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

Getaway

"...But I was out to enjoy the sights,

There was the Bow'ry ablaze with lights;

I had one of the Devil's own nights!

I'll never go there anymore!"

                - 'The Bowery', P. Gaunt & C. Hoyt, 1891

Squeezed out of the club by inches and onto the sidewalk. There had to be more elegant ways of exiting the Bowery Electric.

My ears pinged. A flat, metallic tang of vodka soured my tongue. I hadn’t eaten in any adequate way. The drinks thudded in my stomach louder than they should have.

A mean gloss lay over lights and faces and I felt my teeth rub drily against lips thin from lack of water. I pulled my shirt back into place, it had twisted around while I elbowed through the mob. I felt grateful to be outside. Still it’d be hard to walk this off and come out crisp, no guarantees.

July choked the avenue. Ten pm and the air was thick but mostly fresh. I filled my lungs with it. I willed my head to clear. If possible, to brighten. There was a night off to enjoy and my only obligation, a friend’s fundraiser at Bowery Electric, had been met. After chatting in polite screams, she had teetered off in designer stilts through a crevice between shoulders. I was glad to donate but talking to her over the bass line was like flirting underwater.

On the sidewalk the blue door of the club clanged behind me. The steel, brick and mortar served like a ribcage and muffled the untiring pulse within.

It was a getaway night.

A night off and nowhere to be and no one to meet. Being somewhere new and slightly off-limits. You got away with it. It’s tastier that way. When the unfolding story leads you.

I live for the getaway.

Stretching off in either direction was the Bowery. I had never really roamed it. Around and through, but never along.

I rubbed my face and breathed the haze away. Hands in pockets, I started walking.

From old pictures I'd seen, there used to be twin canopies of steel and thunder above, as north and southbound El trains blocked the sun below and rattled the windows up high. Those images showed a latticework of ugly beauty I wished I'd known. So I stared up and imagined them. It sobered me a bit.

Eyelevel to my left was a coffee shop patio with fenced-in seating. From there Apple logos glowed on laptops, hovering in the dark like creamy grey fireflies. That struck me.

I'd seen the name ‘Bowery’ itself cause either a shudder or a wistful sigh from those who’d known it. Sometimes a twist of both as the happy-bad years drifted through their eyes, with stories of junkies and murders and stripped cars on cinder blocks and absent police and phone booths that reeked of piss and above all the fast and thrilling genesis of great music. To hear them tell it the Bowery was so authentic, it'd kill you. And now that was gone, and wasn't that a goddamn shame, they said.

If there had always been badness in its bones, the Bowery had since purged the marrow clean, and flushed the flavor away with it. Hell of a trade-off.

I kept walking. Crowds were pressed into sticky clumps by the July fist. Weave around the crowds. Push through the haze.

Two or three blocks north, maybe less, and I stopped beneath a luminous clock face.

It hung from the black iron and beveled glass awning of an old train station in Europe. The awning cast wide shelter from off a russet brick front and twin glass doors frosted with the letters ‘BH’. Alongside the entrance was a row of red cruiser bicycles with white rim tires and wire baskets in front. They shined and were all stationed in a row and at the same tilt. Flanking the glass doors were a pair of cylindrical lanterns, ornate metal, Spanish Moroccan. There was an ebb and tide of purposeful walks through the entrance of The Bowery Hotel.

I stood there. Why was I resisting the strong pull inside? There was a story in there. The scent of it wafted out the doors. Still I dug in my heels and wondered why.

It was plain. I couldn’t justify the expense. Numbers are stubborn things.

It pained me to boil it down so crudely. No one filing in or out of the hotel seemed weighted with that thought.

“Excuse me?”

A slight, singsong girl’s voice from behind me, clear and amused. Her tone seemed to peer around to pull me face front.

She was a short brunette with only a toehold in her early twenties. Her figure was obscured somewhat by a strapless black summer dress, a sack dress with a drawstring just above her breasts. It ended at mid-thigh and she wore simple sandals. The legs were strong. I had a feeling she was proud of her legs, had almost a boy’s stance, was a good runner and swimmer, but maybe worried they were meaty if she crossed them. I brought my eyes back up with a speed that made it too obvious and felt like a tool. I said hello through a grin.

