What Are You In For?

Written by Matthew William Austin

“Ah, you’d never believe it.”

“Try us.”

“And it’s long.”

“What else we got, besides time?”

“You’re right, guess I’d tell it eventually anyway.”

We were sitting out in the common area, vending machine coffee in thin plastic cups from the water cooler because the thick paper cups the machine employed had long since run out. The coffee’s what everyone went for, see, kind of a traffic diversion. And who’d want water?

Spring was in its grey infancy, coming through these wide windows that were too high to look out of without making a special effort, like we were supposed to focus inwards, which I guess we were, but then why have windows at all? Everything was grey, the sweats we all wore, the upholstery, the thin carpet and the paint on the walls, all similar shades, like we were in limbo or something. There wasn’t anything to see.

Ray was a talker, no one had asked him, but he’d started up anyway. He was clean-shaven now, but when he’d arrived he’d had this beard that grew in only three spots on his jaw, in long curling wisps, an unruly trident jutting from his face. His hair was greying at the temples; there was none at all on the top.

“Well, get the hell on with it.”

“So it’s a funny one, I guess you’d say. I’d not had so much as a drop for nearly thirty-five years of life, which ain’t so rare for the first eighteen, but the rest… anyway, I wouldn’t have dreamed of ending up here, and here I am, all the same. What do you do on a night when it’s cold, dark? Walk the dog, and get a cup of hot cocoa, that’s what. No urge to fight if I never tried. Between the kids, and the plant and all of that, there wasn’t even the time to try it out.

“My wife though, she liked a glass of wine after we’d put the kids to bed. Part of her wind-down routine, she said. Let her body know the day was over. And we’d be sat in front of the TV, we each got our own chairs, you know, and I guess you could say I found myself watching her. Nothing wrong with a man looking at his wife, of course, but then I guess it wasn’t really her I was looking at, the way she looked like a blueberry in the TV light. I’m watching her taking swigs of this wine, and I don’t exactly feel like I’m missing out, I wasn’t jealous, honestly, it’s just the rhythm of the thing, the constant, regular movement, of glass to hand to knee to chin to face, then hold, then to chin, then hold, to knee, then hold, to table, and back. She always did it the same way, whether she was talking or dead into the programs on the box. I could tell she wasn’t even thinking about it.

“See, the plant I worked at, the production line there, it’s kind of like that. The machine movement. It’s work, and it’s reliable, this movement leads into that, and another and another, it keeps you moving. You don’t have to think, just do, and somehow that wine in that glass was like that. I wanted it because it was work, feeding the machine, and you could keep going at it all the time in that rhythm. Made me realise I didn’t like sitting still – I don’t know if it’s the job that made me like that or if I always was. I’ve never had the jitters, I’m a calm guy. But I’m hardly ever what you might call comfortable.

“It wasn’t right away that it made any kind of problem for anyone. Always on the move, me. So it’s just a glass of wine with my wife at the end of a hard day. That’s just fine. She likes it even, sharing her ritual with me. It’s the realising that there’s these other quiet moments, a fair lot of them, in any day. There’s lunch break, there’s the few minutes before you get out of your car in the parking lot. There’s the waiting on the park bench while your kids tear around the playground and hang off the jungle gym. I never used to think that I was doing nothing, keeping an eye on them. They made a fun watch, I’ll tell you, the friends they made, and the disagreements over nothing – it was entertainment, like the TV, I lived through them, understood – but then I drank when I watched TV, didn’t I? It doesn’t take parents long to notice that kind of thing, especially when you don’t realise you’re doing it. That’s funny too, I think. How many times did I drive under the influence, and nobody gave a shit? Like bad driving was expected, people just put up with it. But when I’m minding my own business, no risk to anyone, that’s when I get it in the neck. What – like I was going to share? Anyway, my wife wheeled me straight in here, and it’s more wine for her.”

We all laughed at that closing remark because we were meant to, like we all had wives who were the same, like we were united by spouses who conspired against us, rather than it being ourselves who orchestrated the sabotage. Ray had run his coffee dry and was making his way right back to the machine, the limp window light just grazing the top of his bald head.

Bernie called after him “Why’d it have to be booze, that’s what I want to know. If it’s like you said, wouldn’t a soda work just as good?”

Ray didn’t answer for a second, just stared down at the sad trickle of weak coffee that made its way into his cup for the sixth time that morning. Then he turned at us and grinned.

“Because it got me blind drunk, that’s why!”

And that really got us laughing.

Edited by Nico Horton