Four

I woke up the next morning and again thought I was in hell. Only this time it wasn’t because of the flaming walls, but that certainly didn’t help matters any.

Oh, no. This hell was due to the excruciating pain in my head. Express trains were rocketing through my head. It was probably the same feeling as if my head had been used as a hockey puck, a baseball, and a tennis ball in the course of a few hours. Every molecule of saliva had fled from my mouth, and my eyes were clearly being salted and whisked about in a giant frying pan.

I raised myself up, trying to get the energy to go downstairs. Once found, I dragged myself to the landing of the stairs, where I had a little bit of a sit-down. Just for a minute. To regain my strength.

Naturally, as if on cue, Miro appeared at the bottom of the stairs, looking sharp and collected and together in a suit. Whereas I was still in my boxers and strangely, Armani shirt, with three buttons buttoned. I had a moment of terror where I wondered if I had gotten it on with someone—anyone—even myself—last night.

Sufficiently secure that I had not, I tried to speak.

“Good morning,” I said. Or tried to say. Seeing as how there was absolutely zero spit in my mouth, it came out something roughly resembling ‘goohoo moohoonin’ which sounds like Swahili.

“Hung over?” he asked sympathetically. If possible, I would have narrowed my eyes at him, but I didn’t want to further the pain. “Come on, I’ll get you some aspirin.”

The sensation of him wanting to help me was so surreal it was all I could do to hoist myself up. Wavering, I latched onto his arm, then transferred my grip to his waist once I saw him wince in pain.

“I banged my arm in the shower this morning. It bruised,” he lied. All at once I wanted to scream ‘I saw you, I saw you burning yourself with that match, why? Why won’t you stop?’ but of course, couldn’t. He ushered me down the stairs, with me clinging to his solid waist the entire way.

Once seated at his kitchen table, two aspirins and a glass of water appeared in front of me, which I swallowed gratefully, then chugged the rest of the glass. Feeling marginally better, I left the kitchen and sat again down on the landing, unsure if I could make it the rest of the way up the stairs.

The sulfuric smell of a match drifted into my senses and suddenly I regained strength and bolted up the stairs, willing myself not to vomit, because suddenly in my mind’s eye I could see the burning match and his arm, scorching under the heat. I wondered if he did it in patterns. I wondered, stupidly, if it hurt. I wondered why.

Hours later, I awoke, feeling unbelievably better. Well enough to shower and get dressed and shave and not look like a broken-down hobo. I wondered exactly what was in those painkillers and if they were legal in the US.

I tossed the thought of possibly illegal drugs out of my brain and shuffled downstairs to Miro, who was sitting at the kitchen table with an open laptop. Did he ever go anywhere else besides that stupid kitchen table?

He clicked the laptop shut and looked up at me. “Sleep well?” he asked. “I should have told you about the beer. It’s liquor content is 13%.”

“JESUS!” I screeched. A twinge of head pain shot back into my skull. “Thanks a lot for not telling me.” He looked ashamed. “You, Unibrow Man, are paying for my liver transplant one day.” I stabbed a finger at him.

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, I’m very sorry.” He bobbed his head a little bit, crazily, then returned his gaze to me. “I’ll warn you next time.”

“Fine, fucking fine, whatever. You have more so-called plans for this evening?” I asked.

“Um, getting smashed?” he offered. “I couldn’t last night, I was driving. So I thought I’d stay here and guzzle alcohol until my eyes roll back in my head. Good?” I looked up at him and really couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not.

“Can I help?” I asked stupidly. Yeah, I’d just semi-recovered from a hangover so bad it was like hell on earth, and I wanted more?

“Sure.” He laughed. “You’re an idiot.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I have nothing to wear, can I use your washing machine?” I abruptly changed the subject. I didn’t really want to think about accusations any more than I had to.

“Sure…” he looked quizzical. “Down the basement stairs and it’s the first room on your left.” I nodded and fetched my clothes and went downstairs to feed the washer.

I stayed with my clothes for a long time, because I somehow didn’t want to look Miro in the eye.

At last the clothes were finished and I amused myself by ironing them within an inch of their lives, remembering everything my mother had taught me. When I was eighteen and coming over to Canada, she’d been so obsessed with me taking care of myself. Within two weeks, I could wash my own clothes and iron and clean a house and cook some reasonably healthy, if not always recognizable dishes. I can make a mean tomato soup, for instance. Provided it originates in a can, preferably with a Campbell’s label on it.

I wandered back upstairs, shocked to find it was already four.

“I spent four fucking hours doing laundry?” I gasped. I’d wasted half the day in his basement with a box of soap and a can of spray-starch for company.

“You spent four fucking hours doing laundry. I thought I was going to have to go down there and pull you out of the washer.” I blushed, even though I had not fallen into the washing machine. Good thing, too.

“Are you ready for a night of excessive drunkenness?” he teased. I kind of did a not-a-shake-but-not-a-nod with my head. A bobblehead-like motion.

