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.

Nobody is Coming (rev 1)

The pinot noir tastes like apple juice since I started paying more than two dollars for it but the table is still sustainable, recyclable corrugated cardboard made in the USA.

It took me over 20 years and a lot of cups of coffee to realize that the sun sets later in the North than it does in Mexico and that it is not the water there that makes a person sick, but the antiseptic hysteria of mothers in the suburbs of major Midwest cities.

The fact is that the food we eat is laced with gluten because that is how the Government will enslave us. And by “us” I mean Texans and people who shop at Wal-Mart. Religion, too, is a grand circus, complete with magic, clowns and folks jumping through burning hoops. Do not let yourself be fooled by the definition of evil.

Lately, men approach older men with round glasses and gray pony tails in the hopes they were in Vietnam and can, therefore, relate. Tears are shed as penance for Improvised Explosive Device massacres and episodes in which they were forced to pry a screaming toddler from the grips of a schizophrenic wielding a butcher knife. The schizophrenic stabbed himself 12 times before he slit his own throat.

Somewhere, in a town very close to yours, peroxide prudes wonder why their legs were forced apart and they lost $600 on an abortion. They fall in love with the next gun smokin’ to make themselves feel pretty again. When they turn 23 they will earn an internship to Teen Vogue and eventually influence the psyche of your granddaughters.

Right now, the most important virtue is courage because the battle is real. It is not enough to do your best or love your neighbor. Even Hitler believed in himself. Here is my advice: You can drift by and be happy, but the real joy comes in serving the greater good. In Jesus’ name we pray; Amen.

Memoirs of a French Holiday

+I read Hemingway that summer and reeled at his ability to write a simple story laced with such substance. The train rocked along the tracks, south toward the ocean. The siren wailed, melancholy, down through. Families around me chattered in Italian, gesticulating and inflecting the last word of each sentence, or names. The mamma unwrapped leftover pasta which she had fried in a skillet until it looked like a little pasta pie. She sliced it like one too and the starched smell of the noodles permeated the air conditioned atmosphere.
As we got closer to the equator, the passengers started speaking French, perfumes and colognes were exchanged, too, Italian for French, as soon as we crossed the border. Train terminals always smell like pee and are full of people yelling, kids screaming: things that I can’t stand. I walked fast away from the crowd, passing a few mangy cats. French cats. I wondered if they were different from Italian cats.
At sunset I walked into town. Handsome people sat in cafes drinking bitter espresso or bitter aperitif. The young people smoked cigarettes and wore sunglasses despite the failing light. Young eyes don’t care. I ordered something – I can’t remember what I drank in those days – and the waiter (smart man) told me that I had “cat’s eyes,” which I promptly scribbled onto my cocktail napkin after he walked away. Later, a French cowboy came and sat down. He had a photo album full of pictures of him getting thrown off bulls in Texas, Wyoming, and Berlin. He wore a big belt buckle, Wranglers and a cowboy hat, but he was still French and I would never have believed he rode bulls if he didn’t have that album full of pictures.
Somewhere around 10:00 as the stars were coming out, a bottle of Absinthe was brought to our table, complete with tiny slotted spoons and cubes of sugar. A man whose name I can’t remember poured the green syrup over the sugar cube, then added a bit of water and I watched as the potion turned white. I was glad that there was a Brit there. He translated until the men got too friendly and their wives spoke to them in harsh tones.
I lay on my bed back at the hotel and listened to the crickets. French crickets. I tried to imprint that moment in my memory forever.