Sketches: 'The Heather On The Hill'

"I dunno how ye stand it. How the hell aren't ye deaf by now?"

When I turned away from the keys, there at my right elbow and only slightly taller than the bench I sat on, was the figure of a gnome as if carved from a knotty old pine.

Her features were stubborn, she had weathered against her will. The powerful jaw and cheekbones still jutted, but the cheeks themselves had caved in, a face of an emptying hourglass. Her cotton-wool hair was old lady-standard, but unlacquered, maybe tamed by hand. The head itself had sunk in between her shoulders so that her long, rubbery ears could rest near her collarbone.

The eyebrows were thatchy black though, and sprung up a bit as I looked at her, as if surprised for us both. Hard eyes, a little filmy, but sharp as pub darts and flaring with a hard humor besides.

"How do I stand it...?," I asked her. Going into it blindly seemed the thing to do. I kept on playing, but kept my focus on the knotty gnome at my side.

Her mouth had pursing lines radiating from it, like a balloon at its knot. It pulled at a corner into a thin smile, and revealed the edges of a moustache I'd have been proud of, had it been mine.

"What yer playin'. Sour notes, the lot of them. Can ye not hear it for yerself?," she said.

"Sour...?," I asked, and felt like a goddamn parrot.

"Not ye, boy. Ye play fine. And I don't know the fahrst thing about music, but that pianah's gone sour. Don't they tuuune the damn thing?"

I smiled at her, kept my hands going but what they kept was time. Noodling. The piano wasn't out of tune, as far as I could tell. It was a beauty of a cherry wood Steinway, and the charity house that owns it shows the instrument the most reverent care. The Steinway is tuned even if only pushed across the room. I show up now and then, and revere it some more. I touch it a little sweeter, a little brighter than I do other pianos. It's easier to get happily lost on that one, when the landmine keys don't stick and others don't plunk or twang, and the damn thing just purrs and shimmers for you. That's rare.

But to my knotty gnome, it was sour. Or maybe she said so just to provoke me. You can usually tell a sour soul from a cranky one. She was the latter. She was a prehistoric ballbuster. I liked her already.

"Let's just keep that between us. Doesn't seem as if the others have caught on anyway," I told her.

It was an East Side cocktail crowd accustomed to fundraisers and honorary dinners. The vodka-sodas are quick, the scotch-rocks sipped, the Pinot Grigio's count their calories. Not a fundraiser this time, but instead honoring a Monsignor. The old boy had decades of service to this charity to his credit, and fine, noble work it was. That night was his reward. That, and a limited edition of Steuben Glass. As I spied him across the room, mild and pale and cheerful to be glad-handed and shoulder-hugged for photos, I figured the Monsignor was limited edition too.

"I like what ye play. Don't often hear songs like that," she allowed, and gestured at the keys with her glass, seltzer fizzing.

"Thanks...?"

"Amy."

"Eric."

"With a 'c' or a 'k'?"

"With a 'c'. You have to be taller and blonder to deserve the 'k'."

I'd wanted to get more of a laugh out of her. Amy found it funny, but she skipped the laugh. Somehow I felt that all the jokes had to be hers, and that was fine by me.

"Love muuusic, always have. Calms a person, don't ye think? Can't play meself. Too poor as kids. But I love it. Hear it at church for the most part."

"The organist?," I assumed. I wasn't sure why I was interested, but went with it.

Amy nodded absently. "And choral director, yah. He's lousy." She shook her head and the lined mouth furrowed. "I tell him it's sour too, though that's him and not the pianah." 

"Got a Steinway, have they?," she asked, eyeing the cherry wood. I nodded, told her they had a few.

"Oh. Doin' well then, are they?" She wasn't asking anymore.
 
Amy was staring at my hands, while I hadn't looked at mine at all. I was looking at her: the limp, polyester black-and-white dotted blouse, the rounded sensible shoes, the pride pushing back against the slouch in her spine.

Shifting over on the left of the bench, I offered Amy room to sit. She hesitated, blinked a bit, before puckering her mouth and shaking her head and insisting she didn't need it.

"Is that what brings you here tonight then, Amy? The church," I asked her.

"St. Monica's, yah." She was less pointed than before, airy. Was it the song? I wondered if I should tune back into it, at least for her sake. Then she roused. "Ever been?"

"No," I told her. "Near here isn't it?"

"Sure. Between First and York. Grand place. There almost ev'ry day."

