Will, Bound and Free

[phantasm]

In the very bowels of the I.R.S., a woman is hard at work at her desk auditing tax dodgers and harassing organized criminals. Audry Vicar works the phones, runs to the copy machine on her floor, hunts down evidence of wrongdoing. She does it day in and day out, and she does it in a short skirt and high heels, avoiding the cat calls while showing off just enough leg to the boss to keep her job. Audry knows too well the tightrope wound in razor blades she walks in her job every day.

But the stress is getting to her. All the calling and yelling at people who are luckless enough to pick up the phone when she calls makes her feel battered by a live cat being swung into her calf and digging in its' claws to keep itself alive. After a while pieces of her soul are starting to feel flayed.

So today she crashes in the cafeteria, desperate to get away from her desk, intensely focused on the bad tuna salad she has just bought. She closes her eyes and focuses on the texture of the third-rate food, allowing the flavor to fill up her consciousness. The taste of tuna beats back the relentless numbers, numbers that harass her as much as they do the poor saps they're attached to.

"Is this seat taken?" Another woman asks. Audry snaps awake and looks at her. It's Nancy, a woman she's seen around. Her cubicle is maybe 5 yards down from Audry's.

"Oh, no, go right ahead," she says absentmindedly.

"You must really like tuna. This place serves awful food," Nancy says.

"Meh," Audry mumbles. Somehow, the conversation is not helping her day. She just keeps her mouth shut and munches thoroughly on her tuna salad. 30 seconds pass in this way.

Finally, Nancy asks, concerned, "Hey, are you all right?"

After another long pause, Audry decides to let her guard down, just a little.
"I think this job is getting to me."

The other woman laughs nervously. "The job will do that to you after a few tax seasons."

"No, I mean, this JOB IS GETTING TO ME!" Audry sobs. "I am so good at numbers and math, in high school I took trigonometry just because it sounded like fun. And it was one of my all-time favorite classes! But, this job," she sniffles. "I hate this job. I hate trying to catch thousands of people in the act of breaking the law, I hate calling phones that never get picked up, I hate being treated like the bad guy. I don't know how much longer I can hold out."

By now the two women are hugging and crying. They hold on like that for a good minute.

"Would you like to join me and some of the others here for a drink after work?" Nancy asks.

"What...?" Audry asks. "You mean as in alcohol, in a bar?" Nancy nods yes encouragingly. "I've..... never drunk much. It just wasn't a part of my family or friends when I was growing up. I was raised in a Baptist church."

"Well, it sounds to me like you could use a drink." Audry feels something inside her. Like she's running up to two gates, one on the left, one on the right. And she has to choose which one to run through. One word will turn her this way or that.

"Yes." The particle that is her body and mind flies through the slit on the left. "Yeah, I'd like that."

"Great!" Nancy says.

Audry then goes back to work. She focuses on her work, but the drink waiting for her on the other side of her punch-out helps her get through it, even before she takes a single sip. She calls her live-in boyfriend Mark and lets him know she'll be coming home later than usual.

[phantasm]

It is very late when Audry comes home, 10:30 pm. Mark sees her pull into the apartment complex's parking lot haphazardly from their fifth-floor window.

"Audry! Thank god!" He says, jumping up from watching T.V. He waits for her momentarily. He doesn't hear her at first, but then he hears footsteps staggering up towards the last flight of steps. He bursts into the hallway and sees her hauling herself up by the handrail. She is so drunk she can scarcely stand. Mark immediately grabs her and helps her finish the flight of stairs and gets into the apartment.

"Oh, Audry, what have you done?" He asks, compassionate and bewildered. "What have you been drinking?"

"All I had... were.... six glasses of......... something called scotch." She hiccups. She is looking unwell.

"SIX?" He shouts. "Oh, Audry." He slams the door behind them. And that's when Audry opens her mouth wide and vomits. On the expensive parquet floor. The floor they both fell in love with when they moved in. The putrid smell wafts throughout the living room. Mark helps her into the bathroom, then cleans up her mess, by now beginning to eat into the surface of the finely crafted wood. He hears her barfing more into the just-recently-cleaned toilet.

As she flushes the toilet, he kneels down and asks, "Why? Why? Why did you drink so much when you've hardly ever drunk before?"

Audry says, "All I wanted... was to feel better. One drink-- made me feel okay. Another, made me... feel even MORE okay. The fourth drink, I really felt happy again. I just... kept drinking.... til, the barkeep cut me off. At least I feel like I'm human again!"

Her saying that last thing knocks him back on his heels.

"I thought you liked your job. I thought you liked the life we're building together. I thought you liked the parquet floors."

"ID... DO!" She slurs. "But, my job. I hate my job."

"You can quit your job tomorrow. We'll break the lease and find a smaller apartment. We can sort this out togeth---"

"NOOO!" She shrieks. "I, ned, need the job. I don't want to leave my home."

