Quiet Irving Place

The Zen Palate was closed I saw when I crossed Union Square. Closed for good, with rental signs in the window. I'd thought that's where we were meeting. I smoked a cigarette and thought things over. I felt in my pocket for my phone which wasn't there. I'd left it. I was out of sorts.

I walked east. I had no way of knowing the time. I looked around me for some sort of public clock. There were none. It was getting dark is all I knew. I came upon Irving Place and happened to take a right. Ahead of me was Trader Joe's. Useless. Then on my left I saw a group of models standing outside a restaurant not smoking. I knew I'd arrived at Pure Food and Wine.

Three hostesses tried to talk me into a table. I blew past them muttering something about a friend in the back. As I stepped out into the courtyard I was hit with the overwhelming scent of Egyptian Musk. It lay like a fog over the crowd. Thick, sweet vaporized oil coating the inside of my nose. Dried nuts? Something else came when I breathed out, I couldn't put my finger on it. I went to the bar they have out there, the bartender gave me a list. There is no hard liquor served at Pure Food and Wine I wanted to drink. I should have known. "Is that Egyptian Musk?" I asked the bartender. She said she doesn't wear chemically-based scents. "Who does anymore?" I knew what I wanted to put my finger on. Sanctimony. That was what came at the back end of this scent. That's what the courtyard at Pure Food and Wine smells like.

My short, fat, gay, Indian companion joined me at the bar. "I tried to call you. I was dumping." I told him I'd left my phone. "They have nut cheese." I looked around. "Not like that. Pistachio." He said he'd been dumping a lot since he began his raw food diet and tried to tell me about them. I ordered a bottle of wine. "It's organic and bio-dynamic," the bartender said. "What, they let the chickens run through there?" "Whatever wants to run through there. No pesticides are used. It's so right on."

We drank the first of three bottles of organic, bio-dynamic Cava made in methode champenoise while my companion ate raw food. I thought about the paring down of a life. He was trying to lose weight so he rejected even the cooking of food, figuring it was more natural and basic. He ran for miles outside and wouldn't join a gym. I'd left my phone and had been lost all day. Ridiculous because the only person who calls was sitting next to me at the bar. I'd felt lighter, out of touch, but dazed. I wasn't ready to give up my own infrastructure. The night before there'd been a problem with the cable in my apartment and the channel guide had gone out. I couldn't see to choose a show to watch. My knees had been cut out from under me. I thought about the growing dependence we have on machines. It scares me, but I'll take it.

I poured out the last of the third bottle in our glasses. My companion came back from peeing and asked if I'd ever gone into a bathroom where someone had been dumping so hard it had made the room warmer. He was smiling, amazed at our bodies. I lit a cigarette and waited for the bartender to ask me to put it out.

Chimney Stacks

A man stands in front of the window of a darkened restaurant. Sage is on Park Avenue South, between twenty fourth and fifth streets, and it has been closed for a period of years. The man leans forward and looks inside. The tables are set with table cloths and salt and pepper shakers. The bar is still stocked, and there is a large bouquet of dead flowers on the sill of the window, beneath the painted name. The restaurant has remained unchanged since the man first noticed it a year ago, and he makes a point to pass by at least once a week and peer in. Can it be that the salts and peppers occasionally switch sides? Or does the man negate the colors in his mind? He looks at his reflection in the window. The face is obscured but the line of his hair is as it should be, and the drape of his suit is perfect, as ever. He carries no wallet, nor cell phone, nor identification; his suit bears no maker's mark. There are ten one hundred dollar bills in his left trouser pocket and out of the right he pulls a rectangular piece of malachite. Green and smooth in his hand, he caresses it with his thumb. This empty restaurant is the one constant for him in the city. His name is not Avery Green.

Green steps into the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis. It's not very busy yet and he orders a negroni. Later, a woman stands next to him at the bar, waiting for the bartender's attention. Blond with a Jean Seberg haircut and glassy blue doll's eyes. She glances at Green.
"Are you drinking a Cosmo?" She smiles, playfully insulting.
"A negroni. What are you having? Let me get it for you."
She waves him away. "I have an account. Do you want another one of those?"
"Thank you."
"Didn't you go to Francis Xavier?"
"School was forever ago, wasn't it? You were friends with Charles Brennan, I think."
Charles Brennan doesn't exist. She looks doubtfully at him.
"I think so! For like a semester or something. Sorry, Natalie Edgewater."
"Wonderful to see you again."