"So you know the Monsignor well then," I ventured.

Amy shrugged and her ears vanished. Across the murmuring room and crisscross of waiters, the man of the hour was laughing at a shared joke.

I didn't want to lose the thread. Again, I didn't know why. So I went with the blandest thing that leaped to mind and hoped she'd bite at it. I asked Amy where she was from. Those thatchy black brows crinkled.

"Good God, can ye not HEAR it?," she barked contentedly.

Bingo.

"Glasgow," she declared, and I'd swear her chin popped a few defiant inches.

"And how do you like living here?," I asked her, happy to play the idiot.

"Eh. Not sure. Haven't decided if I'm gonna stay."

"How long have you been here?"

"Sixty-three years," Amy said, quick and flat and twinkling. She was a pro, an old ham, I had her number.

"Best not to rush into things," I said. "Miss Glasgow?"

She shrugged. I wondered if I'd given her some sadness. Then Amy spread her arms wide.

"Judges didn't like me in my swimsuit."

I squinted at her. Then I laughed through my nose.

"Children?," I asked, still laughing.

"Three," Amy announced. "But I REFUSE to have any more!"

I turned even further from the keys, but kept my hands hopping. Amy's pub dart eyes met mine and her chuckles were breathy.

"Eric, yer not very good at this, are ye?," she said finally with affection and a bony hand on my shoulder.

The cocktail hour was thinning. The charity's hosts benignly shepherded guests to their tables. One of the hosts leaned on the piano and asked if there was any musical cue that inspired people to take their seats. I thought about it and said no, mostly it was intended to get people out of them. Having tried, he went off to make a plea from the podium.

From the milling guests, a man in a mud-brown suit emerged and stopped next to Amy. He was unremarkable, a man vacant in his own suit. She seemed to recognize him. He mumbled that it was time to take their seats for dinner.

Amy raised a lean hand and patted him on his lapel, her face turned up and mouth moving in a light stammer, buying a minute or two. "Okay, okay," she relented, "I've been talking to this young man, I'll be right there."

The empty mud-brown suit melted away. Amy placed her free hand on my forearm, leaning on it as she came closer to me over the bench. We were chummy co-conspirators now, escapees who had never left the room.

"Eric, if I asked ye for a song, would ye play it just for me?," Amy asked, demure as a little girl on a lap.

"Anything. Name it," I nodded, facing forward.

"I've asked the lousy pianist at St. Monica's to play it for me a hundred times, but he never knows what I'm talkin' about. Maybe ye will..."

"Tell me."

"God but it would please me if ye could play 'Far, Far Away'?," Amy asked, and without seeing her face, I could feel the rascally curl in her smile.

I laughed of course, and she launched into her dry, breathy chuckles. Amy mock-slapped my forearm and ably straightened herself.

"Yer still not very good at this, my boy," she said evenly as Mud-Suit returned, and she took his elbow as he led her off to their table.

"We'll finish after the dinner!," I called out to Amy. With a sliver of her profile to me, she nodded and fanned the back of her hand over her shoulder in light farewell.

Amy and I didn't cross paths again, nor did I spot her. I had a date clear across town, and my gig had wrapped late. The clock was against me.

Besides there was no point in looking for her. 

I hadn't yet had time to improve my game, as she'd pointed out.

© Eric Yves Garcia 2013

Wing It

Going home so early tastes bitter, like surrender.

That turns my walk into a march. The wind tilts the night. 

Street crowds scrounge for heat: guys huddle and murmur on what they'd do to passing girls, they smoke and leer and look less potent for it. The girls look bored/worried, but not due to the guys. I think the girls worry each other. 

New couples claw then nuzzle. Other couples ignore one another in silent yelling. I keep walking.

I’m already downtown, so aim East to a reliable spot. 

The spot is as I left it. Plaster and shaded pink lights and uneven planks. The specials are still curlicued in chalk above white linen tables. Tea light candles warm up ruddy faces. This crowd feels heartier. The chatter and clinking thread with the smells of the place, of buttery cooking and a little perfumed sweat. 

I'm lucky. A fight leads to a storming out at the bar. A stool right in front of the makeshift stage frees up. I smile lightly at the fighters. Their mouths are flecked either with beer foam or rabies while they yank on their coats. I slip into place and order a glass of red, middle of the chart, neither swill nor deluxe.

