I wasn’t her husband

[saltdawg]

So the Bo’sun position on this ship is usually filled by the third mate. Which is fucked up for many reasons too tedious for me to get into here. In fact the contract for this ship doesn’t even have a designation for a third mate, the captain simply decided that he wanted to hire licensed people to fill the bo’sun position and sail as third mate. He did this so he wouldn’t have to stand a watch. Don’t even get me started. All I’m trying to say is that even though the third mate fills the bo’sun slot, he doesn’t come close to performing the actual job. In fact, nobody on this ship really understands what a bo’sun really does. Except for me.

 

Anyway. The third mate, who’s been chasing tail all over the eastern seaboard, has taken a couple of weeks off while we are here in Port Canaveral. They have made me the bo’sun for the interim. Which, as I mentioned earlier, is pretty cool because I’m making a shitload of money while he’s gone. Which is also good because I may have to move to St. Petersburg in the near future. And get a job at walgreen’s. I’m going to court next Monday, and I will plead out the felony charges and find out what my punishment will be. At least my attorney got them to completely drop the misdemeanor charges.

 

So they have made me the bo’sun and I’ve been working way too hard. I’ve been up earlier and knocking off later than everybody else in the deck department because the day rate of the bo’sun is common knowledge and major bone of contention amongst the crew because the bo’sun makes more than the second, and quite possibly the first mates. As well as more than the First Assistant engineer. As a consequence, your performance as Bo’sun is closely monitored by the ship’s crew, and any moment of lazyness or entitlement, no matter how slight, could lead to the dissolution of very old friendships.

 

So, because of all that I’ve been rather modest when it comes to booze of late. I’ve had a beer or two at the end of the day, but two beers have been enough to knock me right the fuck out. I’ve been working a lot, sleeping a lot and drinking less. But last night…

 

I knocked off around five and passed out before I could go out to the dock and get a beer. I passed out on my rack in my dirty clothes with the TV blaring. I woke up around eight or so. Went out to the quarterdeck and was immediately set upon by drunken shipmates asking me stupid drunk questions that they were all fucking upset about, but didn’t make any kind of sober sense to me. Maybe if I had stuck around and drank warm bud light with them (our ice machines are all down right now) maybe they would have started to make sense. Lord knows, I’ve engaged in that conversational mode on more than one occasion; out here not much changes from day to day, so we have to invent our own problems to keep ourselves entertained, see?

Yeah, so I had to leave all the drunk shipmates behind and went back to my cabin and  tried to go back to sleep for about five minutes before I said “fuck it, I need some whiskey.” Under my breath. 

Said it to nobody but myself. 

 

It had been too long since I’d had a good couple of glasses of whiskey 

 

I went up to the Captain’s cabin and lifted the keys to the rental van. The relief captain wants to approve all van use, but I wasn’t about to wake him to tell him that I needed a bottle of whiskey.

 

So I set out for the ABC just over the line in COCO beach. Practically next door to that strip club I got ejected from back in aught two. Which I believe was the last time I was ever in a strip club, but I digress…I set out for the package store. When I reached the gate for The Cape Canaveral Airforce base, where we are docked, there is a car standing next to the guard shack. It’s been a while since I’ve been racing the clock to get to the packie in florida and I couldn’t remember what time they close here. And dude is just sitting there talking to the guards. Blocking my way to my bottle of whiskey. So once he finishes talking to the guards, I lean on the gas. Of course just when I began to feel like I I was going very fast (remember, when you are used to traveling at eight knots, 35 feels fast) I spot a cruiser parked on the median. I remember thinking to myself that I have to remember that he’s there for my return trip. 

 

So I slow down, suddenly feeling as if there is something wrong, as if my whiskey lust is somehow going to lead to trouble. I make a silent vow to myself that if the package store is closed, I won’t stop into a bar for “Just one”. I’m driving slowly, looking to the left very carefully, so I won’t miss the booze store, and finally, just when I was convinced that I must have passed it because I didn’t remember it being this far, I see the cheery “ABC” sign lit up and smiling at me. I make my left hand turn.

 

I park. I go into the store. I assess the layout of the store. The good whiskey was to the left, over by the counter, but I had made it to the store before it closed and I take a right.

 

I look at the bottles of rum, I oogle the wodka selection, lingering at the $45.00 bottle of “Ultimat” and silently gagging at the bottle of “trump” flavor.  I check on the local prices of Rioja and peek in on the beer to see if there is anything exotic. And I eventually mosey over to try and make that perrenial decision between Bushmill’s and Jameson. Once I settle on the Jameson, they throw me a curve because they have single malt jameson, but it was almost as much as that bottle of ultimat, and the regular flavor Jameson was on sale for twenty bucks so finally, after the clerk asks me if I needed any help, with that tone that you just know means they are uncomfortable and unused to someone lingering and looking at bottles with as much lust and longing as I was, I grab the .750 of regular Jameson. And then I grab some Jerky and a can of cocktail peanuts. Just so I wouldn’t feel like I went to the store for nothing but whiskey.