Now Green is with them. A large group of what may be considered bright young things. Their money is too old for them to appear in the tabloids, but the generic face is to be seen all over New York. They aren't too polite to say they don't know him, they simply don't care. He's someone new to talk to, and possibly attended school with some of them. They drink at the King Cole until nearly two. Natalie closes the tab to her account. They descend on the street.

Natalie's townhouse is on ninety first street between Park and Madison Avenues. Five stories of lighted windows and music. Everyone from the bar and more arrive before them. Green is affable and charming. He drifts through clots of people in living rooms, libraries, and various kitchens. He has no discernible accent except to say, if anyone thinks about it, which they don't, that he's definitely American. Natalie keeps him in sight for the most part, disappearing occasionally into rooms with friends, closing doors behind her. She emerges bright eyed and pale faced.

Natalie and Green are in her father's study.
"He's never here anymore," Natalie says. "The family wants to sell the place. They spend most of the time in Connecticut these days."
"It's very pretty up there."
"It's so boring!" Natalie looks at Green, behind the desk. She comes around the desk and pulls at his tie. "Don't you want to loosen that up? It's been a long day."
Her pulling the tie tightens the knot. It's uncomfortable and makes the knot look bad. It's irritating. Green turns and subtly adjusts it. He cocks his head at a photograph, there is a platinum Dunhill lighter next to it with the engraved initials A.E.
"Is that your father?"
"Yeah, that's him. That's when he was running for Congress. He was one of the Democratic candidates in our district. Gore Vidal was the other."
"I remember he ran."
"Yeah, well. Vidal beat him. So he became friends with Mailer and published a book of his poems."
"Oh, I don't think I've run across that one."
"You wouldn't. Dad had a little vanity press."

Green asks where the nearest bathroom is. Hers, she says. Just two doors down the hall. To the right after you enter the bedroom. Green stands in front of the mirror in the bathroom. There is a pink toothbrush with some wear in a cup next to the sink. He brushes his teeth with it, dries it on a towel and puts it back exactly where it was. He wipes out the sink and suddenly smiles at himself in the mirror.

Natalie is waiting for him in the bedroom. They're at an impasse. With nothing else to say, she looks at his shoes.
"Those are nice. Sturdy."
"They're brogues."
"Allen Edmonds."
"What?"
"Banker's shoes."
"These are very nice shoes."
She's been crossing the room to him. She smooths his lapel. It doesn't need smoothening. He lets his hand rest on her throat. He can feel her pulse and her breathing. The music is quieter now, the people are beginning to leave.
"It's morning," he says.
"You can stay here if you want."
"Thanks. I'll just sleep on a couch."
She laughs, embarrassed, taken aback. "Or here." He's very close, leaning into her. "Where are you from?" she asks.
"I'm from here." He kisses her.

Later, Green has found a room with a suit caddy. Green presses his pants and showers with the suit jacket on a hanger in the bathroom to steam. After the shower he brushes out any wrinkles in the elbows and the seat and dresses.

The large house is silent as Green makes his way down the hall toward the study. His walk is businesslike, the floorboards creak. At the picture of Natalie's father, he pulls the rectangular piece of malachite out of his right pocket. It's a little dull and smudged and Green polishes it on his shirt. He picks up the platinum Dunhill lighter and replaces it exactly with the malachite before the picture. The lighter goes into his right trouser pocket and he leaves.

* *

Avery Green stands outside the Pegu Club on Houston Street. A young woman comes out of the bar, a cigarette in her hand. She looks around her and catches Green's eye. He pulls out his lighter and flicks the side striking bar. She notices the initials.
"Nice lighter."
"Thanks."
"What are the initials for?"
"My name."
There is a long pause.
"Well, what is it, stupid?" she asks and laughs.
"Allen Edmonds," says Green, laughing as well. "Like the shoemaker."

