Free The Memory Killer by J. A. Kerley Page B

door, glances down the bar, and yells, ‘I’ll have the buffet!’”
    Moans and groans. Fenton said, “I’m gone. Some of us have to work in the morning.” Timmons said the same and he and Holcomb filed from the booth to back pats and air kisses until it was just Billy and Patrick standing outside the booth. Billy put his arm around Patrick’s shoulder and pulled him close. His breath was dense with tequila from a half-dozen margaritas.
    “So there’s this guy comes out of a bar after drinking beer for three hours …”
    “I heard it, Billy.”
    “Shush! Not tonight you haven’t. The drunk staggers to an intersection, unzips his fly and yanks out his wand. Just then a cop runs up and says, ‘Hold on, mister, you can’t piss here.’”
    Patrick crossed his arms and waited. Billy affected a drunken voice and pretended to aim a penis at the far horizon. “‘I ain’t gonna pissh here, occifer,’ the drunk says. ‘I’m gonna pissh way … over … there.’”
    “It was funny the first three times,” Patrick yawned. “Four, maybe.”
    “Gawd, Patrick,” Prestwick moaned. “Lighten up while I go way … over … there and take a piss.”
    Prestwick started toward the bathroom, stopped when Patrick grabbed his arm and pointed at Prestwick’s half-filled glass, sitting on the edge of the table.
    “You left your drink, Billy. What have I been telling everyone?”
    Prestwick affected ignorance. “Don’t lay your doodle on bars?”
    “I’m not laughing.”
    “Uh, lemme see … Don’t leave drinkies unattended?”
    “I mean it, Billy. Never let your glass out of your sight.”
    Prestwick picked up the remainder of his drink, drained it away in a single chug, set it back on the table upside-down. He shot Patrick a wink, mouthed, “Thanks, mummy,” and ambled toward the bathroom tapping at his phone to check the barrage of tweets and Instagrams and Facebook updates. He walked into a barstool, corrected, re-aimed for the dark hall holding the bathrooms.
    Patrick sighed, used to Billy’s hip-swinging sashays down a sidewalk, the vocal trills for emphasis, the bottomless supply of jokes. Patrick knew that somewhere in the twelve years since they’d met in high school, he had become an adult. He wondered if Billy ever would.
    At times Billy showed flashes of adulthood, of introspection, moments in which he realized that his youth and looks were a finite commodity, and though they carried him now, the passage was growing briefer. But such moments were always transient, the span of a meteor across the night sky, as minutes later Billy was ordering another round, or leaving to “comfort” an older man who would repay Billy with one or another generosity, or sometimes just a fistful of cash.
    “Come on, buddy,” Patrick whispered to Billy’s retreating back. “Grow up.”
     
    Prestwick entered the bathroom and relieved himself from two feet away, allowing him to splash his initials on the rear of the urinal. He zipped up and turned to the mirror to check the magic.
    A face appeared over his shoulder.
    “Hello, Billy,” the face said.
    Billy spun. “Uh, do I know you, dear?”
    “It’s been a long time. You are Billy Prestwick, right?”
    “Now you don’t know?” Billy said.
    The face didn’t reply. It just stared, as if amused.
    “Yes,” Billy said. What did this thing
want
? “I’m me.”
    “And the man you’re sitting across from …” the face continued, like filling in a space on a crossword. “The fellow with the brown hair. That’s uh … lemme see if I can remember …”
    Billy hated memory games. “Patrick, Patrick White. You know him, too?”
    “Just briefly.”
    Billy frowned. “When did we meet?”
    “You really don’t remember me?”
    “Of course I do, dear, I’m just so poor at names.” Billy also hated
guess-where-we-met
games. He reached out to touch the man’s shoulder but something made him stop short of contact. “Listen, dearie, great to see you again