Awake Page 14

  “It’s definitely not what I’d prefer,” Lee admitted. “I’m just saying I don’t mind the taste too much. I’d kill for a big beer right now, no doubt.”

  “Fine, you get two guy points back,” Ben said. Lee smiled.

  They joked and bantered through the first round. As they finished up, Lee lost a game of rock, paper, scissors to determine who would get the next round. “Dammit, don’t say anything interesting until I get back,” he said, and went to grab the drinks.

  When he came back with the drinks, he found another man had taken his seat again, just like in Chicago. He was just about to say something, but just as he got to the table the man got up and walked away.

  “What was that about?” Lee asked, setting the drinks down and reclaiming his chair. The girls were cracking up, and Ben looked embarrassed.

  “Well even though I told Ben not to slut it up he was putting the vibes out, so that guy came over to see if he could buy Ben a drink,” Stella said, wiping a tear from her eye.

  “I thought the guy was coming up to me and was thinking ‘oh no’, but then he went right for Ben,” Ivy said.

  “Well dang Ben, why’d you have to lead him on like that?” Lee asked.

  “You’re just being a homophobe. I don’t care. It’s flattering,” Ben said, protesting too much.

  “Well I don’t think the funny thing is that he hit on you, it’s that somehow you set off his gaydar,” Ivy said.

  “Probably the shirt,” Lee said.

  “Whatever, you guys are just jealous of my gender-neutral sexual appeal,” Ben said, but he was starting to grin too. “And my uncanny sense of fashion.”

  “That must be it,” Lee said.

  They busted on Ben lightheartedly for the rest of the round. He took the ribbing good-naturedly, and even went up to the bar and sent the guy a conciliatory drink at Stella and Ivy’s urging.

  “Let’s find another bar now, we’ve filled our end of the bargain,” Lee said once everyone had finished their drinks.

  “Fine, you guys were good sports and we had a deal. Let me find a place,” Ivy said, pulling out her phone.

  “Are you sure we should get going right away? Ben hasn’t even given that guy his number yet,” Stella said.

  “That’s it, I’m not putting out tonight,” Ben said, cracking the table up again.

  “We’ll see about that. I’m sure I’ll be able to convince you somehow,” Stella said.

  Ivy found a bar a few blocks away. Lee and Ben went and settled their tab, and then they all headed out.

  The night had gotten cold, so they stopped back at the hotel to grab their coats. Fortified, they made their way to the bar Ivy had found: Blarney Stone.

  If the name hadn’t given it away already, the inside of the Blarney Stone proved to be a good old fashioned Irish bar. It was authentic down to the point of having an Irish bartender. It was the complete opposite of the bar they’d gone to in Philadelphia, which was Irish in name only. “Now this looks like my kind of place!” Lee said.

  “I figured you guys would like it, since you kept bitching about not having beer,” Ivy said.

  “I believe it’s called Irish water here,” Lee said.

  Since Lee had gotten the last round, he went back with Ivy and Stella to secure a free table, while Ben went to get beer and wine from the bar. “Let’s hope Ben doesn’t slut it up again this time,” Lee said as they sat down.

  “You guys give each other so much crap, I can’t believe you’re friends,” Stella said.

  “Best friends,” Lee corrected. “And that’s how guy friends are.”

  “We give each other crap too,” Stella said. “Just not quite as much as you guys do.”

  “Well, you did once call me a skank because I bought those boots it turned out you wanted,” Ivy said.

  “That’s different. I’m just messing with you when I say stuff like that.”

  “I’m not so sure it is different. It sounds like the exact same thing they do.”

  Ben got back with the drinks, and they proceeded to get viciously plowed. Already buzzed from the six or seven servings of alcohol that had been in his mixed drinks, Lee was completely blotto by the time he and Ben finished off their first pitcher.

  At around one in the morning Ben was cut off, and the others went to leave while Lee went to close out their tab. Even more drunk than Ben, Stella stopped on the way out the door to say inappropriate things to the bartender about the size of his penis.

