By: Erik Priedkalns

            James brought home the Little Red Popcorn Maker years ago. It looks like one of those carnival fortune teller booths. It has big, round, wood spoke wheels, and golden tow arms. I could see why he picked it out for the prize at the school fair.

When James went to college, my wife Susie and I put the Little Red Popcorn Maker in the Do NOT Ever Throw Away Closet. But I started feeling sorry for it, and freed it. I put it on my desk in the den and it looked all right there. But pretty soon, I got the feeling it needed to live a little, so I took it to “Hank’s.”

               Hank’s is my dive bar, but it’s not really a dive bar. There’s a modern-retro neon sign, outdoor patio seating, a bunch of televisions, and it’s as clean as a church. I think maybe it was a dive bar at some point in time, but it got sterilized in the name of gentrification. Good thing too, because if it’d been too divey, I’d never have gone in.

Today, me and the Little Red Popcorn Maker are at Hanks, sitting in a spot up against the wall, just under the blue Dodger pennants. I’m using its face to watch Joyce, my Hank’s girlfriend. She’s sitting at our usual spot with Fred, the bar’s good guy. She has an enormous, ballooning chest. Her tank top reveals a pocked, puffy, tan cleavage just under her silver necklace and jade charm. She’s got a swollen tanned-red face, a wide, thick abdomen, and short greying brown hair. She should have made a career keeping score in bowling. She always smells like Mentos, cigarettes, and gin. When she’s not pissed at me for having a wife, we sit at the bar in the same seats that she and Fred are sitting in now.

At first, Fred was a little nervous when I came in today, but I told Tony, the bar owner, to give him a beer, and Fred relaxed, smiled and raised the bottle in my direction. Joyce glared at me. I’ve been sending them beers and gins and tonics all afternoon.

But my eyes keep drifting to the Little Red Popcorn Maker. Its glassy face has turned to a sullen stare.

               I haven’t been to Hank’s for a while and Joyce is angry. The only reason I haven’t come is because James did it again. He hasn’t come home since he went to school two autumns ago, and he just told me and Susie that he wasn’t coming home for Christmas again. This time he has a soulmate girlfriend. Last year it was another soulmate girl.

               For the last few weeks I’ve been busy yelling at, begging, and urging James to come home for Christmas. Susie, my wife, has gone to bed crying every night.

               When Joyce isn’t angry, I like to sit so I can feel the warmth of her thick thigh against my leg. I sometimes even stretch out my arm and brush my hand across her lower back and bottom.

               “Ha!” Joyce’s wet smoker’s cough blares out, and for a moment I think she’s laughing at me. It’s loud, and clacks around the bar like voices do in an afternoon bar. She moved closer to Fred and has her hand on his arm.

               It’s all make believe. It makes me sick. “Hank’s” isn’t really my old hang out. I only started coming after James went away to school. By that time, I was a fifty-eight-year-old retired lawyer. I hated law so much that I decided to work twelve hours a day, six days a week so I could make enough money to get out early. Susie said all that working stole my life, but what could I do? If I’d been home more, things could have been even worse.

               I suppose I should get this out too, I’m no swashbuckling, grease and oil soaked, two-fisted barroom brawler. I’m a retired lawyer who hates violence and drinks a bit more than the next guy.

                I found Hank’s on an August day. I was in the garden, pruning my marigolds. The air was hot like it gets in Southern California summer, especially the North Valley. Susie was inside the house, and we’d just gotten into a bit of a dust up. James sent another whiny email about how lonely he was in college, and of course it was all tossed on me.

               It was hot, and I really wanted a beer, but I didn’t want to sneak back into the house to get one, so I thought to myself, why not try go somewhere else?

               I quietly crept into the car, sent Susie a text message that I was going to take a drive, and was on my way.

               San Fernando Valley’s straight boulevards were sun-scortched that day. I saw Hank’s jammed between the mirror-tinted glass windows of a strip mall’s shops. It took a while to figure out whether it was a bar or a laundromat.

               I sat in the parking lot for an hour, just looking at the door. I had a small bottle of Wild Turkey and was taking little hits. I’m a drinker for sure, but I do most of my drinking at home or at friends’ houses. Bars are for watching football games with my buddies or happy hour after work. My dad drilled it into my head that bars were for lowlifes and trash. He was a welder but didn’t have the time or money for bar drinking. So, it took a while to go in.

