Free Blasted by Kate Story

saw me. “Oh, come on in,” he said, and a couple of old regulars at the bar raised a cheer. The night passed riotously, the bar gradually filling up with people I hadn’t seen in months.
    People bought me drinks. I bought shooters for everyone. I started drinking tequila. I got up on the bar and danced. Getting banned had probably been the best thing that had ever happened to me – it dried me out a little. Now, I had a powerful thirst to tend to.
    The next few days passed in a murky haze. I was on a bender, my own version of the Foreign Legion one joins to forget. What I really wanted was to get laid. You’d think that in a city the size of Toronto a relatively attractive, horny and drunk woman could find someone to bed. You’d think so.
    But I awoke under the sickening, lightening sky alone, dawn after dawn. Sometimes I’d come to on Blue’s couch, sometimes in the guest room at Tad and Judith’s house, sometimes in my own bed with a vague impression of some Good Samaritan pouring me into a cab. “I was really getting along with that guy,” I complained to Judith one morning, a cold cloth over my forehead, wincing. “Why’d you interrupt like that? What a thing to do…”
    â€œRuby,” she said, filing her impressive nails, “if ever I needed an advertisement to keep me on the straight and narrow, you, girl, would be it.” She spoke severely, deliberately intensifying her Jamaican accent.
    â€œBesides,” Tad put in from the corner where he was tuning a mandolin, “that guy was a real dog. You should thank us.” The mandolin twanged. I covered my ears.
    â€œSo you’re saving me from myself?”
    â€œYes, dear.” Judith patted the top of my head.
    The worst was knowing that if Clyde called me, I’d take the bait. I would. So I turned my battered phone OFF. I might keep myself drunk for days on end, I might be stupid enough to do that, but I was goddamned if I was going to leap up in fear and tremble every time my cell rang.
    Of course there was the job thing. As in, I wasn’t showing up, and they couldn’t get hold of me because I was in hiding from my phone. One sunny afternoon, on a patio drinking beer with Blue, I started laughing, snorting into my pint.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?”
    â€œGuess I’ve quit that job,” I said, and snorted again.
    The afternoon wore on, and Blue and I got tiddled together, and in the late evening sun I started feeling quite mellow, even about Jim. “I can sympathize with him, from afar,” I said.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe last time he saw me, I was walking out of his place, his uniform on my back, in the middle of lunch rush. Poor guy.” I swallowed more beer. “I wasn’t even a good waitress.”
    â€œI loved your style, though. You had great style.” One could always count on Blue for support.
    I staggered home alone that night, refusing Blue’s offer of a crash pad (“I’m onto you and your evil plan, don’t think I’m not…”). On my fifth go at the suddenly elusive keyhole of my apartment door, the vacuum seal swished and Earl popped out. I propped myself against my recalcitrant door. “Hi.” I hiccoughed.
    â€œHome late again. Drunk, I see.”
    â€œShut up,” I slurred, and turned to have another go at my door. I turned too swiftly, however, and fell with a surprised squawk against the wall, sliding to the floor. I looked up at Earl. “I fell,” I observed.
    â€œYou should move in with Izzie.”
    â€œShaddap.”
    â€œIt’s three in the morning – ”
    My arm shot out, the keys dangling from my fingers. “Open my door, there’s a sweetheart.”
    He took the keys and fiddled with my lock. I clambered to my feet, continuing conversationally, “I’ve decided I’ll go back.”
    â€œBack where? Newfie-land?”
    â€œI’m