“So you might think I’m weird...” She half-rolled her eyes and throat-laughed and expected me to defuse.

“I doubt it. I have a high threshold,” I said, defusing.

Her unpainted mouth crooked up. “Oh, really?”

“But don’t let me stop you from trying,” I said.

“Ha. So I’m sure you’ve got plans? Or friends…”

“A few. You’d like them.”

She laughed and rocked on her toes.

“As in you’re meeting people and so you probably can’t, but…”

“…But?”

“…BUT,” she giggled, “We were wondering if you’d like to join us for a glass of wine?”

I paused and kept the smile and let my eyes travel, fast.

Her hands were clasped behind her back as good girls do on the fronts of cereal boxes and it pulled the black cotton of the dress tighter. She wasn’t wearing a bra and her breasts were full and young and heavy, the cleavage not rolling out but down. Eyes up, boy.

“…We?,” I asked.

“OH,” she laughed again at herself. For the third time. Then she jerked a thumb over her shoulder, a slim bracelet spinning up her forearm. “’We’ being my uncle and myself. We’re sitting right over there. See?”

Over her left shoulder she made fast eye contact with a man seated at a table, so I resumed.

The skin was pale enough to be burned at Thanksgiving. Her chocolate brown hair was parted at the center, bobbed at the jaw line and needle-straight. A ladybug barrette of colored glass was tucked neatly into the left side of her high forehead.

“Wait,” I said, “You… you just said your uncle, right?”

She mm-hmmed as her grey-green eyes fired with an odd light and her grin swelled her cheeks. She was a little cherubic, if that angel had slipped off the cloud and hit her head.

I was suddenly certain she wore no underwear at all. I was unsure how I knew. The timing of that thought was poor, but manageable.

She smiled at my smiling.

“So. How ‘bout it?” she dared.

She was familiar though I’d never seen her before.

“I’ve gotta say…” I started.

That was it. She was one of those ambling college girls you see in the park when everyone else is at work, and she’s on the cusp of discovery. There’s a shine of health, a bravado and a fragility, and a madness. They are delicious and one of the best bad ideas the city has to offer.

“Sounds like fun,” I said. “Lead the way.”

“Really?,” she sang.

“You knew it was a safe bet.”

She tilted her head. “Why’s that?”

“You didn’t send your uncle over to invite me. By the way, I’m Eric.”

I extended my hand and she met it and told me her name.

I’ll call her Cali.

She spun on me with a flare and the low, rapid jostle from under the dress told me I was right. Cali turned to make sure I was following. She needn’t have bothered.

She said, “We’re sitting over here.”

Cali led me over to the sidewalk terrace of the hotel’s restaurant, Gemma. The brick ended and became slick, pea green tile. The awning was striped brown and cream. On the fabric’s front, the name was stamped in gold block letters. Behind its scalloped trim, amber bare bulbs glowed wanly. Down from the balcony wound long arms of wisteria.

The portals into Gemma were so large as to make almost the entire place open-air. Waiters in starched white aprons over black pants glided in and out, and had the appraising look of surgeons.

Cali and I arrived at the scuffed wooden table. She wheeled around it and retook her spot. She looked a little triumphant.

A man in his late forties was seated sideways to the table, ankle propped on his knee, with one arm resting on the surface and fingertips at the stem of a glass of chilled white wine. In the other hand he thumbed an iPhone. He was fixed on it. He also knew we were there without looking, a flick of the eyes and a tiny curl at the corner of his mouth.

Everything visible about him was polished and precise. What he permitted you to see was enviable. He was handsome and fit and wore his age well, with the heft of experience and none of the sag. His posture in the chair had just enough slouch to be carefree, the bearing of a man who only skims the bill before signing.

