Awake Page 12

  When they came out to the living room they found that was indeed the case. Stella and Ben barely stirred when Lee started up the rig and drove them to a nearby diner. They wouldn’t even go in to eat, saying they wanted to sleep more and would find something in the fridge later.

  “That was a great night last night,” Ivy said to him as they ate omelets, shooting him a wicked grin.

  “Thanks. I had a lot of fun too. I feel a lot better today,” Lee said.

  “I’m glad I could help tire you out.”

  “Not as glad as I was.” He didn’t mention that he’d only slept for an hour.

  She laughed, and then over a bite of her Denver omelet said “So what’s the plan for today? Are we going to head out?”

  “I think so, this city is cool but there’s not really much else I want to see. I think we’ve covered most of it.”

  “Where to next?”

  “Baltimore is only an hour or so away. Ben and I really wanted to stop by there.”

  “Jesus, why? Doesn’t that place have a lot of crime?”

  “We’re big fans of this TV show set there. It’s stupid, I know.”

  “The Wire, right?”

  “Yeah, you watch it?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t see why that would make you guys want to go there. It should do the opposite.”

  Lee chuckled. “I know, like I said it’s stupid. We just really wanted to drive through some of the areas the show was filmed in, really fast and with the doors locked, of course.”

  “I suppose,” she said in an uncertain tone. “Let’s just make it quick. I really don’t feel like getting shot at, and I think that this RV might draw some attention. What about after that?”

  “Philadelphia is between there and NYC, so we’ll probably go there for the night before heading on to New York, or wherever it is we park the RV to go into New York, maybe Jersey.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Ivy said. “I’m excited.”

  They lingered over their meal, enjoying their time alone. I just want more time with her, Lee thought, gazing at her beautiful face as she espoused the virtues of the latest Smashing Pumpkins album. Why did I have to meet her now? He’d thought he’d been in love before in the past, but the feelings he felt for Ivy proved that it hadn’t been the case. He’d never felt anything like what he felt for her.

  They finished up, paid, and got back to the RV. Stella and Ben were up, watching TV and eating bowls of cereal. All of the RV’s blinds were drawn, making it look a bit like a lair.

  “Shut the door, the light is killing me!” Stella shouted as they walked in. Lee complied, knowing how hangovers went. He and Ivy hadn’t drunk nearly as much as they had.

  “We were going to head out to Baltimore, do you guys care if we don’t stop at that wine bar?” Lee asked as he got into the driver’s seat.

  “Ugh, no I don’t care. I don’t even want to look at a drink right now,” Stella said.

  “Yeah, I’m good too,” Ben said. “We’re going to check out places they filmed The Wire at, right?”

  “You know it buddy.”

  “Really now, what are you guys going to do? Just walk up to the first black guy you see and ask if you can take your picture with him?” Ivy said, chuckling from the passenger’s seat.

  “How did you know what I had planned? Stop reading my mind,” Ben said. Laughing, Lee started up the rig.

  As they drove, Ben got out the laptop and looked up the addresses of places that had been in The Wire, relaying them up for Ivy to program into the GPS. The drive to Baltimore was short; they were exiting into the city only an hour later

  “Oh wow, it’s worse than in the show,” Lee said as they drove through the bad parts of the city .

  “It’s sad, all these poor people, just cast aside. People shouldn’t have to live like this in America,” Ivy said.

  Whether it was Baltimore itself, or the fact that they’d programmed the GPS specifically for the bad parts of the city that had been in The Wire, Lee didn’t know, but the areas they went through were that shady that they didn’t stay for long. There was just something there, a darkness sucking the life out of the poor and the disadvantaged, that reminded Lee of the demon.

  12

  Exiting Baltimore, Lee got back on the interstate and let the GPS guide them towards Philadelphia.

  “What do you guys want to do in Philadelphia?” Lee asked.

  “Let’s take a break from the tourist shit for a day and just hit up a bar,” Stella said. “It would be fun. Plus, it’d help get rid of my hangover.”

