the boy crossed his eyes, cut through double vision. zeroed in on their meal. bowties in place of spaghetti this time, tossed with a freshly made marinara. the single detail that sent the bridge burning. no ketchup. no candles, no kitten. no cigarette, for the moment, because the boy knew that was simply bad form.
Sonia gave the boy’s shin a light kick. told him that unless he made his own plate, it was up to him to carry the conversation.
so the boy leaned back, stretched his arms far over his head. launched into a story about a little robot in a laboratory. a sentient little creature whose masters had no idea he had achieved full awareness of himself. a best friend named Hamilton, experimental turkey trapped in a cage. star-crossed soul mates, destined for a life together were it not for one Christmas when the world would come crashing down around both of them, though three sentences short of killing them both, the boy trailed off.
it had carried them through the meal, and they lapsed into silence.
Sonia stole a cigarette. It’s six o’clock. we should go soon.
A walk for the digestion, Paxi offered.
Yes.
Excellent.
Maybe Blondie will be there, Sonia said, turning to the boy. “Have you had a chance to see him?
the boy lit his own cigarette and stood along with the rest. could be his name was Kenneth, though odds were just as good it was Lucky who turned to his chair. relegated some silent advice. filed out with the rest of them, taking one last look over his shoulder to catch the sunlight streaming through Sonia’s window, beyond which the rooftops of Santiago could still be seen.
If Found, Return to Wanda.
“Look at you,” Zephyr said. “You might as well be drinking your own tears.”
It was maybe fifteen past closing time. Noises off, regulars all gone home. Tables lousy with empty bottles, shot glasses. One or two chairs laid flat. Passed out, boozed out. Cigarette butts crushed into the floor. Space settling with tiny creaks, occasional pop from the pipes. A few barback lights left burning. Didn’t make for a very flattering refection, and so
I looked down into my drink, considered what Zephyr had told me.
“Those are ice cubes,” I said.
“You know what I’m saying.”
“Yeah, I suppose I do…”
“Drink up, Lucky.” Later hours made for a thicker accent, but I’d learned all the important phrases. “I’ll buy you another one.”
I knocked back the rest, got a fresh pour.
Zephyr opened the register, withdrew that night’s bank. Sifted through receipts and bar tabs, shuffled together like cards at The Trop. I lit a cigarette, chased it with a little Jack. Zephyr frowned through his spectacles. Ran a hand past his graying hair. Muttered when things didn’t add up, kept a straight face when all was as it should, line after line of arithmetic.
I glanced down past my jeans and worn dress shoes, noticed some broken glass.
“Zephyr,you want me to clean a little house? Grab the broom or something?”
“Nah,” he replied, distracted. “We’ll do that tomorrow.”
“What about the cat?”
“Cat’s asleep in the kitchen. Don’t worry about it, Lucky. Have your drink.”
Fine idea, seconds from the making when
Three knocks clocked in at the front door.
“Who the fuck is this, now?” Zephyr tossed his paperwork aside, glancing up.
I threw one over my shoulder.
Saw a pair of men waving, motioning for us to unlock the door. Behind them, a second figure stood on the steps leading up to Macdougal, where even the slices and falafel joints were contemplating an early night.
I didn’t recognize any of them, though Zephyr must have.
“Open the door, Lucky,” he told me.
I stumbled over, turn of the key.
Let them in along with mid-December catastrophe.
The two men were dressed in matching suits, all flash and flare. Faces beaming, chock full of that Christmas cheer. Heads bobbing. Dreadlocks swinging. Joyous greetings as their third wheel followed in their footsteps; clothesline of a woman wearing a white blouse. Blue jeans clinging to insect legs. Denim jacket. Bleached blond hair, hard features. Color of her eyes up for debate. First day of the rest of her life, buried six feet beneath all previous ones.
I watched her walk the line.
Locked the door, trotted back to the bar. The blonde had parked herself next to my seat, a toothy grin twice removed from her actual one. She caught me staring. I tried to smile. She gave me the once over and ran her tongue over her lips.