“Um, I think? Are you going to just drink as much as you can as quickly as you can? In your house?” I fired off questions at him, stupid questions at that.

“Yes.” He crossed to a cabinet and opened it. “Well actually, I bet I can make a better drink than you.”

“I bet you can’t,” I said viciously, before remembering that it wasn’t, in fact, a hockey game, but a drink-making contest.

“Yeah, I can, you goof. Watch.” I watched carefully as he measured two ounces of whiskey and a little bit of vermouth into a glass, then splashed in something called bitters. “Drink,” he commanded.

I drank.

“Damn! This is so fucking good,” I exclaimed. “What is it?”

“Manhattan. Now you,” he gestured.

“Now me what?”

“Now you, make one of your own. And give me that back.” He took the glass from my hand and watched as I lifted the bottle of whiskey, set it down, lifted the glass, set it down, lifted the ice, set it down, and then looked at him.

“Nuh-uh. Not happening.”

“What do you mean, not happening? Mix your own freaking drink, already.” When I shook my head he rolled his eyes. “Fine. Here. Take this.” He shoved the glass across the table. “Let me show you how to make something a little less complicated.”

“OK!” I agreed enthusiastically. Easier was probably the way to go.

Responsible Marian? Yes. Bartender Marian? No, not at all.

It must have been around nine o’clock that I realized something. High amounts of alcohol and blenders do not mix. In other words, if you and your friend have already had a B-52, a Long Island Iced Tea, two margaritas, a triple Manhattan, and a grasshopper between you, don’t go the extra mile for the daiquiri. A) you don’t need any more alcohol and b) you don’t need your fingers cut off by a hyper blender.

So anyway, after Miro and I discovered that little factoid, we reclined on his couches, finishing our excessive amounts of liquor, and began to talk. Seriously. As serious as you can get while blindly, blindly drunk.

“So see once, I dated, this really hot chick, and she was really, you know, hot. Like, hot. Like, really. See, and then I dated this other hot chick, and I was like yeah, and she was like hey, and I was like what, and she was like hey, and then finally I broke up with her,” I babbled. See how eloquent I am when at that point in drunkenness?

We had both passed Drunk Stage One, which is having one drink and getting a little tipsy. We had blown through Two and Three, which were respectively the insane giggling stage and the I-think-I-have-a-better-voice-than-Pavarotti stage. Stages Four and Five (“philosophy” and more crazy giggling) were a distant memory.

Yes, we were firmly ensconced in Stage Six, which is the rehashing-past-relationships stage. Thankfully, we were at the same stage of drunkenness, which made it easier.

“Hey, aren’t you gay, though?” Miro asked. He was concentrating on something floating in his glass.

“Yeah well this was before. So anyway.” Those were the last words I got out before his mouth was on mine, and yet I continued trying to talk.

“Mrrphh mrrrtttth mppkkllss, mssggyy?” I mumbled. He leapt off my mouth.

“Stop. Talking. Now,” and then he was back on. His mouth was like sweet champagne, and that’s one thing I knew we hadn’t been drinking. I felt that if I tried for one more second I could identify the maker and year, but then his mouth moved off of mine and it was on my neck, breathing on it, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and fall in shivers.

Suddenly his lips and his hands were all over me, tracing through my hair and my shoulders and my chest. It felt like maybe he was an octopus and had eight arms, but then I remembered just how drunk I was.

Taking off my shirt presented itself as a remarkably good idea at the time, and I only smashed Miro’s face once. I recalled faintly that it was a button-down but it was already half off by that point.

His hands were all over me, glorious and hard and fast. That and his mouth, nipping and licking and biting until I thought I would die. I couldn’t think of much else to do with my hands but run them through his hair and around his face and over his shoulders, trying not to pass out.

There was one crystal-clear moment where I reached for his shirt buttons and he moved my hands away. I remember the fleeting look of terror in his eyes and I sensed something was not quite right.

But I stayed not long with that thought, because the next thing in my head was the fact that I had never messed around with a guy beyond heavy making-out sessions before, and I hadn’t told him. I blew the fact off. At the moment I wasn’t overly concerned with it.

And yet before I could say anything or even really do anything, he lifted himself off of me and dragged me across the room, up the stairs, and into his room before I could gather the coordination to open my mouth and make sound come out at the same time. He disappeared for a minute and I took my shoes off, which had suddenly become not only vitally important but also strangely difficult.

Miro appeared and started laughing, but the next thing was his mouth again on mine, and roaming hands sliding down the small of my back and across my ass, leaving a trail that felt white-hot.

His mouth was on my neck, whispering and sighing and breathing as he worked slick fingers into me, and my mind suddenly flooded with thoughts—thoughts of him and I, soft lips and hard hands and parts of him that were inside parts of me, sensations I had never known existed in the world—all of that punctuated by him sliding rhythmically into me as we held each other and spoke in Slovak and made each other scream.