EDITOR'S NOTE: So we're a day late and a dollar short. Sorry.

The point of the exercise was for James and I to have a drink, but as I watched him sit across from me at a table at the 4th Street Bar and talk on his cellular phone I felt that I might as well as been having a beer by myself. It was a well voiced pet peeve of mine to be anywhere with someone while they spoke to another who wasn't present, a rule I set forth to eliminate any possible crazies from my life but as technology advanced it evolved into a hatred of the modern communication device. James didn't smoke – whereas I was up to two and a half packs a day – and I blew a continuous stream of smoke into his face, generally aiming for the eyes, but with smoke, it really had a tendency to go where ever it wanted. He waved it away and grimaced in my direction like a mother would have done to a problem child she'd given up on.

I listened in to bits and pieces of his conversation and felt as though I could make the assumption that it was one of poor quality and not worth leaving a friend alone in a bar for but he was too busy taking part in it for him to stand back from it and experience from a similar distanced perspective. I tried flirting with the waitress, a girl who I knew I had no chance with but I hoped regardless, and as usual she blew me off with a cute but polite smile that said for the hundredth time no. It seemed as though the bar was split down the middle with people like me sitting opposite of people like James but for the most part none of the others like me seemed to have much of a problem with their friends.

Finally my smoke blowing became too much for James to stand and he muted his phone with his palm and said, "For Christ's sake, would you cut that out," to which I responded with a bird of my own but if he saw it, he didn't say anything to his friend on the line. After a few more minutes of watching him enjoy human interaction – of the most remote kind, but interaction nonetheless – I stood up and swaggered over to the Ms. Pacman/Galaga machine and pumped in a few quarters. I wasn't much for video games, but there was something undeniably sexy about a yellow chomping circle with a bow on top.

The first couple of levels were easy and I watched the animation of how Pacman and Ms. Pacman met then played the next two where I proceeded to lose all of my remaining lives in a rather short period of time and decided that instead of wasting my money on a game I knew I would never beat, I'd wander over to my waitress and see if I couldn't change my fortunes. She listened to my rambling account of the latest news item that she was too busy to take notice of when it first appeared in the paper, then asked her, not with much subtlety, whether she had a guy to which I'm sure the answer was no but that she couldn't say that to a bar patron. I was undeterred but, unlike me, she was forced to be there for a reason and was called over to a table and though I lingered for a minute to see if she was going to return, I eventually went back to James and his invisible friend.

"Hey," I said to him as though there was a secret I needed to tell.

He pointed to his phone and mouthed the words, "Just a second."

"Hey," I said again and again he said the same but with a finger held in the air as though to pause me.

"I'm out of here," I whispered. He furrowed his brow and I knew that though it was expected that I could read lips, he could not do the same. "I'm out of here," I said with exaggerated mouth movement for him to interpret but I knew that all it did was look more like a dubbed Chinese movie than actual English words. If I'd known American Sign Language I would have contorted my fingers into the position necessary to get across the message but I didn't so I didn't and he wasn't any clearer on what I was saying.

I had a math teacher once who said that actions spoke louder than words one time in class when two girls started a verbal argument which I'm sure he meant that giving the cold shoulder would mean more than screaming at each other but that they understood to be, "Fight after school in the parking lot," and followed through on. The phrase, for that reason, seemed to stick with me and I thought that I would try it out. It made more sense in that situation than the other phrase I was left with by my uncle which seemed to me to be something of a motto of his in, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." I drained the quarter of a pint left in my glass then stood up and pulled on my scarf and pea coat, ready to make for the door when James leapt up from his seat, again muting his friend on the other line who I was sure was nonplussed at my continued interruptions, and asked, "Hey, man, where are you going?"

"I'm going home man," I responded. We were both from California so "man" was a versatile word implying many many things. "It's cheaper to drink by myself at home."

"Look, man, I'm going to be off in just a minute. Stick around, I'll get you another beer."

I thought about it for a minute, thought about how he really dragged out the vowel on his "man" and realized that it was actually a plea, that he was going to be off in a second, or more likely the minute that was promised, and dropped back into my chair to wait in silence until my cute little waitress he'd flagged with a motion that came more from the wrist than the arm. When she arrived, he pointed at my glass and she took it for a refill. It then dawned on me that it was actually a great way to drink for free if I would have thought ahead. Had brought a book, I could drain a keg and read all night while James chatted away. But I hadn't and was reduced to watching whatever inane show happened to be on the bar's television that night.