The lesbian Hungarian is still behind the bar. Paprika red hair is piled up to cool the nape of her neck, but her temples are damp. Her tattoos still peek when she reaches for bottles and her accent still knots around broad vowels. Above all her eyes are still hard-laughing. Only way to describe it. She was forcing a gingham shirt to dip and swell in striking ways. She’s still studying to be a masseuse. Until then, the gingham seems content to roll with it.

The quartet takes the stage. All but the upright bass player are seated in a neat row. The Leader is in the center. He sports a vest and natty bow tie and bookish glasses atop a pinched face. He’s either a blues guy or an accountant at Scrooge & Marley.

Leader’s trumpet rolls out a four-chord tune nice and wide, then his riffs turn jagged. His shoulders dip with the change. He performs sitting down until the lyric crests with meaning. Then he rises to sing. His voice is scraped and pitched high, over the din. His throat veins bulge when he does so and I feel as if it hurts. Otherwise he gestures and warbles from his wooden chair as if it's a revival meeting where coffee is served.

On Leader's right: a wind player tripling on bassoon, sax and clarinet. Sometimes he swaps all three in one tune. There is no hectic flash on his face, no sheen of effort. Calm, as he licks his lips and twiddles his fingers along the valves, checks the action. He’s all in black and a folded bandana hugs his forehead. His instruments are littered at his feet, necks craned up at him, like begging puppies. He reaches for them without notice but great care.

On Leader’s left: a guitarist strumming the time and on wispy vocal back-up. He wears a cowboy hat over a ham face with sandpaper cheeks. Cowboy boots tap out the beat and he's hunched hard over both his gut and the guitar straddling his knee.

The only one not in a row like schoolboys is the bassist. He alone has a music stand and charts. A sub? He’s also younger than the rest by nearly twenty years, or looks it. He wears sheepish black glasses and has a stringy blonde pompadour that would rather live in his eyes. He slaps and plucks and darts around the chord rather than just hammering out the 2 and 4.

The crowd responds to the quartet not wildly, but warmly. I decide I like them too.

On break they grab drinks and still chat with each other. Tight crew. A lot of players go for a cigarette, or a drink, a joint, or wander to be away. These four want to talk to each other. They drink while they talk, no mistake, but I don’t see anything harder than beer. I spot Delirium Tremens on tap, and that’s as hard as beer needs to get.

A short, final set. Leader warned us not to get too attached. The band retakes their straight-backed places, chat low among each other. None lock eyes in their row. None need to. All face out. I happen to be close enough to hear. They whisper what to lead with. Democratic. Each have a say, or a grumbling veto. Then the guitarist strums out a blues strut and chins bob in time and eyes all aimed differently, they spring out of the gate in tight unison. I don’t know why I enjoy that, but I do.

Now my glass of middling red is gone. I toss bills on the counter. The lesbian Hungarian’s eyes give me the ‘silly boy' flash. I smile and mean it. She's right, I can be silly.

The band packs up. One of them must have a car for all that gear. One of them always does.

It no longer feels like surrender to go home.




©  Eric Yves Garcia 2013

Hooked

The gulls give me beady, sidelong looks, those awake do. Those asleep dot the sand ahead like white-black or brown pins pushed into a sloping cushion.

It’s frigid, and it’s only us, me and the gulls. The cold affects us both but I do a worse job of hiding it. The gulls are expert.

Too often I visit this Hook into the sea and walk with my head happily cast down, only to realize later I’ve hardly looked at it.

The surf is little tumbles atop each other, a soft suction then a fizz. A winter sea should be more punishing. This is late and lazy August gentle. But I'll take it.

The sky is concrete, forever. Something lurks behind that slab above, something surly. Not the sun, he's fled. It's certain. A fair weather friend if ever there was one.

Sand like ashes, it has seen a lot of rain and wind and my steps break the natural streaks that angle like herringbone.

A red lance of an oil tanker is inching along the horizon. If there were an opposing tanker with its hull painted black, it would be the slowest joust in history. By degrees the red tanker pivots out to sea.

Behind me the brush on the dunes is trimmed the length with a golden thread of wildflowers. A little flair never went wrong.

Tracks are everywhere. The empty circles where fishing poles rested, the tri-corner quick-step of the gulls or the wide, dutiful strut of retrievers.

Lungs revive with the cold burn of sea air. A slap of wind across the eyes. Stings, then reflexive tears. No symbolism, God forbid, just cold wind. All well. Salty, though. Everything here is salty, even what you bring.

