in progress
“I really don’t know where I am.”
Catherine moved her eyes a bit but stayed still. I was too tired to explain but what I meant was this scene couldn’t belong to anybody, to any particular time. We sat in a yellowing diner where the waitresses wore mint uniforms and clacked mint gum and ducked beneath a slotted aluminum overhang out back, next to the dumpster, to smoke menthols on their break. There was nothing of interest on the table between us – a dirty glass ashtray, two coffee cups encompassed by spent cream containers, stacked together and jammed full of empty sugar packets, and Catherine’s hands, clasped tightly. A dull rain fell towards the window but made no sound. Light jazz, possibly George Benson, seemed faintly discernible, but I may have assumed it was there. Few customers were here, all seated alone, and for the last hour nobody had come in or out. I felt alone, too – Catherine’s eyes were matte, unrecognizable. It mattered little if I could name this place; she was long gone.
I signaled the waitress for more coffee. I didn’t really want any, and Catherine’s cup was nearly full, but it was something to do.
Cream, sugar, sugar; more waste. My hands were jittery and I splashed hot liquid on my wrist as I pulled the cup towards my lips. “One last drive.”
“No.” Her eyes shifted again, flickered a moment towards mine. “Where would we go?”
I imagined launching the car through the diner’s plate glass window, shattering the painted-on lettering advertising “The Great Steak Escape.” I’d perform a perfect somersault while being thrown from the car, dust the glass from my jacket, and share a good laugh with all present – Catherine, the other diners, the wait staff, even the cigar-smoking owner of the place who, in his red suspenders clinging to his round belly, reminds me of a carnie. “Happens more often than you’d guess,” he’d say, slapping me on the back. “I’ll get the vacuum.”
“Nowhere, I suppose,” I mumbled. “The sea maybe.” I couldn’t sell chopsticks to a Chinaman.
“What sea. Typical you, spitting out an idea with no clue how to follow up on it. Your head is the only sea around here, a muddy sea full of vague dreams and stalled projects. Yesterday you’re a writer, today an artist, tomorrow a musician. Where are the poems, the paintings, the songs? All I see is a mind adrift, an aging man sitting on lovely hands.”
She was staring now, which was considerably more uncomfortable than when she was avoiding my eyes. “You have nothing to say. You called me here with nothing on your mind. You are going nowhere. And you are not bringing me with you.”
She stood. I hated sitting while Catherine loomed over me. At five-ten she was three inches shorter than me, but I slouched and she stood upright, stiffer than a wax replica of the Queen Mother. People thought she was taller than me, smarter than me, better than me. All I had was the sense of humor, the dark eyes, the aura of creativity – though it’s true I produced little work, and destroyed half of what I finished before anyone saw it. I didn’t know why she was still here, still staring. She was pretty much right about everything.
I studied the carpet between my feet and hers. This proved unwise, as I found it inexplicably captivating. Despite the fraying of years I recognized blue triangles, and flecks of what must have once been yellow ochre, but what of the color field they were set against? Green? Orange? I settled on the memory of a junkyard in autumn, the patina of rusted steel. Was that a commercially available shade of fabric dye? Rusted steel?
Catherine was speaking:
“…but you won’t, will you? I bet you don’t even know what day the appointment is.”
I shrugged. To my surprise she sat back down; I heard her purse slide the length of her sleeve and strike the booth cushion. An inquiry caught in my throat as I lifted my head – her gaze was fixed upwards, lost in the mottled plaster ceiling tiles, a surface probably as nauseatingly complex as the rug that escaped my attention only moments before. I imagined the parallel planes exchanging opposite perspectives on the same tired stories: one groaning under the heels of overburdened waitresses, suffering the indignation of coffee spills, condiment stains, the belligerent vomit of late-night drunks; the other ruing its cancerous skin, the melanoma inflicted by the secondhand smoke and the heat of the stoves, and the inevitable sagging beneath the weight of the elements, the sun and the rain and the snow that heap their cyclical abuse on the roof above. With their own troubles to think of, how could they stand to witness drama after boring drama, the repetitive unraveling of lives like ours?
I decided, firmly but unhelpfully, that I identified more with the floor than the ceiling.
-----
Rain: our first kiss was on the hottest night of the summer, seven years ago, under a sky pissing warm slivers of glass. That was the night I hadn’t been able to figure out the name of the bar I was sitting in. It was on an unfamiliar street, downstairs below a karate studio, and I was there because it was Friday and because I was lonely and I was avoiding everyone I’d ever met. The bar had no air conditioning, just a lean row of windows turned opaque with grime, and it suited me fine. A ceiling fan turned indolently, the jukebox followed Merle Haggard with Kool and the Gang’s “Summer Madness”, and the bottle I held sweated sympathetically along with me. The lamps were dim and the room was uncrowded and I felt comfortably ignored. The bartender, clad in long sleeves and an undershirt despite the heat, spoke little, his eyes locked on a silent, grainy telecast of a Cubs-Mets doubleheader.