               After half the whiskey was gone, I went in. I’d never been in a bar alone before, so I was a bit jangly and didn’t know what to do with my stare. I ordered a beer, drank the beer, and just sat. When I was done, I thanked the bartender and walked out.

               The next day, it was hotter than the day before, so I decided to head to Hank’s again. That day I met some new friends, shut the bar down, took a cab home, and slept in the downstairs bathtub. The vomit stench seeped into my nose from my chin.

               “At least I didn’t drink and drive,” I growled that morning when Susie accused me of being reckless and irresponsible. I could barely focus through the spinning of my booze-soaked brain, and each time I spoke I felt like puking.

               “You’re fifty-eight. What sort of man your age does that?”

               Her eyes were soaked red, and her hair looked like a branch-filled Disney Forest. It was the same look she had the day James left for college.

               We didn’t say a peep as she drove me to Hanks to get the car. When we parked in front, Hank’s was still closed because it was 6:30 a.m. Susie’s jaw was tight, and her black eyes were narrowed to a stony squint. She whispered something. I thought maybe she was praying,

               “Please drive carefully,” she said – matter of fact.

               “I will, thanks.” I wondered if I should’ve shook her hand.

               I had a foot out of the car when she said, “Take your wallet.”

               I gave a milky smile. “Thanks.”

               On the way home I snuck by the Liquor No. 5 liquor store owned by a nice Chinese couple and bought a small plastic bottle of Popov vodka because I only had ten bucks. I had to go back in to buy some breath mints. The Chinese couple giggled as I grabbed the mints and my changed and hurried out. I cracked open the plastic cap of the Popov and the cool, airy liquor burned away the sickness.

               A few months after I started going to Hank’s, Susie decided I needed a new hobby.

               “You need to find something else to do. You can’t just go to Hank’s every day.”

               “I could,” I told her, “I have a lot of money saved for retirement.”

               “I’m not going to take care of you if you get a liver transplant, you’ll be more inactive than you are now.”

               I thought fast.

               “I could try writing,” I said.

               “There you go, you always were a good b. s’er.” She actually said “b. s’er.” Susie’s one of those saints who can’t stand cussing.

               “Okay, but I need to find a place to write. There are too many distractions here.”

               “Try the community center.”

               “Or the library,” I said.

               “Wherever.”

               My little brain started spinning, contemplating all the different routes I could take to the library that would bring me by Hank’s on the way there or going home.

               On my first day, I made it to the library but decided it was too quiet, and I left early for Hank’s.

               It was going good until Susie finally noticed the Little Red Popcorn Maker was missing a week after I started my “writing career.”

               “Hey, where’s James’ popcorn maker?” she asked.

               “It was just taking up space, so I brought it to Hank’s.”

               “Hank’s? I thought you were writing all day.”

               “Yep. When one works all week at writing, one deserves a beer or two at the end of the week.”

               “How’s the writing going?”

               “People love the popcorn maker,” I said.

               “Write a story about that.”

               “Great idea.”

               After a while I gave up writing at the library, and wrote at Hank’s. Actually, I thought about my story. I’d start with a beer and I’d just stare at the Little Red Popcorn Maker until a story came. The problem with that writing style was that every time a story came to me, I’d never have a notebook. So, I’d have to write on a small “Hank’s” napkin with one of the cheap Hank’s pens that were hiding behind the bar. The pen would end up leaking into the paper and look blurry by the end of the night. After a while, I gave up writing the story and just told it to all the barflys.

               The first story I told was a good one, I told them the popcorn maker’s first job was at the home of a Mexican longshoreman in Arcadia. He gave it to his two little boys for Christmas.

               “Why did you buy that?” the man’s wife asked.

               “I’m not sure,” he said. “I just like the way it looks. It calms me.”

               “Where’d you get it?”

               “Some secondhand store in Norwalk.”

               “What were you doing there?”

               “Seeing my girlfriend.”

               “Well, make sure you tell her you drink too much and shower only once a week.”

               “Shut it. Where are the boys?”

               Joyce drunkenly snort-laughed, and Tony sat down on his chair on the other side of the bar.

