“Six O’clock Somewhere” (fiction)

Photo by Dylan Fout on Unsplash

The choice to ignore the phone was easy, but the self-control to tolerate the ringing was hard. The hotel’s old phone didn’t have a switch to shut off the ringer. He’d checked. Still, the fact that it was the hotel phone and not his cell phone gave him hope. He looked from the phone to the digital clock next to it. Frustratingly, 6 p.m. was too early to go to bed.

The phone stopped. It felt good when it stopped.

The day had echoed for him at its end, shaking his head so much that it soon shook his body as well, and he had lain in the hotel bed twitching since getting home from the event center. Each contortion felt like he was throwing out a little piece of the garbage that the day had filled him with. It provided the relief of licking chapped lips.

After some time, he got up and walked over to the coffeemaker by the bathroom. At first, he forgot to put water in, and the machine hissed when he added it. He stood in front of the clunky machine as it brewed, watching it steam. When it was done, he emptied the carafe into one of the hotel’s Styrofoam cups and took it back to the bed.

As he sat down, the phone rang again. With a sigh, he answered it.

“Hello,” he said, holding the thick receiver with his shoulder and the coffee in his other hand.

“Marshall, where have you been?”

“Marissa? Why are you calling me in the room?”

“Because you haven’t been answering your phone.”

“I’ve been at the convention. I’ve made some contacts that will work out very well for us,” he said.

“There are things that matter besides the convention, yes?” College had given her that annoying way of making comments that sounded like questions.

“There’s a lot that matters besides the convention, but eating and paying bills isn’t so bad either, yes?” he said.

She ignored it. “Jake had to come home from school today.”

“Why wasn’t he in school?”

“The bus passed a tractor-trailer truck on the way there. They couldn’t calm him down, so they sent him home.”

“Jake had to go home from school because he saw a truck,” he confirmed flatly.

“You know it’s more than that.”

It was more than that.

“Today was one of the dark ones. He needed you,” she said.

“There’s a lot of trucks in the world. He’s going to need to learn how to be around them.”

“He needed you today,” she pleaded.

“I’m not his father.” He said and paused before adding, “I’m here now.”

“Ever heard of checking your messages? One phone call from you during lunch could have saved the day.”

He gritted his teeth. “I was at the convention during lunch. Listen, I know what he means to you, but he’s going to need to be able to do everyday shit without having to talk to someone about it.”

“He’s put up with enough shit — enough of your shit,” she said.

“People drive trucks,” he shouted.

She sighed. “We both know that the core of the situation is not the truck, it is — “

He interrupted her with his shouting. “Everything was fine before you started in. Just like always, everything was fineuntil you started in with your bullshit.”

“You’re a real asshole, Marshall,” she said before hanging up.

He put the receiver down and took a sip of coffee that turned violent by its end. Finishing the coffee in one gulp, he tossed the empty cup toward the trashcan. It landed on the floor. He looked at the clock again: still basically 6 p.m.

“It’s 5 o’clock somewhere,” he said randomly. Didn’t Jimmy Buffett sing a song like that?

He thought of the dumb kid screaming his lungs out because he saw a truck. The other kids must think he’s a freak.

“It’s 6 o’clock somewhere,” he said as he stretched out on the bed. “We each got our 6 o’clock.”

He wondered what the kid was doing with his 6 o’clock. Dumb kid has got to be tired after losing it like that.

“It’s 6 o’clock here,” he said as he closed his eyes.