The haircut was summer short and classic, brushed aside with fingers, with metal filings in the chestnut brown. His face was the graceful aging of an Ivy League heartbreaker. Even-featured and naturally tanned, with light white lines at the corners of the eyes, he was the sort of former track star that weary wives murmur over at college reunions. Whoever tailored his dark, short-sleeved button down knew his craft, as it managed to mold and hang in equal measure. Khaki shorts, leather flip-flops and the too-busy face of an Omega watch completed the catalog appeal.

I sat down. He looked up from his phone and managed an easy grin with a little vague surprise in it. I wasn’t buying.

We shook hands across the table. A flash faster than a finger snap went between them.  She leaned back in her chair with elbows resting on the wooden arms and fingers laced. The air purred. Something older than my presence at this table was there, then gone.

Cali introduced us.

I’ll call him Uncle Gula.

“Happy you could join us, Eric,” he said, laying his iPhone on the table.

“It’s a little out of the blue, I’ll admit, but thanks for the invite.”

“Give my lovely niece here credit for that,” he nodded at her, “She spotted you standing there and just had to have you.”

Smiles can be pointed. I was looking at one.

“I can’t say I blame her, but you know how impulsive college girls can be,” he added.

Uncle Gula grinned. His energy revved quietly. From my left I felt her wattage dim a fraction. I noted it without looking.

“’Have you’ while we celebrate her graduation, that is. Don’t misunderstand,” he said.

I congratulated Cali. She thanked me but stared at him and thought things she didn’t share.

“We’ve been so lazy here, after dinner,” Uncle Gula offered. “We didn’t want to give up the table.” He looked to her and she nodded from a corner of her chair.

“Holding court?,” I asked.

“You pay for the privilege,” he smirked. Uncle Gula motioned for a waiter. “Ever eaten at Gemma, Eric?”

“Afraid not, no, though I can see the appeal.” I didn’t think he was really asking.

“Ah, it’s incredible. I’ll order another bottle. Join us? White alright?”

“I wouldn’t say no. And yes, white is great,” I said.

Cali sat taller in her chair. “That was the deal,” she said pointedly.

She looked at Uncle Gula. It was the look of a child who finds the rules switched on her mid-game.

“I’d have said yes anyway, drink or not,” I said to her directly.

I felt him watchful and coiled in the slouch. So I defused again. It was my job.

“What’s good on the menu?,” I went on, cringing at myself but being sure to open it to both.

“Oh. Were you hungry?”

“No, no, I ate.” I lied. “But I’m often in the neighborhood.” I lied twice. It may or may not have been obvious.

The waiter promptly arrived. Uncle Gula murmured and pointed to something in the wine list. The waiter sped away and he turned back to me.

“Loved the dayboat scallops. Very fresh, light,” he said.

There was a beat. It was the natural space where Cali should have leaped in. She didn’t. I wondered why.

I turned to her and asked what she had eaten.

“The chicken,” she replied, and sounded embarrassed about it.

“I’m sort of a picky eater,” Cali apologized with a shrug and her voice receded. She was girlish, small, staring. Our talk under the clock face a few yards away might as well have been miles away. But then, he hadn’t been there.

I looked back to Uncle Gula, who blinked at her once, twice, in a tolerant way. He then switched back to me and fired up the too-easy grin.

“Lucky for us you were out on the town tonight, Eric. ”

“Lucky? In what way?”

“It’s my last night here in the hotel. Her ceremony’s tomorrow morning. Lucky we ran into you so you can offer us the New York experience,” he said.

“You may be disappointed. I don’t stand in the harbor holding a book and a torch. That gig’s taken.”

Uncle Gula chuckled. “We must’ve interrupted something this evening then?”

“Not at all. I was roaming. My night off.”

He looked impressed. “Nobody with you?”

“Oh no. Defeats the purpose.”

“Which purpose is that?,” he asked.

“Roaming. Not hunting.”

He tilted his head, was about to say something then went coy and thought better of it.

Cali piped up. “I love that. It’s sort of free.”

I offered her my best smile. If I kept this up, we could’ve filmed a toothpaste commercial.

“New York seems to reward stepping out to see where it all leads,” I said.

Uncle Gula’s smile broadened. “And where’s it leading so far?”

“A cap and gown, evidently,” I told him. “I’d like to hear more about that.”