               And the boys loved the popcorn maker. They liked to play circus with their friends and give them popcorn. But the boys both got older, started bringing home girls and lost interest in the Little Red Popcorn Maker.

               The longshoreman put the popcorn maker away for a while, but then decided to give it to his buddy, another longshoreman, named Charlie, as a gag gift for the Longshoreman’s Secret Santa give away.

               “They have those?” asked Stan, the Down On His Luck, Hasn’t Been Able To Find A Job For The Last Twenty Years, Electrician.

               “Of course, everyone loves Secret Santa exchanges at Christmas parties.”

               “Longshoremen have Christmas parties?” asked Dave, the Night Security Guard at Costco.

               “Y’all want to hear the story or what?” I said.

               “Cranky bastard,” said Tony. “Just tell it.”

               So, the Little Red Popcorn Maker ended up in Charlie’s house.

               “Who’s Charlie?”

               “The guy who got the popcorn maker at the Longshoreman Secret Santa gift exchange.”

               “Hey Tony, you got a piece of paper, I need to write this down?” said Todd, the Stay at Home Dog Owner with a High Powered Executive Wife Who Couldn’t Stand Him But Earned Too Much to Get a Divorce.

               “One more interruption and I’m done,” I threatened.

                Charlie had two daughters who were six and eight years old. They loved the popcorn maker. They’d invite their friends over on rainy days to watch cartoons and eat popcorn. But then they grew older, and they started using words like “diet” and “fat,” and away went the popcorn maker into the bottom of a closet with the old forgotten toys, clothes, tools, and shoes.

               “My dad had a closet full of empty whisky bottles,” Joyce chirped.

               I rubbed her thigh, and she moved my hand up a little more.

               One day, Charlie’s wife opened the closet and was almost buried in a slide of old clothes, magazines, and books. Charlie heard the noise and his wife’s surprised shout. He was trying to sprint out of the house when she caught him.

               “Would you clean this closet?” she begged.

               “I’ll do it tomorrow,” he said.

               “And today you’ll just sit around with your friends and drink beer?”

               Suddenly, Charlie decided he was completely free that day and needed a project. So, he scooped everything out of the closet and put it all into boxes. When he got to the popcorn maker, he stopped and wondered what to do with it. He really liked looking at the popcorn maker because it reminded him of cheerfulness. He liked the red color with the gold trim and fancy, gold words on the side.

Old Fashioned

Popcorn

Movie time

               But Charlie knew that his wife was right, and decided he would feel awful if she were buried under a heap of nostalgia and sentiment. So, he took the popcorn maker to a secondhand seller down the street.

               “I can give you ten bucks for it,” the owner told him.

               Charlie was fine with the price, and the deal was finalized. He was hungry, so he went to a 7-11, bought a sandwich and a tall can of Budweiser.

               And, the Little Red Popcorn Maker sat in the secondhand store, waiting nicely on a shelf. The store was pleasant, and all sorts of clocks, posters and knickknacks lined its cluttered walls and shelves.

               I stopped and took a sip of beer. Joyce lifted her head off my shoulder, and Tony just sat there waiting. I wasn’t sure what to do, that was as far as I made it in the story.

               “Then what?” asked Tony.

               “That’s all I have right now.”

               “Think of something,” Tony said.

               I got a message on my phone from Susie. Are you coming home soon?

               I started getting a little anxious and guilty. I responded. Work is going well, can’t stop writing yet. Be back soon.

               I shouted to Tony down the bar. “Hey, gotta go, I’ll finish the story next time.

               Tony gave a quick wave of his hand.

               On the way home, I tried to finish the story in my head, but thinking about the Little Red Popcorn Maker got me thinking about the kid James, and that got me feeling bad about Susie. He really could work her up. Sometimes I wondered if he was even mine. He was always so cold.

               The worst thing he ever did to Susie was telling her he didn’t want us to take him to his first year of college. Susie had been so happy that he got into a good school. The little punk told us just the week before leaving that he could handle the move himself. This was after we’d been planning to take him for weeks. Susie reserved a hotel, and we had arranged our schedules.

The day he left was one of the worst I’ve ever had. After his friends came, he hugged Susie, and gave me a smart-ass salute.

