Drying Out

by Simon Maslin

I watched the woman in the queue ahead of me put the bottle onto the checkout conveyor belt. It was gorgeous, obscene: a bulging belly of cheap vodka with a long glass teat stretching up into an erection crowned by a blood-red cap. A big nipple from which to suckle beautiful oblivion. It moved slowly towards the till as the conveyor trundled onward, my purchases crowding behind it. I had bought orange juice, bread, a couple of cheap microwaveable meals and some Norwegian cheese that had a comically unpronounceable name. I had been clean for two months now; off the booze and into the great blank illumination of non-stop sobriety.

The checkout guy was old, slow and seemingly incapable of doing anything at any decent speed. I felt my hands shake as I passed over my last twenty and thought about what the rest of the evening held. I didn't hold out much hope for it to be any better than the last; a few hours of mindless TV and then the sweet amnesia of sleep.

Out in the car park, the night wind was picking up and a light rain was sweeping into my eyes. The shoppers were sparse at this hour; a few rejects from the tail end of the rush hour, a couple of transient lost souls like me. My car was a ten-year-old Ford, invisible, unpretentious, calming. It was parked next to a big silver Merc, so close, in fact, that I'd had difficulty opening the door to get out. I was never much of a driver.

As I unlocked my car, this guy shouts at me, "Hey you! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I'm getting into my car, idiot," I say quietly, inaudibly.

He's bigger than me, just, in a rumpled suit that looks expensive. He's carrying some bags that he's putting into the back of the Merc, his car, which he's just unlocked.

"Did you do this?" he demands, moving round the car swiftly and gesturing vaguely in the direction of his passenger door. I can't see what he's talking about.

"What?" is all I can manage.

"You parked so damn close, your door clipped mine. You scratched my car!" It's dark. I can't see anything wrong with his door. I may have clipped it when I parked up and got out, I don't remember. I don't care.

"Did you see me scratch your damn car?"

"No, but it wasn't scratched before you parked so close!"

"Well if you didn't see me do it then why do you think it was me? Why are you accusing me? Get lost, will ya?" I open the door to my car and move to get in. But he's mad now.

"Hey, no way! You can't get away with that! That's an eighty grand car! You're gonna pay for that damage...."

With that he moves to grab my coat, to pull me back, so he can swing at me. He's well fed, bulkier than me; I've frankly spent most of the last five years eating sporadically and living at the bottom of a bottle, so I'm no heavyweight. But I've spent a lot of those years in the cheapest, worst pubs in the city and I'm used to fighting, an activity I'm damn sure he doesn't attempt too regularly. As he grabs my collar, I turn, let go of my half-open car door and stick my left fist into his face. Hard.

"Get the hell off me!" I roar at him as he falls backward, shocked by my sudden rush of aggression.

He slumps back against his car, hands held to his face, moaning. I think I busted his nose. Well, he had it coming. Just then, I notice that one of his shopping bags in the back of his car has a whisky bottle poking out of it. It's a single malt, a good one, and it's leering at me seductively. I'm feeling a little tense now. A little too tense for another cold evening alone with the damn TV.

So before I drive off and leave him to his troubles, I make a point to open the back door of his car and take that bottle with me.