The Paris Review - Fall 2016

She would start writing when she got home—no more putting it off. If
Cal could write three lame historical novels and Marcus could become an
artist, nascent or otherwise, and Kim could get on the radio talking about
her memoir in progress, surely she could produce something of proportionate
value, or at least something not embarrassing. And if she couldn’t, well,
then maybe she didn’t deserve to be so goddamn opinionated.
“Oh, shit,” Kim said, looking past Leslie. James the bartender now had
the drink stealer in a headlock from behind the bar. The haggard guy flailed
his arms listlessly and kicked over a stool.
“I told you to cut it the fuck out,” James said. The other guy seemed to
be giving up, or passing out.
“That seems really unnecessary,” Cal said.
He was probably right. But she still felt pretty okay about it. How’s this
for identification: she wasn’t sure whether she’d rather be the guy getting
choked or the guy doing the choking.
“I’m going to see if I can help,” Cal said. He moved toward the crowd of
people who were standing around the bar not helping.
“Would you be nicer?” Kim said.
Leslie turned and gave her a slow-dawning, shrunken-head smile.
They focused their attention on the growing melee just as Cal took a
kick to the nose from the flailing drunk guy. He put his hands over his face
and dropped to his knees.
“Okay, now call the police,” Kim said.
Leslie started to say, “Why me?” out of pure instinct, but caught herself.
Why not her? She pressed the emergency button in her contact list for
the first time ever as Kim moved across the room to help Cal. She tried to
commit the details of the tableau to memory—the drunk’s sweatpants held
up, barely, by a piece of weathered rope, the usually gentle James grinning
sadistically as he shouted obscenities at the man in his grip. Cal, helped to his
feet by Kim, and Kim pressing a pile of cocktail napkins to his bleeding nose.
When the dispatcher picked up, Leslie was pretty sure she wasn’t witnessing
an emergency. But since she was already on the line, she explained, as clearly
as she could, what she saw. It was a first draft.
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