               “See you,” he said.

               “Yup,” I said. I wanted to punch him in the face.

               Susie limply hugged him turned, and didn’t speak at all. She turned and slowly walked back to the house. Sometimes hurt runs deep like a canyon.

The September sun was strained by the giant ficus tree that was in the middle of our hard.

Susie suddenly stopped and crossed her arms across her chest. Then she spun around and watched the car roll off. She wore baggy, beige shorts and a white, tight tee shirt.

Her skinny, tanned legs bumped up against each other. Her white Keds barely left the ground.

               Her real name is Susana. Her Mexican mother and father used to tease her and call her white girl because she married me.

               The memory seeps into my mind again as Joyce and Fred start cuddling in our spot. Thinking about James and Susie in this bar makes me feel like a pimp.

               Tony’s voice snaps me out of the memory. “D’you have any more stories about that damn popcorn maker?”

               I look up from the beer. “Huh?”

               “The popcorn thingy.”

               “Oh. Well, it’s not totally done yet.”

               “Who cares, I’m bored,” says Tony. “But hurry, because the Happy Hour crowd is about to come in.”

               “Got it,” I say and quickly think up something.

               The popcorn maker sat in the secondhand store and waited nicely. The secondhand store was cheerful, and all sorts of clocks, posters and knickknacks lined its cluttered walls and shelves.

               “You already told that,” growls Tony.

               “I know, I just have to warm up a little.”

               One day, a young man in his thirties got the idea that he wanted to start a beer bar in the attic-room of a two-story building. He had a lot of friends who gave up drinking the old school beers. The young man suspected the old beers were going to disappear under the wave of IPAs and craft beers, so, he decided to open a craft beer joint.

               “Those are all around now,” says Tony.

               “Yeah, but it was new back then.”

               The young man’s target audience would be hipsters. He had been to the hipster capital of the world, Seattle, and knew that hipsters liked the unusual and quirky. So, when he decided to open the beer place, he went around town looking for some kitschy items that would give character to the joint.

               At the secondhand store, he picked out a Mickey Mouse clock and started towards the register. Then he saw the popcorn maker.

“Why not?” He said to himself. He took the Little Red Popcorn Maker to the beer joint and set it next to a wood carved owl lamp he got from a friend.

               At first, nobody even noticed the Little Red Popcorn Maker. It just calmly sat in its spot on the bar. But one day, a couple was drinking there on a chilly day. The woman asked the young beer joint owner what it was.

               “It’s a popcorn maker,” he said.

               “I like it,” she said. “It reminds me Iceland.”

               ” Iceland? Why?”

               “I’m not sure, but it was the best trip I ever had.”

               “Would you like some popcorn?” asked the young beer joint owner.

               “Sure,” said the woman. “I’m a little hungry.”

               “I haven’t used it yet, so this will be an adventure.”

               The young beer joint owner started the Little Red Popcorn Maker. It quaked and shook on the bar so much that the other three people in the place gathered around to watch it do its thing. The owner placed a bowl in front of the opening where the popcorn came out. As the white, puffy pieces appeared, everyone in the bar breathed deeply, and sucked in the pleasant smell. The scent gently warmed their minds, and they all sat back on their bar stools.

               “That’s a very excellent popcorn maker,” said the woman who went to Iceland once.

               I stop and take a sip of beer.

               “That’s it?” asks Tony.

               “Yep.”

               “Needs work,” he says.

               “Is that where you got it?” asks Mike, the substitute schoolteacher.

               I don’t look at him and just stare at the pint glass. “Nah.”

               Mike doesn’t really care much, so he goes back to his beer. I take a sip of my beer, and it tastes the same as every single beer I’ve ever had.

               Now, as Joyce and Fred giggle at the other end of the bar, I think back to the real story of how we got the Little Red Popcorn Maker. I would never share that story with these people.

               James was eight years old, and we’d gone to his elementary school carnival. To me, the carnival was just another one of life’s annoyances, but to him – I knew the feeling. When I was young, showing my dad my world beat everything.

               At the carnival, they had the usual games, throwing a ping pong ball into something, picking the right rubber ducky, and knocking down some cans. James dominated. He was winning everything. When we walked to the prize booth, there it was, the Little Red Popcorn Maker.

