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