I shove my hands deeper into my pockets and make a leaner line of my body against the cold.

What I love about the Hook is what it gives, without fail, without my asking, an endless reserve.

Sand and sky are narrowing into each other now. Sunset.

I came a little too late, but it’s alright. The wind grows broader and less feeling. It’s snatching at the hair and shoving the wildflower faces away. Oh, fine. Show’s over. Has to be, sooner or later. I lead with hunched shoulders and retrace my steps that broke the herringbone sand.

Halfway back, I catch myself mid-wish and say ‘No.’ It was a selfish wish. To ask for two such places in any one life is to fail to appreciate the first. The original gift. It’ll always be there. That is good fortune enough for a lifetime.

In my imagination, that stretch of beach waits for me.

But it isn’t true. Foolish boy.

It doesn’t have to wait. Why should it? It knows I won’t be away long.

© Eric Yves Garcia 2013

Wise Potato Chips

 

Above, Bloomingdales was a cube of white gold. Proud as a beacon, guiding the faithful through the chill rain and cobalt sky.

Below, the 5 train was a southbound sardine can. Belted coats and woolen necks and sour, sweaty faces. We were all very intimate and not so much in love. As usual I was racing to a gig in order to affect a breezy lateness. As usual the MTA was cooperating like sugar in a gas tank.

The ‘Express’ crept. I was already giving lie to my once crisp shirt. My back was flat to the doors. Unseeing faces dotted my view. Our halting progress gave me glimpses of chalk and spray paint scrawls in the tunnel. I couldn’t read them. The chipper fake-voice assured us there was traffic ahead, cheerily made it sound as if there were only a few minutes before it was your turn to meet Santa. I leaned my head against the glass behind it.

Pressed up hard to my left was a pair of munching jaws.

Her left hand cradled a bag of potato chips, while the right kept the steady feed of a conveyor belt. No hurry, just a continual, happy crunch and chew and rolling tongue to pry loose some bits.

I watched from the side. Miss Chomps was less inhibited. She leaned on a shoulder and faced my left profile. She stared at me with popping, watery blue eyes. Then, as if to punctuate a thought, she raked the corners of her mouth where some fried yellow flakes had clustered. Her tongue as deft as a Musketeer's blade, the crumbs never stood a chance.

Miss Chomps’ mental gears spun at the same inexorable speed as her chewing. I didn’t mind her stare so much. Some stares feel harsh, hers was evaluative. All I had to do was stand there.

I reached into my coat pocket and turned down the iPod. It was coming. Do I open the door long before I even hear someone ring the doorbell? Could be.

"God know I shouldn't eat these damn things, but I will. Normally I'm so careful, eat so cleanly. But today, I dunno."

Miss Chomps’ voice was nasal, unvaried, steam-rolling. She was already mid-conversation and I was late in joining the party.

"Ah to hell with it, right?" Munch.

"Can't eat just one, remember that commercial?" Smeck.

"They're too good, I mean, who'd want to stop?" Crunch.

"You like potato chips? You must, I mean, really who doesn't like potato chips, not all the time, God knows, but really who doesn't get that urge for a potato chip now and then?," she asked.

I smiled. Her wide, thin mouth was a pink rubber band stretching and snapping back. Without being able to prove it, I had the sudden thought that she was less daffy than she portrayed. She was gauging my responses. What for, I wasn’t sure.

Miss Chomps was short and late-middle age solid, her frame filling out a turquoise overcoat. The chin was strong and jowls pulled the face into a ruddy square. Lemon yellow hair was bundled up in a violet beret, cheekily tilted. Her watery blues were watchful, a flare of silliness in there but a skeptical crease between them. What she thought, she kept to herself. She had managed six questions that didn't require a single answer.

"You want a potato chip?" 

That, I assumed, required an answer.

"I would,” I told her, “But you can't have just one."

She nodded sagely and looked down to the crumbs in her palm. Then she hoisted them into her mouth. "That's true, you really can't."

Miss Chomps relished those crumbs.

The 5 went from sluggish to dead stop. We were jostled into each other and righted ourselves. That pinging bell-tone, the impotent groan of the crowd, then the chipper fake-voice. Another train got precedence, rumbling over ours, like furniture being moved in the apartment above.

"You deserve it,” I suggested to her. “Treat yourself."

"How do you know?"

"That you're treating yourself?"

"That I deserve it." The skeptical crease deepened. The merry, lightly salted mouth carried on.

