.
There was a star on the map about 8 blocks southeast of where the first Hackett house was. "We're here," said Wheeler.
"I feel sort of like a pirate with this map, looking for treasure."
Wheeler concluded that we should head towards the first house, and stop at whatever bars we collided with on the journey.
After 5 blocks towards the first Hackett house, we came to a slightly busy slew of low buildings with cheap looking fluorescent signs and stirs of amplified music inside. The gutters surrounding reeked of sewage and mud, and there wasn't anything or anyone remotely pretty in sight. There was life though, and booze, and we settled with that.
The first bar on the left was called "Hobo Sam's". The crowd was surprisingly young. I knew nothing about the demographics of the area, but I did know how confoundedly ugly it was outside. Usually young people congregate in pretty little places, but there must have been a college nearby, I thought.
Wheeler hung around me like a belt, and it was only by extremely aggressive shoves that I got him to remove his arm or arms from my waist. He went to the bar and squeezed between a very dull looking group. I sat at a tall wooden table on the left side of the room and surveyed the variance, feeling quite tired and greasy. He looked back towards me periodically, with a happy drunk grin on his face, as though we repeatedly shared a discreet moment that words could not necessarily convey. There was no moment though. No connection, and I actually quivered in disgust at the sight of his elongated gazes.
He was wearing a snug navy t-shirt with a picture of Mufasa on it from The Lion King. It read, "Mi Mufasa es Su Mufasa," in white cursive font. Mufasa was the father in the movie. Did the shirt mean, my father is your father? Crazy fucking Wheeler, I thought, as I watched him stand there, all lanky and British looking. Those big buck teeth and high cheek bones were nothing short of laughable. The expression on his face was one that indicated he desired and deserved attention, attention from me no less. However, I could never reciprocate that look he was giving me. No matter what we'd done together or what we were going to do, I would never even remotely care about him on any romantic level. Any sexual encounters we had were merely consequences of apathy, not attraction. What was most palpable to me in that moment, was that I lacked even the smallest amount of remorse for the entire debacle. His feelings were his own problem.
He came back to the table with a pitcher of beer and two quality plastic cups. The beer tasted like apricots, and the plastic was thick, nothing that I could bite through.
"Nice," I said.
"The bartender only had fucking quarters for change. You mind if I go blow them on those machines over there?" he pointed to a little area by the foyer where there was an abundance of kiddie looking machine games. "I think there's a jukebox too."
"Yeah, go."
He reached over and squeezed my hand before he got up, just before I had a sufficient chance to remove it from his range.
The other tables around me were quickly occupied, and I was suddenly filled with an overwhelming feeling of familiarity. I could be in any college bar in any city in the country and find nothing remotely different, aside perhaps from a variation in the nightly specials. The three guys behind me were wearing blue and black and tan, and their names were probably Chad, Chris, and Tom. There were four girls behind them. They were probably talking about relationships or the trivial details of their daily affairs. All of the noise around me struck me in such an exasperatingly daunting way, that I could do nothing more than chug the pitcher to suppress my anxiety. I drank and drank until the apricot beer deflected in burps from my full stomach, back into the noisy air.
Wheeler popped back over to me just as I finished the last drink of the apricot beer."I won this in a machine," he said, pulling out a small black box from his pocket. Inside was a fake gaudy diamond ring with a thin faux-silver band.
"I also won an alligator stuffed animal, but some dude bought it from me for $1.25."
"Weird."
"I'm gonna do something now, and you have to go with it. No matter what, just go with it. Okay? Trust me."
"What are you gonna do?"
"Just trust me."
He walked over towards the bar and disappeared in the accumulating crowd.
Some big girl in a table perpendicular from me was leaning too far forward and her shirt was far too short. The blatant sight of the crack of her ass made me almost want to throw up the apricot beer. Also, I'd been extremely malnourished in the past few days, and the impetuous pitcher chug left me feeling unsteady in my chair. Thanks to the beer, time was sort of easier to endure though, which was a feeling I could not deny liking. I wished for a minute I had a napkin to crumble, or a paper straw wrapper to toss over into her crack. I had nothing though, and just cringed flagrantly in her general ass crack direction.
The lights became a tad brighter, and the music stopped playing mid song. It was hours before closing time. Several fat and thirsty college beasts looked towards the bar, bewildered. Others were too drunk or distracted to notice. However, all mouths and eyes halted when suddenly the bartender hopped on the bar. He sharply whistled with two fingers in his mouth, a skill that awed me and commanded the room nearly silent.
"Hey! Everybody. Listen up for a minute!"
A congregated group by the bar parted for an emerging person. It was Wheeler. Goddamn Wheeler. He walked out from the group and moved towards me. He had a look on his face like a man who'd just born a child. He seemed completely meek and utterly amazed. 'What the fuck is he about to do?' I thought. Thankfully I was feeling a bit loaded, and the bright lights in the room were fuzzy enough to keep me calm. I remembered what he said, "No matter what, just go with it." Go with it I would, for the sake of sparring a likely brawl, but I was nervous as hell as he approached me.
