Chaser

For Nikita Nelin.

“I don’t dream,” Joana said, her skin and hair pale and washed out in the streetlight.

Tom’s bifocals rested low on his nose, under a brown and orange Browns cap. “Some people say that,” he said. “But did you ever?”

He inhaled while she thought. The tip of his cigarette glowed redder.

“I don’t know,” Joana said. “I don’t think so.”

She reached in her once-white purse but came out empty-handed. Tom drew his pack from his denim jacket. He flipped the top open and Joana picked one, which he lit for her.

“Thanks,” she said, and exhaled. She looked up at the sky. Tom’s Bar was the local in South Collinwood, slivered through a crumbling ex-warehouse far enough from downtown to see stars. She was usually the only person here other than him, and if two die-hards hadn’t stayed till last call tonight, they would have closed early. Now it was three a.m., and she and Tom sat on the back step near the dumpster in the alley. It was this silence Joana loved most, listening for what Tom would say next.

“Everyone dreams,” he said. “The question is more like, do you remember them?”

“Well then, I guess I don’t remember.” She smiled. “Nothing since I was called Yo-Ana.”

Tom laughed a little. “I have one most nights,” he said. “And when I don’t, I feel lost the next day. Two or three nights, and I get scared I’ll never have another.”

He dropped his butt and stepped on it. Then he lit a new one. “If I didn’t dream, I think I’d go crazy,” he said.

Joana smirked. “You’re already nuts.”

He clamped his lips on his smoke and mock-applauded. “You’re getting better at this,” he said.

She hadn’t joked or flirted, at first. She hadn’t bummed smokes, either. She coughed. “I’m quitting tomorrow,” she said.

Tom’s eyes widened. “Please don’t,” he said. “You just started. I can’t run the place by myself. And everyone I know’s already worked here.”

Joana laughed. “Not the job, dummy. Smoking.”

“Oh,” he said. “Good luck. It’s tough to quit anything.”

She rested the heel of her hand against her forehead and let the cigarette’s fragile chimney grow, its smoky smell contaminating her hair. She avoided Tom’s eyes and looked instead at the garbage bag, tied off beside them.

“What’s the matter, kid?” Tom asked.

She lowered the hand and laughed. “You, you old bastard.” He was only fifty-five, though—and at thirty-three, she didn’t feel far behind. Every year showed in small creases around her eyes, and new greys in her long brown hair.

Tom said, “No, seriously,” and leaned over. “What’s going on?”

Slowly Joana shook her head. She exhaled. “I’m thinking about moving again.”

“I knew it.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,” she said. “I get tired, is all.”

“Everybody does,” Tom said.

“Yeah.” Joana nodded. “Yeah.” She stubbed her cigarette on the ground and stood up on the wooden step. She lifted the black bag by its knot.

“See you tomorrow,” she said. “Thanks for the smoke.”

“You got it,” Tom said, keeping his eyes on the backside of her jeans as she walked to the dumpster. With one arm, she hefted up the bag and dropped it in. The bottles inside clinked.

• • •

If she took one only when she needed one, she’d have no problem with sleeping pills; the problem was that she always needed one. She would kid the college boy who stopped in for nightcaps—who was secretly proud to have grown up here—that if resuming the Cold War meant she’d get her six-to-eight, she’d be up for it. She hadn’t slept since Gorbachev, and the smoking wasn’t helping: the last one of the night always left her heart racing, and wired her eyes open. She could have gotten more tonight—the 7-Eleven on her corner never closed—but she had walked past, half forgetting and half meaning to, and had turned down the street to her square and concrete building, which at twelve storeys, was small compared to the one in Vilnius, where she had lived as a girl. She unlocked her apartment door and softly swung it open, nudging her cat, Petr, who scrambled off the mat. Ten years had passed since the snowy evening in Brooklyn when Vasili had snuck the orange handful into their rented house and opened his coat, letting a mew escape. He had since returned to Russia—at least, that’s what he had told Joana he was doing—and now, there was no brown brick, and no approaching wedding, just Petr, sleeping near the door whether she was home or not. She was never sure whether he meant to stop her from leaving, or whether he was trying to keep her gone.

