John's Lament

He had to walk; he'd traded in his 1992 pickup truck for a hundred dollars' worth of meth. Hot, sweaty, tired, head pounding from withdrawal, he'd reached the Couvillion home.

Pat gleefully informed John that Debbi no longer lived there. She had remarried, married a real man, with a real job, real ambition in life. And, no, he wouldn't tell John who Debbi married, or where they lived.

John took the fifty dollars and scored some low-grade meth. He knew it was low-grade because he'd lapsed into a four day coma after shooting it up. Thus began another seven day stint at a Detox Unit.

"Burke, pick it up, let's go," Mark hissed as the waiters bustled about, serving the happy guests at the wedding reception.

John wanted to dash out the door. He wanted to guzzle the champagne in the glasses he held on the tray. He wanted to do some meth.

"God help me. Keep me from using," John muttered under his breath and began serving the guests.

"What the fuck, Burke?" Mark asked when they stepped back into the kitchen to replenish their trays.

"My ex-wife, and my kids. Didn't know it was them," John admitted.

"Sucks," Mark commiserated. "Had that happen to me too."

"What'd you do?" John asked as they prepared to enter the dining room again.

"Kept my mouth shut, smiled," Mark said. "Little bitch wanted pretend he was straight? Marry some fat ass cunt? Not my problem."

On one of John's tours of the area, Debbi waved John over. She smiled happily as she helped herself to a glass of the champagne. John nodded his head politely.

Debbi's hair was still carrot orange, but it no longer hung limply. She'd had it cut to just below her shoulders and there was body, life to it.

Her skin was still heavily freckled, but she'd learned the use of cosmetics. Either that, or she'd had it done for the wedding.

Her brown eyes sparkled and shone and her smile was exuberant.

The few extra pounds she'd managed to put onto her small frame looked good. The dress she wore emphasized her figure very well.

If Debbi recognized John, she didn't let on. She just sipped her champagne and looked beyond the waiter to the other guests.

John offered the tray to the young woman next to Debbi. John doubted if Patricia would have recognized him; she'd been one and a half when he'd seen her last.

The man to Debbi's left took a glass and John resisted the urge to punch Tony Childress in his fat, smug face. For a brief moment, John wondered if it had been Tony, Anthony Paul Childress that had told Debbi of his brief one-night stand with Marcie Brennan.

But as Bear, John's N.A. sponsor had pointed out in John's Fifth Step, if John hadn't fucked Marcie, Debbi wouldn't have had that particular reason to divorce him. Tony Childress may, or may not have told Debbi, but Tony did not put John's dick into Marcie's extremely hairy pussy.

And in a moment of clarity, John remembered, it had not been a one night fling. It had been an entire weekend fling. Debbi would have had to have been an idiot not to figure something was going on. Coming home, drunk, stoned, high as a kite, reeking of pussy, Debbi, and Pat had known exactly where John had been. They might not have known whom he was with, but they knew what he had been doing.

Bowing again to the happy celebrants, John continued to walk around, until the last glass of champagne was taken. Then he dashed again to the kitchen.

When the bandleader announced the dance of the bride and her father, John felt the sting of tears. He paused in his serving and watched for a brief moment as Tony waddled around, clumsily dancing with a smiling, beautiful Denise.

Just like her mother, Denise had carrot orange hair and pale skin. She'd learned the value of sun screen, though. There were only a few freckles, a few dots across her small pointed nose.

She wasn't as bone-thin as Debbi had been at, at, John did the math in his head and deduced Denise would be around twenty one years old by now.

He continued serving, blinking back his tears. Then Mark caught John's eye and nodded toward the kitchen. John nodded and walked toward the kitchen.

"Getting ready serve the meal," Mark ordered as the band announced their break.

Mark assigned tables and John breathed a sigh of relief that Wade had been given the bride and groom's table.

"Keep it moving, keep it moving, there's two hundred and nine of them and they all need to be fed," Mark called out. "The last plate needs to go down before the first plate comes up."

John did move, did hustle to place beverages, then salads, then main entrees

"I don't like this," a child whined to John.

"Then put it in your sister's pocket," he advised and the child's mother laughed.

"I'm his mother, and he better not," she stated, smiling.

"Honest mistake," John smiled as he continued down the line.

And then there was the cutting of the cake, the tossing of the bouquet, the throwing of the garter belt, and then the stragglers as the cleanup began.

"Gentlemen, pleasure to work with you tonight," Mark called out as he divided the tips among the staff.

"John, I'll be sure ask for you again, hear?" Mark assured John as he pressed fifty dollars into John's hand.