Unsure of what to do, I cautiously mirrored the gesture.
Now we were both confused.
I knocked back my drink, picked up the broom and began sweeping.
Zephyr and the late arrivals began to argue.
I kept an open ear, followed their conversation.
Realized I didn’t speak Creole, and gave it up for broken glass and crushed coasters.
The blonde stared into space, bony fingers sparking a cigarette.
The argument cut out with one swift handshake. A simple twist of the tap, as the two Haitians went into the kitchen, blonde trailing along with spiraling wisps of smoke.
Zephyr went back to his books, muttering.
I lit a cigarette. Kept sweeping.
Checked the kitchen door, bright light streaming through its compact, rectangular windows.
Back to Zephyr. “Santa come early this year?” I asked.
“Fucking assholes want to bring that fucking prostitute in here. I’m trying to tell them to go back to their own fucking place.”
“What’s that now?”
“The blonde, Lucky. Why do they have to bring that into my fucking bar, man?” He poured me another. “It’s depressing. We get enough problems in here. Enough pain. Got this poor woman doing whatever she has to do. Nobody should have to do whatever they have to do, you know it?”
Then he stopped. Tilted his head to the right, listening.
I tilted my head as well, tried my best to tap into it.
“What?” I asked.
“Shh… Listen…”
Well, the bar stayed quiet for a full minute. Jack Daniel’s anxiously awaiting my return. I was close to losing interest, when the first muffled moan hit home.
“mmmm.”
I rested my chin against the broom handle.
Strained my ears.
A smile spread over Zephyr’s face.
“mmmphmmm.”
Zephyr giggled, hand over his mouth. Brain somersaulting, sunny side up. Wizened philosophy replaced with the juvenile pleasure of a peek behind the peep show curtains.
More sounds from the kitchen: “Oh, yes, baby. Yes…that’s right. Oh, that feels so good, baby. Take that down, yes…”
Zephyr laughed, then stopped. Face serious. Righteousness and gross voyeurism finally laying down their arms. His lips twitched beneath his mustache as he continued to thumb through his greenbacks.
“Fucking idiots,” he muttered.
I strained, lonely ears listening for further scrapbook sounds. Straddling the fence. Envisioning the blonde’s bleak and disenchanted aggression. Kept listening. Caught bits and pieces here and there, and soon enough, a different shade made its way into the bar. Sounds of a sluggish conversation. Half-managed laugh or two squeezing under the kitchen door before a sharp escalation. Bypassing argument, blooming into a volley of angry accusations. Outright shouting.
Zephyr looked up from his numbers. “What the fuck is this, now?”
The two Haitians burst back into the bar.
Blonde in hot pursuit.
“No fucking way, woman!” one of them yelled. “No fucking way we are paying you!”
“No fucking way,” number two chimed in.
“You wanted head, you got head!” the blonde yelled.
Zephyr and I exchanged a pair of silent Goddamnits.
“WE are not PAYING for that shi
t!”
“I didn’t even come!”
The blonde’s face disappeared for an instant. I don’t know if the others saw it, but under city streets and the subterranean trap of dying candles, her features simply vanished. Replaced with less than a second of barren fields before emerging from the darkest depths, dragging someone else out with her.
“What the fuck are your trying to pull, MOTHER FUCKER?” she screamed. “YOU FUCKING CAME and I FELT IT, you KNOW it!”
“Pull WHAT, pull NOTHING!”
“I CAN STILL TASTE IT, YOU FUCKING PRICK!”
“GET THE FUCK OUT!”
“NOT WITHOUT MY FUCKING MONEY!”
No hopes for a happy ending here.
Expletives overlapping. Reverb screams of unsatisfied customers, the wild rage of a jilted working girl. A Rubik’s Cube of messy accusation as the blonde reached into her sequined purse, came back at them with a blade. Held out at arm’s length, brandished in side-winding silver rainclouds.
“Pay me my FUCKING money!”
I watched, terrified. Mesmerized by the flash of a cheap switch.