I was four or five beers into the night, my head emptied and my tongue pleasantly thick, when the rain started. The sound came unannounced – it was humid and then rain hammered down with no in-between, no crack of thunder. Though the room grew no cooler, a shiver swept across the bar as every head turned reactively towards the noise to stare dumbly at the closed door. My vision swung in a wobbly arc as I spun my barstool back towards my beer, then made a dizzying reversal towards the sight of – of her – unfolding like a switchblade from a cramped corner booth. She was a blasted-out monochrome, her paper-white shirt and skin offset by black jeansbootsbruiseseyelinerhair – the latter dyed messily, a spiky asymmetrical bob. She was lithe and she was handsome and she had a tense, almost bruxist edge to her walk: smallish chest forward, elbows back, fingers twitching, and – I blinked hard as a finger emerged through the boozy haze and tapped coarsely on the back of my brain – she was moving towards me.
“You play?”
Articulate as ever, I think I blurted out “Huh?” before realizing there was in fact a pool table in the bar, hidden beneath a cluster of milk crates jammed chaotically with file folders. She skipped away, leaving me to gather my wits as she charmed the bartender into clearing the game surface. I watched the ballgame a bit, hoping the Mets might turn a triple play while the bartender had his back turned like in The Odd Couple, but all I got was a visit to the mound to discuss strategy, a pop foul to third, a visit to the mound to switch relievers, ads for pain relievers, beers, cars.
She came back, handed me a cue; she smiled as she introduced herself as Catherine and I forgot my name, though I think my mouth managed without my brain’s help. It seemed healthy to let her win, which of course meant I demolished her in the first game. I’m normally no good with geometry, but somehow every drunken attempt I made at a near-miss ended up adding deadly spin to my shot. The second game was closer, but she scratched on the eight ball and I accidentally finished up two games.
“Nice shootin’. Looks like I owe you a beer.”
“Thanks.” I paused, smiled sheepishly. “Negra Modelo.”
“Lime?”
“Yeah.”
Catherine moved her eyes a bit but stayed still. I was too tired to explain but what I meant was this scene couldn’t belong to anybody, to any particular time. We sat in a yellowing diner where the waitresses wore mint uniforms and clacked mint gum and ducked beneath a slotted aluminum overhang out back, next to the dumpster, to smoke menthols on their break. There was nothing of interest on the table between us – a dirty glass ashtray, two coffee cups encompassed by spent cream containers, stacked together and jammed full of empty sugar packets, and Catherine’s hands, clasped tightly. A dull rain fell towards the window but made no sound. Light jazz, possibly George Benson, seemed faintly discernible, but I may have assumed it was there. Few customers were here, all seated alone, and for the last hour nobody had come in or out. I felt alone, too – Catherine’s eyes were matte, unrecognizable. It mattered little if I could name this place; she was long gone.
I signaled the waitress for more coffee. I didn’t really want any, and Catherine’s cup was nearly full, but it was something to do.
Cream, sugar, sugar; more waste. My hands were jittery and I splashed hot liquid on my wrist as I pulled the cup towards my lips. “One last drive.”
“No.” Her eyes shifted again, flickered a moment towards mine. “Where would we go?”
I imagined launching the car through the diner’s plate glass window, shattering the painted-on lettering advertising “The Great Steak Escape.” I’d perform a perfect somersault while being thrown from the car, dust the glass from my jacket, and share a good laugh with all present – Catherine, the other diners, the wait staff, even the cigar-smoking owner of the place who, in his red suspenders clinging to his round belly, reminds me of a carnie. “Happens more often than you’d guess,” he’d say, slapping me on the back. “I’ll get the vacuum.”
“Nowhere, I suppose,” I mumbled. “The sea maybe.” I couldn’t sell chopsticks to a Chinaman.
“What sea. Typical you, spitting out an idea with no clue how to follow up on it. Your head is the only sea around here, a muddy sea full of vague dreams and stalled projects. Yesterday you’re a writer, today an artist, tomorrow a musician. Where are the poems, the paintings, the songs? All I see is a mind adrift, an aging man sitting on lovely hands.”
She was staring now, which was considerably more uncomfortable than when she was avoiding my eyes. “You have nothing to say. You called me here with nothing on your mind. You are going nowhere. And you are not bringing me with you.”
