Chapter 9 "Wyatt"

I hopped back in my car, shut the door and heaved a heavy sigh. Well, they'll have to call Dade's aunt from the daycare, because I sure as hell am spooked. I nodded to myself and tried to start the car, but it shuddered and sputtered and died.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" I put my head on the steering wheel, and groaned, "Don't do this, not now." I tried it again. Vapor lock. No good. I pulled my keys from the ignition, got out and calmly closed the door. I had to find a phone. At least the car was legally parked. I trotted back north a block and started walking on Colfax Avenue again, and quickly found a payphone and dialed up the only person I knew that could bail me out of this one. Wyatt.

Wyatt was probably my only friend in this world. Well, my only good friend, anyway. Hopefully, he wouldn't mind picking me up from this little disaster. His phone was ringing. It took six rings for him to finally pick up, and when he did he wasn't listening. He was ordering food at a pick up window. From the sound of it, I'd guess it was chicken.

"Wyatt!" I was pleading into the phone. The phone rustled for a second, and then he said, "Yeah, who the hell is this?"

"Buddy?"

"Buddy! Well I haven't heard from you in like a week! That's no way to treat a buddy, buddy."

"I know, buddy, but I need you to do me a solid, man."

"A what?"

"A favor. I'm stuck out here on Colfax, and I need you to pick me up."

"Sure thing," he said. "Just let me finish up here, and I'll come get you. Kristy wants to have a chicken dinner tonight."

"I don't want to interrupt anything."

"No, dude, she's got one of her dumbass friends over, and they’re sitting there talking and doing shots of Hot Damn. Where are you, buddy?"

"A few blocks past Colorado, on the north side of Colfax."

"Okay, buddy, I'm at Church's Chicken, just walk down to Colorado and Colfax, and I'll pick you up there in like five minutes or so."

"M'Kay."

"Bye."

I actually couldn't wait to see Wyatt. To tell Wyatt the story of how this day has turned out so far, would be fun. The dog mauling, Dean, Jaime, Officer Mayhew...times two, it had been a day for the ages, and it wasn't over yet. I started walking down Colfax toward Colorado, taking in the scenery of the city, such as it was.

It was becoming rather clear to me that this wasn't a well planned Chloe extraction. Once I picked Chloe up, assuming I could, what was going to happen? Was I to wait patiently at my apartment until Dade or his aunt showed up? Perhaps I could take Chloe on my date with Jaime. That'd be fun. Maybe I was going to be called and I would await further instructions. Right about now, I'm rethinking my distaste for cell phones. To top it all off, I don't exactly know where Dade is being treated at; this is a major fuck all situation. It's important not to lose my head about it, I told myself.

Perhaps I don't have to bail on Dade's daughter quite yet. Wyatt could be helpful.
From certain experiences in my life, I have learned one thing. It is this: Whenever you feel like getting hung up on the smaller details, don't. It's as simple as that; keep the faith in the big picture. That credo is harder to live by than you may think. If I think back to all my previous relationships with women, these memories have been kind of an obsession of mine lately, I remember certain fights vividly. They were always about the small stuff, which ended up adding together to be a huge metaphor for our relationship, and the metaphor ended up being stronger than all of the good things that were present in our shared lives. It's a shame, not seeing the forest for the trees.

I wonder if you are willing to give love away for a metaphor, then, what was your definition of the nature of love to begin with? Did it have exceptions? Would you qualify it? Would you say things like, "Why do you like your friends more than me?" Or, "How can you say that? You know how it makes me feel." Or, "Why don't you make love to me anymore?" That's a biggee, eh? Is it based on the actions of another person? How can it be? How does love become a game of validation where you are basing your worth on what you perceive your lover’s feelings about you to be? I've been obsessed by thoughts like this because I am missing something in the center of my chest that makes me feel so isolated from the rest of the world that it makes me want to scream. Was I responsible for destroying the love in my life?

I've been thinking that love is the byproduct of the sixth human sense. The sixth human sense has always been a mysterious mode of perception, lauded by psychics and mystics to allow super human powers. I think it's more primal. It's sticky and wet, elicits flushed cheeks and moans of pleasure. It's sexual. I think we know on some base level. We see everyone naked in our minds eye. Humans can perceive the baby making attributes, fertility, ovulation. We smell and taste compatibility. We can hear health, success, stamina. It makes us crave. It makes us yearn. We are not human without it. And without love, where would you be now? Sigh. I trudged on.