Quiet XES

A tall girl was breaking up with her boyfriend on the phone. She wasn't quite crying. She hung up. "You look a little like Snow White. Except, you know. Shorter skirt." She lifted her phone a little. "He wanted it. Now he won't even see it." I said it can't rain all the time. She looked at me. "I heard it in a movie." She took off. My short, fat, gay, Indian companion came out of the bar. I was leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. He told me I looked like I was trolling for some butthole. We went inside XES.

It was Friday at eleven and the bar was crowded, but there were still two seats. XES is a stopping off point for the gays and their one girl friend. They meet at there before heading to the more popular bars. I watched it swell and empty. A bus stop.

My companion pushed his way through the dance floor to the bathroom. I ordered us beer. The bartender asked for identification. I showed him mine and he asked who was drinking the other. I told him it was okay, he wasn't Indian like that. XES is loud. He didn't hear, and set my companion's beer behind the bar. I yelled that it was okay, I wouldn't be drugging it. Young, spiked haired, humorless Asian bartender. He looked through me then started making some gay cocktails. My companion appeared in the seat beside me, ID out. The bartender squinted at it. "Is that Apache?" My companion made a feather with his hand at the back of his head. He drank most of the Budweiser in one pull. "If you have to piss, watch out for the fat one dancing. She's a mess." We were silent for a moment. He said you know you're a bitter old queen when you start referring to all men as she. "You're twenty six."

XES is typically loud. Bass and falsettoed women's vocals. Some new Britney Spears came on. Slow, filthy, saddening, herion-rape beats. Loud. You have to get right in their ear when you talk. This is the point. It's comfortable for friends to scream at each other and for strangers it's an immediate forced intimacy. You get over awkward hellos when your mouth is on an ear. "Are you German?" Someone screamed at me. I shook my head. He looked at me again. "No, you're all like, 'I'm from Brooklyn.'" He trailed his hand across my shoulders and left with his group.

My companion was having trouble with his husband. He was in New Mexico digging fossils of human feces. There is no signal in the desert. He said he's getting old. He was worried about becoming the man at the corner of the bar. Alone, drinking a pint of ice water and a Stolichnaya martini with olives. Pursed mouth, arched eyebrow, cradling the glass, pinky out. Looking like he's over everything and I remember when I was twenty one, too, honey. But secretly terrified to talk to anyone but the bartender, who was busy.

He disappeared. The bar emptied and never quite filled again. We drank Jameson. A block of songs from the nineties played. You are always on my mind. 100% pure love. Rhythm is a dancer. More and more and I found myself thinking about a few years spent in South Beach then. Before Mtv found it, before the condos. I thought about the AWOL Marine and his friend who only wore sarongs. Young wild-eyed tea dancers.

I blinked and found myself in a cab hurtling uptown with my companion and two of his new friends. We were at Columbus Circle.

I crossed fifty eighth street. A cab honked at me. He was yelling. "What?" I stopped in front of him and lit a cigarette. He was huge and African and angry. He wrenched the steering wheel, threw the cab into park, and opened his door. I strolled away. My companion came out of the bar. I saw in his face what was about to happen to me. I dragged on my cigarette and waited for the punch to come. Right on the back of my head. I wanted it. Why not? Let's go. "Donkey punch." I heard the cab door slam and the cab take away. My companion went back inside. I tossed my cigarette away and fell into the next taxi that would take me.

Cement

You're never ready for the sound of an empty apartment. Mine has cement for its floor and ceiling. The walls too. This morning there were carpets on the floor and curtains on the sides of the windows. It looks very white in here now. I keep on clicking my tongue on the top of my mouth.

You flush the toilet. It's too noisy. The chair scrapes the floor. My glass of whiskey bangs against the desk.

I'm looking for a funny picture to illustrate an empty cement room. I've found a panda, and another of some tiles.