"Really?" John asked, surprised.

"Absolutely. Got a hell of a shock? And kept moving?" Mark complimented, patting John's shoulder. "Dude. That's a pro, hear? That's a pro."

John nearly slipped as he stepped out onto the now wet floor of the main dining area. There was nothing that showed that there had been a wedding here just thirty minutes earlier. John looked around, then put his head down and walked to the employee locker room.

There was nothing to show that there had been a wedding twenty two years ago. Any mementos John may have kept had long ago been lost, misplaced, or if it had any value, had been pawned for drugs.

John dressed in his usual garb of bargain brand blue jeans and Miami Dolphins tee shirt. He did not know why, but he had always liked the Miami Dolphins.

In his right front pocket, John felt the heavy medallion. Two years. Two years was a long time for him to be clean and sober. It was the longest he'd ever been clean and sober since his first joint, again he struggled to do the math in his head.

"Burned too many brain cells," he chuckled mirthlessly. "Twenty seven. Twenty seven years since that first joint."

"Yellow?" Bear answered.

"Hey, I uh, man, God, huh? Does God have a sense of humor or what?" John laughed drily into his cell phone.

"Yeah, God gave me a ten inch tongue and a two inch dick and I don't like eating pussy," Bear agreed. "Just ask Kirsten."

"Wedding tonight? My daughter's wedding," John said.

"So, you make your amends?" Bear asked.

"I uh, man, it just wasn't the time," John protested.

"No, probably not," Bear agreed. "But how'd it go?"

"Went, Jesus, Bear, I want use so fucking bad right now," John started sobbing.

"Uh huh, and that's going solve what?" Bear asked. "That going make it not your daughter's wedding? That going make last twenty years not happen?"

"No, but it'd make this fucking hole in my heart go away," John sobbed.

"No it wouldn't," Bear said. "No it wouldn't. And it'd make an even bigger fucking hole after."

They talked for another ten minutes. John finally wiped his eyes and started his car.

It was actually his mother's car. Patty's eyesight was so bad she couldn't drive any longer, and when she was finally convinced that John was no longer drinking or using drugs, reluctantly allowed him to drive her car.

John drove to the small home and parked the car. Wearily, he went into the house.

"Forty fucking years old and still living at home with Mommy," he muttered as he put his keys on the small hall table.

"Yeah, well, beats shit out of the I ten overpass," he thought and peeked into the living room.

His mother had fallen asleep in front of the television set again and it was blaring CSI at an intolerable volume. Her snoring let John know she'd been asleep a while.

He found the remote control and reduced the volume. Then he gently kissed her on the top of her head and went to his room.

It was the same room he and Debbi and Denise had shared the first ten and a half months of their marriage. The furniture was even the same. Same bed, same chest of drawers, same nightstand, same lamp.

"Needs a three way bulb," John said to himself.

He could not remember that lamp ever having a 3-way bulb in it after the original bulb had blown. After that, it had always been standard light bulbs. Two clicks to turn it on, then two clicks to turn it back off.

He slid his shoes into the closet, then sent bear a text message, letting his sponsor know he was home; he had not gone to Waters Housing Project looking to score some meth.

He next removed his aching dentures. Years of neglect had ravaged his mouth and the ill-fitting dentures were the result of the University of Louisiana at DeGarde's School of Dentistry's training program. But as Bear routinely pointed out, 'Beats the shit out of nothing.'

Stretching out on the bed, John stared at the blackness. He started to slip into the morose thoughts of what drugs and alcohol had taken from him. A loving wife, two loving daughters. Soccer, ballet, birthday parties, Christmases, Easters, a wedding...

"Bullshit. Drugs and alcohol didn't take shit from you," he said aloud, echoing Bear's words. "You willingly gave it away."

THE END

*****

**Author's Note: I write these stories for my pleasure; I post them here for your enjoyment. I thank you sincerely for reading my stories.

I especially thank those that take the time to leave comments, good and bad, and those that rate my stories. I do read all comments; I appreciate some, I laugh at some, and I scratch my head at some. There's one gentleman from Las Vegas that leaves numerous obscure comments; rarely can I tell if he likes my stories or not. But, he does read them.

Bear is a character from 'Waiting, Just Waiting' in the Loving Wives category.

And, again, I posted this story in 'Loving Wives' because there is not a 'Loving Husbands' category.

Have a swell day. As my old pappy used to say, "Son, stay clear of weddings because one of them is liable to be your own."

(Plagiarized from an episode of 'Maverick' television show.)