  “That actually sounds pretty good to me,” Ivy whispered to Lee.

  “For once I think she’s got the right idea,” Lee said, whispering too. Besides drinking more, the only other sure cure for a hangover that Lee knew of was sleeping it off. He didn’t have that option any more. “Okay, the bar idea sounds good,” he called back. “Ben, see if you can find a good bar in Philly on the internet, would you?”

  The drive was only a couple of hours. By the time they got there Ben had found a suitable area of the city with a lot of bars close together that looked promising. Again, they parked the rig in the suburbs, in a Target parking lot, and called a cab to take them into the city.

  The driver of the cab looked as though he could have been the brother of the first cabbie they’d had in Chicago. The resemblance was striking and Lee wanted to ask if they were related somehow, but didn’t want it to come off the wrong way.

  Ben instructed the cabbie where to go, and a little less than an hour later they were dropped off in a section of town that was a bit more run down than they’d envisioned. The sidewalks were cracked, as well as the streets, and the mostly brick buildings seemed to loom over them. Still, the streets were filled with seemingly nice, happy people.

  “Ooh, let’s try this one: Padraig’s,” Ivy said. “I’ve never been to an Irish bar before, even though my dad’s family is from there.”

  “Sounds good to me, my mother was part Irish,” Lee said, then turned to the others. “Sound good to you guys?”

  “As long as they have alcohol I’m fine with it,” Stella said.

  “Ha, yeah,” Ben agreed, laughing. Lee could tell from his overenthusiastic laugh that Ben was falling for Stella almost as much as Lee was for Ivy. It made him feel good to know that his friend was enjoying the trip as much as he was.

  Inside, the bar was a dive. It was dim, musky, and ordained with Irish decorations, or more accurately the American version of Irish, but it seemed bearable. It wasn’t packed, but for an afternoon, the business wasn’t bad. “You guys go grab a booth, I’ll get a pitcher and a bottle of wine,” he said and veered away from the others towards the bar.

  Three men behind the bar were engaged in a loud argument about football, and wouldn’t pay Lee any attention, no matter how many times he gestured to them. He was about to grab the others and leave when a pretty blonde woman came out and served him. She was a bit surly, but promptly filled up the pitcher and got the bottle.

  “That’ll be fifty bucks,” she said, placing the booze on the counter between them.

  He handed her his debit card, “Just keep it open for now. And could I please get two beer glasses and two wine glasses as well?” he asked. She rolled her eyes, grabbed the glasses and plunked them down next to the alcohol.

  “You look like you’re going to need help carrying all that back to the table,” Ben said, suddenly popping up behind Lee as the waitress ambled off to join in the argument between the other bartenders.

  “Thanks,” he said, and handed Ben the glasses.

  They quickly downed the first pitcher and bottle, their hangovers disappearing in the process. Their conversation became louder and happier, in contrast to before, when in the throes of their hangovers, it had been muted. Lee went to grab more drinks. He stood at the bar and waited for the waitress to decide to come over and help him, noting that they were still arguing loudly. She seemed to finally notice Lee, and after telling the
men to “screw off,” came over to help him.

  “Dude, Holden Caufield did not kidnap little kids, you have no idea what you’re talking about. There’s no way you even read the book, you’re illiterate,” one of the men said to another, as the waitress refilled the pitcher. Trying not to laugh, he grabbed the drinks and brought them back to the table.

  “Man, you guys are really missing out. The owners of the bar are complete morons. They just keep arguing over ridiculous things, it’s great,” he said, setting the pitcher and bottle down at the table and taking his seat next to Ivy.

  “What were they arguing about?” Stella said.

  “Catcher in the Rye, sounded like. One of the guys thinks that Holden was a child molester or something,” Lee said.

  “That’s golden,” Ivy said, and laughed. Ben chuckled too, with Stella joining in as well, even though it was plain from the look on her face that she had no idea what The Catcher in the Rye was.

