Tequila and Knitting

I told him tequila and knitting don't mix, but of course he didn't listen. He never does, you know, not to someone like me. I warned him about the skylights, too, and the man with moccasins, and he didn't listen to me then, either. I'm not sure why I keep telling him. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, or maybe I just like to end up right.

It all started with the cab. A man gets into a cab with horns and he thinks he can do anything. Maybe if I had told the driver what he usually does, she wouldn't have driven him, but then, maybe she doesn't listen to people like me, either. We were just going to go bowling—see? How innocent is that? Harmless, unless you drop a ball on your foot or pull a muscle or slip on the waxed floor. We should have been okay. But he picked that cab with the speckled cow-hide and the horns, and it all went screwy.

“Wait, wait!” he said. “We wanna get off here!” And so we stopped, and got out, and it wasn't Bowl-O-Whammy but Polly's Knitting Emporium. The window was filled with skeins and needles and crochet hooks. Half-finished shawls draped from manikins. “You've always wanted to knit, right?” he said, and pulled me inside. He was only half-drunk, right, and it's not my fault, is it, that when he touches me my knees go to jelly so I couldn't haul him away.

“You've been drinking,” I said. “Let's go bowling. Tequila and knitting don't mix.” But he grinned, and even over the alcohol he smelled so good, and the yarn was so colorful and soft that I think my willpower melted into my sneakers.

“I don't wanna to bowl and you wanna knit. Lady,” he said, swinging his gaze to the woman at the register. “Where's a guy find a book to teach a lady how to knit?”

The woman was reading a novel. It had a man and woman dancing on the cover, and she didn't look up. She pointed towards a display. “Thanks 's' lot, lady,” he said, and scrutinized the rack. “Hey, look. This 'un's got a picture that looks like you. Go pick out some needles and yarn, how 'bout yah?”

I looked down to find there was already a skein of yarn in my hands, and I was petting it slowly. It was red and violet and felt like a kitten. “Ah, yah got some already, huh? I'll get yah some needles, then.” He rummaged through a collection of needles and came up with two crimson crochet hooks. “Here, look—these'll match your thread.”

I wanted to tell him that they wouldn't work, but maybe I was a little drunk, too, and he looked so pleased to have found them. They had such a gorgeous sheen. “Hey, lady, we'll buy these.” The cashier glanced at us long enough to see the items. He paid with a crisp twenty.

We still weren't far from his apartment, he saw, and it made sense to walk there with the supplies for my new hobby. He held the book while I fumbled with the needles, trying to make them work around the yarn, then had me hold it while he tried. The bundle of yarn fell twice before we reached the apartment. “Yah know,” he said as I let us inside, “I don't think these are the right needles.”

“Sure they are,” I said, because now they looked just fine to me. “It's just tequila and knitting don't mix.”

“Sure they do,” he said. “They're mixing right now. Look, they'll mix even more.” He picked up the bottle from the counter, half-empty, and took a swig before sprinkling the skein of yarn with the liquid. “Here, you mix 'em.” He handed me the bottle.

Maybe if I hadn't drank, too, it wouldn't have turned out so bad. It was just a bottle of tequila, some yarn, and crochet needles. But by morning the yarn was tangled across the kitchen and the needles were stuck in the couch pillows and we were passed out on the couch, covered in alcohol-bled yarn-dye. At least we hadn't put out each other's eyes with the crochet hooks, but I was still wishing I had dropped a bowling ball on my foot instead.

“Knitting and tequila don't mix,” I told him as he down an Advil and surveyed the damage.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “maybe they don't.”