"You said before that today was an exception...?," I offered.

"Yeah. Heh. I did. It is. It’s a treat. I'm anxious.”

“About?,” I pressed.

“About Friday.”

“I see.” I didn’t press further.

Another jostle and the ‘Express’ resumed limping.

“So I thought what the hell, satisfy your urge, right?,” Miss Chomps insisted. “It’s so rare. Not like my husband. He's such a terrible eater, really awful."

"In what way?"

She shrugged. "Oh God, when I first started dating him, that was in the Sixties, I thought, oh God, I can't stay with this man. Hot dogs, pastrami, you name it. All this shit. And I was eating macrobiotic! Well. We all were. I guess it was fashionable. Anyway I married him. He's still alive. Lousy eater but not as bad as then. I've made a dent I guess. Know what's funny?" Miss Chomps’ drone up-ending was my cue.

"No, what?"

Lip licks, then a sandy chuckle. "All these macrobiotic eaters back in the Sixties, God were we anal about it. But here’s the joke: we all smoked!"

She laughed, shook her head. "That's what we thought was pure I guess. Go figure, right?"

I smiled in response. Not to pacify, but because she was what I'd hoped.

"You have an accent. You're not from here,” Miss Chomps declared. “Where are you from?”

I get asked that a lot, often a barb of suspicion lurking. Her tone was bright, clean of any barbs, or of any doubt.

My biography was brief. Parents’ nationalities, summers abroad, languages, all those credentials that can be ascribed to you but you haven’t earned. They simply are, and simply are you.

The watery blues glinted. “So you spent a lot of time in France?”

“That’s right,” I nodded.

“Been there recently?”

“About six, seven years ago,” I sighed. “It was a lot easier to do as a kid.”

“Speak French?”

I nodded again.

Miss Chomps’ look warmed and her chewing slowed. “That’s beautiful. You’re so lucky. Some languages are like listening to music, don’t you think that’s true, I think that’s true, French is like listening to music. Even if the voice isn’t that hot and you don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, it’s still like a song!”

She bunched a jolly shoulder and the beginning of a laugh rippled on her mouth. “Of course you know what the hell they’re talking about so maybe it’s not so much a song to you. Your parents taught you French growing up?”

“Right.”

“Yeah,” her laugh bubbled over, “So when they were yelling at you, it wasn’t so much music!”

I laughed with her. “Not a song I’d listen to twice, anyway.”

Miss Chomps’ giggle belied the rest of her.

“I’m Estonian,” she told me. “Born there after the war, not such a cheerful place.”

“No, I shouldn’t think so,” I said.

“I loved it though, was there as a young girl until my parents finally brought us here. We spoke it at home. I still speak it.” A half-shrug, a flash of resignation there then gone. “Not as much as I used to.”

Miss Chomps pushed on.

“My son, he’s really bright, really very bright, about your age, well maybe a little older, how old are you, I bet you’re older than you look, my son looks his age, whaddya gonna do, right? He’ll be fine. Anyway, my son is so annoyed with me that I never taught him Estonian growing up.”

“If there’s ever a time to learn a language without effort, that’s it. But you must know that,” I told her.

“Sure, I know it,” she answered. “Who knows, maybe I should’ve taught him. For you, it’s such a gift, French. Lots of people speak it all over the world, it’s romantic, right? God. Beautiful. But Estonian? I mean I love it, sure, but really who the hell uses Estonian? For what? I mean, let’s be real. I guess my son wishes he could speak it, just to be able to say he speaks something other than English. I told him, '...and what, when you were a kid, if I’d made you go to Estonian classes in the afternoon after school!? Yeah, that’d have gone over great, who are you kidding?'”

Miss Chomps’ giggle resurfaced. “Maybe he’s right, I dunno. But really, can you go on a date and woo some girl with Estonian?”

Now it was my turn to shrug. “Lonely Estonian girl, far from home? Could be the magic ticket.”

“Heh.” The bag of potato chips crinkled as she foraged. “Trust me, it’s still not music.”

“Skype comes from Estonia,” she added. “Did you know that?”

I admitted I didn’t.

“Estonians gave Skype to the world, it’s true. Pretty remarkable. You’ve never been there, I’m sure you haven’t?”

I admitted I hadn’t.

“I still have family there, friends. I miss it now and then, don’t go back very often.” Her skeptical crease deepened again. “It’s not a creative culture.”

