Fall and Rise

CHAPTER THREE. The Bar

Not the same. Lot less light. Piano music though piano covered and keyboard cover locked. Before the place always so jammed. One customer at the bar and behind it a barmaid with her mouth right up to the mirror picking her teeth with a toothpick. She reams, she digs. Got it her face seems to say throwing the toothpick away. Before when there probably wasn’t so much rain. When there was and we were down here we’d get a cab or on a subway and go to either of, or a bus if we didn’t mind the long ride, our apartments to be dry. To drink wine or shot of warming this or that and maybe a snack and maybe read awhile or watch — or do both — part of a television movie in our undies or nude. Or one in her or his undies and the other nude, depending if the temperature outside was mild and if it wasn’t then if the heat inside was still up. And chances are one or the other of us after we’d fooled as May liked to say with one another would climb — but stop. On top of the other and get not climb or side by side each other or both of us on our knees facing one of the bedboards. But why bring all that back? I don’t know. You can try. “Lost like a dog, dark like a roach, dumb like a goat and almost half as hot as a cat it’d be too rudimental and simplistic to say, those are four of the foresown fates of man — Hasenai, it’s not safe: grab your son and bone and race back to your flat!” he says in his poem “Autumnal Ordinal Poems.” And disinfecting smell from the john, music from the jukebox. Not jukebox but whatever those big blinking modern record-playing machines are called and which I don’t think was here before. Debussy I bet.

“Debussy,” I say to the barmaid, walking over bobbing my head at the jukebox as she turns puckering her lips from putting on lipstick in front of the mirror, but not taking a seat.

“Could be. Like something from the bar?”

“Sounds it. The little piano tinkle. Like rolling leaves, like falling trees. I mean rivers and leaves. The high keys. Rivers rippling, little leaves flipping in the air or on the ground briskly tripping. And ridiculous those descriptions. Not descriptions but likenesses or pictures of whatever they sound like or are depicting. Maybe depictions. But you probably know music so do you know…?” snapping my fingers. “By the same composer. Not Le or La Mer or The Valse. No, that was someone else. Piano pieces all in a series by Debussy that sound like this and maybe is. I bet the pianist knows. He on his break?”

“Vacation.”

“Oh, vacation, lucky stiff. But I bet he’s playing twelve hours a day on a resort ship or at a Nassau hotel or one on one of the Keys. Say, that’d be the right spot. But the sign outside — Never mind. I’m not nosy and I’m sure you have your good reasons.”

“You’re not very thirsty either and the reason for the sign is it’s not my idea. The reason is it’s my boss’s. To keep music lovers coming in while the pianist’s away. You see what luck we’ve had. Sure, the freaky weather, but people are a lot smarter than he thinks. And the wind which keeps knocking it over could be God’s way of saying don’t pull the wool over the public’s eyes too much.”

“You believe that?”

“If I just said ‘politics and religion,’ you’d like a light know what I meant.”

“Go ahead. I never get upset over those two subjects.”

“But you should or you’re not human. If you were a Jew and I called you a Red kike, you wouldn’t mind? Anyway, you still don’t want anything to drink if you never did? False advertising, so I’m not holding you to stay here.”

“No, I’ll have something.” I take off my raincoat and hang it on a wall peg. “My sweater.”

“Yes?”

“My sweater. No wonder I was so cold. I was at a party before and left it. Ah, it’s too ratty for anyone to take.”

“People will do that at them — leave things. I’ve done it plenty. Once even my year-old baby.”

“You have a baby?” sitting at the bar.

“Now she’s not.”

“What happened?”

“She grew up.”

“At the party I mean, and I didn’t mean anyone would take my sweater at mine. She was later taken home and raised by someone else?”

“I went back for her after I got halfway home without.”

“And, fretful the whole trip back, found she was the life of the party when you got there.”

“Close. She couldn’t even walk a step then but was dancing without holding on in the middle of the room. People don’t believe that when I tell them. She never knew I was gone, so it had no lasting effect on her, and now she’s old enough to have a baby herself.”

“I know I’m supposed to think I’m supposed to say this, but it doesn’t seem possible she could be that old.”

