The Atlas

WHERE ARE YOU TODAY

In the reddish-black light of a bar that stank of cigarette smoke, four men sat around a table watching their hands. They had big pale arms. Drunkenness gleamed on their waxy foreheads, and their pale shirts lay open to the chest. They were sweating and grayhaired. The U-shaped shadows across their faces and paunches cheated the checked shadows around their dark eyes that burned like cigarette-ends. Their features were bland and flushed. Their glasses were as empty as falsehoods we tell every night.

The drunken artist slowly signed his worthless painting. He had the same last name as the best chess player in the world. Slowly he rolled his cigarette between thumb and forefinger and shook it like a baton.

The drunken zombie said: The time I was dead, dead, dead, it was real medicine. I used medicine that my body couldn't accept. That was the day I died. My heart had the pulse zero. It was only sleep, a very deep sleep like heroin. You see, brothers, I'd spent more than three years in India. That was the time yellow fever was popular. At least eighty percent of the junkies caught yellow fever. But I was playing with fever. It was something like playing poker or one-eyed jack. That's how it was when I was dead.

The drunken gypsy said: There is no most beautiful. Let's say tomorrow I am free, I am — I don't have to work. . No! I want brandy! And one beer for all of us, just to water it. .

The drunken soldier, the old one in the plaid shirt, was the only one who still had money. He got brandy and one beer for all. He shook his fingers at the others, a glass of brandy in his other hand, brandy on his breath.

The drunken zombie said: They took my passport in 1978 for making samples of medicine for myself. .

Silence! Silence! cried the drunken gypsy. The soldier wishes to sing.

Bowing, the drunken soldier placed his fingers on the drunken gypsy's arm. Then he began to sing, demonstrating that he almost had teeth. His singing was a series of spitting sounds.

The drunken artist, the beefy one, squeezed his own biceps and wept as the bikini-girl twitched in the flesh of him. He'd tattooed her into marrying him so long ago that she was faded to the color of old chewing gum. He wept, and whispered: Children, everyone wants my money.

Take it easy, said the drunken gypsy, who was happy.

The drunken soldier's cigarette dropped out of his mouth. — I was in Tito's army in '64, he said. I saved all your asses. Without me, you wouldn't be where you are today.