That struck me. I asked what she meant. Miss Chomps’ watery blues popped a bit further.

“It’s a culture of engineers! Ever tried to connect with an engineer? It’s not the most exciting moment of your life, believe me.”

I laughed and she went on.

“They’re literal. They’re rigid. Right now, they’re also so damn nationalistic, really conservative, ‘get tough to make up for lost time’, you know, that whole thing? You talk to Estonians and get all this nationalism.”  Miss Chomps made a weary face. “Not my bag. At all.”

The ‘Express’ idled into Grand Central like a royal carriage past an adoring mob. Through the window I didn’t see too many adoring faces crammed on that platform.

Miss Chomps balled the now empty bag of potato chips, the metallic foil gleaming and collapsing between her fingers.

“That was good,” she said.

I looked at the face of an older woman, a face with the cheer and radiance of a girl who has snuck a special treat and no one need know.

It reminded me of something. There wasn’t much time, soon the 5 would stop and its doors would slide apart and I’d step out and others would flood in.

“Why the potato chips if you never eat them? Why are you anxious about Friday?,” I asked her.

“Oh,” Miss Chomps’ pink rubber band mouth pulled in a rueful way. “Friday I’m having surgery.”

I didn’t ask more. More would have been intimate.

Miss Chomps’ pleasure was intact. “The potato chips cheered me up.”

I wished her luck on Friday. She thanked me. I offered her my hand and said I was glad we had spoken. Miss Chomps said likewise. The doors parted. A wall of coats pushed forward and I went sideways and slid through a break in the wall.

I thought about potato chips.

 

© Eric Yves Garcia 2012

Frozen

Tonight I watched a train rumble over a helpless man on the tracks.

I was standing on the elevated platform at 125th, tea in hand, ready for the 6:13 train to my gig. We were all bunching our shoulders a bit against the cold, avoiding each other’s eyes.

Then to my left a shout, stark, then cut off. I turned and leaned over the edge of the platform. Very nearby, a man lay hunched over the nearest rail, unmoving. I saw his red-checkered shirt and white t-shirt and pale jeans. His limp legs curled away from him and his back was a mound over the track. I heard his pleas for help. He begged for help, shrill, over and over, could anyone help him. I looked past him.

The 6:13 was late, and now was a white flare, growing, harsher and brighter by the second. There were shrieks in the crowd, groans, cries to God. I turned right. There were three women in yellow reflective MTA jackets. I hoped they had radios. They didn't. Wild waving of arms, of palms pumping the air to will the train into stopping. We shouted, incoherently. I don't think we used words, only cries.

There was no time. I walked a few feet closer. The white light grew and grew and grew. You could never have leaped into the track, picked up a wounded person, hoisted him to safety first, then yourself, in time. It was impossible. In our helplessness, there was only horror. You could only watch. Those very few seconds when nothing but watching could be done, they dropped away one by one.

The white flare was now brilliant. The front of the Metro-North train was sooty blue, #209. It had begun to slow down, in a fashion almost grotesque. It slowed just as it passed over the helpless man's form. I felt perverse.

An ugly moan rose from the crowd. Around me were a few women who burst into instant tears. One turned her back. One, in the reflective jacket, gripped her own head and wailed and stomped in circles and cried to God that this was 'overwhelming'. That was her word. It struck me, that word, almost from afar. I had my hand to my mouth and my eyes had never left the train.

Minutes passed. Very few of us left the platform. We remained, hardly logical. But we did remain. The firemen and police arrived with near instant speed, cordoning off part of the platform and gathering near where the train conductor leaned out of his window and darted around an anxious head.

I called out of my gig. They were very sympathetic.

Then I called my father, the original YVES. I had to talk to someone, and for all our differences, he was the one I thought to call. I told him the story while I still watched the train. Through a shifting crowd I could spot flashlight beams crossing each other and flicking underneath the train. I finished telling my father the story. He swore softly. To swear is his way. To swear softly has never been his way.

Then he instructed, "Get the FACK out of there, you can do nothing, just go, it was a horrible experience, traumatizing, but get the FACK out of there while you still can!" Not necessarily unwise.

All at once, heads started to snap to each other and murmurs trickled over. The woman in the yellow reflective jacket bobbed from one person to the next, "He's alive! He's alive! He's under there, they hear his voice and he's sitting up! But they can't move the train or they'll kill him!"

This news was no less overwhelming but shouting it to God seemed less urgent. He likely knew already.