She stood. I hated sitting while Catherine loomed over me. At five-ten she was three inches shorter than me, but I slouched and she stood upright, stiffer than a wax replica of the Queen Mother. People thought she was taller than me, smarter than me, better than me. All I had was the sense of humor, the dark eyes, the aura of creativity – though it’s true I produced little work, and destroyed half of what I finished before anyone saw it. I didn’t know why she was still here, still staring. She was pretty much right about everything.
I studied the carpet between my feet and hers. This proved unwise, as I found it inexplicably captivating. Despite the fraying of years I recognized blue triangles, and flecks of what must have once been yellow ochre, but what of the color field they were set against? Green? Orange? I settled on the memory of a junkyard in autumn, the patina of rusted steel. Was that a commercially available shade of fabric dye? Rusted steel?
Catherine was speaking:
“…but you won’t, will you? I bet you don’t even know what day the appointment is.”
I shrugged. To my surprise she sat back down; I heard her purse slide the length of her sleeve and strike the booth cushion. An inquiry caught in my throat as I lifted my head – her gaze was fixed upwards, lost in the mottled plaster ceiling tiles, a surface probably as nauseatingly complex as the rug that escaped my attention only moments before. I imagined the parallel planes exchanging opposite perspectives on the same tired stories: one groaning under the heels of overburdened waitresses, suffering the indignation of coffee spills, condiment stains, the belligerent vomit of late-night drunks; the other ruing its cancerous skin, the melanoma inflicted by the secondhand smoke and the heat of the stoves, and the inevitable sagging beneath the weight of the elements, the sun and the rain and the snow that heap their cyclical abuse on the roof above. With their own troubles to think of, how could they stand to witness drama after boring drama, the repetitive unraveling of lives like ours?
I decided, firmly but unhelpfully, that I identified more with the floor than the ceiling.
-----
Rain: our first kiss was on the hottest night of the summer, seven years ago, under a sky pissing warm slivers of glass. That was the night I hadn’t been able to figure out the name of the bar I was sitting in. It was on an unfamiliar street, downstairs below a karate studio, and I was there because it was Friday and because I was lonely and I was avoiding everyone I’d ever met. The bar had no air conditioning, just a lean row of windows turned opaque with grime, and it suited me fine. A ceiling fan turned indolently, the jukebox followed Merle Haggard with Kool and the Gang’s “Summer Madness”, and the bottle I held sweated sympathetically along with me. The lamps were dim and the room was uncrowded and I felt comfortably ignored. The bartender, clad in long sleeves and an undershirt despite the heat, spoke little, his eyes locked on a silent, grainy telecast of a Cubs-Mets doubleheader.
I was four or five beers into the night, my head emptied and my tongue pleasantly thick, when the rain started. The sound came unannounced – it was humid and then rain hammered down with no in-between, no crack of thunder. Though the room grew no cooler, a shiver swept across the bar as every head turned reactively towards the noise to stare dumbly at the closed door. My vision swung in a wobbly arc as I spun my barstool back towards my beer, then made a dizzying reversal towards the sight of – of her – unfolding like a switchblade from a cramped corner booth. She was a blasted-out monochrome, her paper-white shirt and skin offset by black jeansbootsbruiseseyelinerhair – the latter dyed messily, a spiky asymmetrical bob. She was lithe and she was handsome and she had a tense, almost bruxist edge to her walk: smallish chest forward, elbows back, fingers twitching, and – I blinked hard as a finger emerged through the boozy haze and tapped coarsely on the back of my brain – she was moving towards me.
“You play?”
Articulate as ever, I think I blurted out “Huh?” before realizing there was in fact a pool table in the bar, hidden beneath a cluster of milk crates jammed chaotically with file folders. She skipped away, leaving me to gather my wits as she charmed the bartender into clearing the game surface. I watched the ballgame a bit, hoping the Mets might turn a triple play while the bartender had his back turned like in The Odd Couple, but all I got was a visit to the mound to discuss strategy, a pop foul to third, a visit to the mound to switch relievers, ads for pain relievers, beers, cars.
She came back, handed me a cue; she smiled as she introduced herself as Catherine and I forgot my name, though I think my mouth managed without my brain’s help. It seemed healthy to let her win, which of course meant I demolished her in the first game. I’m normally no good with geometry, but somehow every drunken attempt I made at a near-miss ended up adding deadly spin to my shot. The second game was closer, but she scratched on the eight ball and I accidentally finished up two games.
“Nice shootin’. Looks like I owe you a beer.”
“Thanks.” I paused, smiled sheepishly. “Negra Modelo.”
“Lime?”
“Yeah.”
posted by Anwar Montasir at
3:00 PM
1 Comments