I reached Colorado Boulevard still stuck in my head. I was replaying scenes of my most idiotic instances on the planet. You know, the ones that make you wince and laugh alternately. As if on cue, Wyatt pulled up in his grey Volvo. It wasn't a new Volvo; it was one of the clunky old ones that I used to make fun of as a kid. You know, "They're boxy, but they're good." Wyatt made like he was going to stop in the middle of Colorado Boulevard, in the middle of rush hour traffic, to pick me up, but he kind of faltered and hung in the middle lane, much to the chagrin of a few motorists behind him. They were honking and swearing. Wyatt looked at me through his open window and kind of shrugged. I indicated for him to take a right by pointing so that he could meet me on the other side of the boulevard. An Acura passed him and honked, I heard him growl some obscenities out of the window, and then watched him cut off a driver on his right and take a right on to Colfax.

"Now that's a true friend," I mused to myself. The pedestrian light turned grey and I jogged across the street. I saw his car pull in to a Good Times burger joint a couple blocks down.

Good Times burgers are a strictly Colorado institution. It's what In n' Out Burger is to California, but in my humble opinion, Good Times handily kicks In 'n Out Burger's ass. (To be fair, I just figured out how to order a burger animal style at In n' Out and now I could be rethinking that whole theory.) Anyhoo, I jogged the rest of the way to his car. Wyatt had gotten out of his car and was casually leaning against the trunk of his car, smoking. I like to say that Wyatt, even though he's barely thirty, has the fashion sense of an older black dude. You know the guy that shows up at the wedding looking better than the groom? Wyatt had more accessories than my last girlfriend. He was wearing a well-worn straw hat complete with an Elvis button, gold plated Elvis style sunglasses, a black button down shirt that must have cost him about seventy dollars, some fashionable jeans, black Pumas, and he was rockin' the gold watch, gold chain with crucifix, and matching gold and onyx ring. I swear he belongs to a different era. Or he could be in a Tarantino film as some scrappy protagonist. Wyatt is of average height, but commands the quiet respect of a larger man; he has brown hair, brown eyes, and five o'clock shadow that reappears soon after he shaves.

If I sound venerable, I am. Wyatt has gotten me out of more than a few tight situations. He's, as I indicated earlier, my best friend. As I jogged toward him, he was beaming at me and shaking his head. Apparently, I entertain him as much as he entertains me. I reached him. I was short of breath, wheezing like a morbidly obese schoolgirl. He embraced me and said in a psuedo New York accent, "You nevah call me!"

"Sorry, mom," I gasped. I was still trying to catch my breath. I leaned over his trunk for a second and inhaled deeply. The trunk of his Volvo was pockmarked from hail damage, and I noticed his Kansas License plate was more than a year expired. "Man, how do you drive with that thing?" I breathed, indicating the plate.

"Buddy, most of the time I use my Chevro-legs."

"You will not believe the day I have had."

"Yeah, well hop in, you can tell me about it, but let's get the fuck out of here." I nodded, and we were on our way.

"Last night I had the thirst."

"Yeah, I know it well,” Wyatt replied.

"So I went to the Goosetown and started on a whiskey regiment, backed by cheap beers."

"Ouch. You meet any women?"

"No, I saw Nelson."

"Nelson?"

"You know, 'fuck stick'?"

"Oh, annoying Nelson? I'm glib and funny, yet so, so sad, Nelson?"

"Yeah," I replied.

"So how is that douche nozzle?"

"Better!"

"Hmmmm."

"He found some kind of rad swingers club online that made him feel like a man again. He gave me their card." I had taken on a somewhat serious tone. Wyatt scoffed.

"Well, if it's got a card, it's legit!" Wyatt laughed.

"Yeah." He was right about that. Anyone can get a business card, even I had one, it said 'Pleasure Professional'. "Although, he did say something to the effect of...he won the trifecta." I gauged Wyatt for a response, but he just lit another cigarette and stared out of the windshield. "You know, the ménage a'...A THREESOME!" Wyatt just nodded, and began to park his car in the small parking lot next to his place. "He said that this group of people changed his life. He said it and I believed it." Wyatt sighed and looked over at me.

"Yeah, I guess you'll believe what you want to hear."