“If she was like me at her age she’d have had her first by now and leaving it at wild parties too — but with her brains, forgetting where to go back for it. Fortunately, I’ve kept her a child.”

“Probably a good idea. I’d both love and hate to be a father today, maybe something else I’m supposed to think I’m supposed to say.”

“Why? And you were never a father?”

“Did I say that? Even if I did, it’s true. And you’re about to say something like how I’m missing the best—”

“You are. And if you were a father but the right kind, you’d have it with someone else to help bring it up, which I never had the luck to have. And unless you’re ten years younger than you look, you shouldn’t wait.”

“You’re right, I will. The right woman, she gets proposed to right away, no time-wasting, from me and our future child.”

“If you’re laughing to yourself, you’re making a big mistake.”

“I’m not. I’ve just about made up my mind. No, I’ve made it. This second. All my women and no women before — the heck. I’m getting too old. I’m beginning to taste the grit between my teeth. I don’t know what that means. But yes, I met a girl — a woman — I’m sure she’s a good seven or eight years younger than I — tonight — at that party — one with the left sweater — left and right, both sleeves — that, who I’m going to pursue to try to marry and have a child by. I will. The woman. Will and try.”

“You could be a little high now, so don’t jump to quick decisions. Girls still say yes to marriage proposals even if they keep their maiden names, and get depressed if the man suddenly backs out.”

“No, I’ve decided. I’m tired of living alone. Being — etcetera, and getting old, gritty teeth. I want a kid under my feet. By my feet with a little silky head to pat and a wife sitting on the floor with her arms or head on my knees or lap, all while I’m seated in an easy chair, or any but some hard wooden chair, just enough lamplight over my shoulder so as not to coarsen the scene with its glare, and a rug so my wife doesn’t bruise her knees while reclining beside me and my child doesn’t get hurt when it falls. I mean it. Carpet or rug. And me even in a hard wooden fold-up chair if that’s what it has to take to succeed. I’m game. So done.” Same piano piece comes on after a half minute being off. “You didn’t have a jukebox before. Not a jukebox. What’s that machine called again?”

“Jukebox, what else could it be?”

“All right, jukebox. But music to my ears. Before, remember when I snapped my fingers? Well it’s not like me to forget a famous piece’s name that I also love. It’s something like études, though I’ve always associated those with Chopin. Preludes, that’s what they are and I’m sure this one is. Deedle leedle lee. Like that. Deedle leedle leedle lee, leedle dee. Like leaves, rippling trees. You hear it?”

“Sort of. So what drink will it be?”

“Goddamnit,” slapping my head. “Brahms. An intermezzo, for piano — one in B? No, I always forget the number and key. I know Chopin’s Waltz C-flat in D-minor or something, but this which she played as much? I used to love to unlock the door to her place, woman before the future mother of my child to be, and with my own keys, ones that go in the holes, when she was practicing this piece — coffee?”

“Saving it for my Irish coffee and serious Black Russian drinkers and it’s been sitting on the hot plate so long it’d be too bitter to drink straight. I know I could make more, but I’m too lazy.”

“I’ve done time behind counters. I could make it.”

“Strictly you know what. Maybe you should go to a real coffee shop.”

“Can’t. I’m here, drying off. Running across some hitherto unseen but intriguing things about myself, and it’s still drizzling and now that I know my sweater’s gone I’ll be even colder on the street. And if it’s just the tip, I’ll give you as much as for those sickening mixed drinks.”

“Okay, I’ll be honest.” She empties an ashtray and wipes it clean though it only had a broken swizzle stick in it. “Though the boss is at his busier place he might drop in and see your coffee and how much your tab is and that you’re not a regular to do favors for like that and say to me how come I’m not peddling the drinks better even with this weather and the pianist away? So how about it? An Irish coffee would warm you up quicker than anything and the bitter coffee in it sober you up a little also if that’s what you think you need, or keep your high even. And I make them with real whipped cream I whipped myself, so you get some food value from it too just when you might have to use it.”

“Make it without — I was going to say ‘without the whiskey and cream,’ but I know about bosses and I’m no wiseguy.” She looks at me as if I am. I look at the mirror and see her still looking at me. A sign on the mirror says Guinness is good for you. “Good, that’s what I want to be and the weather and your business to be like — so a Guinness please. It’s supposed to be healthy besides.”