  “That reminds me, you missed Stella’s amazing thought when you were at the bar,” Ivy said, wiping a tear from her eye. “Stella, tell Lee what you think about the situation in Greece.”

  “Why? The whole thing is stupid, I don’t care about it anyway.”

  “Come on, just tell him.”

  Stella sighed. “Fine. I said that I don’t see why we worry so much about what’s happening in Africa when we’ve got plenty of problems here at home.”

  Ivy and Lee burst out laughing as Stella huffed and fumed, still not sure what the joke was. Ben tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed anything.

  “What? What’s so funny about that? I think it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to think,” Stella said, her face getting red.

  “Stella,” Ivy said, barely able to stop laughing long enough to get it out, “Greece isn’t in Africa.”

  “Ugh, whatever. Like that even matters,” Stella said, which only made Lee and Ivy laugh again. Ben pretended even harder that he wasn’t paying attention.

  Stella was pissed for a while after that, but for all her flaws she wasn’t one to hold a grudge for long. Soon she was laughing and going on about her love for a certain teen idol that was usually more popular with women a decade younger. The black opal cocktails that Lee had gotten for both her and Ivy when he went up for the third pitcher of beer probably hadn’t hurt.

  “So, what do you guys think about politics?” Ivy asked as she sipped her cocktail. Knowing that drinking and politics don’t go together, Lee braced himself for a huge debate. Luckily, it turned out that they all shared the same views, as everyone was agreeing with each other.

  “Well I’m glad we’re on the same level with everything. I thought that’s what you’d think from how you write your books, and now I know for sure,” Ivy said to Lee.

  “Heh, I didn’t realize that people could see it in my writing,” Lee said.

  “You definitely can,” she said, and took another drink.

  By five o’clock, when the regulars started coming in, the group was scandalously drunk. The bartenders were still bickering, and Lee wondered if they ever let up. He got the impression that they didn’t.

  “We should hit up a dance club,” Stella said after finishing her latest drink.

  “Oh my god, that would be awesome,” Ivy said, turning to Lee. “Let’s do it, please? Dance with me.”

  “You’re lucky, I don’t normally dance unless I’m really drunk,” Lee said, standing up. “Sound good to you, Ben? I’ll feel better if you’re out there dancing as badly as me.”

  “Sounds good to me. I’m the best dancer of all time, though,” Ben said. He turned to the girls. “Lee was always jealous of my moves back in high school.”

  The women had already polished off their drinks, so Ben and Lee quickly downed the rest of their pitcher. Lee went to pay the tab while the others went outside to wait.

  Lee gave the waitress a healthy tip, despite her mediocre service, figuring that having to work with the three arguing buffoons was ample enough excuse for her surly attitude. If she was grateful she didn’t show it, taking the tip without so much as a word and walking off to go to the bathroom.

  It was hot and humid outside the bar, and it helped snap Lee out of his drunkenness slightly. He’d started to have a mild case of double vision inside Padraig’s, but it went away almost immediately in the evening sunlight.

  They didn’t have to walk far to find a dance club. There was one only a few blocks down from Padraig’s, simply named “Dance”. The place was nearly empty when they walked in, it being early in the evening, but they didn’t let that stop them from grabbing more drinks and then heading to the floor to dance drunkenly.

  The two couples had the floor to themselves, and Lee and Ben kept cracking the girls up with mock dance contests that were more about who was the worse dancer than who was better. “You guys are so hilarious,” Ivy said after a particularly heated round.

  By the time ten o’clock rolled around, the group was all but too drunk to walk. They decided to get one last round and then leave, but when Lee went up to the bar to order the round, the bartender informed him that his entire group was cut off. So he closed the tab, writing “Don’t be such a bitch” on the tip line of the receipt. He was usually courteous to everyone, but getting cut off from bars was the exception to the rule, which was probably because he was drunk whenever it happened.

  “Fuck that bitch. Let’s go back to the RV, we still have booze there,” Stella said when he told them about the cutoff, raising her voice loud enough to be heard at the bar.