  “Sorry about that,” Lee said to the bartender after Ivy managed to pull Stella away and out the door. “I’m tipping for the guy who got cut off, and can you close him out too please?”

  “Fine,” the bartender said angrily. He brightened up though when he saw the large tip Lee left him. “Have a good night!” he said, as Lee walked out to rejoin the group.

  They staggered back to the hotel, went up in the elevator and split into their respective rooms. “That was so much fun, I don’t think I’ve laughed that much in one night in my entire life,” Ivy said when they were alone.

  “It really was. I know we haven’t been here long, but I’m going to go ahead and say this is the best place we’ve been to so far.”

  “Agreed,” Ivy said, and kissed him. “I think I can think of something that will make it even better.”

  Lee had drank so much that it was slow going at first, but between Ivy’s beauty and his determination, he found it in him. By the sounds Ivy made, and the deep scratches she put into his back that he found the next day, he thought he’d done well.

  “I love you,” Ivy said as they lay next to each other, sweating and panting.

  “I love you too, sweetheart,” Lee said, and kissed her temple.

  “You’re looking so much better today, do you think that maybe the doctors are wrong about… your thing?” she asked hopefully.

  “Maybe, who knows?” Lee said. He didn’t think it was remotely likely, but he wasn’t going to bring the night down.

  After Ivy fell asleep he tried to fall asleep too, but just ended up rolling around for hours instead. Getting desperate, he decided to take one each of his old pills, swallowing them with a slurp directly from the bathroom faucet. That worked moderately well, and he was able to get a few hours’ worth of sleep. For once, those few hours weren’t plagued with nightmares, and he even had a pleasant dream, which he couldn’t quite recall when he woke up.

  The couples met up the next morning to find a place to get breakfast. “It looks like there’s a place on the ground floor, the Tick Tock Diner,” Ivy said as they rode the elevator down, studying her phone. “How’s that sound to everybody?”

  “You had me at diner,” Lee said, his stomach grumbling.

  “Yeah, sounds good to me,” Ben said. “Bacon sounds like just the thing to help get rid of my hangover.”

  They had to exit the hotel and walk around to a different side of the building to get to the diner, but it was quite easy to find. “Welcome y’all, is it just you four?” the hostess greeted as they walked in, speaking in a shockingly southern accent.

  For a moment Lee forgot he was in New York. “Uh, yes,” Lee said, surprised.

  The hostess ushered them to a booth near the back of the crowded restaurant and put menus down on the table, assuring them that the waitress would be by soon. She was, and everybody was so hungry they asked if they could order their food at the same time as their drinks, and the waitress cheerily agreed.

  Ben ordered his much-wanted bacon, with eggs, hash browns and toast. Lee got the strip steak with eggs, while the women both went with vegetarian omelets that were filled with spinach, tomato and feta.

  “Wow, the prices were amazing!” Ivy said after the waitress had taken their menus and hurried off to place the order.

  “I know, for some reason I assumed everything here would be amazingly expensive,” Lee said. “It’s good to see that New Yorkers don’t all try and rip you off like in some tourist traps.”

  “Oh my
god, have you been to Hawaii? I went there with my parents once and I remember a ‘value meal’ at McDonald’s was like ten goddamned dollars. It’s bullshit,” Stella said.

  “Well, they do have to bring all their food in by ship or by air. I don’t think they grow a lot more than pineapple there, right?” Ben said.

  “I don’t care, ten bucks is not a ‘value meal’,” Stella said, making air quotes as she said “value meal”.

  “Congratulations,” Ivy said, “I’m pretty sure that’s the first time you’ve used air quotes correctly.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Stella said.

  It wasn’t long before their food arrived, and everybody dug in. “Oh my god, this is the best vegetarian omelet I’ve ever had!” Ivy said after her first bite.

  “It is really good,” Stella agreed.

  “So what’s the plan after this?” Ben asked through a mouthful of food.

