Charlie’s ex Air Force. He’s been out of service for a couple years, I’m guessing, but it’s tough to tell. From what I gather he’s still in the business, but how far is anyone’s guess. He still works for the V.A. hospital, of that much I’m sure, but sometimes he gets a little tipsy and it starts to sound like he’s in real deep. As angry as he gets over policy and veterans rights, he gets just as patriotic sometimes, and I’ve started to wonder if he might not be a spook.
He’s got a look like an aging George Peppard, like when he was on the A-Team. I like it. He gets to talking about the military and I get to thinking like I might kidnap him, paint a big red stripe on the ambulance, and start searching for the rest of the team. We could go mercenary on this damn country, start fucking shit up, and get it back to the way it ought to be. But then, of course, we both drink too much, and neither of us really give a shit.
“There are these people. You meet them every day, they sort of saunter through life like it didn’t mean anything to them.” He sips his scotch and soda out of the little cocktail straw. “I noticed them years ago, back when I was just a set of combat boots and weak knees. I decided that I never wanted to be like them.”
I nodded like I understood.
“Saunter not, my friend. Whatever you do in this life, do it with purpose. If you’re walking someplace, walk like you plan to get there. Move like you mean it.”
I finished my shot and my beer. It was fairly obvious that I wasn’t going to get much paperwork done if Charlie was sitting there. I glanced at the pages that I was working on. First person. An account of a relationship that had gone bad.
“Just don’t be like all these kids I see, drifting around, doing nothing and taking pictures of themselves doing it.”
“Selfies, Charlie. They call those selfies.” I stuffed the hand-written pages back into the spiral notebook, closed it, and slid it away from me.
“Whatever. A whole lot of bullshit is what I call it. Kids staring at their damn phones all the time, sitting around with each other, taking pictures of their food, or their drinks, or their friends, all grinning and having a great time, and then they’re back to their screens, staring into their phones again.”
“Social Media, Charlie.” I slugged back my whiskey. “Pics or it didn’t happen.” I pushed my shot glass to the edge of the bar so Maggie could see it and refill it. “That’s how they do it these days. Gotta look good on a screen.”
“Where I come from, we didn’t take pictures of anything except our girl.” He sipped his scotch. “Or a vacation, maybe. And nobody really wanted to look at them.”
“Yeah, well, if it makes you feel any better my generation doesn’t much like looking at other people’s pictures either. We just post them on the internet so that exes can see how happy we are without them.” I took a pull off my pint glass, trying to empty my beer. “These days we’re just hoping that somebody is stalking us on the internet, pretending like anybody gives a shit.”
He snorted a laugh. “I guess that’s handy.” He slurped the last watered-down bit at the bottom of his bucket glass and slid it to the rail so Maggie could see it. He patted the pack of Pall Malls sitting on the bar. “Go for a smoke?”
Maggie was at the end of the bar chatting up one of the old-timers. Really, everybody in that place was an old-timer. The place was like hell’s waiting room, a bunch of rummy bastards all waiting for death to finally take them. I was the only young guy in the joint. “Yeah, what the hell.” I pulled a smoke from my pack and followed Charlie out the side door into the alley. I left my spiral, smokes, and a pile of papers on the bar. People tell me that this is a dangerous bar, that people get stabbed or shot here. They tell me that there are thieves, but most of the thieves are people who sit next to us every night, and I never worry too much about it. People worry about theft when they have something to lose. Nobody wants my crappy flip phone or that useless pile of papers sitting next to it.
Charlie stretched out and took a deep breath before he lit his cigarette. The night was cool. A mild winter, even by Northwestern standards. My hoodie was warm enough, and despite the steamy breath, the heat flowing out from the side door was enough to keep Charlie warm in a short sleeve button down shirt. He blew smoke at the cloudless night sky, bookended by the brick walls of the alley. “I just can’t imagine spending so much time trying to document a life that ultimately means nothing.” He offered his lighter as I placed the cigarette to my lips. “Who cares what the hell you ate for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? I go out to a meal and find kids taking photos of every plate put in front of them like it was some secret government document or something. Who the fuck wants to see that?”
I shrugged. “People actually get paid for that sorta shit now, Charlie. Restaurants pay people to take pictures of dishes and post them to the internet. Social media is pretty big. It’s like grass roots advertisement. People make money off that stuff.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about. People who saunter through life, and they’re getting paid for it. Every boring fucking moment in a mundane existence, and these people are making money for it.” He took another drag off his cigarette and exhaled toward a crisp winter sky. He shook his head and waved a hand like he was brushing the thought away. “At their age, I was busy running through the jungle, getting paid a few bucks a month to play cowboy to shoot some gook that was a few years younger and more afraid of me than I was of him.”
“I thought you were Airforce.”
“You see a set of wings on me, boy?”
I shook my head. He had never looked so serious to me.
“Somebody had to man those makeshift airfields, and up country, if you’re wearing boots, you can carry a gun.” He glared at me.
“Sorry, Charlie.”
He shook his head again. “You kids got no idea what it used to be like.” He took another drag off his cigarette. “Kids are getting paid to take pictures of their fucking breakfast and put pictures up on the internet; making more than I was.” He flicked his cigarette down the alley. “That’s the problem with this country now. No more men.” He swung the side door open and stormed back in. I glanced down at the unfinished portion of my cigarette. Probably best not to leave him alone now. I’ve seen him like this. I tossed my smoke into the coffee can and followed him back into the bar.
Maggie had refilled both of our drinks and returned to the gentleman she’d been talking to. I took my seat again, but Charlie wasn’t there. I slugged back half of my shot and took a long pull off the pint, looking over the page. The first five paragraphs started with “I”. this is the literary equivalent of a selfie. Maybe it wasn’t exactly a picture-perfect breakfast or anything, but it was definitely as The Professor described it: Solopsistic nonsense.
“What America needs right now is men.” He adjusted the tiny cocktail straw and took a sip. “You know, you’re a writer. We need more guys like Hemingway.”
I used to like Hemingway. Now I think he’s a misogynistic bastard. “It’s out of style, Charlie.”
“That’s the problem. We need real men. Men who cuss and fuck and fight.”
“It’s out of style, Charlie.”
Andrew Tomacelli 