  “Calm down, we really are pretty drunk,” Ivy said. “I’ll call us up a cab, what’s this place called again?” Lee told her.

  Surprisingly, Lee passed out on the ride home, sitting in the front seat after losing a coin flip over it to Ben. It couldn’t have been more than half an hour until the cab stopping in front of the RV woke him up, but he felt refreshed nonetheless.

  They didn’t have as much booze left in the RV as they’d thought, particularly wine, so Lee and Ben volunteered to grab some booze from the Target they were parked in. “Dude, this whole trip has been fucking awesome. Thank you so much,” Ben said to Lee, slurring, as they staggered across the parking lot.

  “No. Thank you, man. This trip wouldn’t even have happened without you. And I certainly wouldn’t have been worked up the balls to pick up the girls. I feel bad that I’ve only given you that little advance, we should hit up the bank sometime and I can just give you everything up front. Don’t know why we didn’t do that in the first place,” Lee said.

  “You don’t have to, I’m fine for now. I still have like two hundred of what you gave me the other day left, since you keep paying for almost everything.”

  “I know, so it’ll actually save me money if I pay you soon so you can cover yourself and Stella,” Lee said, laughing to show he was kidding.

  They bought beer and wine at the store and lugged it back across the parking lot. By then, Lee had sobered up enough to realize he didn’t want another hangover, so he stuck to water while the others drank more. He also took a sleeping pill, having figured out by then that one or two with booze wouldn’t kill him.

  “I think I’m going to hit the hay,” he said after an hour, yawning.

  “Goodnight lil’ buddy,” Ben said, his arm around Stella.

  “I’m getting tired too,” Ivy said, and stood up with him. When they got into the room Ivy fell into the bed, and was asleep almost immediately. The booze and pill combination worked again, and Lee followed suit after half an hour.

  He had another nightmare. In his dream something was chasing him. Try as he might, no matter how fast he ran it was gaining on him. It never quite caught him, but it kept gaining on him and gaining, closer every second.

  “You keep running, but you know I’m going to catch you eventually,” it growled from behind him, just before he woke up.

  “So what are we going to do today?” Ben asked as he finished up his breakfast.

  “Yeah, what
is even in this city besides the Liberty Bell?” Stella added.

  “Ooh, I’d forgotten about the Liberty Bell. I definitely want to stop by there,” Ivy said.

  “I’m sure there’s some pretty cool historical stuff here, but honestly I just want to see the Liberty Bell quickly, then New York,” he said. Lee felt great; he’d gotten six hours of sleep the night before. Nightmare aside, it was the most he’d gotten since his diagnosis. He felt like he could see and hear more than he could before, as though his senses were more alert, though he couldn’t say exactly how.

  “Well there’s actually the Constitution Center here, which I found on the internet and wanted to check out, but fine,” Ben said. “New York sounds cool too.”

  Ivy called up the cab company they’d used the day before and called a cab to take them to the Liberty Bell. She’d become quite the expert at getting them taxis wherever they went.

  The cab dropped them off surprisingly close to the Liberty Bell; Lee had assumed it would be a long walk from the street to get there, like the landmarks in Washington had been. There was a crowd of people surrounding the bell, but the group worked their way up to the front quickly.

  “Huh. It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be,” Lee said when they were in front of the bell.

  “That’s what she sai-, wait…” Ben said. Lee, Ivy and Stella all laughed, as well as a few bystanders who had overheard.

  “That’s what you get for using that outdated joke over and over,” Lee said.

  They looked at the bell for a while, but despite its historical significance it was just a bell, so they left after half an hour at the site and caught another cab back . They didn’t even have to call one as there were plenty near the Liberty Bell, waiting to pick up the tourists.

  “So who’s going to drive? I’ll do it if no one else wants to,” Ben said as they got out of the cab .

  “I actually want to,” Lee said. “I was looking at the drive and it’s only a few hours, maybe a little more with the traffic, and I want to see the sprawl between here and there.”