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milliways_bar2005-04-13 07:58 pm
no-prisoner.livejournal.com) wrote in milliways_bar2005-04-13 07:58 pm
The Sum of All Happy Hours
Eddie comes in from the Staff Quarters with damp hair and his Ginslinger t-shirt, his gun and gunbelt already tucked into a neat roll that he sets under the bar. He sits on a stool for a while picking his Specials and writes them up on the chalkboard.
"Howdy, all you beautiful folken. Specials tonight are Love Potion #9, the After 18, and that old fav, the Manhattan. Come and get it!"
"Howdy, all you beautiful folken. Specials tonight are Love Potion #9, the After 18, and that old fav, the Manhattan. Come and get it!"
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"It was 2005 when I was there earlier today."
He stares at his scotch for a moment, then, eyes slightly narrowed, he looks back up and says, "On September 11, 2001, two passenger airplanes flew into the World Trade Center. Both towers fell. If Black Thirteen was there, it had to have been crushed."
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Or it feels like he does. From Ted's perspective, he's stock still.
"...n..." There's no blood in his face at all. Now he does move, leaning forward and gripping the bar. "What?"
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And he drinks his scotch.
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"I should have been there."
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Ted swallows. He doesn't want to get into the details he found. The newspaper stories. The magazine articles. The 9/11 Commission Report.
It's horrible enough as is. It would be worse if he were from New York. He can't bring himself to look at Eddie.
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red to white red over white red over white it was a beautiful fall morning I should have been there
"What the fuck, Ted?" His voice cracks, and the first tears try to fall.
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There's Discordia on the larger level, the multiverse level...and then there's things like this -- things that are somehow worse because they're yours, and they've been taken. Dismissed out of hand, like so much dross. Not even a chance to say goodbye. Not that there's anything you could say. Not to something like this.
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There's no comparison. Irrationally, absurdly, faithlessly he'd sell the Tower in End-World and its twin in the rose to get them back.
It makes no sense; if the world ends, assumably, New York goes with it, but the mathematics of the heart make no sense at all.
Everything I am, everything I've done, none of it matters at all because of this. I'M SUPPOSED TO PROTECT--
He pitches forward onto the bar, burying his face in his forearms. "I've been there."
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Quietly:
"There are memorials. Little ones. It looks like a construction site, now -- they're planning to rebuild. A somber place. But -- pictures, and flowers. All over. People pay their respects. It's not over."
It's cold comfort, he knows -- but there's nothing else he can offer.
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Eddie doesn't know how he feels about anything
twice as high don't want to provoke a sheet of glass understanding kill considered justice murder humble names and names and
and it sings all their names and IT IS NOT ENOUGH. It will never be enough. No magic will bring them back, no song will undo what happened and no memorial will ever save one blessed person who lived and breathed and ate and fucked and died on a beautiful fall day when he wasn't there.
In the world where time only runs one way.
He thinks he is going to be sick. He thinks he going to scream. He thinks he is going to punch Ted right in the mouth, Ted who is from fucking Connecticut.
He bites his lips hard enough to taste blood and coughs into his arms, hiccoughing as the tears finally break loose.
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He doesn't say anything.
There's nothing to say.
He remembers vaguely -- like it happened years ago -- staggering out of the New York Public Library that afternoon, feeling strangely numb, walking three avenues over and six streets up to the rose without noticing how the city has changed in the decades he'd been gone. Feeling as though he were in a stupor. The rose changed that feeling. There's no rose here now. And even if there were...
No magic in the world that can fix this. And if he were to try the good-mind on Eddie, the man would shoot him.
So Ted Brautigan sits there, a mostly empty glass of scotch and a grieving New Yorker in front of him, and is silent.
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Did you blink? Were you on the can?
Did I not give enough, unselfishly?
My brother and my daughter and my goddamn life, that I should live to hear this?
AREN'T I OWED ANYTHING?
Dear Gan or God or Power unknown on high in Can' Ka No-Rey: Get fucked and take ka with you.
The Turtle couldn't help us. I wasn't there. Why am I here and they aren't? They should crowd the tables and the chairs and sit on the floor and ring around the lake with wide, shocked eyes.
If this is mercy your sense of humor is deeply fucked up. Who hands out second chances around here anyway?
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It's no substitute for the real thing, and Ted Brautigan knows it.
Is there such a thing as grief for what you never saw? Perhaps. But there is such a thing as sympathy, and regret, and the desire to ease suffering.
And the knowledge that there is a job to be done.
"Eddie."
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Susannah was from 1964; he's not sure but were the Towers even started then? But by '76 they had to be open, and they'd've been under construction for at least a decade before they did.
Oh Christ how'm I gonna tell Jake?
"You say true, Ted." If he stay out here, breaking on the bar, someone might try to symapthize, and then he might hurt them. He really might. And if it were Bernard or Ace, cheerful mad bombers...
He shudders. There is an ocean of rage looking for a place to vent right now. He needs to get out of the bar.
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He looks at Eddie's Mets cap, now askew. He feels sick.
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He's not taking it off for a while.
Like, a year.
"Night, Ted." He takes his gun out from behind the bar and walks out into the Staff Wing, his shoulders bowed.