It was more agreeable when she smiled. His smiles were pointed. Hers were grateful.

The waiter returned with a bottle wrapped in linen in an ice bucket and three fresh glasses.

“Orvieto,” Uncle Gula explained. “A little too young but it should still be worthwhile.” No one argued.

The cork popped. Three glasses were poured. We clinked and toasted her graduation.

I asked her what she had studied.

“Art. Design, really,” she replied. “I’m at Pratt. In Brooklyn. I majored in Communications Design. It’s a pretty new field. Exciting.”

I paused to think then said truthfully, “I’m sure. But what is it?”

One of the boys had thrown the ball to the girl finally and it cheered her. An insistence rose in her voice.

“Words. Graphics. Moving images and certain sounds,” Cali recited. “Basically like how to convey a brand or message across a variety of platforms. Relating a powerful message maybe without saying it, but doing so in a slick and kind of effective way.”

“You of all people should appreciate that, Eric,” Uncle Gula intoned over the rim of his wine glass. His eyelids sank a little.

Cali leaned to her right, which brought her closer to me. “But I also took a bunch of photography courses. That’s kind of a side thing. Love it though.”

“Beautiful hobby,” I said.

“And I’m really good at it,” she insisted a little more darkly. Her eyes were locked with her Uncle’s. His glinted in reply above the wine glass.

Cali’s cheek was close to mine over our armrests. “I don’t doubt it,” I told her sideways. “Practical, as well. You never know when your hobby can become your breadwinner.”

“Oh, has that been your experience too?,” Uncle Gula drawled.

Funny guy.

I provided the stock lines about my work. Both uncle and niece were as politely intrigued as most strangers. I wasn’t eager to linger on it.

I looked to him and signaled it was his turn.

Uncle Gula’s index finger jutted from his wine glass and pointed at Cali. “Much the same. Design. Only slightly different.”

“How so, what do you design?”

“People’s lives,” he answered.

A rough swallow of wine. I turned to the girl.

“And to think that deadbeat Moses only parted the Red Sea,” I said and Cali giggled.

Uncle Gula smiled and obliged my joke.

“People who want to overhaul their living space, their working space. They hire me. I create an environment tailored to that individual’s needs, their tastes, their outlook on life. Architecture, interior design. Both, either. It can be as simple as an organizational system to make them more productive, or an aesthetic flow to make them more inspired.”

I nodded and thought about it. “Sounds fascinating. And expensive. A guru with a palette wheel.”

His grin was humorless. “Fortunately there are people who can afford it but can’t do it for themselves. Or prefer to have someone do it for them.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Do you?,” he asked, maybe sensing another dig.

“Believe I do. If more people played the piano, there wouldn’t be much novelty in my playing it for them.”

Uncle Gula placed his glass back on the scuffed table and re-laced his fingers. “As you say,” he admitted.

“You immerse yourself in others’ lives for a living. Better than they’re willing or able to themselves. When your work is done, their lives are changed as if by magic,” I said, ballsier than I’d intended.

He looked pleased. “Unlike Mary Poppins, I don’t soar up into the sky afterwards,” he said.

Alright, so that was funny.

“Maybe not, but people will always pay for newness,” I insisted.

“Tell that to my antique dealer.”

“I took some amazing pictures during our helicopter flight today,” Cali interjected, a little shrill at the edges. We turned to look at her. “Would you like to see them?”

Her hand shot into her purse and pulled out her phone. She flipped through several images on the screen and leaned back towards me.

“I treated her to a helicopter ride this afternoon,” Uncle Gula murmured as if he’d bought her an ice cream. “A gift for myself too, I’d never done it.”

I leaned further to my left to join Cali in the middle.

They were the usual aerial cityscapes, but well framed and lit. She had a good eye. Cali kept the slideshow brisk, the screen of her phone tilted up to face us both. I could smell a light, sweet sweat on her. I tried not to show it. Across the table and excluded, Uncle Gula busied himself with the last of his wine.