“Ad’s an antique, and as for the medicinal qualities, all the health Guinness gives is the runs. Closest thing to any brew Irish or English we have is Molson’s Ale.”

“Then, Miss, after you give me some jukebox change, I’d say you’ve made a sale.” I give her a dollar.

“Hurray. And the place even makes extra cash from you too.”

She gives me four quarters and steps on the pedal to open the lowboy refrigerator. Light-blue light illuminates her body when she squats to get the bottle out. Thin, tall, too-tight shirt to cast aspersions, I mean call attention or dramatize her very large compared to her tiny waist and nearly nonexistent hips, breasts, or why ever a woman would wear a shirt so tight with no garment beneath that the color and contour of her aureoles show and nipples push through and is probably unhealthy besides. To sell more drinks and get bigger tips, but doesn’t excite me, I think mainly because it looks so damagingly tight. And somehow, in recent years, two…three, and I don’t believe because of any libidinal decrease, the breasts of strangers even with the nipples erect and whatever age and size…I prefer the woman I love or am in the process of or think I will when she’s taking off her clothes and making no show, except maybe a parody of one, but just those.

She pours my ale. I taste, say “Ah, real great,” put a five-dollar bill under an ashtray in case someone suddenly comes in with the wind and go to the jukebox at the end of the bar. “Brahms Intermezzo,” it says, but not who’s performing which one. I stick a quarter in and press “Slow Movement Mozart Concerto,” figuring it’ll be piano and the romantic movement used as the musical theme for a popular Swedish movie years ago, but it’s violin and Prokofiev.

I try opening the door to the men’s room near the jukebox; it’s stuck or locked. “Excuse me,” jiggling the doorknob, “anybody in there, and going to be long?” No answer.

“Is there someone in the men’s room,” I yell to the barmaid, “or do you keep it locked for your own reasons?”

“Is this fiver minus your drink all for me?”

“No why, how much is the ale?”

“Two.”

“You being funny then? Take a dollar. But the john here?”

“Probably the clean-up man. Give him a good knock. He could sit in the shithouse all day.”

I knock, not good, and a woman says “Please, I don’t feel too well. I won’t be out soon. Go next door.”

“This is the men’s room, ma’am. You can’t use the ladies’?”

“It’s too filthy. Please, nothing I can do now, and I won’t talk anymore.”

“How filthy is it?” Doesn’t answer. “Mind if I use the ladies’ room?” I say to the barmaid. “Men’s is being used by a woman and, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go bad.”

“She’s in there? Wondered where she went. Thought she ducked out on the check when I was doing my nails and I truthfully didn’t care she looked so sad. Be quick, will you? Not just the boss but the whole city health force frowns on the mixing of washroom sexes. And the mayor himself still keeps his rent-controlled apartment around here and a minimum of twice has stopped in to hear.”

“What’s he drink?”

“It was only told to me — probably to hype business — never seen.”

“I shouldn’t be long,” and I open the ladies’ room door slowly. It’s not filthy at all. Floor mopped, no wall cracks or remarks, mirror, commode, sink and pipes shiny and clean, vase of fresh flowers over the toilet’s water tank and above that an oil painting of beach grass or machine reproduction of one down to the smudged signature and raised brushstrokes in an oak or imitation oak frame. Seat seems to be clean, and I pull down my pants and sit. This is going to be a long one; should’ve brought a book. I look around: nothing much else to see. Alarm tape bordering the small barred window, so it also can be that kind of place. I try to smell the flowers from where I’m sitting. But I can’t smell, if they do smell, anything but what I’ve so far in bulk, liquid and gas expelled and don’t remember smelling anything but cleanser and disinfectant when I came in here. “Please for poor ole Petie’s sake don’t take posies from WC or vase to your home or to throw away on the street,” notice on opposite sides of the vase says. My mother, far back as I can remember, always had flowers on our water tank, fresh or dried. Except Christmastime when she put a holly branch in and middle autumn when it was twigs with different colored leaves from the park. Not in a vase but an old cough-medicine bottle that can now only be bought at a flea market or antique shop. The bottle was still on top of her tank last time I was there. I don’t know how we never broke it. I guess the bathroom was the one place in the apartment my sister and I never fought or played, since we couldn’t roll around on top of one another without clunking our heads on the sink pedestal or one of the tub legs. Or maybe we did break it and she had a supply of these bottles we never knew about, though there wasn’t much room in the two-bedroom apartment where she could have kept them hidden too long without our finding out. I should call her and ask, or go see her. Just call her to see how she is, or go see for yourself. Why am I always putting it off, not being a good son, because how long would it take? Hour out, drinks, dinner and talk, which could be illuminating and fun, hour-plus back, ladened with enough of her breads and overcooked food in plastic containers to fill two large shopping bags and feed me for a week. Not tonight go, though I don’t think it’s too late to call and haven’t for two weeks.

