Got the Hook Up: Part 2

     Gene sat at the bar and waited for Lenny to show up. They were supposed to meet at five thirty, but it was six now and Lenny hadn't shown up. Sitting by himself, surrounded by loud people, Gene thought about how well he actually knew Lenny.
     The people around Gene were local. Judging by the amount of people sitting at the bar and the cars in the lot beside the building, most of them had driven there. They sat around the bar and drank. They drank with purpose. They were dressed in flannel and dirty pants and they wanted to forget that. They laughed and carried on like people 20 years younger then them.
     Gene was would feel himself get a little nervous as the voices rose. Because he was sitting at the bar he could feel people standing behind him and wondering what he was doing there. They would get loud and laugh loudly. Gene knew he had no business being in a place like this. These people had had hard lives. Gene's life wasn't a picnic, but it was different.
     Gene grew up in a family that never talked about their emotions and pretended that everything was okay. His family kept up appearances  In that way he envied these people. All of their hardships were clearly displayed on their bar tabs and weathered faces. They were rageful and happy and funny and they wanted every one to know about it.
     While he sat there, Gene felt like these people could tell he didn't belong. Gene was young, was carrying a shoulder bag with a laptop he had gotten for Christmas, and had been sitting with a miller light for cover, but they could tell.
     He would take a sip from the beer every time he was nervous that he didn't look casual. He had drank three beers in a half an hour so far.
     After college Gene didn't really talk to Lenny too much. They had been friends on facebook, but he had never been to active on there, so it was hard to tell what his life was like from looking at it. His picture had been the same from when he left school and there weren't any new ones on there, or any posts at all really. That seemed to tell Gene something, but he wasn't sure what.
     Could Lenny have become one of these people that were slowly hating Gene as he sat at their bar. Sometimes, in the mornings before work at the library, Lenny would talk about how he used to be a great football player in high school, but busted his leg. He had always walked with a little bit of a limp, but it wasn't something that you would notice without paying attention to it. He was studying sports medicine and graduated with a degree in it.

     At six thirty Lenny finally walked into the bar. Gene wouldn't have noticed it if a few of the other guys at the bar hadn't gotten up and loudly greeted him when he walked in. Lenny was know here, a regular. Gene looked up from his beer and tried to make eye contact with him.
     Lenny stood at the door for a few seconds and saw Gene sitting at the end of the bar. He nodded his head began moving towards him. His limp was much worse than it had been
     "Hey man hows it going." He walked up to Gene and patted him hard on the back.
     "Hey Lenny, its great to see you again, I'm pretty good." There wasn't another seat at the bar next to him, so Gene suggested grabbing one of the empty tables on the other side of the place.
     "Yeah sure, lemme grab a brew first and I'll meet you over there."
     Gene gathered his coat and shoulder bag from the ground beneath his stool. He felt funny carrying all this stuff across the bar to where the tables were. He got a seat by a window that was mostly covered by a large sign for Miller Light.
    Lenny came over with his beer and sat down across from Gene, he held his leg out straight from the table it went right next to Gene, hr would have to step over it to get out.
     "So, Gene," Lenny took a long drink from the beer. "How the hell are you."

Got the Hook Up: Part 1

     Gene stepped off the train onto the cold concrete platform. He hadn't been to this stop before, but the bar he was supposed to meet his friend was right near there, so it was his best bet.
     The whole train stop was under a bridge that blocked out the five o'clock sun. As Gene walked out of the station all he could see was run down buildings and highways. They were the sort of buildings that you would see along highways, brick shells that had been abandoned a while ago. You could still see the faded signs on the roofs of the buildings, peeling and old. Most of the windows had been broken. There were buses and taxis lined up outside of the station too. This didn't seem like a stop that people walked out of.
     He had to walk around the train station to find the side walk that led into town. The only difference between the buildings right in front of Gene and the buildings that he found by walking around the other side of the station were the windows. The windows in town weren't completely smashed. It also seemed more residential, but the general feeling of despair hung heavy along the street. He took the sidewalk along what seemed like a road that was too busy to have a sidewalk. He followed the map on his phone closely, continually making sure that he was in the right place. It seemed to be right, but he couldn't imagine there being a bar along this road. He kept walking, up a little hill lined with check cashing stores and arguing couples. At the top of the hill, he could finally see the place he was supposed to meet Lenny.

     Lenny had been a friend from college. Gene knew him from the job that he picked up to help pay for tuition, they had both worked in the library at the school. Gene had worked at the snack bar in the lobby to be more specific, and Lenny was at the front desk of the library.
     When they had met, Gene thought Lenny seemed like a nice guy. It had been freshman year for Gene, but Lenny was a senior. Gene was still young enough to be impressed by older kids talking to him. Lenny kept his hair long and had a goatee too, which made him seem even cooler. He would get the same sticky breakfast roll from Gene everyday saying something along the lines of:
     "This sticky bun is so choice right now man."

     And he would talk with Gene until one of their bosses yelled at them. Lenny would come into work high most of the time too, but no one seemed to notice. If they did notice, they didn't seem to care. Gene had tried going to class high once but almost had a panic attack so quickly learned that wasn't his thing.

