TGs
Maybe it’s because Jane went west to see her sister, and Pauly finds us better company than none at all.
He wants to get drunk and warns Hank not to, even though he knows Hank won’t listen, and counts on me to drive if they both drink too much.
Pauly claims he doesn’t like booze, and only tolerates it when he can’t find pot.
“I don’t need to feel as stupid are you guys are,” he claims during the ride north.
I can’t recall ever seeing him drink anything before this but wine, and then only to impress a girl – back when I was still in the army and made me dress in my uniform to buy some.
TGs is located on the New York side of Greenwood Lake, attractive because the drinking age there is 18, where until recently, it was 21 everywhere else.
Hank is thrilled.
He’s still miserable from breaking up with his girlfriend last year; and finds we spend more time with him now that we’ve broken up with our girls, too.
We go everywhere with him, and he just can’t get enough.
Pauly fiddles with the radio in search of songs he likes, yet ones Hank won’t sing along with – a very small variety.
While Hank has a good voice, strong and deep, hearing it annoys Pauly, who tells him to “shut it or get out.”
“But it’s my car,” Hank says.
“You think I care?” Pauly mumbles, fiddling with the radio also to distract himself from Hank’s horrible driving, not needing Hank’s neck brace to remind him what happened last time we drove this route to the lake, or my still deviated nose broken when it smashed against the dashboard of Hank’s former totaled Dodge Dart.
Pauly warns Hank not to honk the horn at pretty girls he sees walking along the roadside.
“I’m not on this trip for you to exercise your gentiles,” Pauly says.
Hank, a notorious womanizer, perpetually prowls for sex.
I tolerate his whims because I want sex, too, although something always seems to get in the way of our getting anything when we prowl together – such as the crash in April. We had two teenage girls in the car at the time.
We know Hank can’t resist; Pauly and I hope we can steer Hank away from women long enough to get him drunk enough not to care.
Pauly trusts me to drive home because he knows I rarely get drunk.
I don’t realize just how desperate Pauly is for our company until he volunteers to pay the cover charge at the club – so out of character I look at him sideways to figure out his scheme. With most outings, Pauly manipulates us into paying for everything, even after he’s agreed to pay his share.
Hank vanishes the minute we’re inside, drawing a curse from Pauly, as he insists, I buy him a beer for my failing to keep tabs on Hank, not the inexpensive kind Hank and I buy such as Miller Lite, but some fancy European brand, imported from the Isle of White or some place near there with twice the kick at twice the price.
That’s more like the Pauly I know.
Then, he makes me buy him another.
By the third, he’s more than a little drunk and more than a little peeved at Hank.
“He’s doing it to me again,” he keeps saying, referring to the trip to Nova Scotia he, Hank and Rob took last summer when Hank took off with the hotel maid for a club in Prince Edward Island, leaving Rob and Pauly in a motel room without even any TV, neither one knowing if Hank would ever return.
“I’m not walking back to New Jersey from here,” Pauly says. “I’ll find him and kill him for the car keys first.”
We search the club twice but find no sign of him.
“I’ll bet he’s out in the car screwing some bimbo,” Pauly says, slurring his words so much I wonder if he can even walk.
Hank is not in the car when we get there, so we figure we somehow missed him in the club. Only when we try to go back inside, the bouncer stops Pauly and demands he pay admission.
“I already paid,” Pauly says, yet when he goes to show the back of his hand the man previously stamped when he paid admission the first time, the stamp isn’t there, not even a smudge of it.
“It must have jumped off my hand,” Pauly says.
“No pay, no entry,” the bouncer tells us.
This time Pauly makes me pay, and even then, he’s pissed as if Hank’s antics had cost him more than a frustrated search.
We search the place again, still no Hank. Then, Pauly clutches my arm.
“Do you hear that?” he asks.
“Hear what?”
“Listen!”
I tilt my head and catch the slightly sour notes coming from near the bandstand.
We find the drunken Hank leaning against one of the stacks of speakers, singing a slightly skewered version of “Honky Tonk Woman” the band happens to be playing.
Pauly and I each take one of his arms and drag him out to the car, dumping him into the back seat still singing.
“You drive,” Pauly tells me as he hands me the keys. “But no singing.”
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