There’s no toilet paper. No tissues, hand-towel paper, cloth towel or even the paper holder on the wooden spool in the wall the toilet paper comes on. My handkerchief is in my raincoat as is the napkin with the pâté. I could use my fingers, but there’s no soap. My briefs have several small holes and frayed places in them and the elastic’s about to go. I start taking my trousers off. But as long as I’m going to dispose of the briefs I tear them off my legs by pulling at one of the unfabricated holes and chewing through the band, blow my nose in it which I have to do, rip the briefs in two and wipe my behind with the smaller part and drop it into the bowl and flush, hoping it all goes down. It does. I throw the other part into the can under the sink, then think I should have looked in or behind the can before I tore up the briefs for little pieces of soap or what could have been clean to semi-clean paper of any sort and also saved the clean part of the briefs for a possible emergency later on.

I splash water on my face, dry it on my sleeve and hands on my pants, check the toilet to see that none of what I flushed came up, look in the mirror at my face and say ‘“Now as Hasenai says in his humorous poem “Optics in Inner Space” would be a well-chosen moment to reflect on myself and place in the luminous race,’” want to pull a hair out of my nostril but because of the impending pain which has stopped me about one time in four, push it back in till it stays and go to the bar.

“That was an excellent selection that beautiful piano music you played before,” man at the end of the bar says as I pass him.

“You mean my concerto came on?”

“No, a solo, soft and sweet — delicious, unless they have concertos for just one instrument and no accompanist or orchestra. You know what it was?”

“The Brahms intermezzo? Much as I love it it wasn’t my choice. I put on that screechy violin piece before, though paid for and chose a slow Mozart piano concerto movement.”

“Must be mine then,” the barmaid yells over. “Just threw in money and with my eyes closed, pressed.”

“Your own money? Doesn’t seem practical with so few customers and such lousy tippers like myself.”

“Not real money. Sure, real, but with red nailpolish on it, which means it’s the bar’s and the gorilla who collects for his company gives it to us back. You have to have music in here, but why classical? Neither of you answer me that. It’s a classical music bar, so people expect it. But I don’t like it and aren’t afraid to say so.”

“What does she know?” the man says low. “She’s ignorant. She likes disco. She likes hip-huggers and guys with safety pins in their lobes and roller skates. She’s not supposed to but she wears those new kind of wheels in back of the bar. You see them?”

“I don’t believe so, though I don’t see how I wouldn’t have heard them.”

“They’re the new silent kind I said with something like polyurine wheels that make no noise. She knocks our music but thinks those things are the ultimate creative achievement of Western mankind till now, along with every single movie made. She’s pathetic.”

“I don’t know. She seems sort of nice. And if the owner doesn’t mind her skating or he’s not around to see, I don’t see why I should.”

“You’re right. That’s what I should think. I should mind my business and not be so critical of people. Thank you for telling me that. Thank you.”

“Excuse me, but I didn’t say you were wrong or even imply what you should think or do.”

“You don’t understand. I’m thanking you. Take the compliment you deserve when someone gives it because you may have to wait a long time for the next one to come,” and he sips his drink and looks at the bar mirror. I go back to my stool but don’t sit.

“Can I open you another one?” the barmaid says.