  Lee held up one finger while he finished the bite he was working on, then said “Ivy and I were thinking it would be fun to head over to Central Park. It’s like a half an hour walk from here, or we could take the subway.”

  “That sounds awesome, we should walk. It’ll help us get a feel for the city,” Ben said.

  “That’s what we were thinking, but we weren’t sure if you guys would want to walk too,” Lee said.

  “It sounds good to me. I need to get some exercise to burn off all this restaurant food we’ve been eating anyway,” Stella said.

  Excited, they finished up and headed out. They walked towards Central Park, following the GPS, which Lee had brought along with him in anticipation. They didn’t really need it though; it was pretty much a straight shot down one road to get to the park, and after using it for a couple of minutes Lee stowed it in his pocket, embarrassed at the looks people were giving him.

  The walk was mind blowing. Lee had never seen so many people on sidewalks before. It was like a ten lane road, with people weaving in and out, passing slower walkers and obvious tourists stopping to take pictures. He and Ivy tried to hold hands for a while, but it was simply impossible to move about the foot traffic two abreast.

  Halfway into the walk, he got separated from the group, caught ahead of some fast moving traffic behind him that kept him surging forward. He could only keep moving with the traffic and look back helplessly as the distance between him and Ivy and the others grew. It gave him a strange sense of déjà vu. After a couple of minutes he found a spot behind a street light where he could stand and wait for them , and rejoined the group as they caught up.

  They arrived at the park next to a giant stone column that had a golden statue of a woman on a chariot of horses at the top. When they got closer, he saw on a plaque that it was a monument in remembrance of the USS Maine. Lee wasn’t familiar with the ship or its (presumably, from the memorial) sinking, but the monument was certainly striking.

  “Look over there! Bike tours,” Ivy exclaimed excitedly, pointing to a stand of bikes. “The guide I was reading online said that they were the best way to see the park because it’s so huge.”

  “That looks cool, let’s do it!” Lee said.

  “I just want to walk around,” Stella replied.

  “We can meet up later I guess,” Ben offered.

  “Cool, just give us a call,” Lee said, and they went their separate ways.

  The bike tour was expensive and didn’t accept cards, but luckily Lee had some cash on him. He paid the outlandish fee and he and Ivy got into a carriage that was hooked up to the rear of a bike.

  “Make sure that you keep your arms and legs inside,” the young, hip-looking guide said in a European accent that Lee couldn’t quite place, and with that they were off.

  As the tour guide drove them through the park, Lee and Ivy marveled at its immense size. “Man, we have some huge parks in Washington, but this is so much bigger than any of the ones I’ve been to,” Lee said.

  “The same in Oregon, we have a lot of good-sized parks, but this is just… wow,” Ivy said.

  The tour guide helpfully pointed out everything from statues to buildings along the way, giving them the backstory on everything. The biggest highlight for Lee was seeing a particularly well-done statue of the famous Alaskan dog, Balto, until they got to the Strawberry Fields Memorial for John Lennon. At that memorial the guide stopped and let them walk around, exploring the site.

  “Wow, I feel like I’m actually connected to Lennon somehow now,” Ivy said as they looked at the engraving on the ground at the center of the memorial, which simply read, Imagine.

  “I think this was built after he died,” Lee said. “It’s a memorial, after all.”

  “Oh, come on! Now you’ve ruined it!” she said, but laughed.

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, he lived here, so I’m sure at some point we’ve crossed somewhere he’s been in the park.”

  She smiled. “I guess that does make it a bit better.”

  They got back in the carriage and a short while later they were riding up to a food cart on the side of the path. “That is an organic food store, you want to stop?” the driver said.

  “Sure,” Lee said, his stomach grumbling at the smell of the food.

  To his surprise, they found that the place was a hot dog stand called Good to Go. Lee wasn’t sure what an organic hot dog would be like, but he loved the idea.

  “This looks awesome!” Ivy said. “I was hoping to find places like this here.”

