My Friend Rooney

My friend Rooney is an Irishman. He drinks in a surprising methodical regimen. You can time him as the barkeep noted long ago. I see Garrett look at the clock, fetch another glass, fill it, then nod his head up, lockin’ eyes with Rooney. Rooney points his finger in appreciation. And then he tells a tale. He does like to tell tales, no Joyce, no Swift, but he keeps your faith with each new one. Once, when he was going through his divorce, the end of his first marriage, and the two of us were polluted at Garrett's. He told me this one of a well to do couple very much in love, but doomed. The wife had continuous fits of jealousy and also more than her share of vanity. She hired a chambermaid, a fair of face chambermaid. Her husband, who always appreciated beauty, would say behind his wife’s back that she hired the maid for her outward qualities. She wanted, per the husband, a pretty chambermaid as all things around her must be beautiful and, so she could yell at her husband for lookin’. The husband was a catch too, which also kept up her vanity and her jealousy. Anyways, after she hired the maid, the wife made sure her husband and maid were never left alone together. If he would go to the kitchen using some excuse, she would follow or call the maid to her. For six years she continued her vigilance until one day at the public bath house she realised that she had forgotten her silver wash basin and sent the maid to fetch it. The wife neglected that her husband was due back from work any minute and the maid ran home, recognizing the wife’s mistake. The two met at the front door. Without a word they went inside and embraced in a passion so quick they did not latch the door. The wife jumped at the bath house, knocking over her neighbour’s basin, when she became mindful of her folly and also sprinted home.

“S’who do you think ran faster?” Rooney said.

“What?” I asked leaning forward, noting the tale had ended and I now was to participate.

"S’who ran faster? The woman for love or the one for fear?”

I raised my eyebrow, entirely baffled.

“Does it matter?” I said swaying with confusion and liquor. “But don’t both run for love?”

After a pause, Rooney said, “Fuck you. You fuckin’ prick.” He slammed back his Tullamore and left, leaving me with the tab.

It was never a forethought in Rooney’s mind that there could be trouble in marriage. Well, he knew there would be bumps on the road, but never something that would all together total the car. Rooney knew of marital mishaps, also of marital bliss, but he could always be relied upon to think the best of his partner and think that nothin’ ever was wrong with him.

But of course he drank; and there’s a certain blindness to a man that refuses to think anything is off if you can run your watch on how much is left in his glass. I couldn’t tell if it was the type of romantic in Rooney that made him drink, or if the romantic was brought out by the slurred emotions in that bottle.

“That damn English girl.” he said while we were picking up our daughters, Janey and Maeve, from field hockey practice. “I saw her out.”

“She’s allowed to go out, mate.” I said.

“Miles, she was with the pup.” Rooney said. “The reason she’s not here to pick up Janey from practice is ‘cause she was out with her beau.”

Of course I had seen them out too, though not on this occasion. I heard all about the young apprentice Chelsea started up with, according to Rooney, while they were still together.

“Chelsea cleared this with you a long while back about you pickin’ up Janey. And if you don’t want to pick her up, I can do it an’ get her home. Our girls are friends and it’s not too long a drive.”

“Oh, hell, Miles. That’s not the point. It’s the principle of the thing.”

“That you get to spend time with Janey?”

“You’re a ripe C-”

“Hi Dad.” Janey half shouted from a bit away, walking up to us.

“Hey, Deary. How was practice?”

Seeing them two out jarred the sense of normalcy. On more than one occasion, the three of us, Rooney, Chelsea and me, had pissed the night away singin’ and laughin’ at the stars and the damn ploughs seeing the world turn like a cherry on the tree brightening in the predawn sunshine. Oh we were so fuckin’ young. Thinking we had time enough for everything, so we never set ourselves to anything certain and just let the days roll. So much disposable time, and that’s exactly what we did with it.

But what’s-his-nuts, Bill? William? I can never trust Rooney on this subject and he is my sole stream of information on the two. William and Chelsea are now a not un-normal sight in town. It’s hard to miss them driving around in that new Ashley Sportiva or 1172 something. Damn English sportscars, thinking they can out race the road on this island. We are all stuck on it and it would behove an English gentleman to not act like an ass as if he owned the whole road. I see them them flying by and that causes me to raise an eyebrow, set a grim face and shuffle off away on a different path.

“Who the hell gets divorced anyway?” my friend Rooney said to me.

“You do, y’dunce.”

“Get off it, Miles.” he said. “I thought you was supporting me in my time of need.”

“I’m looking for a friend, Rooney, to share like in-ter-ests. Real posh like. Fancy an Opera?”

“Ugh. Could never get with a girl named Brumhilde.”