"No, man, you know me. I saw something in him that really changed him..."

"Like I said..."

"Well, this isn't the story, anyway. I don't know why I'm stuck on this point, there's more. I just thought of this as the point at which to start it, but in retrospect, you probably only need to start from the point where I wake up, hung over." We got out of the car and started up towards the apartment. Wyatt flung a brown paper bag at me; it was obviously filled with a titty bit o’ liquor. Somewhere an angel choir sang. I have the thirst, often, especially after run-ins with the po-po. I dare not look in the bag. Knowing Wyatt, it could be anything from Wall Street Whiskey to Crown Royal. It could be anything from Absolut to Skoal.

He pulled the chicken from his car and was like, "What the fuck do you care, man? Nelson, buddy, come on."

"No, it was just weird. I really believed him."

"Maybe he was just drunk, and so were you from the sound of it."

"Yeah...no...he didn't even drink his drink, and HE was buying."

"Hmmmm. Yeah that IS weird. Maybe, he was so drunk, he passed into some kind of drunken sobriety."

"That's stretching..."

"...quite a bit, I know." Wyatt said while nodding and smoking. He motioned his head up toward his apartment and we walked in silence until we got past the front door of the apartment building. "So anyway..." Wyatt said in anticipation. He was looking at me as if I should have been talking the whole time. I nodded a slight apology and continued as we walked up the stairs.

"I went off on my boss, I have a date with Jaime, Dade is in the hospital, and I almost got arrested," I blurted out. Wyatt nodded again and took a drag off of his cig. He smiled and shook his head again. It was if I had amused him. Like I said, we amuse each other, but today, his life was probably a little less interesting than mine had been.

"Mmmmkay, keep on, buddy." We started walking up the stairs, and by the time we got to his door, I was finishing the story about my confrontation with Dean. We got into his place and went to the kitchen. By about this time, I was deep into the dog mauling story. I started to put the brown bag in the freezer, but Wyatt was rapt. He shook his head disapprovingly and pulled it from my hand as I continued. He revealed the bottle. It was a half pint of Jagermeister. He cracked it and took a snort, and offered it to me. I grabbed it and continued. I didn't drink, however. I kept on going; it was coming out of me like a faucet with a bad filter, all spray, no style. It had lots of water pressure behind it. Amazingly, Wyatt held it together, like he was holding a Bell jar straight into the spigot. I love this about Wyatt. He, unlike most of our generation, can hold his attention span, without trying to top the story, or bring his own stories in at any point. I think we have this in common, although sometimes I wonder about my own attention span.

I was at the end of Dade's story and moving into my little scene with Jaime when he made a quick move and deprived me of the Jagermeister bottle. I had been hoarding it for awhile. Again, he made a short, disapproving shake of his head and proceeded to drain about half of the bottle. He sucked in through his cheeks and bulged his eyes. He handed it back to me. I paused, and took a nip.

I realized, at this point, that I was probably taking too long with this story, and became aware of the two women talking in the front room. One of them was Kristy. Wyatt had dinner for her in the form of Church's Fried Chicken. Wyatt was fingering the bag o' chicken as he listened to my long ass story. Kristy is Wyatt's long term girlfriend. The other one was either Mandi, Candi, Sandi, Brandi, or Mandy. ("...with a 'y', not an 'i'...") I didn't know. I made out with one of them...once.

I made a head nod towards the front room. Wyatt laughed out loud and then gave me a dismissive hand gesture. He didn't really give a flying fuck. He then cupped his hand to his ear. The acoustics aren't great in his pad, but I heard snippets of girly conversation via the hallway. It was really insipid. Fashion, shoes, comments about "that bitch" were all present. It's like Wyatt and I weren't even there. We could have been privy to some real female bullshit convo, but fuck that. It was kind of cool. The girls didn't care, and neither did we. In my past relationships, my women couldn't wait to get all up in my business. Wyatt seemed to be invulnerable and invisible to this kind of shit. It is something that will haunt him later in this story, but something that will also set him free.

We finished the small bottle of Jager whilst I finished up my story, and somehow we moved to small glasses of white Russians. I must have talked for about thirty minutes. I was getting a little tipsy, but I was acutely aware of the time, even though I had wordlessly given up on the Chloe extraction. It was about at this moment when Wyatt said, "Let's go get Chloe."

To spite my best judgment, I said, "Alright."