A lazy summary of my nineteen years on planet earth, as everyone’s hands went up in the air.
“Hey, relax, girl…”
“Yeah, calm down, baby. There’s no need for that.”
“Relax…”
“It’s cool.”
“Two hundred,” the blonde replied. “Now.”
“Two hundred?”
“You said one hundred for the both of us.”
The blonde shrugged. “Well, times have changed.”
“Oh, shit,” Zephyr said, right about the time I felt something brush against my leg. “You woke up the fucking cat.”
There was Moses, tabby indifference taking my shin for a joyride.
The laughter came pouring out of me.
I couldn’t help it, because this was just another story. Another classic example of something that happened to other people. Not me. Never me, one hundred times over.
No stopping it, and then the knife was aimed at my throat.
A good foot away, truth be told, but space was relative to circumstance.
“Something funny?” the blonde asked.
I closed my mouth.
I couldn’t put my smile on hold, though. Like an image sent through the iris, flipped upside down. Trapped in the darkroom. Nothing funny, nothing to sneeze at in the gruesome magic of after hours.
“I asked you a question,” the blonde managed through her teeth. “What’s so funny?”
I still had no answer. I had, actually, none of them.
That was when she pressed the knife close to my neck, my veins dangerously close to escape.
“I ASKED IF THERE WAS SOMETHING FUNNY ABOUT ALL THIS?”
“Yes…” I managed, as Zephyr and the two Haitians looked on, helpless. “Wait, no. There isn’t. I thought there might be. And then there’s the whole other side. I don’t know, I’d feel like I was cheating you if I said both, but I really think…” I paused, noticed her eyes lose interest over the course of my rambling. “Fine, yes, both. No. Neither. All of it, hell, fuck it.” There were gutters out there on the streets that knew more about this world than I ever would. “Yes. Yes, this is funny — though it doesn’t look as though I’m still going to be laughing come sunrise.”
But I was.
And I didn’t die that night.
Turns out 4:55 in the morning just wasn’t my time.
Though, truth be told, when Wanda told me the story, one lazy morning at Creole Nights, I gave her fair warning.
“That’s a good one,” I had told her. “Don’t think for a moment I won’t be stealing it.”
“A race to the finish…” Her blue eyes were rapturous, and she raised her glass. “Starting now.”
We pounded some Jack Daniel’s.
Smoked cigarettes.
Compared notes.
No plans to make that night our last one on earth.
And like a stockbroker in a leather bondage mask, or the laughable request from a literary journal, I am, and always will be open
to all submissions.
Corrective. Elective. Ruby.
Before she left me for the Champs-Élysées, Helena had clocked in a good six months at an upper-east side dive colloquially known as Red Rum. Long after it was over between us, I’d find myself stopping by. The food was bad, the beer rank. On more than one occasion, some poor sod got his face separated from his head. Cops, paramedics, the whole jellyroll.
Still, when they know you, they know you. The price was almost always right, the lighting a low and jealous red. Bathroom graffiti sporting some of the more blissful gems ever engraved on plastered walls.
Above all else, though, it was Ruby.
Ruby was a vision from the Windy City who never spoke much about her hopes beyond tending bar. Straight, black bob with trimmed bangs. A body that came complete with black jeans, sturdy legs, and a plain, white tee that gave both men and women plenty of reason to stay for just one more.
“Fake tits,” some would mutter after she served them with a pint and a smile. “Got to be fake tits.”
“No fucking way,” a drunk wingman would counter.
“How’s that?”
“Just look at her face.”
“Are you fucking insane, she’s fucking hot.”
“Take a closer look next time she comes around.”
I would switch stations, ears to the jukebox, and try to get as much domestic into me as last call would allow.
***
For whatever reason, Ruby was always kind enough to let my ego rest. No extraneous flirting, teasing, or counterfeit grins. Didn’t suggest, or imply. No cellophane hopes past our usual late night talks, and that suited me fine. I’d hold her eyes while she spoke. We’d tell stories. The call would come, and down the bar she would go, trolling for tips. Resting her breasts on folded forearms, looking to boost her bottom line .
