He relaxed his arms and managed a modest grin.
“Drink up.”
“Forgive me, Archer. I’ve one last question.” Alvin clasped all ten of his fingers around the remaining pint. “Is it depressed you are then, too?” Alvin looked silly as drunken people do when trying to be inquisitive. One eyebrow cocked itself dramatically, like the arm of a pitcher.
Archer considered Alvin for a second. “It’s a queer depression I have. Queer for its suddenness. But I have an excuse for that, too—at least, I thought I did.” He rubbed his hands together, trying to organize the words in his head. “I’ve been blaming it on college graduation more than the Indians. I’ll be going home to the States in a few days, after final exams. I’ll be leaving Ireland and Susan, and I’ll have to start living in the real world, cook up a resume, find a job. Seems like explanation enough for feeling a little down.”
“With me already having a great drop taken, I’d be likely to agree to anything. But I can’t help feeling we’ve a relationship to each other, something I wouldn’t have expected…” Alvin’s train of thought was interrupted when he was distracted by the exotic woman passing on her way back to her table.
Archer wondered if he could stand long enough to make it into a cab. He guessed there was a better than average chance he would have a hangover from hell tomorrow. Training on his bicycle the next morning might be out of the question if he didn’t retire soon.
Too drunk to remember exactly what they’d been talking about, Alvin fell back into ranting about his favorite football team and how bad the keeper was. Hardly able to hold his head up, Archer managed to put a ten-pound note on the bar.
“Is that for the mouse’s tab or is it leaving you are?” asked Alvin.
“It’s late. I promise I won’t forget you since you’ve been a good friend to me tonight, but I need my sleep for tomorrow and another drink might kill me.” They both laughed.
“Well and if you must go, then get you gone. I would besiege you further, but far be it from me to keep a man from a passing mark,” said Alvin. “Now get you gone again. Just promise you’ll see me back at my favorite pub before you do be returning to the States.”
“I promise. Good night. Better tomorrows. You’ll find your love for her again you know. I’m sure of it.”
“Aye, you’re right there, friend. Good night to you.”
The next day didn’t start well for Alvin.
His mood was so horrible he’d gone so far as to declare himself “no longer Irish.” Nonetheless, he dutifully went to work, leaving every light in the house turned on as they’d been all night. He grabbed a bag of Mel-O-Cream Donuts and shakily filled a large silver flask with a funky fig brandy from Portugal before he left.
Though it was a beautiful day, the sunshine only served to make a disaffected Alvin look more out of place as he jerked awkwardly across Dublin’s poignant aesthetic. His protruding waistline, replete with blossoming stretch marks pulled across puffy white clouds of fat, took second fiddle to the look of pain on his face. All morning customers asked Alvin what was wrong, but he couldn’t speak about it.
It didn’t help matters that the many pints and whiskeys Alvin had consumed with his new American friend, Archer, were still winding their way through his pores. He hadn’t slept a wink, either, and in fact, he’d been too busy trying not to sleep to worry about being drowsy once morning came. During the long night, as he listened to his mind replay the conversation with Archer about their shared depression and dreams of murderous Indians, it became clear to Alvin that his nightmares were part of some sinister plot. He hoped the man holding the strings was just trying to sell him sleeping pills.
As Alvin drove his truck to the next delivery, images from his dreams rode with him: fierce Indians, noisy like nature, stepped from doors and vanities and slithered from under his bed. He’d known who they were immediately from having watched so many American movies; he still toasted John Wayne any time an American girl talked to him at the Boar’s Head. The Indians circled around his bed, horrifyingly real, their painted faces and smoky breath a shock to his senses. They pulled Alvin from his bed, his head ricocheting off the hard floor as they dragged him from his one-room flat. On the verge of slicing him apart with dull-looking blades, a smallish, pitch-black man shouted for the Indians to stop. The man, his skin a reptilian obsidian, took Alvin’s face in his impossibly large hands and squeezed until Alvin burst from his sleep, dry-mouthed, cold, and with a scream on his lips that left him unable to sleep for the rest of the night.
Exhausted, Alvin stopped at Peet’s for a second cup of scalding black coffee. “It’s like I’ve got déjà vu, and me seeing you twice in the one morning, you bloody old cod,” the clerk said, but Alvin only nodded sadly. Alvin kept delivering office supplies until the need to nap overtook him like a pack of young greyhounds. He’d barely guided his truck to his favorite shade tree – the one with the five-fingered leaves – before he was out, a split second devoted to a prayer that the Indians would leave him in peace to dream of Tatiana.
Naps weren’t uncommon for Alvin. In fact, he took one every day on the job. He said they focused him. And besides, Alvin’s naps could be counted on to last exactly 45 minutes, a short respite in the scheme of things. He would park around one ‘o clock in the afternoon, and minute by minute, his head would loll forward until his apnea-strained breathing would catch so hard he would jolt awake. Wiping his chin and gathering himself, Alvin would head back to Dublin’s streets to finish his deliveries.
Deep in sleep, Alvin was unaware that the brilliant white cab of his truck perfectly reflected the sweat-beaded forehead, black eyes, and cave-black skin of an unusual-looking man walking with an unusually fluid gait. The man, sharp featured, short, and precisely dressed, was the darkest man in the world. His skin was pure black, like some lost bit of space captured in human form. As the man passed the hand-polished truck, he smiled politely at its sleeping inhabitant, ironically, since he knew he was unseen.
Looking at his scratched watch, Alvin was shocked to see it was as late as 4:00 p.m.
Wiping his face, Alvin cranked the keys still hanging from the ignition. He felt the smooth surface of the picture of Tatiana he’d laminated and hole-punched on the key ring. Every time he looked at the picture, he wished it were bigger. He wished it were her skin he was feeling. He wished he knew where she was. How would he ever find a Korean girl, raised in Russia, whom he’d met only by chance on her journey through France?
The truck’s engine fired to life. Alvin’s foot rocking on the pedal gave it a throaty sound like a Harley Davidson, or so Alvin imagined. He wished he were anywhere else. Alvin stopped revving the engine, his eyes fixed on the quiet street reflected in the truck’s large rear-view mirror. Any other day he would have slipped the column’s gear shift into first and sprung onto the streets; now he just sat there. Picking up his cell phone, he pushed at the power button until the home screen popped up. No messages. Alvin let the phone fall from his fingers like a tear.
He looked into the side mirror and pulled it toward him until he could see his face. He tried to repair the distorted reflection with a smile or cough out a laugh. Nothing changed. The look of sorrow on his face seemed permanent, frustration etched deeply like a tribal tattoo.
Alvin was ready to break.
Losing Tatiana was bad, but manageable with the help of a little brew.
But losing his ability to sleep because he was repeatedly murdered by ferocious Indians from some faraway country? That was too much.
The black man strolled around the corner, sniffing at the air. He could not resist a casual backwards glance at the rumbling white truck and Alvin’s fluttering blue eyes.
“I have chosen as well as I could,” he thought. “He will do his job and be back with his kind before he misses a meal. And I will be just in time to clear another field of disbelievers so another ministry can grow.”
While his fingers absently fingered