               “That one,” he said to Mrs. Jones. She was Brian’s mother. Brian was his best friend.

               “That’s awesome,” I told James. “You really earned it.”  One time, when I was getting a bit loaded at Hank’s, I thought about that time, and I realized it was the last good thing I ever said to the boy.

               “Let’s go try it, daddy.”

               We went home and watched movies and ate popcorn. James’ brown-haired head bobbed up and down as he chewed the popcorn in front of us on the floor. Susie put her head on my shoulder. I could smell the sweet shampoo smell on her wavy hair. She was happy because I didn’t smell like liquor. That was the last time I thought of us as a family.

               Now, Susie and I barely speak. When we’re in the house at the same time, we go to our different spots. I’m not sure about her, but I know exactly where to go to avoid her.

               And I’m not sure when it happened, or how it happened, but I just sort of put her in the Do Not Throw Away Space in my mind. I have no idea why either of us sticks around. But I suppose, what else can we do?

               And now, I just have this pretend girlfriend at a pretend dive bar. I watch Joyce across the bar with Fred. She disgusts me.

               And now, that’s what kills me. What I can’t explain is that at one time I couldn’t wait to be around Susie. And today, Susie is at home, and poor Fred is fighting off Joyce’s drunken come-ons.

               Suddenly, Joyce starts making a huge racket. She isn’t yelling or trying to be noisy, she’s just cackling and talking so loudly that the entire bar is vibrating with her voice. Poor Fred is turning all sorts of red.

               “Hey Joyce,” yells Tony, “keep it down or I’m cutting you off.”

               She flips him the bird.

               Somebody is playing pool on the other side of the bar and the balls clack into each other with a noise so sharp that it stings my eyes. I put my elbows on the bar and my chin in my hands. I stare at a bottle of Maker’s Mark whisky on the shelf behind the bar. Its red waxy top drips down the neck like blood. It reminds me of church and Jesus.

Susie makes us go on Easter and Christmas. When we go to church, and if I’m not too hungover, I like to close my eyes and do a stupid breathing game that makes me feel spiritual. Breathe in God, Breathe out me. Breathe in God, Breathe out me.

I don’t know why, but it soothes me. Last Christmas, the first one that James skipped, it was really bad between me and Susie, and I was really hung over. I woke up with a ripping, white light fear because I had no idea where I was, or where I’d been the night before. I looked at the clock and it was 8:05. Susie was ready for church bustling around downstairs. I got up and suddenly my woozy head plopped to my stomach, and I had to run to the bathroom to throw up.

               On the drive, I desperately tried to think of how I got home from Hank’s, or whether I even went to Hank’s. Susie drove because I could barely see a straight line through my blurred vision. I looked at her from the passenger seat and I could see her jaw muscle popping out from clenching her teeth. We didn’t talk at all that day. But in church, I remember making myself pray. All I could come up with was some whiny plea. Well God, I’m standing on nothing, she probably hates me, and I barely have a memory anymore. You’re all I have Sir. Please, I don’t want to go to hell. And that was it.

               Now, trying to block out Joyce, I think of a cross we used to see when my dad would take us on drives to the farms of the Oxnard Plain. We’d take a back road through a nice valley full of farms and T.V. looking houses. I’d look at the dusty, dry foothills to the left. I’d always try to search out a big white cross that sat at the top of the ridge.

               Suddenly I want to get out of here. There’s a guy who stands on a corner close to home who is always shouting about Jesus. I want to talk to him, but what would I say?

               I feel guilty about bringing the Little Red Popcorn Maker into the bar. I don’t even know these people, and James was so proud of it.

               I feel sick with shame as Susie’s image comes into my mind. I can’t stand any of them.  Joyce, Tony, the drinkers, the losers, and everything else in this bar.

               I want to call Susie and tell her tomorrow we’ll go to church, but I can’t even remember what day it is, or where she went.

I’m bound to nothing, and I look at the dripping red wax, wondering if the blood can still save me.

From the deepest part of my belly, giant tears gush. I can’t stop crying. None of them know, and I drop my face into my forearms. I can smell the disgusting stench of old booze on the bar.

               All I want to do is go home, but I’m too far gone to remember the way.