If You've Got to Lose, Lose to the Best

I was on my way home from a brothel in Maybrook with a stubborn wad of cash in my pocket. The building hadn't been used as such for almost a century and a half, but as far as my plumbing partner and myself were concerned the same went for cathouses as for bullshitters: once is always. Some forty-year-old slumlord couple had subdivided it and was renting it out as four separate apartments. If only those low-income tenants could hear the stories that those walls could tell...

A man I used to work with was standing in his driveway as I drove by pondering the possibilities. I hadn't seen him in almost two years. The obligatory honk didn't seem like enough so I turned around and pulled into his driveway.

"Hey, Shakespeare," Johnny said with the suds from his lager clinging to the corners of his mouth. My early apprental nickname had stuck with this one; I'd shaken it from the tongues of most of the others, at least when I was around. People who call you by your alternate moniker in your presence are probably to be trusted more than those who wait until you leave. Johnny was somehow allowed to let that name fly, though. He was the one who gave it to me four years ago when a few of my fellow pipefitters caught me reading in my car on lunch break.

"What's new, John?" I asked through my rolled-down window after putting my truck in park and killing the ignition.

Right off the bat he was digging through the toolbox in the bed of my truck. "Hey, is this thing mine?" the notorious tool-thief asked of me, a shiny pair of tin snips in his hand.

"Nope, but these are," I replied, tossing a rusty pair of pliers I'd pulled from my backseat in his general direction. He caught it one-handed without spilling his beer. Practice, for some, does indeed made perfect. "Check out the handles."

John looked down at the blue rubber grips where he'd once written his intials. Since being in his possession the inscription had been modified-- the word "sucks" was scrawled in magic marker after his two letters.

"No one steals from me, kid," John snarled in his best attempt at intimidation. I was almost twice his size, physically and otherwise. We laughed at his charade and he handed the pliers back to me. "At least you learned from the best," and he was right-- though that applied to his craft more than his trade.

Not much had changed around the man's house. The grass was still the same sickly green hue. The driveway still needed some patching. His three daughters had grown quite a bit since I'd seen them, however. They chased each other through the yard in their bathing suits, screaming and dripping over-chlorinated water in their wakes. A jealous Johnny Jr. peered out from the living room window. He'd literally doubled in size since I'd seen him last. I could hear him speaking actual words from the English language through the screen. The squawking toddler I remembered was limited to monosyllabic Neanderthal-speak in my recollection. A chill went down my spine as I realized how quickly years pass. He too will be a plumber in no time.

"Here, have a beer," John blurted as he shoved an oh-so-familiar green bottle into my hand. "Come on in. I'll show you my new pellet stove."

Not his wife, Maria, whose wonderful Italian cuisine I'd savored several times at their dining room table after work. Not their oldest daughter whom I taught a few chords on the guitar. Not little Jon-Jon who could now amaze me with his early stages of the lifelong mastery of speech. A pellet stove. He wanted to show me a pellet stove. The mighty plumber had succumbed to a form of heat that required no boiler or pipes full of water. Worse yet, he'd forgotten the main thing I admired and envied: his family.

As we walked through the kitchen the smells of his house came back to my mind right after my senses. It's odd how much trivial olfactory information we file in the recesses of that spongy pink matter. The living room looked mostly the same, aside from its hardwood floors being slightly duller and the presence of two dozen more movies stored on the shelves of the entertainment center. "Here it is," John said with an unfittingly sinister grin. Had he gotten such a good deal on the contraption that it felt like a crime? If so, was I supposed to care? I pretended for the sake of his manhood.

"Wow. She's a beauty, alright." It was easier to lie without his wife and kids around. This man alone was no saint to be feared.

"Do you have a lighter on you?" he asked, pointing to his unopened beer.

"Yeah. Hold on." I set my bottle down on the pellet stove and rummaged through my left hip pocket for the lighter I always keep there. It comes in handy in dark crawlspaces or while lighting a torch at work. More often than that, though, it's used to open bottles. The trick is to hold the neck just under the cap and use the index finger as a fulcrum point to pry the cap free with the lighter. A simple matter of leverage is practically rocket science to amateurs at parties who witness the feat, whether or not the credit is warranted. Another thing that Johnny had taught me. The list was slowly growing. It wouldn't take too much longer to finalize.

"Thanks," he said after popping the top. I picked up my brew and joined him in a swig worthy of the frustrating day I'd had.

For the next twenty minutes I planned my escape. When the perfect segue presented itself I took advantage of the opportunity. John and I shook hands in his driveway and made each other false promises of getting together again soon. That's how it goes with that type of friend. It wasn't until later on that evening that I discovered the extent of it.

I was emptying my pockets onto my dresser and noticed something missing: my lighter. He'd pocketed it after cracking his beer with a hand as sly as a street hustler's. I smiled into the mirror on my bedroom wall, the day's dust and failure still glued to my face. My loss was minimal compared to the gain. Some things never change, thank God.