nighthawks

An ambulance siren wailed down Broadway as I rounded the corner and left it behind me. I could not stop thinking about the funeral this afternoon. Dick was my age, my friend. No more. I came to New York for Dick's funeral. His mother was overwhelmed with grief and was inconsolable. His father could not stop looking at me with these eyes that let me know I should have been there with him. I got the feeling he wondered how youth could survive when his only son was gone.

53rd street was empty and the clouds hung low over the city so that only peripheral noise was audible: somewhere a man and woman were fighting, their screaming drifted on the air like a crow's song. Poor kids ran down alleys nearby kicking a tin can. It might rain. Phillies is up ahead, I suppose I wandered here by accident. The gang and I, Dick included, always ended our nights drinking in New York, drinking coffee until we were sober enough to remember to return to our upscale hotel rooms for forty winks before returning to college on trains were we sat in 1st class seats. The place was empty except for the barman, a roustabout and his fast lady. All three lifted their heads as I pushed open the door and made my way to the stool where I sat down, trying not to let the uneasy feeling in my stomach show on my face.

I asked the barman for a coffee, no sugar, and listened for a while to the conversation of the roustabout and his fast lady. He was telling her stories of the war, about Japanese Geisha and rowdy nights on shore patrol or leave. He was in the middle of a particularly graphic story when I came in and I could tell that this fast lady was eating it up.

"Oh, Joe! You didn't kill anybody! I don't believe you would hurt a fly!" she said with restrained interest. Her voice kept low to hide her glee.

"I did kill them and I'd kill every one of those Japs if I had the chance!" He turned suddenly, solemnly to the barman and asked, "Hey, Marty, you were in the first war; you ever kill anybody?"

The barman looked up at Joe briefly, laughed to himself and continued washing and drying cups then stacking them neatly, one on top of the other.

Obviously agitated at being ignored by the barman, Joe went on telling his fast lady about how the Geisha wore their hair and then he touched her hair; or how they never showed their ankles and he touched her knee; or how their lips were just as red as her cheeks were right then against their porcelain skin, he touched her lips. The fast lady laughed nervously. He got up without a word and made his way to the WC. The fast lady looked at me briefly and then, with a look of self satisfaction, turned away, took out her compact right there at the counter in front of me and the barman and reddened her lips with the tubed wax. She stopped after the third layer.

I was done with my coffee when the Joe returned, so I asked the barman for a refill. I was thinking about the war and how I could have been dead like Dick if my father was not rich and pulled some strings to keep me in college. The truth is, I did not want to go to war and was glad to use college as an excuse. Dick's father was not the first man to look at me with disdain for being alive. Just then I caught that same look in Joe's eyes. Only this time he was not looking at me, but through me, thinking of men long gone. I held his gaze for a full minute as a futile attempt at bravery. He cracked a sideways smile before turning away - the kind of smile people smile when they have stared death in the face and stood tall.

Joe grabbed his fast lady by the arm and told her he was taking her home to meet his mother. The fast lady's eyes flashed with panic but relaxed when she realized he only wanted to show her his tattoo which he could make dance by flexing his abdominal muscles. He clinked fifty cents on the bar and walked behind his fast lady out the door, into the empty street. I could hear them shrieking like children with joy until they turned the corner as they tried to find a busy street with taxis.