The people in the room formed sort of a half-moon crescent around us as he cleared his throat.
"Paigebrook," he said, so loudly that I could almost feel the vibrations of his voice.
"I have loved you since the first time I saw you." Pause. Oh God. Oh God. What the fuck is he doing? I put my hand over my heart, and the other over my mouth, worried I may puke or laugh, and the hand could stop both.
"Every day that I've heard your voice and seen you smile, has made me happier than the day before... You've stood by me through these past 8 years. Through my drug problems, through the cancer... You've given me strength that I never knew I had in me. Sometimes, I just look at you and my whole life just makes sense. You are my best friend, and the most beautiful girl I have ever. ever. seen." The long lustrous pauses were filled with perceptible intensity, and I could see that around the room girls and boys alike were beaming with receptive happiness. A blond girl sitting on a stool wiped a tear from her cheek.
Wheeler took a deep heartfelt breath and got down on one knee. 'Oh God,' I thought. The crowd around us jeered with more enthusiasm than I remember seeing at any baseball game, any track meet or 5k road race... Tough boys with deep voices cheered from the depths of their lungs. Tiny girls 'wooed' with high pitched yelps, and the fire in the room pulsed with genuine intensity and support. Even I felt like crying.
"Paigebrook, Esmerelda.. McGillicuddy. Make me the happiest fucking guy in the world," He pulled out the black box with the ring that he'd won from the quarter machine. "Will you, marry me?" He opened the box. The room sort of held it's breath for just a moment, and I found myself nodding uncontrollably, 'yes', I moved my hand away from my nearly laughing mouth and said, "Yes, Yes, Yes!" Every one went bizerk; clapping and jumping and cheering wildly. I got up from my chair and Wheeler picked me up in one brisk motion, spinning me around in an eloquent loop.
I heard joyful crying from the table of boring broads I'd noted earlier. There was the sound of champagne popping, and before I knew it, I kissed him, in the heat of the brilliantly contrived moment. We had parted The Red Sea. We had turned water into wine, and everyone in the room wanted a piece of our miraculous asses. True love had been witnessed, at least in the perception of these dopey Minnesotans.
I couldn't believe how badly every one wanted to be apart of it, to believe it, and to support it with every type of alcoholic salutation I'd ever consumed. It was like my goddamn twenty-first birthday, on steroids. Never had I been treated better in my life. Before we knew it, we were Hobo Sam royalty. Bottles of champagne were opened in our honor. We took shot after shot after shot. We were holding hands and Eskimo kissing our way into being given the bar itself.
We were becoming quite good at being engaged. Our story became bigger and more concrete as the night went on.
"So, why'd you pick Hobo Sam's?" asked a relatively cute brunette, who didn't buy us a drink but came over to our celebrity stools at the bar. It was a reasonable question.
"This has been our place for the past five years," said Wheeler.
"Yeah that's right, we come here all the time," I said.
The bar was a dark dusty square with old looking pool tables and bathrooms that reeked of shit and murder.
A tall gump in a backwards grey hat, with borderline cross-eyes overheard our response and chimed in. "You know, I've seen you guys in here so many times. You always look so happy and so in love. Makes me want to get a girlfriend, man," he patted Wheeler on the back.
"Nothing beats love," said Wheeler.
"Wow. That's just great. I'm so happy for you guys!" said the brunette. She then ordered us two shots.
"Five years? How fucking old do I look?" I whispered in Wheeler's ear. He laughed and kissed me on the cheek. "Love you too, honey!" he said.
A short guy with dark hair walked over to us. He looked and smelled like he'd just popped out of the tanning bed, and he held out his hand towards me with enthusiasm. "Congrats guys. Really. That was incredible. I work for Minneapolisbars.com, and I actually caught the entire thing on my iPhone. I'm gonna put it up on the website tomorrow if it's cool with you both."
"Oh yeah, absolutely. I can't wait to see it!"
"I've never seen anything like that. It was seriously, really amazing. I've seen you guys in here before, and I gotta tell you, I've noticed how happy you are together."
"Hear that dear? How nice," I said. I smiled drunkenly at Wheeler. I felt like an aspiring actress with my first big break.
"Hey and if you guys need anything, like a promo for your wedding, promo for your bachelor parties, seriously let me know. I also video tape, too," he said. He handed us his card. It had his face on the front of it.
"Also I'm gonna give you guys this V.I.P promo book. There are drink tickets in there, coupons for restaurants and hotels, party discounts, limo discounts.. lots of good stuff," he handed it to Wheeler.
"Excellent man. We really appreciate it," said Wheeler. He kissed my forehead.
The plastic ring was entirely too big for my ring finger, and it slid around in circles and dropped down onto the ground from time to time. A boy glanced skeptically while Wheeler retrieved it. Wheeler picked up the ring and leaned into the boy, "It's my mom's engagement ring man. I love the woman, but she's bigger than a house," he said. The boy smiled and moved in towards the bar.
"Bartender! Two shots!" he said.
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