O’Hara had strolled by this bar before but never been in it. He walked downstairs to enter and found the womb-like darkness and wood paneling comforting. Settling in, O’Hara took a deep swig of his IPA, thankful his snappy presentation at work had locked up a new client and he could break away early. At 3:00 p.m. there were only two customers on stools at the long bar with a resplendent top sheen. Another guy in a gabardine suit and loosened tie fiddled with his phone at a table where you stand up and drink. A post at the far end of the bar partially obscured another man behind it who O’Hara had not noticed until now. The light was dimmer there. Setting the beer down, he peered at the man. Could it be? Something about the tilt of the man’s head, the slope of his shoulders—a body language fragment from the rubble of memories. O’Hara leaned forward, trying not to be too obvious while getting a better look.
After a second sip, he considered approaching the man to determine if it was indeed the person he thought it was. It could be embarrassing if he was wrong. If it was that person, O’Hara didn’t know if he’d get this opportunity again. It had been 15 years since he’d last seen him at their high school graduation. What were the odds of bumping into him in downtown Manhattan? He kept watching, trying to pick up additional clues. The beer was almost drained and it might have been the alcohol propelling him to accost the stranger. O’Hara made his move.
He walked the bar’s length and turned the corner past the post. “Danny, is that you?”
The man looked up from his beer as slowly and ponderously as a Galapagos tortoise lifting its head. “Who’s asking?”
“It’s me, O’Hara. Don’t you remember?”
The man squinted and looked at him so long O’Hara thought he was mapping the pores on his face. “I do.”
The lack of emotion and recognition in Danny’s voice set O’Hara back a second. It wasn’t as if they barely knew one another. They had been part of the same Pompton Lakes High School social swirl—Class of 2004. Not best friends, but Jersey bro’s was close enough. Stars of the drama club who took their bows and went out on a high note with a senior year performance as Will Parker (O’Hara) and Curly (Danny) in “Oklahoma.” Danny acted as if O’Hara was shaking him down for a buck.
“It’s good to see you after all these years.” O’Hara reached for a handshake.
Danny placed his hand in O’Hara’s and left it to O’Hara to shake it. What kind of handshake was that? No sense of joy, no enthusiasm for an old friend. It almost made O’Hara step back to re-evaluate the person in front of him. They had double-dated the McCormick twins, and smoked pot huddled in the nearby woods on winter nights so cold the trees made cracking sounds. Didn’t this mean anything to Danny?
“Where have you been? Did you go to college?” While the rest of O’Hara’s crowd went to Rutgers, BU, SUNY, and Penn State, Danny tossed Kerouac’s “On the Road,” a spare pair of jeans, a pack of Trojans, and a few t-shirts into a small backpack and headed to Europe. O’Hara had asked when he was coming back. “I’ll be in Europe for the summer and maybe head to Asia after that.” Postcards that summer of Gaudi’s Basilica in Barcelona and the Spanish Steps in Rome were the last traces of Danny. Someone thought they’d seen him in a London train station a few years back. O’Hara put a hand on Danny’s shoulder but Danny dropped his arm so the hand slid off. “Everyone’s been asking about you—for years.”
“Around, I guess.”
“You guess?” O’Hara couldn’t believe a friend could disappear without any contact for so long. There was no mistaking the lingering sting he and his old high school friends felt about Danny. Maybe they weren’t important anymore. Friends aren’t like a change of clothes. You don’t treat them that way. It didn’t help that Danny’s father had transferred to a job in Philly in late 2004. The family packed up, so O’Hara couldn’t stop at the house with the manicured front yard to ask Danny’s mom or dad about his whereabouts. A common refrain when O’Hara’s classmates got together was, “Has anyone heard from Danny? What’s going on with him?” As the years slipped by, those questions grew less frequent, like sediment slowly covering an object on the sea floor.
Danny shrugged and stared straight ahead as if O’Hara weren’t there. “That was a long time ago.”
“We missed you.” Danny had always brought the sunshine to every gray forecast. Here he was now, as if endless dark clouds were rolling in.
“It’s been a long journey. Pretty simple, really.”
“That was one hell of a pilgrimage. What did you find?” O’Hara’s arms were at his side, palms open, hoping for more than platitudes. “When does it end?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t think it ever ends,” Danny said. His twirled the glass’s coaster with his index finger in a tight circle on the bar.
O’Hara’s cell phone buzzed. It was Denise, his fiancée. They had dated in high school, split up, and reunited three years ago. He was meeting her for dinner later that evening. “You’re not going to believe who I’m having a beer with,” O’Hara said.
“Try me.”
“Danny.”
“Danny who?” Denise asked.
“Danny Etheridge.” How many Danny’s did she know? “Remember?”
“Of course, I remember. You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m standing right next to him.” O’Hara moved a step closer to Danny as if that would prove to Denise he was telling the truth. Better yet, he’d take a picture of him. Proof he’d encountered his high school equivalent of Bigfoot. “Hold on, I’m gonna do a selfie with Danny.” He placed an arm around Danny and held the phone out in front of them. Danny tried to put his hand up like a Mafia don wanting to stay out of the newspapers. “Geez, you almost ruined the shot,” O’Hara said. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? Let me get a better one.”
“That’s it.” Danny moved out of hugging range and slid his near-empty beer over.
“Tell him ‘Hi.’ Text me the pic, too. Anyway, I wanted to let you know I’m running a bit late—5:15 is more like it now,” Denise said.