“Not yet. Hardly touched this one. By the way, he says you wear roller skates, so if I peer over the bar at your feet it’s just for that, okay? Oh that’s stupid.”

“Roller skates?”

“No really, forget what I said. I’m embarrassed by it. Trying to be provocative or something with my silly talk. Sorry. I’ll shut up.” I put my hand over my mouth and say through it “I’ve shut up.”

“He said it though, true?”

“He didn’t mean anything by it.”

“But he said it.”

I take my hand away. “What do you want me to say? If I said he said it he said it.”

She shoots him a dirty look, puts her sneakered foot on the counter next to my glass. “Other one’s like this one down to the broken laces. So whatever his reason for saying it, and I can tell you why but I’m a much nicer person than he, you could be an even bigger fool for believing him, not that I meant that as an insult to you — just to that troublemaker.”

“Look, what are you getting so riled up about? I’m sure he was kidding me. Playing around, man to man — you know. Besides, right after he told me it he apologized and said your roller skates were none of his business, so now I don’t know what to think. What does it matter anyway? And I’m the one who started the trouble, so blame me.”

“Maybe you have your own reasons for wanting to take everyone’s blame, but that bastard started it this time, not you.”

“And maybe you’re only looking to fight with him over nothing and for your own reasons and using my stupid roller-skate remark as the excuse.”

“And maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re only a first or second timer here and know nothing about what goes on around. Because that guy — yes, I’m talking about you,” she says to him and he says “Huh? What? Me? I can’t hear so good from so far away. Bad ears and I also can’t read minds or lips.”

“Sure you can’t. Oh, go back to your drink,” and he says “Anything to help keep cemented relations, but I’m still not so sure what you said,” and he looks at me and raises his eyebrows and shoulders, then looks at the mirror while he sips his drink.

“Anyway,” to me, “he’s always doing something like that about me with new customers. One time he told somebody I was a man in drag. Another time that I put laxatives in the drinks of customers who don’t tip. Those are jokes? Maybe if you don’t take them seriously, but both times those stupes seemed to believe him and who knows what else he says when I’m not around. I ought to really tell him where to stick it.”

“You just didn’t? Could I have change for a phone call please?” pushing one of the dollar bills at her.

“You’re just changing the subject.”

“No, I have to make an important call to my — and oh, before I forget. There’s no toilet paper in the ladies’ room. And I’m not saying that to change the subject from your saying I changed the subject before. I didn’t then and am not now and there’s no paper. Just thought you’d like to know.”

“That’s the truth?”

“About the paper and everything else, I swear.”

“Henry,” she yells to nobody I can see in back. “The girls’ room needs paper.” Man’s still looking in the mirror and sipping his drink.

“No hand towels either or soap. Face towels. Whatever they are.”

“All kinds of paper, Henry, and soap. I hope you didn’t have to go too bad,” she says to me.

“Just number one. And those papers in the pull-down metal container are hand or face towels, aren’t they?”

“Just paper. If they’re cloth, they’re cloth, but now we’re talking about a long linen roll.”

“Okay, gorgeous,” a man shouts from the back. “Toiletries and roses for the heavenly bodies. Thy will is mine done.”

“And you,” she says, going over to the man at the end of the bar. “You I want to have it out with now.”

“Please, my change,” I say. “I need it for my phone call.”

“What’d you say to her about me?” he says.

“I’m sorry. The roller skates. But I told her it was a joke and nothing and my fault. It was nothing, Miss, nothing.”

“Don’t tell me — I know what it was. And if you’re not that keen on me,” she says to him, “and have to keep making these vicious cracks about me here, then I don’t care if you’re our best customer ever and also the chief muck-a-shit of New York. I’ll have to demand that you leave and never come back while I’m tending bar and you can run to my boss and cry about it to him all you please.”

“I will,” he says. “I’ll have you fired and get him to put a girl behind the bar who at the very least, if she has to manually drop ice cubes into the drinks, cleans her fingers once a week.”

“You drip. Get the hell out of here now.”

“I’ll go when I’m good and ready, sister, and not a second before.” He finishes his drink. “I’ll take a refill if you don’t mind.”

“Henry,” she yells.