I chuckled, picturing Rooney with a blonde ponytailed Viking. Rooney pointed in appreciation as another dram hit the space in front of him. I shifted on my bar stool.

“Miles? Back you up on a second?” Garret said.

“I still got half to go. I’m good for now. But thank you”

Garret nodded and walked down the bar a bit. He smiled and nodded at a pair of women asking if they wanted another drink.

“You ever think you’ll get back out there?” I asked Rooney.

“You mean find a new girl? See someone?”

“Yah. Like that?”

“I mean maybe. I wouldn’t know where to start though.”

“You’re in a bar, mate.”

“Ugh. This town knows all my business though. I couldn’t see anyone from here.”

He was right about the mirror of this town and how it reflected back what it saw. Always showing you something it saw long ago even if you had since passed it by, like the rearview that never left.

“You ever ask her why she wanted one?”

“This is what you want to talk about?!” Rooney said. “You want a postmortem on my marriage while there are two cute birds over there that Garret is chatting up and getting ‘em drinks?”

I paused. They were cute. But I’m not going to play wingman to relive the single days of yester-year while Rooney gets so pissed he needs a babysitter. I’ve been down that road.

“Nah, I’m good.” I said and reached to my back pocket.

“What the fuck, Miles? Whaddiyou doing?”

I laid my money on the bar after only having one drink. “I’m going home. You have a good night.”

“There was this one time.” He started, my first foot on the floor, my other still on the stool. “When two friends sat without saying a word. A nice comfortable silence that neither felt the need to fill with anxieties or ‘I told you so’ or hang ups about the other’s character. We can just look at the birds and appreciate the beauty of Nature.”

“No guilt trips neither, I bet?” I said.

Rooney shook his head.

“I’m not judging your character. I just want to go home. Tonight’s not the night for me.”

“You’ve fucking changed Miles.” He said. “Ten years ago we’d be all about talking and just having a good time. Now you just want to take apart what went wrong.”

“Rooney,” I said. “In another ten years I hope to have a different opinion from the one I have today. It means I did not waste ten years and I’ve grown some in that time. Mate, I love you. I’m going home.”

Then Saturday, I take Maeve to the store, buying shoes ‘cause this kid just shoots through clothes. I’m looking down at the hockey boots when Maeve all of a sudden says:

“Hello, Mrs. Rooney.”

So, of course I look up and see Chelsea looking directly at me.

“Maeve, I don’t think it’s Rooney anymore. Back to Kenyon, yah?” I say to Chelsea.

Chelsea smiles. “Yes. Good to see you Miles.”

“And you.” Though I don’t know for sure if that is true.

“New boots for Maeve?”

“Yep. Same for Janey?”

“A couple other things too.”

“Is Janey here?” my daughter asks.

“In the girls section.”

Maeve takes off at not quite a run, behind Chelsea, and turns off behind a rack of fall dresses.

“You’re a good friend, Miles.” she said. “To stand by him.”

“Yah.” I hesitate. “Yah maybe. He’s drinking more. Gettin’ too much for me.”

Chelsea chuckles. “Too much for me too.” she started looking at the boots I was minding. “Transitions are hard.” Her eyes went back to me.

“You seem to be doing ok. Riding around with that new boy?”

“-Oh.” she laughed. “Yeah that’s done. Fun to relive my youth for a bit but really was like dating a child. Really it was a lot like when Rooney and I started up. But I’ve been through that and want a different - a different kind of life; one with more direction.”

“Rooney’s not that?”

“His goal is to go to the bar. That’s where he wants to be. No drive to do anything else.”

I nodded. She was not wrong, I also had been seeing the pattern for what it was; the transition that never was, the car accident that everyone wanted to avoid. Usually those are the best ones: the ones that didn’t happen.

“Ok.” she said. “I’ll get back to Janey. Good to see you again Miles.”

“You too, Chelsea”

And with that I didn’t go back. Not to Garret’s bar. Not to the great tales that kept me entertained. Not to my friend Rooney. Of course, he shouted at me at my flat, left messages for me at my work, called me on the phone in an attempt to understand why I quit hanging out and the part of life we consoled each other through. I just said I was done, and I didn’t want to live like that anymore. He just couldn’t understand why for the longest time.

I don’t think he likes me much anymore. Though I don’t know and haven’t talked to him in years. He hasn’t been around town much since he sobered, not since he moved to Bristol. I heard he found a new lady and that Janey goes to visit them on occasion. Chelsea, seeing her randomly in town again years after our meeting in the store, said I did a kindness to him. How’d she put it? ‘I let him be alone so that being a drunk wasn’t fun anymore.’ He had no one to tell his stories to. That’s a brutal type of kind, but so is divorce and losing my friend.