  Lee ordered a beef hot dog with onions and mustard, while Ivy went with the veggie sausage on flatbread. The hot dog was absolutely amazing, and after being practically forced by Ivy to try the veggie sausage, he found that it was great too. He made a note to himself that they’d have to come back there one day if they found the time; he knew that Ben and Stella would think it was cool.

  When they got back in the rickshaw, Lee began to lose his focus and feel drowsy. It was accompanied with a sudden certainty that he was about to hallucinate again. He flicked his eyes back and forth as they looped around the park, certain he’d see the demon. He didn’t, luckily, but the feeling ruined the rest of the tour for him. He couldn’t focus on the sights or what the guide or Ivy were saying, all he could do was look around nervously for the demon.

  The guide completed the loop around the park, coming back to the bicycle rental station. “Thanks, that was fun,” Lee said as he got out, mumbling.

  “Yeah, that was really great,” Ivy said.

  Lee tipped the guide, not really knowing what the custom was. “Thank you so much sir,” the guide said, and left with a smile.

  “Are you feeling alright? You didn’t seem all there for some of the ride,” Ivy said when the guide was out of earshot.

  “I was feeling a little off, but I’m feeling better now,” Lee said truthfully, the feeling of imminent dread having evaporated the second they’d gotten out of the rickshaw carriage.

  “Is there any way I can get you to check out some clothing places around here with me? There’s a few stores near here that I want to check out,” Ivy said. “I didn’t bring nearly as much clothing as I should have. That’s what happens when you have to fit everything into a backpack.”

  “Sure, let’s do it. I could actually use a few things too, come to think of it,” Lee said.

  14

  They could see American Apparel from where they were standing, so they headed over. “You do your thing, and I’ll head up to the men’s department and then find you afterwards,” Lee said as they walked into the store. “I’m sure I’ll be done before you. You know, since you’re a girl.”

  “You never know, I might be the one who comes looking for you.”

  Lee was of course done first, and he found Ivy by the dressing rooms. He sat on a bench by the dressing rooms with the three shirts and two pairs of pants he’d bought in a shopping bag on his lap, giving his opinions on the outfits she’d picked out as she tried each one on.

  “Did you even try any of your stuff on?” she asked while modeling
a particularly sexy blue halter top for him.

  “No, I know what my sizes are,” he said with a grin.

  “But the sizes are wildly different between brands!”

  “Not in my experience, most of the guy sizes seem to be pretty constant. Is it not that way for women’s clothes?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Ivy was still trying on outfits when she got a call from Stella. Ivy told her where they were, gave instructions on how to find the place, and hung up.

  “That was Stella, when I told her where we were she said she and Ben would come by right away, she wants to do some shopping too,” Ivy said.

  “Oh joy, I suppose that means we get to stay here even longer,” Lee said.

  “You know it, I’m sure you’re as excited as I am!” Ivy said, laughing and going back into the changing room with the latest clothes she wanted to try on.

  When Stella and Ben showed up, it became quickly apparent that Ben was as into shopping as the girls, if not more so, and Lee found himself trapped with three fashion fanatics. He had another full hour of waiting and mostly refraining from making jokes as the others shopped. He wished he’d brought a book.

  They finally finished and everybody paid for their own clothes except for Stella, who got Ben to pay for hers. Goods in hand, they exited the store, Lee feeling a wave of relief. The relief ended as soon as Ben spotted the Armani store, two short blocks away. “Holy shit Lee, we have to get suits there!”

  Lee sighed. “Dammit!” he said. “Fine, but only because that’s the greatest idea you’ve ever had. They’re on me, but you have to wear the suit whenever you’re driving the RV.”

  “Deal. We can wear them to the show tonight! The Book of Mormon.”

  “Oh yeah, I’d almost forgot about that,” Lee said. “I’m game, we can class it up.”

  It was another hour and a half to get the suits fitted and choose accessories for the two of them, and that was with Lee trying to hurry it along. Not to be outdone, the women picked up elegant dresses while they were waiting for them.