“Okay. I’ll just drink more beer,” O’Hara joked. He knew she would have loved to meet Danny and prepared to get pumped for “Danny” information at dinner. He checked the pic; it was okay despite the poor light and uncooperative subject. “What was that all about? You don’t want your picture taken?”
“Not a fan of selfies or pics for that matter,” Danny volunteered.
Things weren’t adding up. The guy who loved being front and center on stage couldn’t bear to have his photo taken. O’Hara set his phone on the bar. “I hope you don’t mind me sharing the pic.”
“Do what you want.”
“What’s gotten into you?” O’Hara laid it straight out. “Did something happen?”
Danny glanced toward the TV bolted to the wall. A split screen of two talking heads on MSNBC jabbered. He let out a low sigh. “Cambodia. Jail. Four years. Okay?”
O’Hara stopped what he was going to say, blurting out, “Jesus.” The smell of beer and salted pretzels in the bar hung heavier than a moment before. Danny must have gotten into some pretty deep shit—maybe drugs—to go to jail.
“We’re not who we were, and never will be again,” Danny said. “It’s time to move on. I don’t want to say more about that.”
Danny seemed to be speaking in riddles from the time they started talking. “None of us are who we were, Danny. We all change, but most of us remember where we came from. Look at me” —O’Hara ran his fingers along his suit’s lapel—“I was gonna be a forester but I’m in advertising now.”
Danny was about to say something, and O’Hara sensed a momentary let down of a barrier, but the words never came.
“At least let me buy you another beer.” It felt as clumsy as it sounded. As if a beer for a guy jailed in Cambodia would make up for everything Danny must have gone through. What a stupid thing to say. With the offer made, O’Hara gestured to the bartender and pulled out his wallet, laying a pile of cash on the counter. “I don’t normally carry much cash, but I finally won the office football pool.” He plucked a twenty from the pile, said “keep the change,” and put the rest back in his wallet.
The bartender set two frosted mugs down. O’Hara grabbed one and held it up. Danny took the cue, and half-heartedly clinked glasses.
Tilting his head back, Danny gulped his beer and nibbled a few pretzels. “I gotta piss.” He rose from the stool to his full height and staggered into O’Hara before gaining his balance.
Ten minutes passed and Danny hadn’t returned. O’Hara fidgeted in the bar trying to parse Danny’s behavior and consumed all the pretzels in the bowl while he wondered if Danny was feeling sick. Finishing his beer, he told the bartender, “I’ll be back,” and headed to the men’s room.
O’Hara pushed open the bathroom door and looked around. “Danny, you in here?” Nobody was visible so he checked the stalls. Empty. Maybe Danny wandered to another seat in the bar so O’Hara turned around and went back into the bar. No sign of Danny. The guy in the gabardine suit gestured to him. This was getting odder by the moment.
“Is this yours?” the man said. He handed O’Hara a wallet.
O’Hara felt for his wallet in his pants pocket. He experienced that same sinking feeling in the gut when he’d left his wallet in a pair of pants at his apartment a few months ago. He opened the worn brown leather folded in half. His driver’s license and credit cards were all there. “How’d you get this?”
“A guy came up to me while I was texting.” The man sipped his beer. “Never seen him before but he said to give it to the guy who was sitting where you were.” The man slid his phone to the side. “He described you. Not sure what’s going on, but I’m hoping this is your wallet. Then he ducked out.”
O’Hara pulled out his wallet and checked the billfold; only a ten was left. “Damn. Danny robbed me.” His mind ticked back the past half-hour to when he set cash on the bar; an innocent enough act among friends with nobody else around. There was no reason to suspect Danny would steal the money. The drunken stagger—Danny must have picked his pocket at that moment. He peered into his open wallet as if a deeper comprehension of Danny’s act might be revealed and that conjured a stunned emptiness. What a shitty thing to do to a friend. He wanted to believe Danny was the same guy from high school and relive a time where everything was fresh, unjaded, and spontaneous. Instead, Danny dashed the memories to bits. O’Hara would have lent Danny the money if he needed it. Hell, he would have given it to him unconditionally. Looking up, O’Hara saw the man was as confused as he was.
“You knew the guy?”
“I thought I did.” O’Hara rushed up the stairs to the street, not really expecting to see Danny. The sun edged over the horizon, pouring corridors of fading light between the skyscrapers. People bustled down the street now the workday was ending, and there was no way he’d find Danny in the crowd. O’Hara faltered as if he’d just recovered from a blow and leaned on the wall of an apartment building trying to regain his senses. It felt like Danny had blotted out O’Hara’s life like a painted-over canvas. In his short lifetime, O’Hara had experienced many emotions, but nothing prepared him for being discarded. His thoughts shifted to Danny; whatever happened in Cambodia had also erased Danny—at least the one he remembered.
A doorman standing nearby asked, “You okay, buddy?”
At first O’Hara didn’t realize who the doorman was talking to. “Yeah, I guess so. Thanks.” O’Hara regained his bearings and wrapped his scarf tighter in the chill, thinking about the postcards from Barcelona and Rome. He preferred to remember Danny that way. Those memories would have to do. This time O’Hara knew Danny was gone for good.
*****
Photography Credit: Jason Rice
Ken Post’s fiction has previously appeared in Cirque, Red Fez, Underwood Press, Poor Yorick, Kansas City Voices, and forthcoming in Woven Tale Press. The short story in Red Fez, “Enola Gay,” was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize.
