The last time I saw John Bruce Shoemaker, he came to my house at 10 p.m. and asked me to go play pool at Charlie’s. the writer,
I had been in the yard, watching the summer sky turn dark. My two children were sleeping, and my wife, standing next to me, said, “It’s okay. Go and have fun.”
I got into JB’s pickup, and we drove downtown. JB said, “I just can’t sleep anymore. I just fidget.”
He told me the bars, especially Charlie’s, calmed him down.
He also said that I was good to be with. “I can trust you, Man. Everyone else is full of shit.”
“Everyone else is broke. I have a job,” I said.
JB said, “You’re my straight man. You keep me honest.”
In the months since meeting him, JB had tried to steal my credit cards and made passes at my wife. But JB was smart and fun, and around him, I did not feel lonely.
JB made some money writing stories for an L.A. tabloid, where he was a part-time writer, and had published a few books, and he shared outrageous ideas. I didn’t care if I spent money on him. Being with JB was like being 13 and going to an amusement park on a full moon night.
Some of us have limited times when we make close friends, and for me, those times were in my teens and early 20s. When I met JB, it had been years of too many people who were safe, predictable, and had no idea of who I once had been.
We’re running the table in Charlie’s, and no one is getting it from us. It’s midnight, and a couple puts down their money. The woman is early 20s and her skin is perfect, and JB says, “Wait till she’s bending over.”
Her boyfriend is strong-large. Like a football-playing construction worker with a hangover. He sneers and keeps ruining his shots. He can’t play pool at all.
The woman’s hair hangs down on the table when she makes her shots. JB is right. When she bends over the pool table, it hurts to look at her. “I’m going to get her,” JB says.
I ask, “What about Mr. Muscle?” And JB laughs.
We win the game. The boyfriend puts more money on the table, and we start a second game. I get another pitcher of beer, and when I come back, I don’t see the boyfriend, and JB is talking to the woman.
“Why are you sad?” JB asks her. “Your hands clench into fists when he talks to you. Why?”
As the boyfriend comes out of the bathroom, JB touches the woman on her elbow and whispers, “Don’t answer. Just smile some for me.”
We keep playing, and the boyfriend drinks most of the pitcher of beer, so I buy more.
When the boyfriend goes into the bathroom again, I hear the woman say to JB, “He never fucks when he gets drunk.”
JB answers, “I’d fuck you. I’ll fuck you right now. He will never know.”
She asks, “Where?”
JB says, “In the alley. Let’s hurry.”
Then, they both go out the back door.
I wait for the boyfriend to come out before I make my shot. I get two in but miss my third shot. Then the boyfriend shoots. He misses.
He asks, “Where’s your partner?”
I answer, “In the crapper, I guess.”
Right then, the woman comes back to the table. Boyfriend hasn’t noticed which direction she came from, and he doesn’t notice when JB walks in from the alley door.
“Man,” JB whispers, “That was nuts. We went down those stairs, and we stood up. This guy is an idiot who drinks too much.”
I looked at the woman, and she seemed relaxed, although it could have just been the time or the beer she had been drinking.
We won our second game, and someone else put money on the table, so the woman and her boyfriend merged into the crowd.
Later, walking out of the bar, I asked JB how he could have sex with someone he didn’t know, start to finish, in about four minutes.
“My years as a desperate virgin,” he answered, and continued, “She kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you,’ but you know what?”
“What?” I asked.
“She wanted to leave with me when we were finished, not go back in. I think she meant it. She probably would have moved in with me.”
We were walking down Higgins Avenue at one in the morning, and I was thinking about my wife and my children, and how peaceful they always looked when they were sleeping.
“So why didn’t you do it? You could have taken her home. Might have been nice lying down in a bed.”
“I don’t know,” JB answered. “She would have always expected me to live up to how we met. And that boyfriend! He would have made a scene. I would have ended up shooting him or something. I wonder what her name is.”
We went into another bar, and I bought JB and myself shots. Then we talked about JB’s plans of going to Prague and opening a nightclub there.
“Lots of abandoned buildings now. You could come, too. Think of the money we will make,” he said.
When JB dropped me off, he said, “Few years from now, I’ll probably be dead, but you will be doing fine. I envy you…” and he gestured to my house, the one with a garden, and children’s toys in happy disarray by the front door, “…your life…”
JB went to Prague and opened a nightclub, kept skirting the edge of violence, wrote me a few letters, and lived a few more years.
And me? I’m fine.
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Steve S. Saroff was a runaway and high school dropout. In his 20s, he supported himself through his fiction published in national magazines, including “Redbook.” He is the author of “Paper Targets” (Flooding Island, 2022), and host of the podcast “Montana Voice.” Recent stories of his have appeared in “Monkeybicycle”, “Jewish Fiction Journal,” “Examined Life Journal,” “Bull Lit,” and more. He is an inventor and has founded and sold several companies. Visit saroff.com, Instagram @stevesaroffwords.
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Rejection Letters 