I told my father the news, in a voice less taut, less repetitive and nearly piercing.

"THERE you GO, see?,” YVES declared. “He's alive, he's fine, no problem, now get the FACK out of there!" YVES is often of a fixed mind on things.

The firemen used a ladder to climb down into the track and a cluster of them, helmeted and in striped, heavy jackets, bent around the front of this frozen train.

I ended my call. I couldn't leave. I had to know. They got him out, and I only wish I knew how. But they did. The fallen man survived.

I picked up my tea from where I'd dropped it then threw it away. I didn't have a taste for it anymore. I passed the cordoned off stairwell and down onto Park Avenue where a mass of flashing sirens and speculating citizens stood with their heads craned up above.

Tonight I watched a train rumble over a helpless man on the tracks. Then I watched him live to tell the tale.

© Eric Yves Garcia 2012

Lows and Hi's

 

Zebra Print had arrived with Irish Prep. Both struck me when they walked into the bar, doing the out-of-the cold-isn’t-this-nice? routine.
 

Irish Prep asked if the stools next to me were taken in that rib-nudging tone that men adopt when one assumes he understands the other. I was shouldering the wall, between the hat rack and the coffee urn. He had jolted me from my pages and absent sipping of beer. Chin in palm, I swiveled left.

Irish Prep was the girl’s age, early twenties, medium height and reliable build, a solid sweep of wavy chestnut hair. He had a pale, chummy face, a stockbroker’s grin. Somehow you knew he had uncles and cousins and brothers who all look precisely like him, and that they take turns backslapping each other. Irish Prep wore a white button-down shirt beneath a grey knit sweater, and kept a black and white striped scarf loosely draped around his neck. To be fair, the only thing I disliked about him was the mere sight of him. Otherwise he seemed fine.

I offered up the stools without much charity. I kept staring at my scarred pages, thumbing the end of the pen for the clicks. CHAK-chik, chik-CHAK. That was as much as the pen was used.

Distractions need only present themselves. I’ll do the rest.

Dark-featured girl, slight but coyly rounded. I noticed her and tried not to look like it. She wore a clinging zebra print dress in which the white stripes were grey. A camouflaged zebra? She could have been Latina, or Caribbean. Her face was wide, earnest, heart-shaped. The onyx eyes were thickly lashed and cheerful. She wore very little fuss of make-up, no jewelry save a modest silver link bracelet. Her black hair had the feathery fullness of curls flattened into submission.

The pair situated themselves, ordered a round, and I had new neighbors.

Early Saturday night in a Lower East Side bar. A Happy Hour has never been lower. Not bleak low, just dialed-down low. Checkered floor and Deco light fixtures, horizontal blinds and green/red neon. For holiday cheer a stiff, plastic garland studded with bulbs looped over the back mirror. Low lights, low jukebox, low prices, low talking. Easy. I’ve never mentioned the place to anybody because I don’t want to spoil it. I like it low.

A good place to work, but all I could do was push at the pages. Or cut. Or stare. Or try too hard. I couldn’t find many shards of the original thrill to write it. Only see it through, because…? Because. 

I went back to the distraction.

Their meeting felt polite, exploratory. On him was self-consciousness, and God bless him for that. I watched eyes that darted and gambled, a grin that rose and fell, topics that cast wide nets. I watched him know he was scrambling. I watched him know it, but keep on trying. And the girl? On her was a calmer shade of uncertainty. Some couples look like puzzle pieces impatiently wedged together.

Some absent sips, some chik-CHAK’s. I gave my neighbors an ongoing listen. They sounded like a familiar song heard through a closed door. You nod and keep going.

Then in a sunny chirp she pleaded the ladies’ room. He stopped her with a light palming of her forearm. Irish Prep’s assurance felt as shiny and thin as enamel. I sympathized. I made a silent, futile prayer that I wasn’t as transparent.

Irish Prep upped it though. His lips gathered in a discreet pucker that hung in the air, expectant that she would meet him in a ‘hurry back’ peck. Was this a first kiss? An early volley, to gauge the defenses?

Zebra Print, purse in hand, blinked and gave a small, toothless smile. Her answering pucker was so tightly sealed that a dust mite couldn’t have floated through, let alone a tongue. She brushed past him for the back of the bar and the ladies’ room.

After that I ignored them and don’t know how much of the clock's face fell away. I dove back into my slashes and arrows and question marks. Some fun. Too much of it I disliked and couldn’t think how to fix. What little I liked, I didn’t love.

