Fiction: "Better Than Drinking Alone"

A piece of fiction from a friend of mine, used by his permission:

"Better Than Drinking Alone"

I shared a few drinks with Death last night.

It was in a bar off of Avenue A, and she was wearing midnight blue stockings with a matching leather skirt, a flame red tank top, and a necklace made of pieces of Lucky Charms cereal strung together on a thin wire. The breasts of Death looked full to bursting underneath her tank top and I’ve always been a breast man, so I made my way across the room to get to know her better.

At first when I asked her name and she said, “I’m Death,” I assumed she was just trying to blow me off, so I kept on hammering at her. After a minute she repeated it, but this time she put her hand on my arm and looked me straight in the eye.

Her touch was warm but her eyes were cold, and when I looked in them I suddenly felt like I wasn’t in an East Village bar anymore. I felt like I was inside of a sewer during a storm, and then I felt like I was the sewer and I could see all kinds of junk – bottles, syringes, garbage bags – floating by, and I realized that all this junk, all this cast-off trash, was really the lives or the souls or the karmas or whatever of people she had taken charge of lately.

I shook her hand off of me and was immediately back in the bar. Her breasts still looked inviting, but even I’m not randy enough to try to cop a feel off of Death, so I started moving away.

“Buy me a drink,” she said, “and I’ll buy the next round.” So I ordered her a drink.

I’d never drunk with a manifestation of a concept before. I was a little intimidated. At first.

Aside from her breasts, she’s pretty ordinary. Not scary, like some people think she is, and not gorgeous, like some others think. Cute – even if she’s not a natural brunette.

She likes rum and cokes and whiskey sours and screwdrivers and Irish coffees, and everything on the rocks, even the coffees. Especially the coffees.

Let me tell you something important I learned. Death can’t hold her liquor.

Also, after the fourth drink, it’s hard to get her to shut up. Finally, I had to tell her, “I don’t care who killed Kennedy, or how Ken Starr will ultimately get it, or how many corpses you can fit in a phone booth. Now come on, you're making a scene."

I dragged her out of the bar, intending to help her home, but when we got outside she broke away from me and said she didn’t need my help, she’d been getting home on her own for millennia, thank you very much.

Then she barfed into the gutter.

As I cleaned her up, I told her she needed to get out more, but I don’t think she heard me.

When we parted she offered me a kiss, but I declined. Politely. Then I went back into the bar to see if I could scare up any action this late. I did, with a woman who turned out to be the manifestation of Lust.

We’re meeting again tonight.

I shared a few drinks with Death last night, and she left me to pick up the tab.