Dead Eye

My grandfather Mike taught me how to shoot when I was eight. After plinking cans with a BB gun for a few weeks that summer, he pulled out an old .22/shotgun combination gun. The .22 barrel rested on top of the shotgun barrel and the hammer clicked up or down depending on what sort of shell you wanted to fire. I loved the sharp crack the .22 made and was a pretty good shot. One morning Mike handed the gun over and told me again to make sure to hold the butt-end firmly to my shoulder, breathe slowly, and squeeze rather than pull at the trigger. "Like you're making a fist." "I know, I know." Man, it felt like that gun came out the back of my arm. Mike had clicked the hammer down to strike the shotgun side. The only other time I saw him laugh that hard was when he put a lit firecracker under a coffee can to fire it in the air. The fuse was faulty, it exploded before Mike could back away and the can hit him in the mouth. His brother and he laughed and laughed, blood filling my grandfather's mouth.

A few years later Mike began taking me hunting. After that first switch-up whenever I shot a gun, even if I knew the kickback was coming, my pulse would race, I'd have to force my breathing to slow, and my mind emptied. I don't remember shooting the deer. He was an eight-pointer and Mike said his dressed weight was two hundred forty pounds. What I remember is the deer hanging in one of the outbuildings after we got him back. Empty, spread open, and darkly meaty against the fluorescent lighting. My grandmother was standing in the sawdust she'd spread on the cement floor underneath the deer, blood covering her hands and arms up to her elbows.

Quiet Seventh Street

"I'm not waiting in line to get in to no god-damn bar," said my short, fat, gay, Indian companion. There was a long line outside the bar early on Saturday night. The sidewalk was narrow and they had a police barricade keeping the people from blocking it. It was five thirty and the rest of the block was deserted. We were at McSorley's.

There were two large men smoking outside the door. One looked over at us. "He's not Indian like that." The man laughed and gave me a cigarette. He had impossibly bowed legs and a gut that hung halfway down his crotch. "Doug," he said and shook my hand, "but youc'n call me Precious." He thought that was hilarious. So did his friend. Doug had a long scraggly goatee and a pony tail coming out of the back of his New Jersey Transit baseball cap. He told me he was a train conductor and that we were with him. "You don't have to wait in no line."

Two women followed us in and as we pressed through the crush they were prodded, cajoled, and tormented by terrible men. These predators are the reason for the Sunday morning Horror. A pack of dogs, drunk before seven in the oldest working saloon in New York. It smells bad at McSorley's. You get two beers for the price of one. A set, they call it. You may have light or dark, but it doesn't matter, both taste like fish. Flat, viscous, slightly warm beer served in hastily rinsed glasses. Doug told us they were going to Jack Dempsey's right after. He's kind of friends with the owner and he gets hooked up. Then Doug forgot about us.

McSorley's never cleans. They still throw down sawdust in case some one throws up or is bleeding everywhere. There is a lamp near the center of the bar with tendrils of dust hanging off of it, and something else I couldn't discern. "Dude," another large man told me, "the lamp has wishbones on it. They'd hang a wishbone on the lamp when a sailor went to sea. If he never came back, the wishbone would never come off. It's beautiful, bro. Beautiful." Groups of men punching each other on the arms. One man had bought a McSorley's tee shirt and was wearing it over a dress shirt. "Do you think maybe you hit an age where you don't go some places?" I said. My companion wanted to know where the hell the pisser was. "They don't have a ladies room," I said.

Doug told a woman at the bar that she wanted to ride him like a Rigid down a bumpy road. She smiled prettily and tried not to say anything. Doug looked satisfied. My companion was still in the pisser and I pushed my way out of this vile trap. I couldn't breathe. One man took a cowboy hat off another man and put it on. "I'm a goddamn cowboy!" I opened the door and lit another cigarette. I'd never return. It's become a joke and a must-see in the tourist books. A filthy hole masquerading in the light of tradition. They don't have to clean the lines because they've never cleaned them. The bartenders are laughing at you. Joseph Mitchell's vision of the Wonderful Saloon no longer exists. All that's left is a coal fire and the wishbones.

Quiet Sunnyside

The 7 train stopped running the other night after it entered Queens. We sat there and listened to the speakers in our car. We couldn't understand a word. After a few minutes we still weren't moving, the train was empty, and the doors were still open. My short, fat, gay, Indian companion stood and threw one end of his scarf over his shoulder in a flounce. "Let's blow," he said. We were in Sunnyside.

