#5

Several desires milled about in my mind.

The first was to gouge out my eyes so that I wouldn't have to look at Bat's face, oozing with the sheepishness of a man who'd just realized he was a serial killer.

The others were along those lines, but much meaner. Too mean to type out.

"Bat, that's my friend you are talking about," I squeaked at first, then found some of that anger and put it through my vocal cords. "And now I have a mental image that inspires thoughts of nothing but suicide."

"Oh, come on Alex. Like you've never wanted to tap that..." he whined; I had to stop him once again.

"Stop. First of all, don't defend yourself with overused rap lyrics. You are from rural Kansas, you do not relate to Snoop Dogg, Nelly, Nas, or any other person in that branch of the recording industry.

"Second," I was on fire, and the kids at the surrounding tables were leaning in to hear while pretending not to notice.

"Katie and I have a platonic relationship based on trust, do not speak of her in that fashion. Hell, don't use those words about any friend of mine around me."

All the while, Bat kept trying to speak but was overrun like a turtle under a steamroller by my barrage of angry sputtering.

"Third, while most girls who say they intend to wait until marriage to fuck someone ultimately become liars, Katie is hell-bent on her chastity plans. I've seen guys limp out of bars after she put a stun gun to their genitals because they dared to hit on her, and this was before she started this relationship with you."

I paused and glared, my bloodshot eyes looking straight through Bat at CNN on the big screen behind him. The NASDAQ was up 20 points, at least there was some good news.

"And above all, you're telling me you did this on the day we promised to toast Reg?"

He didn't answer, I suppose I had finally beaten down so many of his attempts to speak that he had given up.

"Well, did I miss anything?" I demanded.

"No, you pretty much summed it up there," he sighed. "But I know you've always been jealous that I have Katie and you have, well, nothing."

"That is not only a steaming pile of bullshit, but beyond the point," I screamed quietly. Bat had somehow put me on the defense. "I already told you my relationship with Katie is entirely platon..."

"Hey, I'm not the dude who keeps befriending girls in hopes they'll screw him out of boredom," he said, coming in for the kill. "I mean, hasn't life taught you that women never date guys for being nice, they date them for image?"

I just sat there dumbfounded, the patrons at the surrounding tables no longer concealing their interest but looking directly at us. My intent was to demolish Bat with guilt, but he was cutting me to ribbons with this.

"Here's what you are, Alex," he said while I tried to bring this to a halt, but he washed right over me. "You are a man who is always there for the women in your life, you listen to their thoughts and problems and hopes and dreams, you care about what they say and how they feel, and you treat them with respect. Am I right?"

His scowl had become a look of triumph. I couldn't deny this, and I wouldn't dare confirm it, so I just kept on looking at him. Then he threw a gauntlet across my face.

"Shit, Alex, you might as well be gay, you might as well be Katie's gay friend," he crowed.

I found my mental footing.

"Where the fuck does this come from, Bat? Where? What the hell makes you so special compared to me?" I was re-engaging the target. "And what the hell did you do to make Katie... make her... no, wait, I really don't ever want to know."

He wrinkled his face like he'd been stung in the cheek half an hour before by a bee.

"I'm just defending myself, Alex, that's all," he said, rediscovering his smirk. "As for Katie? I took her ring shopping after lunch cuz we ate at the mall. I took down a bunch of notes, stressed her ring size, and then I went to her apartment for the studying and," he paused to judge if I wanted hear any more, "well, you can figure out the rest."

"So when's the wedding?" I inquired. His pause had given me time to plan my next offense, and his smirk was gone.

"Well, at the time, I really meant that I wanted to marry her," he hemmed and hawed his way through that, and I cut him off.

"But what?" I demanded, not liking where this was headed. "Is she your future wife, or a wind-up sex toy?"

"I'm not so sure now," he almost moaned. "I mean, yeah, we've been dating a year now, I thought we should talk about it, and she was so happy to see those rings so I just kept the momentum going from there."

"So you lied to get in her pants, Bat?" The phrase felt sour coming from me, but at least I had him cornered and the guilt I'd wanted all along poured out of his eyes. "Now, as for being nice, that just comes naturally to me, and it's all I have. We aren't all born with expensive cars, a famous family or greek letters on all our shirts like you. Some of us have to make do with what we got."

I stood and grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder, flinging a rooster tail of water out a few of the spectators our conversation had accumulated. I pushed through a few more of them and made my way out of the Union.

I didn't tell Bat goodbye. I didn't even look at him after I got up from the table.

I shuffled my feet down the stairs, and there was Katie, sitting at a table with our mutual friend Jenny. Jenny was holding her 8-month-old daughter Selena, and Katie had that look of parental-whimsy in her eyes, which were locked on the kid.

Jenny spotted me and waved me over. I wanted to avoid speaking with Katie very much at this particular moment and prayed for something less painful to occur; like maybe a dentist would appear and give me a root canal with a pipe cleaner.

Instead, I carried myself over for a conversation I expected be as dangerous as a matchbook salesman in a powder keg.