Leaving Las Vegas by John O'Brien

it slip into the void of blackout. He sits at the filthy bar and silently witnesses the change of watch from his will to his independently operating motor skills. His heart provides the musical accompaniment as the drinks are finished and he walks his crooked line home, as he clutches his bag of vodka and makes the distance to his door, as he puts his parcel on the floor carefully—even his body knows how important it is—and stumbles to his bed, where he turns off. His heart is beating him to sleep; there is no more required of him for now.

     
    It is a different day, and Ben sits in a different bar. It is early afternoon and he has successfully made the trip into Beverly Hills for lunch: a bullshot and six raw oysters, continuous vodka for dessert. Now properly fortified, he is ready for a second visit to his bank, also in Beverly Hills.
    He tried earlier, and it didn’t go so well. He giggles over his kamikaze, under his breath, “My visit to the bank didn’t go so well this morning.” He had felt okay after his morning drinks and decided to take advantage of his consciousness and withdraw the rest of his cash from the bank. This sort of big business deal is not his favorite thing to do these days, and the bank is ripe for construction as enemy turf by his often paranoid, alcohol-enriched imagination. In an attempt to get the nastiness over with—actually just the simple process of cashing a check since he did not intend to close the account—he decided to stop at the bank before starting his afternoon drinking in Beverly Hills. He had filled out and signed the check beforehand, four thousand and six hundred dollars—4.6K, his life expectancy—but forgotten that he would be asked to sign the back of the check in the teller’s presence. Upon hearing the words
Would you sign the back for me please, sir,
the small tremor in his wrist immediately doubled its seismic output. Just being partially sober in a bank was already enough to produce serious sweating, but to have to sign a check under the gaze of a teller was unthinkable.
    “You couldn’t just cash it like that?” he asked with his best flirtatious smile and sweat lining his neck.
    “I’m sorry sir. Is there a problem?” said the teller.
    Fuck, fuck, fuck, nowhere else to go.
    “Well,” he started, his voice cracking, “to tell you the truth, I’m a little shaky right now.” Just a little, he thought. “I had a rough night and I guess I need a little hair-of-the-dog.” Hair-of-the-pack, he wanted to say. “Why don’t I just come back after lunch when I’m feeling better. We can take care of it then.” He picked up his check, in itself an accomplishment, and left.
    The poor girl smiled through her confusion, wondering if even this customer could possibly be right. Certainly he was not all right. How could she know that there was disarray and devilment wreaking havoc with his very biology. To her he was a customer of the bank whom she recognized, but who refused to sign his own check. She thought it over, and since her cash drawer had not been opened at all during the encounter, she shrugged it off.
    While listening to the lunch waitresses shout their orders to the overworked bartender, he spots his moment. Time for thebank. The bank once and for all, last and forever, is about to be revisited. He gulps the balance of his drink and calls to the bartender that he’ll be back in a few minutes. He has never walked on a tab and this is standard operating procedure for him. He and his ego say smugly to each other,
They know me here.
    He is cruising on that golden highway of maintenance. The increasingly elusive mixture of blood and alcohol that makes him feel and act normally happy. This is the time of his grand hallucination. Things are fine. Who knows what could happen tomorrow? He’s getting away with a lot of fun. What it really is, is a taste of his first good drunk. It’s a small refresher course in the wonders of alcohol. Start again at