Then her finger started wiping the screen faster, a motion hidden by the phone. Cali’s expression never changed. The cityscapes blurred by one after the other until she landed on the faceless picture of a stark naked girl.

She was curves and swells and dimpled places, not solid and not heavy. The breasts pointed slightly in opposite directions as if for maximum field of fire and were roundly capped by very pink nipples. The shoulders were slim and the arms hung artfully like in an old portrait. Her stomach was not at all hard, but fleshy and a little shaded until it sloped into a fuller shadow below. The hips were wide and cocked so that the glancing hint of one cheek was teasing the camera. The legs were strong. And familiar.

The lighting was afternoon golden. The picture was taken in the reflection of an old full-length mirror on hinges. What little I could see of the room was well appointed.

Before I could stop, my eyes shot to her right breast pressing into my arm then back to the picture on her phone. I never doubted I was looking at a nude photo of Cali, but I like to be thorough.

The beaded moisture on my wine glass smeared as I drained it and placed it empty back on the table.

“Impressive, right?,” Uncle Gula prompted.

I looked at him over the top of the phone and then back to the screen.

“I’d suspected your niece had gifts, but this confirms it.”

Cali had been stoic. But now she giggled again and bunched her shoulders into her neck in fake unease. Her bottom lip jutted and her silent ‘oops’ narrowed her eyes. Cali looked at her uncle as if she’d knocked over his priceless Ming vase while playing with the puppy. Then she unraveled into throaty laughter.

Uncle Gula read her face, at first quizzical, his eyes darting. Then the cloud lifted and he smiled at her and placed his forehead in his fingers.

“Oh God. You showed him that picture, didn’t you?”

I didn’t stare at her. I looked dead at him. Maybe I shouldn’t have been shocked.

Was the picture’s background a hotel room, this hotel in particular? I’d no idea. Both her hands were visible in the photo so even though a mirror reflection, she hadn’t taken it herself. Unless she used a timer? Did someone else take it?

I left the last, obvious question unasked, even to myself. Too late of course. Once it crosses your mind you’ve already asked it and are halfway to an unwanted answer.

He might not have taken the picture. But at the very least he had seen it prior.

Cali switched off the screen and threw the phone back in her purse. Uncle Gula lofted his hands up in defeat.

“Well, girl, I can admit when I’m wrong,” he told her with some respect.

Now I watched them both. I suddenly hoped they found me more of an idiot than I felt. It would be expedient.

“Thanks for the drink,” I said, rising from my chair. “Thanks for the photo. And good luck with the circus, this act should be huge in the south.”

Uncle Gula watched my branching off in mild interest. He didn’t’ rise. I didn’t expect or want him to.

Cali appeared by my side with her purse on her shoulder a few yards later and kept pace.

“Walk me to the subway?,” she asked with her earlier perk.

“Afraid you’ll get lost?”

“I don’t know this part of town or where my line is.”

I turned and faced her. I didn’t sweat wondering if she was angling to invite me back to Brooklyn, or walk her part of the way and then make out at the top of the subway stairs. Truth be told I thought about pressing it, if only just to see. No question it’d be memorable. But no.

“Let’s look it up, to be safe” I said instead, and took out my phone to scroll through maps.

“I might get lost,” she said.

“Not for long. You have an appealing way about you. I know, I’ve seen it.”

I asked what line she took to get home and found it and showed her on the map how easy it would be to find. I suggested her uncle walk her if she was anxious. Cali looked put out by the idea. She asked why I couldn’t do it.

“Oh I’m booked solid, sorry,” I told her.

“With what?”

“With whatever happens in there,” I said and pointed at the twin glass doors of the hotel with the etched initials.

“That’s the hotel. What happens in there?”

“The rest of my night, whatever it is.”

I wished Cali luck and meant it and shook her hand and felt like an ass for being susceptible to her look of disappointment. She’d survive. Lunatics always do. I doubted she’d remember it by the time she climbed out of the subway stairs near her dorm. I was certain I’d remember far longer than she did but then I always think that.

I waved her off and the doors were swung open for me by a pair of attendants in dusty crimson vests.

I made my getaway.

© Eric Yves Garcia 2012