“Then whatever comes out of this thing then,” and he reaches over the counter for what I think’s called a soda gun and squirts water or tonic or soda water into the sink and then into his glass.

I grab my two dollars off the bar, get my raincoat and start for the door.

“Thanks a lot, fella,” the man says, holding his glass up to me in a toast. “I’ll do the same for you with my fat ratting mouth any damn day you want and then worm out when it gets most ticklish too.”

“Any trouble up front, gorgeous?” Henry says when I open the door.

‘Half of it’s on the way out now.”

I turn around. Henry’s tall and burly but not mean looking and is holding a roll of toilet paper and package of paper towels and a broom. “Look,” I say, “let’s settle this amicably. Because I’m the cause or indirectly so of this big absurd whatever you want to call it harmless to-do and I can’t just leave knowing this man might get his head bashed in over it.”

“I think, if intellectual wisdom’s to be king, that you be better to leave now,” Henry says. “No harm shall come to no one at the bar I’ll here say.”

“But if you think you’ve a good grievance against him or she does and he doesn’t want to go, call a cop. At least that way you’re assured nobody will get hurt.”

“As you said, so I say — no man shall, long as the gentle Hen’s here.”

“We don’t want cops when it’s not necessary,” she says. “They’re hard at it with a lot worse than him and don’t like coming in on things we can easily fix ourselves. Now close the door behind you. It’s getting cold and the landlord’s a cheapo with the rent. But if you want to do the most good, take with you your creepy friend.”

“Thank you,” the man says to me, his hand cupped behind his ear. “I didn’t catch all you said, but you spoke up, that was grand, and from now on I can handle myself dandy.”

“Don’t handle anything. They don’t want you here. I’m not wanted also — that’s also clear — but not wanted not as much as you, if I got those nots right, and there’s nothing to be learned or gained or anything from talking back to bartenders and so on. So be smart and pay up and leave with me and we’ll have a drink or coffee down the street so long as it’s not a tough dumpy joint and talk about why there’s no sense talking and fighting back at bars and being big men and strong and all that hooey and stuff and pride and so on and knocking heads and losing teeth and standing on your own two feet and later blacking out after making great fatuous points, though maybe there I obviously speak for myself.”

“Fine, if I agreed. But I don’t because this is a public place licensed for such and no discrimination of any kind, so not somewhere you can be tossed out of indiscriminately. It’s also like home to me or become one I’ve been coming here so long, something pretty Marjorie’s going to learn from her boss Mr. Witcom very soon.”

“Then you might end up getting hurt,” I say and Marjorie says to him “I’ll learn, all right, will I ever learn,” and Henry says “What in the good name are you all mouthing on so much for? The Hen’s got work.”

“If I am then I am,” the man says to me, “because I don’t pretend to be a tough strong man like these two here.”

“Uh-oh,” I say looking up and Marjorie says to him “You calling me a man again?” and Henry says “Now will someone please tell the Hen what he just said to make that man say that about him? Someone. Please. The Hen’s open-minded. So tell him.”

“Oh, did I say that?” the man says to her and smiles for a few seconds and drinks from his glass.

She grabs the glass from him, a lot of what’s in it spills on the bar and their clothes, and throws the rest of it in his face. He stands, takes out a wallet, slaps some bills on the bar, kicks his stool, it’s wobbling on two of its four legs when he kicks at it again and misses but it still falls, grabs his hat and coat off a peg while Henry picks up the stool and slides it back to the bar and Marjorie raises a chair leg she got from somewhere and bangs it against something metal like a cabinet or sink and yells “Get out of here before you get your ears nailed — I’m not fooling with you, get out, get out!” and bangs the metal again and he rushes through the door I didn’t know I was still holding open and outside puts on his hat and coat.

“Don’t go if you don’t have to,” she says to me. “But if you do, I hope no hard feelings to the bar.”

“No really and I only came in for a single coffee or beer,” foot keeping the door open as I put on my coat and think never again in this place even with the pianist playing and a friend.

“Hey,” Henry says, “the Hen’s got a terrific idea with business booming this great.”

“We can’t,” she says. “There’s still the lady in the gentlemen’s can and what if Witty—” but I’ve let the door go and step outside.