X Gram

“Alright, buddy, listen to me.” Gram was almost finished with his second bottle of wine (still couldn’t taste the leather) and yet managed to speak as clearly as with the first glass. His speech, if nothing else, merely accelerated. He went over details and contingencies and counter-contingencies and counter-counter-counter-contingencies. Every time he came up with an idea, he saw its flaw, then he saw the flaw in exploiting that flaw. The more he talked, the more certain he became that such an open-ended task with so many unknowns created near-infinite branching paths. Marco’s eyes had been glazed over for most of it.

“How ja you do it?” Marco said with a pronounced slur.

“What?”

“That iron liver of yours,” Marco slurred. “Drink like a fish and lookatcha you’re a bloody twig.”

Gram finished the bottle off. “Practice, practice in all things, my friend.” Given enough excitement, Gram could stay functionally sober well past what any normal person could consider reasonable. Some people called this power of his ‘alcoholism’.

Marco’s head was hovering a few inches from the table. “Well, you should drink more then, eh? No fun having you buzz about talkin’ like that to yourself.” He hiccupped, “you gotta catch up.”

“Marco, did ya forget about why you asked me here? That blockhead of yours has a target on it.”

Marco looked up and grabbed his drink. “Ya well, you’re bein’ an awful stick about it. Relax ‘ave some fun fer fucks sake. We got plenty of time.”

Gram considered what his retort should be but then thought better of it. He stood up to find the waiter. “Let’s switch to cognac.”

By the time Gram got back, Marco’s head was resting firmly on the table. He decided to just have one anyway. Surely, Marco wouldn’t mind. Now he could enjoy himself without having to worry about Marco messing things up. A bit of drool fell from the edge of his friend’s lip and landing on the table still connected to his mouth by a loose thread. He sat there alone. Across from him, his friend was deep in Bacchus’s somnolent embrace. Slowly sipping his cognac Gram wished he felt equally peaceful. He finally had the meal he had dreamed of, read about, and yet a blanket of malaise covered him with increasing weight.

There was no way of saving his friend without losing him. The fact he thought he could save him, actually believed it made him cringe a little. Could he really outsmart a hunter with all the resources that entailed? No one survived hunts. He had ideas, but they were just that. Was he fooling himself? As he took another sip of cognac, he felt a stone in the pit of his stomach. Macro’s blood bought the meal, and the oaf really believed he, Gram could save him. He talked a big game but he was no Slate. This wasn’t a game as much as he tried to keep it in the realm of intellectual exercise. Looking at his slumbering friend he imagined, for the first time, truly, him dead in a year with the fault squarely in Gram’s lap.

Guilt started to creep into the mix of emotions. The lummox had embarrassed him at this fancy restaurant, but why should he care what a bunch of toffs think? He hated them. Gram looked around at them. All those toffs spent more time on social cues than their food or wine. In no way did they appreciate any of what they had, nor did they deserve it. A din of banal chatter was all they could produce. He looked up at the gilded ceiling and let the environment fuzz. His heart was beating so hard it felt like it was drowning him in blood. Blood forcefully inflating Gram’s veins near to the point of bursting. The feeling was that of preparation to run from a lion, but with the clear and cruel knowledge that there was, in fact, no lion. The faces, everywhere the people masked menace behind false smiles and forced laughs. He felt as if his mind was detaching from his body. This wasn’t the first time Gram felt like this, but why now? He took another sip of the woody-fiery cognac in an attempt to soothe his nerves. It burned numbly as he swallowed. Gram was a fraud. It was all fraud and he had to go.

On the trip back Gram’s panic attack had subsided though he still felt some residual shame which tempered his annoyance of wrangling Marco home. He knocked on the door, and Luna answered. She was Marco’s cousin, short with a cute little button nose and a sharp jawline, a mix of facial features that managed to somehow make her appearance both soft and angular. Her eyes lit up upon opening the door, then she scanned over to see her semi-conscious cousin who Gram leaned up against the wall.

“Oh Marco, ever since he got the contract, he gets like this every night. How much did he drink?”

“Eh…not so much. He must just be tired.”

“Then I’ll make some coffee for you two.”

“Ummm, I really should be headin’ home.”

She gave him a warm hug, Gram stiffened up. “It’s been a long time, just one?” Her voice was a silky playful contralto.

 “I suppose just the one couldn’t hurt?”

He dropped Marco off on the couch to a billow of dust. She brought out a French press and started grinding the coffee. Dull confusing conflicting fuzz went through his head restricting his responses to single syllables. But then he noticed the coffee—the grains were much too fine for a French press. The water had already boiled and was taken off the stove a while ago, and she was still grinding the beans as the water cooled. Gram was about to start giving advice. The grinder and press were new, obviously for guests. They were hard to come by in the lowlands, where coffee typically started out as brown pellets from a silver can and finished its journey of becoming coffee if you could call it coffee with the simple pour of a kettle. There was a lot of pride in that coffee. He held his tongue, the mistakes might cancel out anyway.

“How is the coffee?”

“Very nice.” Every instinct in his body told him to gently explain what she did wrong, but he suppressed it and smiled instead. After all, it wasn’t so bad, really.

He caught himself staring into her soft brown eyes. She was smiling gently into his, delicately pushing her hair behind her ear. A bad idea, a very bad idea. Things rarely worked out in the end and with Marco it wasn’t like he could just avoid her. If Marco lasted that long. Gram felt the punch of guilt from that last thought.

Gram finished the coffee in a gulp. “Let me carry him to the bed.”

She laughed, “at least the couch is an upgrade from the floor.”

Plopped heavily into the bed Marco groaned. Gram gently pulled the covers over his friend.

“You really are a dumbass Marco”

“Fuck you Gram” Marco mumbled half consciously.

“Love you too buddy.” Gram messed Marco’s hair before leaving.

On the walk home his head crowded with thoughts until it went blank and he felt numb. He was almost entirely sober by this point, he lit a cigarette, maybe just half a bottle of tigal and he could get some sleep. It was late and he had work tomorrow. He carefully opened the front door, closing it without a sound.

“Alex, is that you, hon?” “Dammit, ma! For the last time, the name is Gram.”