The Constant Swallow of Time

Haggis finally realized he was engaging in head-injury behavior and returned the platypus Beanie Baby to the bar before it got damaged. It was a squishy purple thing and Ray the bartender was overprotective about it. Imagine, a 47-year-old man fretting over a silly plush-thing manufactured for children by children. According to Haggis, Ray’s obsession with the purple platypus bordered on the pathological. Haggis often expressed concern for the way Ray seemed to fetishize it. It was evidence of a deeper, more sordid plushie paraphilia. 

But that was according to Haggis, so it didn’t really mean much. Haggis perceived the world through a bottomless glass and a shaken brain. 

“I was just fooling around, Ray,” Haggis said in a plaintive tone. It was his oft-repeated refrain whenever he was met with disapproval for something stupid he said or did. 

Like just now, with the platypus.

Ray (the bartender) said, “That’s what you always say. No matter what it is. Destructive or stupid or meanspirited. You’re always just `fooling around.’ Like it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card. And it ain’t! It doesn’t work that way. `Oh, I ran over your kid? Just fooling around! Oops, I burned your house down? Just fooling around!’ No. Not anymore, Haggis man. Just shut up and drink and leave Patti alone.”

“Patti? Who the fuck is Patti?” Haggis asked. 

Ray patted his Beanie Baby. “She is. Her name’s Patti Platypus.” He picked up the purple bean-bag platypus and placed it above the top-shelf liquor bottles, where it belonged.  Where it could watch over the customers with its scratched resin eyes.

Haggis laughed and said, “Well excuuuuuse me!” and then looked around at the blank faces of the other patrons. There was a sharp absence of response. “Don’t you guys know where that’s from?” 

He was met with blank, bereft, indifferent expressions.

“Steve Martin! He used to go, ‘Well excuuuuse me!’ and audiences would howl! Doesn’t anyone remember that?” 

He looked around at the others with increasing agitation, gesturing with empty, pleading hands. 

Ray said, “It’s okay, Haggis. Take it easy. That was a long time ago.” His voice was soft and low, like a friendly therapist. He didn’t want Haggis to get riled again. The man came with his own Richter scale. The damaged pathways in his neural circuitry could result in unreason, confusion and unhinged behavior.

“No, it wasn’t that long ago, Ray. It was in the 1970s!”

“Hate to break it to you Haggis, but that was a long time ago.”

“Aw shitballs.”

Lorraine returned from the ladies room. “Hey! Where’s the platypus?” she asked. 

“Ray took it back,” said Haggis.

Lorraine had been the one who begged and badgered Ray to let her see the Beanie Baby. He’d reluctantly acquiesced. She laughed and cooed over it and then Haggis grabbed it and started getting stupid with it. Ray cursed at him and they narrowly averted an uncomfortable situation when Big Mike Bean stepped in to intimidate Haggis into a thoughtful pause. That’s when Haggis realized he was acting like a fool and placed the platypus back on the bar and Lorraine excused herself and staggered to the bathroom with uncertain equilibrium. 

Now she’d returned to instigate another inappropriate incident with “Haggis the Sap.” That’s what the other barflies called him whenever the topic of Lorraine cropped up. Haggis the Sap. Leaking like a sticky pine tree all over himself.

She and Haggis were partners in cirrhosis and when they teamed up they were like the Bonnie and Clyde of Pour Richard’s Cocktail Hole, only sloppy and stupid. And their petty little schemes never amounted to anything. And nobody liked them. And they weren’t in love. Or wanted.

So, they were nothing like Bonnie and Clyde, really. 

“Hey, Ray,” Haggis said. “Gimme anudder voot beer, and one for milady here.”

Ray nodded. He thumped two frosted beer mugs on the bar, poured vodka into them, then added draft root beer from the tap. He finished with a flourish of whipped cream and punctuated the whole production with a couple of maraschino cherries. The very thought of the sickly-sweet concoction made Ray’s salivary glands shrivel-up like raisins. 

He slid the drinks to the couple.

Haggis sucked on the straw and smacked his lips. “Ah! Sweet nectar. Just like mother used to make. Hey Ray, did you ever hear that song, `The Bartender’s Just Like a Mother’?”

“No.”

“Sure you have! It was by Slim Gaillard.”

“So, what’s your point?”

Haggis shrugged.” I don’t have one. It’s just a good song, that’s all. It goes with this drink `cause Slim Gaillard used to say, `Vout’ a lot. They called him McVouty and he actually wrote a whole dictionary called Vout O’Reenee where he explained stuff like vout and vout-a-reenie, just like this voot beer. It’s vout-a-reenie, chili beanie o’vootie! Melloroonie-voot!”

