The Fifth Part of Chapter 24: Bleak Month

On the night of Friday, February 18th, Ken was indulging in a habit that at once brought easy camaraderie and liver troubles at his favourite bar with two of his friends, Herman and Ed. He did this because he said it warmed his blood on such a cold night, and it was a cold night; minus twenty and that was three hours after sunset; at the coldest point in the night, just before sunrise, there was promise that the temperature would reach thirty degrees below zero, leaving the air extremely cold, dry, and clear; at that temperature, one’s breath would come in visible puffs as the water vapour condensed out, quickly cooled and froze, creating a frosty rim on jacket collars.

Herman pointed out a woman to Ken. “You notice her?”

“I saw her last week”

“Week before that, too.”

“She’s getting progressively sluttier, have you noticed?”

“Yeah, I find it hot.”

“So do I, kind of. The thing is, she’s looking morose right now. Maybe she broke up with somebody.”

Clarissa overheard, even though there was some rather loud music playing. “Actually, I’m a widow. My husband died of a heart attack.”

“Isn’t it still a bad idea to hang out at a bar while you’re pregnant?”

“Oh, I don’t plan on drinking. I want to pick up. Speaking of which, what are you two doing tonight? Would it bother you to… attend to me?”

“Sorry, I hope you understand that I’m not exactly ready for a kid at the moment.”

“Oh,”

They could see Clarissa’s lip quiver before she turned around and left the place. The bartender turned and said, “This is the third time she ran out of this bar since New Year’s. Each time, someone asked about her pregnancy or why she was in a bar. The conversation would inevitably turn to how she got pregnant, what had happened to her husband, and, well you know. She never had a drink, either; I think she’s a poor, lonesome soul. Incidentally, she had to talk about her miscarriage each time; that made it worse.”

Ed, a frequent customer who was sloshed, said to the bartender, “What are you, some kind of philosopher?”

“I’ve seen all kinds of customers come in here. She’s odd; not like you, I’ve seen boozed up guys checking women out all the time.”

“I think she has a pretty face. Beauty is all in the eyes, you know.”

“Oh yeah, if you have a nice pair of eyes, you have it made.”

“You would have to be pretty lonely to go to a bar once a week for a month in an effort to pick up guys. I’m with my buddy Herman, here,” said Ed, putting an arm around Herman and pulling him into a tight hug. Herman, a person often mistaken for Ed, was at least a little uncomfortable.

“Um, thanks, Ed,” he said.

Ken pondered Clarissa after she had walked out the door, forgetting what she had told him. If she’s a widow, he thought, that must mean her husband died a violent death if he died young. If her husband were old, she would simply be a gold-digger, but for some reason, he could not see a gold-digger widow hanging out at a bar that was admittedly targeted at the university set who came over from the nearby campus. A gold-digger, thought he, would have her own bar at home, furnished with the money of her late husband. Therefore, her husband must have been relatively young, and of similar circumstances to her own. Was it violent, maybe a car crash? That seemed likely; car crashes do kill plenty of people, after all. It might also be some other dark tale of violence and woe. Ed turned to Ken and said, “So, what do you think of the Prime Minister?”

“Duff, you mean? He seems very smart and he has quite astute political instincts, which he’ll need if he is to last with such a small minority government. He hasn’t done anything too high profile yet; he promised ‘rationalisation of the bureaucracy,’ which obviously means cuts to the Public Service, and there was the promise of tax cuts and reform of the Employment Insurance system that was announced to be in the budget. Overall, there’s nothing particularly high profile; I think he aims to be a workhorse, which is nothing too flashy, but decent enough. The budget should be interesting,”

“That’s not so much like the American President.”

“Ah, yes; the world’s foremost admirer and proponent of all things glitzy; tell me about it,”

“Say, where are your kids? I hope you haven’t abandoned them?”

“Of course not; I’m too much of a responsible parent for that; Annette and Venesse are visiting mom and dad in Montréal.”

“That’s nice,”

“They said they wanted to see their grand-filles. They are really quite nice people, and doting. I hope my girls are getting their homework done.”

“What is it that happened between you and Viola?”

“I think it was something about the retirement plan: I wanted to buy stocks, you know, so I could sell them later, and live off the gains. She thought the money was better off squirreled away in an RRSP.”

“That was it?”

“I don’t think that was entirely it; she picked on me constantly for my drinking habits, and I really don’t think it’s a serious problem; what’s wrong with a couple of drinks? It doesn’t make me any less lovable a person. There was also the car; she coveted it so much. It was serviceable enough, which is all I care about, but she desired its glamour. She said I could do with a Sedan. Lucky I’m the sole breadwinner, while she was a housewife.” Ken also thought it was lucky of him that the judge had awarded him custody, with Viola getting visitation rights. “Awarded” was not an appropriate word to use in a divorce case, when all that remained was wreckage and kids who
hated both parents. He had to admit to himself, sometimes, that his drinking did occasionally get out of hand. He personally regarded this as a hold-out from when he was young; he and his wife had met at a crowded bar in Montréal, but Viola had grown out of the drinking habit, while he had not; it wasn’t that he was a nasty drunk; he was slower and more mellow when drunk; it was that his wife thought it was unbecoming, and she called him embarrassing in social situations, and he set a poor example to his daughters, an opinion expressed pointedly and often in front of them.

“You seem to be lost in thought,” observed Ed.

“Just ruminating on the past,” answered Ken.

“Baggage?”

“Lots; too much, in fact.”

“So that’s why you come here,” said the bartender.

Ken proceeded to forget his sorrows with an increasing number of shots of rum, Grand Marnier, and rye; the next morning found him awake at six in the morning, on the couch in his living room, with a dull headache; this was the additional price of the bottle.

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