***
Maybe she didn’t figure me for the kind of guy who wanted to grab her by the hair. Can’t entirely say she figured right. Because the drooling pronouncements of male clientele weren’t entirely wrong; Ruby did have a body built for brash fantasies. But for me, even beyond those spherical eyes and the bracket of her welcoming smile, there was her face. Round cheeks and forehead a gallery of imbedded pockmarks. Craters and potholes. Scars that would suggest an acne riddled youth, only that wasn’t the whole story.
Wasn’t so long ago that Ruby had been involved in a lawsuit. A major cosmetics line that had failed to mention their beauty cream might prove hazardous for zero-point-zero-two percent of the population. Naturally, they calculated the odds and took their chances. Said odds landed all over Ruby’s face, and the chemical reaction sizzled against her skin like glacial acid. Left behind a litany of scar tissue, even with what little surgery her insurance would allow.
Two years’ worth of litigation proved to be too rich for her blood. Ruby never got close to that settlement. The cosmetic company chewed up her lawyers, spat them out. Mopped the floor with her ruined face. Left her broke and languishing behind the bar of Red Rum.
“How they treating you tonight?” I would ask.
“The same,” she would say.
“Don’t ever change a thing about you.”
“Please. What would this world be like if everyone saw it through your eyes?”
“There’d be a lot more sky.”
She would pour me a pint, on the house, and move on down.
I would sit and drink. Think about the future with carefully hidden nerves, and from time to time, I’d catch Ruby, just staring absently into barback mirrors.
***
We said our goodbyes without realizing it, one hot night in early late June.
I had taken the express up to Eighty-Sixth. Crossed from Lexington down to Second Avenue, cutting through Rupert Park. The sound of live music came at me. Grew louder as I forded the street. Had to step to the
bouncer before realizing that Red Rum was hosting a live show.
“Twenty dollar cover,” the bouncer informed me.
“Twenty? This is Red Rum, am I right?”
“Right place, yeah. Wrong night, maybe.”
“What’s the story?”
“Live music. Playing a benefit for one of the bartenders.”
Shit, I thought, flashing my ID. Cancer? Aids? Open heart surgery?
Pushed on through the door and paid the gate.
Right into a tin of sardines. People plastered shoulder to shoulder, barely enough room to lift their drinks. Lit cigarettes dangerously close to neighboring necks, cheeks and eyeballs. Had to fight through the thick stew of bodies and second hand smoke. Rock and Roll some several decibels above its pay grade.
I managed to squeeze against the bar. Leaned over, searching towards the back, where the tables had been cleared to make room for the band. High above their trucker hats hung a wide, white banner, reading:
SAVE THE FACE!
I caught Kieran rushing past, setting down three overflowing pints of Bass.
Called him out.
He nodded, winked. Hair gelled into a bed of perfect spikes. He played favorites, sliding past requests to land at my doorstep. “What’ll it be, Lucky?”
“What the hell is going on?” I yelled over the roar of lead guitar.
“Benefit for Ruby!”
“Benefit for what, what’s wrong with her?”
“Raising money for caustic perjury!”
“Say what!?”
“Plastic surgery!” He pointed to his own handsome mug and traced a few circles. “Raising money to help Ruby fix up her face!”
The natives were restless, no time to let it sink in. “Why!?”
“You’ve seen it! She’s got those scars, wants to get rid of them!”
“That’s not what I—”
“What can I get you, Lucky?”
Fine. “Double Jack, rocks!”
Kieran went to fetch, as I strained to find a face in the crowd.
Saw Ruby sitting further down the bar. Head propped upon her wrist, laughing as she tried to capture her straw, take a good pull of what looked like a blue Hawaiian.
I fought my way to her side.
“Hey, Lucky!” She waved her hand in front of my eyes. “Thanks for making it out!”
Felt her breath on my lips, pineapple and Curaçao.