 

And this is how accidents happen: If I hadn’t spent the extra time in the rum aisle trying to remember the flavor rum that the Ingénue wanted me to get for her husband. If that car hadn’t been at the gate at the base. If I hadn’t spent so much time trying to decide if single malt Jameson was worth the extra cash. If I hadn’t parked in that spot…

 

I sat in the van, buckled my belt, because they can stop you nowadays if you don’t. I fiddled with the lights. Racked the lever until the little red line was under the R. I looked behind me. I really did! And there was nothing there. There wasn’t! I swear, there wasn’t a thing behind me. I stomped on the gas pedal and started to swing her around to head out of the parking lot. And I’m not even sure how I noticed, but then, when my reverse u-turn was halfway complete, I heard first and then I saw something collide with the driver-side door. Right next to me. I slammed on the breaks as soon as I noticed, but there she was, crumpled on the pavement. Crumpled on the pavement in a puddle of spilled booze that she had in that aqua plastic tumbler which was rolling bout into A1A.

 

I put it in “P” and got out of the van. 

 

Are you alright? Oh my god, are you alright? As I help her to her feet.

 

NO I’M NOT ALRIGHT! OH MY GAWD! OH LORD! I’M NOT ALRIGHT! I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF!

 

Huh? She’s going to kill herself because I hit her with a van?

 

No, m’am, are you hurt? Did I hurt you? 

 

Call an Ambulance! Call 911! Get me to a hospital! 

 

So here I am thinking that, oh fuck, after all these months of laying low and behaving myself, here I am hitting a woman in a liquor store parking lot at 930 at night. Not only that but she wants to go to the hospital and I’m going to spend another night in jail and she’s going to sue me and then the company and I’ll lose this job and…one little craving for whiskey is going to ruin my life. Again. Fuck.

 

So I tell her that I’m just going to park the van but don’t think that when I got back in and started moving, don’t think that the thought that I should just drive right the fuck off didn’t cross my mind, but I park the van anyway and sit down next to her on the curb.

 

I’m alright, she sobs at me. You didn’t hurt me. I mean it hurt when I fell, but you didn’t hurt me. Please call an ambulance, not for you hitting me, but for, how do you call it… mental issues. I’m suicidal.  It’s just that I just caught my best friend fucking my husband and I want to kill myself…That bitch, how could she! 

 

She, of course is sobbing through all of this. I’m sitting next to her on the curb outside the Coco Beach ABC and I want to reach out and put my arm around her shoulders and tell her that I understood. I felt awful that I had just compounded what was obviously going to be one of the worst nights she’ll remember for the rest of her life. I saw her overnight bag and offered to bring her someplace. I wasn’t about to call the authorities, not just then, at least.  I offered to give her a ride someplace and she doubles over sobbing even harder. I GOT NO WHERE TO GOOOOOO….I live right there with my Hu-hu-husbad….Pointing at a motel not too far away.

 

So there we are sitting on the curb and I’m wanting to put my arms around her and tell this complete stranger that it’s going to be alright and he doesn’t deserve you and yeah, it fucking sucks to get betrayed like that. But I don’t. This woman could very well decide to have “soft tissue damage” and with my legal limbo, I had to be very calculating about my actions. 

 

Some people who were walking by heard her sobbing and screaming about suicide and cheating and they came over and offered to kick my ass. Not in so many words, but the intention was obvious. She tells them that it’s OK. That I’m ok.  I wasn’t her husband. I had just hit her with my car. Which seemed to confuse them enough to make them want to leave the two of us alone.

 

So there we are. I’m half wanting to comfort her, half wanting to get the fuck out of there, but I can’t. See? I can’t leave her sitting in a puddle of her spilt booze sobbing. I mean how could anybody just leave her there like that? After hitting her with your car, I mean.

 

So we sit. And she talks. And screams, and cries. Sobs mostly. Yes, it was mostly sobbing. And I try to  fall back on some of the old “crisis intervention” tricks I learnt years ago as a Jr. Psychiatrist. Only they aren’t working because she won’t listen to me. Finally, I offer to buy her some more booze.  Something I couldn’t offer when I was a Jr. Psychiatrist but somehow seemed appropriate at that particular moment. And something about the offer made her stiffen up. It made her stop crying for a moment and she turned and looked me in the eye and said “No, I don’t want no booze, but I just live over there and can you go tell my husband that…” She trailed off and started sobbing again with her head in her hands.

 

What? I ask her. What do you want me to tell your husband? What is it?

 

I really didn’t want to know. I didn’t really want to talk to her husband, but if that was the penance due, I was going to see it done.

 

Nothing. She says and teeters to her feet. You don’t have to tell him nothing.

 

She’s calm for a moment. 

I hand her the bag.

 

She takes a couple of steps back towards the motel she indicated was her home and turns back to me.

 

You don’t have to do nothing, she says to me: I’m going back to Maryland.

 

I got back into the van and waited until I was sure she was far enough away from me that she wouldn’t be able to read my tag numbers in the dark,  and very carefully and very slowly backed out of my parking space.