“So’d’jya fuck that girl? Get somma that black pussay?” That’s Gao.
This is us three drinks later.
“Djya get yourself in somma that black cunt?”
“Gao: shut, up.”
He puts his hand over my trivia thing so I can’t answer. “Did you ever fuck a black girl before?”
I press my button anyway. I press it through his hand, using one of his fingers, bending it the wrong way.
“You are the slowest scotch drinker I’ve ever seen,” Gao says.
“What’s the hurry? Aren’t you supposed to enjoy it?”
Gao slams back a scotch and orders more food. “Black pussay,” he’s saying, “Black pussay.” He’s spinning the utensil setup like a propeller.
My eyes are intent on the trivia. Gotta get in a few answers while Gao isn’t paying attention.
Jess is used to this.
There’s a pair of surgeons sitting across from us. The bar is a square, it goes all the way around. It’s us, there’s some early work people on one side, a guy drinking alone, and these two surgeons, who are talking real loud. The one’s trying to impress the other. He’s holding his hand out, flat, palm down. He does this thing with his wrist, where he flies his hand out, into that flat, palm-down position and he says to the other one: “Steady as a rail.” He works with organ donations. When people die, he’s the supervising surgeon who decides who to give the organs to. He’s presenting his drinking partner and the rest of the bar with these juvenile ethics dilemmas, like: If one room has a woman in her twenties, who’s a drug addict, and pregnant—“and she’s on welfare”—and the other room has a stock broker, middle-aged, male, with no family (who rips people off for a living)..which one should he choose?
“Which one did you choose?”
“He chose the stockbroker, cause he’s a motherfucker,” Gao says real quietly.
“Huh?”
I yell across the bar. “Which one did you choose?”
“I chose the stockbroker,” the guy says. Then he’s telling his buddy about how he came in here before he had to make that decision and had—how many?—gin and tonics.
Jesse tells us how many with her fingers: three.
The surgeon flicks his hand out and holds it flat.
“Steady as a rail,” he tells his friend.
“I think he means solid as a rock,” I say.
But Gao says: “Whatever.”
But Jesse wants to know about this girl.