In the small kitchen, she reached in the cupboard above the sink, where she kept the sleeping pills and Aspirin and antacids. The last were essential when she drank, which made her smoke too much. She needed more nicotine than she could stomach cigarettes, which meant she was addicted, she supposed. She removed the cap from the Dozaids and dropped a white pill in her hand. As she replaced the bottle, the cupboard door slipped from her hand and closed with a bang. Petr jumped up and ran to the bedroom down the hall. Joana swallowed. She hadn’t removed her make-up or brushed her teeth yet, but drowsily, she pursued the cat, and lay down on the bed beside him.

• • •

She awoke late the next afternoon and rushed to Tom’s. She enjoyed the walk but on the way she fiddled, with the waist of her jeans and her top’s shoulder strap and in her ragged purse for gum or cigarettes, of which she had neither. When she arrived, the bar was ordinary, which is to say empty. She doubted she’d stay smoking were the place ever full, but sitting out back with Tom waiting for the door chime had been a gift in blue plumes. It wasn’t the cigarettes she would miss—it was him. And when he said, “Come on, kid, we’re goin’ for a smoke,” Joana shook her head and told him to go alone. His expression fell.

“Shit, you’re serious,” he said.

• • •

“A whole day. It wasn’t so hard,” Joana thought, home at three a.m. again. But now, it was the not-smoking making her tremble. She reached above the sink for the Dozaids and noticed a box of nicotine patches beside them, unopened as it had been since her last vow to quit. She had packed it and moved it a few times, and now she brushed off dust from Detroit or Philadelphia and revealed the warning label: Side effects may include vivid dreams. She scoffed and opened a drawer, took out a spoon whose back end she slid under the flap. She lifted her shirt off over her head, peeled the backing from a patch and affixed it to her shoulder. In her black bra and jeans, she stood looking in the mirror and she thought of the tan circle as a bandage on a wound. She stared another moment before she finished undressing and pulled on a long t-shirt that had once been Vasili’s, though she no longer thought of it that way.

• • •

“I was in a forest,” she told Tom the next night, on the step. He was smoking; she still wasn’t. He leaned closer to listen.

“It didn’t look familiar—I don’t get it. I’ve never lived in the country, just cities, and I don’t think I’ve ever even been in a forest. But I was running. And I was completely out of breath. All I could see were trees, black in the distance then green and detailed as I ran past. Their branches were swirling like they were trying to grab me. I was on this path and it was the only way out, and my chest hurt, and I was crying, but I had to keep running.”

Tom’s heater reddened as he inhaled. He breathed out.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s it? My first dream in years, and that’s what you say?” She looked away from him. “Yeah, Tom. That’s it.”

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s really common, that’s all. Falling, running away. They’re on Page One in my dream book.”

Joana cocked an eyebrow. “You have a dream book?”

“I have a few,” he said. “Some to read, some to write in.”

“So what’s it mean?” she asked.

“Depends,” Tom said. “Depends who was after you. Did you look back?”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t.”

“Can’t help you, then,” he said.

Joana stood up and walked inside: she had yet to run the dishwasher for the happy hour glasses. They could lock up early if no one came before the machine finished, though part of her wished that someone would, to keep her off the back step. Today she had chewed her fingernails to stubs. She lowered the front panel and scooped in the soap. The door chimed as she reached for the start button.

“Shot ’a bourbon, whisky chaser!” a man roared.

“Coming!” Joana called. She hurried from the kitchen and found a man she had never seen before, staggering to the bar in a collection of holey coats and a thick, unkempt beard. Joana knew alcohol couldn’t make a face this red. This man had been outdoors for years.

“Shot ’a bourbon, whisky chaser!” he roared again.

“You got it,” Joana said, glimpsing his feral eyes. State law prohibited serving someone so drunk, but refusing him was the worse idea. She filled two shot glasses, one with Beam and the other with cheap Canadian rye, and set them on the counter.

“F-five dollars,” she said. She hadn’t stammered since her first year of English lessons.

The man took the bourbon and raised it to his lips. He opened his throat and snapped back his head, exaggerating an “Ah” after he poured it down. Joana could smell the sweat and urine baked into his clothes. She wondered if he’d be found dead this winter, frozen in a bus shelter. Someone always had been, everywhere she’d lived. The man smiled. His face relaxed, and she could see his eyes had once been kind. His gravelly voice said “Thanks,” softly, and he turned his head slightly. He eyed the second drink.