I took a pull of my beer. A few pulls, in truth.

“You look like you’re working.”

She piped up from nowhere, from the bend in the bar.

Zebra Print sat cross-legged a stool away, wrists stacked over her knee. Within reach was half of a vodka/soda/lime. I saw that Irish Prep had vanished for a moment. I never noticed him leave her side.

“No, not really working,” I mumbled, cheek mashed against my fist.

“Really?," she asked. "It sure seems that way.”

“Alright. How about ‘working but not getting anywhere’?” I gave her a shallow smile that she returned more fully. A swirl of humor and relief spun in her eye.

I put down my pen and looked at my private square of bar space: a pint of beer, typed pages X-ed to death, illegible notes on the backs of old envelopes, a Moleskine oozing scribbles. It was as if Jackson Pollack were planning D-Day.

“I’m enjoying myself,” I told her, told us both actually.

“That’s good to hear. You should. It still looks like work though.” Her grin filled out healthy cheeks and laid out a sliver of white atop her tan skin.

She asked me what kind of beer was I drinking.

“Southampton Whey,” I answered, tilting the cloudy gold in the glass toward me. “Not the Pale. Though I recommend both, if you like wheat beer. They’re on tap. And you?”

“Oh, we’re still figuring out what we are to each other,” Zebra Print said, the words sliding out blithely.

“…We are?”

“Not you and me. This guy, he’s in the bathroom. First date.”

“Got it,” I said with a fake detached nod. “Then yeah, I can see how you’d still be figuring things out. First date, all that. No need to rush.”

“Right??,” she said in exaggerated commiseration. She managed to make it a little too harmless without being dull-witted. Or maybe I was too ready to take her side. It happens.

“So. Yeah. Who knows, right?” She gave me a shrug more playful than she felt.

“Having fun?,” I asked.

Zebra Print leaned onto the bar and held her arms. Not so much protective than pensive. Her mouth bunched all to the right.

“Ehh. I mean, it’s alright,” she leveled.

On principle, I wasn’t leading the Irish Prep parade, but even I winced through a crooked smile. “Ouch,” I said. “I’ll grab some napkins for the bleeding.”

She realized her words. She flapped a quick hand to the side of her head as if to scrub her honesty from the imaginary chalkboard. “No! I’m sorry! I mean it’s fine. So far he’s nice.”

I snuck a quick look to the far end of the bar. A distant Irish Prep was closing the bathroom door, wiping a damp hand on the back of a jean leg.

“I understand. With any luck it’ll improve,” I told her. “He’s on his way back. However it goes I’m sure you can handle it. Enjoy your night.”

“Thanks,” she said gamely.

Irish Prep was midway across the room, even to the taps and jukebox. He had a purposeful walk, likely thought he was on firmer ground with the girl. For the moment I knew something he didn't, and I didn't want to know. I'd walked with purpose into oblivion once or twice too. I hoped then no one else knew it before I did. Then I blinked. Maybe he knew he wasn’t getting the girl, and was now marching back to damn well get her. Irish Prep was a only a few stools off now.

“You’re sure you’re not working on something?,” Zebra Print insisted.

“No, I’m not,” I let my hand drop to the pages. It landed like an accidental slap with some heat in it. “Well. I suppose it’s work. But it’s work I choose.”

“Oh,” she said, with a glossy bubble in her voice. “So it’s your passion!”

It seems so flimsy, but it wasn't.

The way she said it, a battered, overused word, she exclaimed it, discovered it. Her excitement popped out the dents as the word righted itself, new again. She said the word as if it were the most obvious thing to any child or any fool, which I suppose it was.

I looked at her. Not for too long, but too intently. I hoped she wasn’t uncomfortable, I couldn’t tell. Irish Prep was retaking his seat.

Now I gave her a shrug more playful than I felt.

“You could be right,” I said to her and smiled. There’s a distanced warmth, a silent note of thanks you reserve for someone you don’t know and aren’t going to know, but whom has given you something.

“Enjoy your night,” she told me, turning away.

"I am," I told her.

Zebra Print led with her shoulders back to Irish Prep, freely giving him all her attention, and it rang true. She was willing to try.

They left soon afterwards. Several minutes later, the shifts were turning over so I settled and tipped and left too.

With any luck the place would still be low when I came back. Not bleak low, just dialed-down low.

 

© Eric Yves Garcia 2012