     Gene walked down the hill to the bar. There was a small snowy parking lot next to it where a few lonely cars sat. It was five on a Tuesday so he was hoping the place would be mostly empty. He just wanted to meet Lenny and get back on the train.
     There were a couple of guys standing outside while Gene walked in. Gene felt like they had been watching him come towards the bar since the top of the hill and seemed genuinely surprised when he walked into their bar. But he was careful not to make eye contact, or look like he noticed that they were watching him.
     Despite the people smoking outside, the inside of the bar wreaked of cigarettes. There were two rooms separated by a partition leading down the center of the bar. On the right wall there was a bar along with a surprising number of patrons sitting at it. On the left there was a small sitting area that was empty but for a man sitting by himself eating what looked like a breakfast platter.
     Gene looked at his phone again. He had texted Lenny when he had gotten to the train station, but he didn't get anything back yet. He didn't want to seem too forceful, even though Gene was just buying pot from him, Lenny didn't have to sell to him, and he wanted to maintain good terms with him in case it was out of Lenny's way to hook him up.

     Before Lenny had graduated, Gene and him got rather close. They didn't hang out much outside of work, but they both worked the same shifts and Gene saw him as the one person there that he could talk to. The other people he worked with were terrible. Lenny would tell Gene about some crazy thing he did on mushrooms the night before or they would just talk about life.
     Maybe it was because of all the drugs, but Lenny was great with really deep conversations. He would talk in a way that seemed meaningful, and would always listen when Gene would talk. Gene took to seeing his talks with Lenny as mutual therapy.

     Gene was looking forward to another deep conversation when he had heard that Lenny was still around. He hadn't seen him since he had graduated. He did want to buy some weed and he felt a little bad about just calling him up out of the blue for just that.
     The bottles behind the bar were shinny but the colors seemed dull. There was a sparkle to them, but it seemed like the lazy sparkle of street lights when you were too drunk to see where you were going. It was disorienting.

     The other people at the bar laughed like it wasn't Tuesday night. They talked about their plumbing and kids that they were so proud of. The bottles behind the bar shone in the low lights hanging from the ceiling   

False Start

Gene got into his car and slammed the door. He was parked in the driveway his now ex-girlfriend. She said she had met someone else and sent Gene on his way. He sighed as he looked down at his hands on the steering wheel.  

He didn't know if he wanted to slam his fists on the wheel or just cry. He thought about both, he would probably do both.

The keys were in the ignition for a few seconds before he felt he had the strength to turn them. They sat there, a pink owl hung off of them, she had given him that. He took the keys out and tried to get the key-ring off. The metal ring wouldn't separate. He tried to get his finger nails in there to get the owl off, but he had been biting him for the whole hour and a half break up. His hands were sweaty and shaky. He gave up, put the keys back in the ignition and started the car.

Only, the car wouldn't start. He tried to turn the keys again, but still nothing.

                “Fuck”

The car was dead. Gene felt the blood rush to his face as he tried to think about going back into that house and asking for someone to help. He tried to think of anything else, anyone he could call.

Looking up he saw the little roadside service button. He had never really trusted it, it just seemed too convenient, but he couldn't think of anything else to do.

“Roadside assistance, how are you doing today?”

The woman’s voice was soft and kind. She spoke as if she really wanted to know how he was doing. That was all he needed to break down. He would never hear her voice on the phone again, never wake up to her kissing him, never feel the comfort of knowing that she would pick up the phone when he called and they could talk for hours.

“Hi,” he mustered out. He wasn't quite sobbing, but he was starting to breath funny, where he couldn't get words out.

“Are you okay sir?”

“No.” The ‘o’ lingered out into another sob.

“Do you need me to call someone?” Her voice was serious now. Gene realized how this must sound.

“No, no” He sucked up some mucus “I’m fine. I just broke up with….” The words were still hard. Everything he said shot him back through a thousand memories.

“Sir, I need you to tell me what happened.” Her voice was assertive, but still kind. She sounded so nice.

“My girlfriend…I…we…we broke up.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“She wanted to be with someone else.” Gene felt some weight come off his chest just saying it. He took a deep steady breath. It was the first one he had fully taken in two hours. “She said the met on a tilt-a-whirl.”

“A tilt-a-whirl?” She sounded so understanding and talking was making him feel  better. She was on his side.

“I know. How do you meet someone on a tilt-a-whirl?” Gene let out another long breath. “It doesn’t even make sense.” He remembered her leaving for Florida. “She had gone down to visit schools in Miami, I had called her every night. She told me about-“ He choked up again.

There was a few seconds of silence. “You’re going to be okay.”

“She told me about going to a carnival one of the schools was throwing. I guess they must have met there. She’s going to the University of Miami and were breaking up.”

“Look, a lot of people break up when they go to college, you should look at this as an opportunity.”

“How is this as an opportunity?” Gene wiped his nose off on his sleeve.

“Well, I’m sure your relationship wasn't perfect…”

“It was!” Gene could feel himself jump on the defensive, but then he thought for a second. “Well-“

“If she is going to jump on the first guy she meets down there, I can’t imagine she was much of a keeper.” Gene suppressed his instinct to defend himself. He let her finish. “Think of this as a chance to start fresh.”

“Start fresh.” It wasn't much, but he had stopped sobbing. He could breathe normally again too. Maybe he was going to be okay. “Thanks, I really do feel better.”

“Good, I’m glad I could help.”

“I think I just needed to break down a bit, sorry about that.”

“That’s quite alright, I was happy to help but I-“

“Things just get all bottled up in times like this, you know?”

“Yes sir I do, but I have to-“

“I’m really glad I called you.”

“Yes, I have to-“

“Oh! You have to go don’t you”

“Yes, I’m so glad I could help but I have other callers so I do need to go.”

“Well, thanks again. Bye.”

“Good bye sir.”

It was only a few minutes of conversation, but Gene felt better. It still hurt, but there was hope now. Gene looked down at his keys in the ignition.

“Fuck”