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The fist time I saw Barry he wasn’t acting. “My Lord, the Queen is dead”, he said. Damn, the dude’s crazy, I thought, that’s commitment. With just enough luck, he’ll be huge. Maybe we’re witnessing the birth of a star or something. But then I saw him acting, after the show. He was leaving the theater with the rest of the troupe, trying to look cool and collected, he was walking just far enough to seem engaged but not participating. When they all reached the parking lot gates, he waved his hand at them and mumbled something. The team did try to make him stay but he’d already backed away a couple of feet.
When they left, he walked up to the stairs leading to the theater’s back door and sat down on the steps.
I knew that I was watching the guy for an unreasonably long time so there must have been a reason for that. I looked around to make sure there were still enough people for me not to come off as creepy when I walked over to him. He had to be pretty cold sitting out there this time of night on bare iron, no jacket even. I though that’s why he was shaking.
“Hi”, I said and he jolted, “Oh, I’m sorry.” He looked up at me and tried to say something but nothing came out. “I just wanted to say that I think your performance tonight was amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before. I mean on-stage, you know…” His eyes were so baffling I stammered.
“Thanks”, he said quietly. “That’s kind of you to say”.
It was almost a whisper but I could feel that he had a great rich voice, his large shoulders were tense and his whole body was huddled into a tenth of a man he was supposed to be.
I asked if he was okay and he said yes. I asked if he wanted to have a drink, he paused, and then said yes.
“No, my friends are gonna be there, let’s go someplace else. If you don’t mind.”
The bar we ended up at was whatever but it was pretty crowded which looked like a good thing for Barry – I didn’t know his name at that point though. It looked like he finally let out the breath he was holding the whole time and now the oxygen was coming back to his bloodstream. He seemed even taller now.
“Whiskey please, double. And –“ He looked at me.
“Beer”, I said.
I told him my name realizing it must have been incredibly impolite of me to take a person out for a drink and not even introduce myself.
“Um… it really is nice to meet you but… would you mind if I didn’t tell you my name right now?” He was already onto his whiskey. The guy had something real bad weighing on him. But at least now he was not huddled up shaking.
For a moment I thought that I, again, gave into my maternal instinct – all it took was one tall-dark-and-handsome dude in distress and there I was, getting him drunk so he could take that load off his chest. Well, why the hell not? That face wasn’t too hard to look at, if you know what I’m saying, and if the guy felt better afterwards, all the better.
But I knew I was kidding myself with those thoughts. There was something about this guy that made me uneasy, not in a threatening way but in a way that made me want to dig into his chest and hug his heart. He looked like he’d marched a battlefield bare handed. This comparison should not count because now I know that he’s actually been in service but that’s the best I can describe him. And his knuckles were fucked up, so.
“Yeah sure, no problem.”
There was a minute of silence between us where we just sipped our drinks occupied by the thoughts that we didn’t know were actually related.
“You know, there’s a good chance we won’t see each other after tonight”, I said and saw him smile bitterly at his drink, “so you can as well tell me whatever’s on you mind. ‘Cause it looks like it just might kill you if you don’t, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“Where are you from?” he asked suddenly and finally looked at me, rather intensely.
I told him.
“And what do you do?”
I told him that too.
The following questions were asked with such unquestionable authority that I couldn’t but reply. He was asking some general stuff like my relation to different fields of work, if I’ve heard about this and that. I had no idea what that random shit was all about but I was too intrigued by what he was about to tell me so I didn’t want to fuck up the interview. The whole time he was inquiring about my background, he hasn’t taken his eyes off of me once, analyzing my reactions it seemed like.
“Right”, he sighed. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”
After ordering another round, we found a table at the back and relocated there. Now we were shielded by the crowd.
A good couple of minutes passed until he made himself speak. His voice was low, composedly calm, he was not looking at me.
“You know how even when your word doesn’t mean anything, you still gotta have everything under control.
“You execute orders because they say that’s the only thing you good for. You obey because you don’t know better and you create a world of your own… But in this world that you’ve built all for yourself everything depends not on you but on them, those who give the orders.
“I was in active service”, he took a gulp of his double whiskey and looked me straight in the eye. “I had been ordered to kill and I had done that.
“I didn’t have it worse than the other guys though. On the contrary I think, I’m alive, you know, and whole even”, he slapped both of his arms. “Yeah… When we came home, some of the boys couldn’t take it. Quite a bit of them actually. You know the drill: drinking, stupid fighting, isolation… even those who made it out there didn’t make it back here. A damn shame.”
Now, sitting close to him, I could see that his eyes were red and hooded, terrible dark circles under them.
“But if you can make sense out of the world after all that, you should count yourself lucky”, he managed an ironic smile. “And I believe I have successfully done that. Yeah. I sure have.
He took in a sharp breath and hung his head grabbing his hair. Those bloody knuckles in that greasy hair just didn’t go with his gentle voice and pleading eyes. It was like he was begging for mercy but all he was getting was a fucking beating. He still had not said anything specific about his situation, and I had a feeling that he wouldn’t, but his thoughts and his feelings were loud and clear.
I put a hand on his arm.
“Yeah, sorry”, he sniffled and coughed out a laugh.
“Don’t apologize. Are you kidding me?” Yeah, a war veteran apologizing to a fucking idiot signifying nothing, am I right? Jesus.
“So you have found a way?”
“What?”
“You said you have found a way to make sense out of it.”
He laughed again, and as much as I wanted to see this guy happy, I’d never want to see him laugh like this again.
“Yes, I have. I keep doing the same thing I was doing out there.”
“Killing people?” I shouldn’t have said that but the words were already out. He shoot a glance at me; then, he slowly stretched his lips into a smile, his brow twitched.
“Following orders”.
After saying that, he leaned back and looked up at the wooden ceiling. It would have been crazy for him to be religious but every part of him had a contradiction welded to it.
I took a moment to have a better look at him. When was he discharged? The physical shape he was still in was rare to come around. He wasn’t dramatically ripped but there was certain firmness to his body. He definitely could knock down a dude, or a dozen. But again, the reassuring contradiction about him was that he wouldn’t. His neck was glistering with sweat and so was his stubbled jaw. He seemed a bit dirty. He just finished an amateur theater show, where could he have gotten so battered? But boy was he sweet. He closed his eyes now; they were big and green and devastatingly tired, so it was good that they were closed. His chest was rising heavily, it seemed like he was trying to control every breath he took.
So I finally took his hand. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time. It would’ve been nice to hug him but – baby steps. He opened his eyes to look at me.
“Listen”, I said. “I wish you’d told me that name but still. I hope you’ll hear me.
“This is fucked. up. No one should have to do what you guys did. What you did. This is incomprehensible – but!” I took his hand in both of my hands. “What’s done is done. And I don’t wanna tell you how brave, how strong you are, that you’re a hero, that we all are indebted to you. You’ve heard that thousands of times, and it could barely mean anything to you coming from the people who don’t understand shit. So, the only thing that I can remind you of is that you’re here. You have a life. And it is yours. Even if we have to follow the rules, make compromises, bend over to survive, the life itself still belongs to us. Free will is very questionable these days – well, if it ever was unquestionable. But. The little things, the little details – that’s where the Devil’s at, right? You do have control over the Devil, sweetheart. You do.”
I gave his hand a final squeeze and let it go. I already felt like a fucking idiot but in all honesty, I did, sincerely, want to see him– just being fine. But how could I of all people make him that?..
“Barry. My name is Barry.”