“How much?” he asked.

“Five,” Joana repeated.

He curled his mouth into a snarl. “How much!?”

The money wasn’t worth it, to her or to Tom, who entered now hidden in the shadows by the back door. She looked at the customer and got out, “Don’t worr–” before he brought his fist down on the counter. He lunged at Joana, who sidestepped his reach, and his elbow knocked the video poker game to the floor. She ducked behind the bar, telling herself silently to stay down, and glanced at the baseball bat below the cash register. The man rose heavily from his seat and howled, “I thought we were friends!” He picked up his stool and heaved it over the bar, shattering some bottles and the mirror behind as Tom rammed the drunk from the flank. On the floor, the men grappled a moment. The customer went limp.

“I’ll leave,” he groaned.

“You’re fucking right you will,” Tom said.

Tom rose first, and then the drunk, who teetered toward the front door. Behind the bar, liquor trickled in a stained glass waterfall and collected in the jagged shards scattered on the floor. Joana tiptoed over them to the phone beside the cash register. She dialled 9-1-1.

The man’s second drink sat undisturbed on the bar.

“Wait,” Tom called. “You forgot your whisky.”

The man turned back, smiling again, that same warmth rising in his face. Tom pointed to a table by the front window. “Just sit there,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

“Get one for yourself, too,” the man slurred.

Tom smiled and said, “Alright.”

Joana watched the drunk’s eyes follow Tom to the bar, and then, she watched Tom’s quivering hands. He picked up an unbroken green bottle—gin, though what was inside didn’t matter—and he took a glass from under the counter. He paused to consider it, then removed the cap and poured. He walked slowly back to the table, one drink in each hand, and he sat across from the man and set down the whisky, keeping the gin for himself.

“Drink up,” Tom said, miming a toast.

The man snapped his head back and downed the whisky. Tom brought the gin to his lips and held it there. He stared at the drunk, who raised his eyebrows, puzzled. When the red and blue lights flashed outside, Tom finally put his glass back on the table.

• • •

It was four a.m. when they finished sweeping up, the light dimmers turned as high as they went and Tom’s Bar a beacon on St. Clair. Two policemen had taken statements while the drunk sat on the curb, passed out with his hands cuffed and his head on his chest. An hour ago, they had driven him away.

Joana waited on the back step while Tom locked up out front. He joined her and flicked off the breakers, clunking the bar into darkness. He turned the door’s bolt and stowed his tinkling key ring in the pocket of his jacket. His hand re-emerged with a pack of Marlboros. He looked at Joana, who sighed, and nodded. Her eyes welled up with tears.

“Don’t worry,” Tom said. “You can quit again tomorrow.”

She sobbed once. He handed her a cigarette and she put it in her mouth. He lit it, and then lit his own. Joana breathed the smoke in, then out.

“You used to be a big drinker, didn’t you?” she asked.

“The biggest,” Tom said. He chuckled. “Got thrown out of so many bars, I had to open my own.”

Joana wiped her eyes. Her voice evened out. “How long’s it been?”

“Eight years.” He exhaled. “Eight years and two wives.”

“Why do people do that? Order two drinks at once?”

Tom stared at his hands a moment. “I think it’s about knowing where the next one’s coming from.”

“Thanks for saving me,” Joana said.

“You knew where the bat was.”

Joana shook her head. “I’d never have gotten there.”

Tom put his arm around her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s done now.”

Joana looked up at the half moon and the stars. This was as dark as the sky was going to get, and soon it would begin lightening with the dawn.

“It’s enough to give me nightmares,” she said. “Me.”

Tom nodded. “I understand if you can’t come back,” he said. “I mean, what are you still doing here, anyway? There must be somewhere you’d rather be. Some dream you’re following.”

Again, she shook her head.

“I think I’ll stay a while,” she said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniel Perry is the author of the short-story collections Hamburger (Thistledown, 2016) and Nobody Looks That Young Here (forthcoming in 2018 from Guernica). His fiction has been short-listed for the Carter V. Cooper Prize, and has appeared in more than 30 publications including The Dalhousie Review, Exile, SubTerrain, and Riddle Fence. Dan lives in Toronto, where he is co-host and blog co-ordinator for the Brockton Writers Series.

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