“You know you’re not making any sense right now, right?” Ray said. 

Haggis laughed. “What’s the vout, scoot? Slouch O’rootie! Zoot-suit boots!”

“I’m shutting you off.”

“Hey no, Ray, wait please. I was just foolin’ around. It’s just jazzy hipster slang from the 40s.”

“That’s before my time,” said Ray.

“Shit man! It’s before my time too! How old do you think I am?”

Lorraine said, “Haggis is cultural. He’s interested in history. I think it’s commendable. If you stop learning, you start dying. All the big thinkers thought that way and they lived into ripe old age.”

Ray rolled his eyes and made a “Phft!” sound. “Whatever you say, Lorraine.”

“It’s true!” Haggis piped up. “Look at Leonardo da Vinci. The guy never quit learning and he lived to be like, a hundred.”

“He wasn’t a hundred,” said Big Mike Bean. “He died in his 60s. I seen a documentary on his life. They say he might’ve been gay too.”

Haggis, in a cowed, obsequious tone, addressed Mike with care, “Well, y’know Mike, back in those days, living to be sixty was like a hundred would be now. That’s alls I was sayin’. It’s all relevant.” 

Lorraine corrected him, “Relative.”

“Yeah, right. It’s all relative,” he said, and then added, “Relatively relative anyway.” Haggis laughed at his own joke.

Ray placed a fresh bottle of Beck’s in front of Big Mike Bean and then turned to Haggis. “Okay, so if it’s so important to keep learning and grow your mind, why do you spend all your time sitting on your ass, drinking yourself stupid?”

Haggis flinched and looked into his drink. “That was uncalled for, Ray. I learn in my own way.”

“Yeah Ray!” said Lorraine, rallying to Haggis’s defense. “What do you do to keep your brain young and healthy?”

“I’m taking a class in epistemology at Milton Community College, I play chess with seniors once a week and I’m writing a rock opera about the life of Pascal.”

“Oh. Yeah, well whatever…” she said.

“And, of course, all the scintillating conversations I have with you.”

“Fuck you.”

“Case in point.”

Big Mike Bean laughed his booming, Paul Bunyon laugh and said, “Ray don’t fuck around! He’s a bonafide intellectual. He’s got brains he’s never even used yet!”

Ray raised his hands and said, “Too much by far, but thanks, Mike.”

“Sure. S’true…”

There was a beat of silence which Haggis shattered by loudly sucking up the last of his drink through the gurgling straw. He burped and said, “Yo, barkeep. Gimme anudder vootoroonie voot sweet-toothareenie doot!” and descended into a fit of self-indulgent laughter. “Rooty-toot toot!”

Nobody else at the bar was amused. Tolerance for Haggis was rice-paper thin in even the friendliest of circumstances.

Ray shook his head. “No way, Haggis.”

“Wuddayuh mean? No way? Gimme anudder voot!” He slammed his open hand on the bar. “I ain’t foolin’ around this time!”

Lorraine leaned into him and said, “Hush, honey. Don’t make a scene. We’ll go to Morlock’s Pub. They’ll serve you.”

“But I ain’t even drunk. C’mon Ray. You know I got in a motorcycle accident. My brain don’t work right. I’m have still a concussion…”

“That accident happened six years ago,” Ray reminded him. “And it happened because you were drunk. I don’t want to be responsible for another concussion. And you can’t survive any more brain damage, my friend. Trust me.”

“Sure I can,” Haggis said. “I could be a comatose vegetable then.” He turned his unfocused eyes to Lorraine. “Would you pull my string if I was a carrot, baby?”

“What’re you talking about?” she said.

“Vootie.”

Big Mike Bean stepped in to rescue the situation. Sometimes he had to act as Pour Richard’s unofficial bouncer. He placed a heavy hand on Haggis’s shoulder and said, “Okay Haggis. Time to go.”

“But it ain’t time yet! There’s anudder whole hour till last call!”

“Not for you. For you it’s time to go. Now.” 

He yanked Haggis off the barstool and ushered him out the door. Lorraine hastily gathered her things and followed them outside. 

Ray removed their empty glasses and started wiping down the bar.  

Neither of them had left a tip.

“Cheap chiselers,” he said. 

He busied himself, waiting for closing time, while Patti Platypus looked on from above. He raised the volume on the television. There was a PBS documentary about the Algonquin Roundtable he wanted to see…