"All right," he says compassionately. "As long as you promise me you won't drink again."

"I promise," she says.

[phantasm]

But she breaks her promise. Again, and again, and again. For a while she does not let Mark get wind of it. She drinks with the girls and learns of ways to hide it all from him. All the women in the drinking circle work together to cover for each other, with work and with their families, coordinating drinking times at their bar of choice. The bar is full of working women who pull double or triple shifts in work they hate and love to maintain their familiar lives. Lives in which their husbands and boyfriends pull at least full-time work themselves, if they're lucky enough to not be unemployed or on Social Security. Audry is lucky that her boyfriend works. It's the only way to maintain the apartment they have.

Until she screws up. She goes to the bar at an untimely time.

Mark is driving through town on an errand for his boss just after 4:30, to a part of town he usually does not go. As he flies through downtown, he's forced to stop at a stoplight. He glances to his left at the bar there and sees Audry's car there!

"What the hell!?" He asks himself. Angry, he pulls in. He reads the license plate to confirm it's her. It's her car, all right. He can feel himself radiating hate, loathing, pity, love. He strides into the women's bar. He sees her sitting at the bar with a dozen other women, laughing and cavorting and drinking hard liquor. And then she sees him out of the corner of her eye. She looks right at him, right into his eyes.

Mark sighs deeply, turns his face away, and walks out of the bar, feeling profoundly disappointed.

[phantasm]

Back at the office, having bought the stuff he was sent out to get, Mark pops into the walk-in closet that was converted into a break room. Four other guys are gathered around, munching on junk food from the vending machine in the hallway.

In his disappointment, he feels like he's gained 20 pounds. He crashes in the nearest chair.

"Audry is still drinking," he says. "I don't know how she's hidden it. I should've seen the signs. Her skittishness at times. Her excuses. But I saw it with my own eyes just half an hour ago."

"Well, I know my Kate has been drinking heavily for YEARS," Jesse says.

"Really?" Says Lance. "Well, I know my fiancee has been drinking ever since I proposed to her six months ago. I don't know what to do about it."

Andrew says, "All three of my sisters make easily four times as much as I do in this job, and they all have serious drinking problems.

"My 25-year-old daughter started drinking exactly one year after she took a high-powered lawyer job in the Big Apple," says Vince, the honored elder of the group.

"My God." Mark contemplates this on seemingly a spiritual plane. "Our lovers and our sisters, our daughters, they're all developing a drinking problem. We have *got* to solve this problem somehow!"

"How?" Lance asks.

"I don't know yet," Mark admits. "But I'll figure it out."

[phantasm]

Exactly nine months later, at a political rally for a Presidential candidate, Mark, all the co-workers from around the table that day, and 400 other men are front and center, hording attention. They are waving signs and placards of various kinds:

"MAWD: Men Against Women Drinking"

"Alcoholic women are destroying the home!"

"Women! Be good examples to our kids! Stop Drinking NOW!"

"Drink booze and you'll lose!"

"Mr. candidate president, make our women stop drinking!"

"My wife blew her paycheck on tequila and now our kids are eating out of garbage dumps! Stop women from drinking!"

"Alcohol is from the devil!"

"Be divine, stop drinking wine!"



A movement to make it illegal for women to drink is sweeping the nation. Men of good character are standing up to be counted. New legislation is being demanded of Washington, D.C. to restrict the sale of spirited drinks.

Hmmmm, where are we going with this?

[anirbas]

I don't know...But, I do know...I like sweet red wine and merlot...And shiraz...gigglegiggle...And I adore this phrase...

"knows too well the tightrope wound in razor blades"

Story of my life, Phantofriend...cryptic lol...Story of my life...

Excellent line...Wish I'd thunk it myself...

[phantasm]

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to notice this story.


I'd heard on the radio one morning on the radio that more women than ever are drinking heavily. Something made me want to turn that into a short story. Made me think of the Prohibition Era. Maybe the thing I wrote was crumby, I pretty much dashed it off in a few hours. Some reason, I just wanted it......

[phantasm]

Anybody else read the story?

[heartfelt7]

You're a natural, Phantasm. I read each segment and got a kick out of the continuing story. I did not much like the politicians getting involved, but there is much in politics I don't like. Nice going.

[phantasm]

Thanks!

Well, I had a bit of teleology in my head. All I knew was I wanted to work towards an ironical 'bring back prohibition' motif. I didn't want to take too long getting there, either. Not that I think that's ACTUALLY going to happen, it just struck my funny bone when I heard that blurb on the radio that one morning.

[anirbas]

Stopping by to do something I meant to do the other night in here, but, I'd already dispensed my daily exalt.

So, now, back to give piece, justice-*exalt*!