It was quiet on the Highway of Death, and we couldn't find a cab. But my companion almost managed to get hit by a stopping bus. The driver regarded us from his open door. I dragged on my cigarette. "No way," I said. The bus pulled away. I don't trust busses in Queens. Who knows where you might end up?

It was cold, though, and soon my cigarette hand was red raw. Switching hands didn't help. I knew I needed gloves. My companion said the next best thing to gloves was stopping in at Gallagher's 2000, the gentleman's club. I hadn't realized we were so close. It was off of Queens Boulevard, a little to the north. No streetlamps. No parked cars. No sign. Before I knew what was happening, we were at the security post.

On Sundays there's no cover at Gallagher's 2000, but bag check is compulsory. The lighting in the entryway is harsh and fluorescent. It feels like a post office. Linoleum on the floor and acoustic tiles on the drop-down ceiling. Four large gentlemen stand by an airport walk-through metal detector. They're nice enough, but one still cupped my balls. My companion giggled. I told the security guys it was okay, he wasn't Indian like that. And we were through.

Sunday is a slow night, and the big room was closed. Large armchairs were stacked in a corner by the stage, as though Gallagher's 2000 was about to move out. On our way in we passed a hot dog rolling machine. "It's Free Hot Dog Night at Gallagher's," said my companion. How would he know that? "Please," he said. We sat at the bar. There were maybe six other guys there. It was a large rectangular bar with a long narrow stage in the middle. Three poles. A lady was dancing, wearing white stockings and a matching thong, a sultry look on her face. My companion said she looked constipated. He went to get us some hot dogs. I ordered us whiskey and beer: it was cold outside. The bartender told me that water was the best thing to keep warm. She'd learned it in the service. I told her I didn't know what she was talking about. And I wanted ice in my whiskey.

The hot dogs were delicious. Our sultry white-thonged lady approached us after her featured dance. "Hey boys," she said. "How's your wieners?" "Delicious," said my companion, "now get out of here." She did look constipated.

The night pressed on. One woman or two at a time would dance for two songs, then make the short round through the room, soliciting private shows. I almost bought one for my companion at one point, but thought better of it. He's missing his husband. They had Hancock Reserve bourbon. Appropriate. We blew through maybe a bottle, and plenty of Budweiser. This is why I won't ever subscribe to a porno site or buy dvds: the length. By the end of the night the stage shows had become repetitive and drawn out. I lived in Amsterdam for a while and one night attended a live sex show. Boring. Mechanical. This is why we watch clips: for a minute, maybe two of excitement and titillation, then we move on to the next. The Internet has given us clips, and we are grateful. My companion and I talked about filming sex. We both had tried it and decided that it's very hard to make it look good, and if it does look good, it's no fun. He said he likes it when a guy spits in his mouth. And who'd want to watch that? He's missing his husband.

It was late when we left Gallagher's 2000. I smoked cigarettes the entire way and didn't mind the hands. Water be damned. There were still no cabs. As we turned down the road we'd been heading to, a Main Street bound 7 train passed us overhead.

Burial Platform

I used to know how to sharpen a knife. My grandfather, Mike, taught me when I was a child. Once when we'd been hunting some rabbit, he killed a deer. We dressed it there in the forest, in the snow, in a clearing. I was afraid of the ghosts watching us from the edge of the field. I could hear them howling between the trees when we rode his John Deere five-wheeler. Mike let me hone his buck knife on a whetstone and then he slit the deer's belly. Steam rose from it. Mike said the Indians believed this was the deer's soul rising to be with the Great Spirit. He hated the Indians.

I could make knife so sharp if you cut yourself you wouldn't even feel it until you started bleeding. The trick was to find the sweet angle on the stone. You could sense it when the blade caught, and you wouldn't even have to press very hard. Now I'm an adult and I've forgotten everything. I have a complete Wusthof knife set that's so dull I can hack at my wrists and leave only indentations, as though I'd fallen asleep on a headphone cord. Sometimes I get out my stone and steel and slice away until my forearms bulge. But my professional knives only ever smoothen and become more dull.

In the forest I said my dad told me animals go to Heaven, too. Mike hated my dad, who he saw as an effete city-boy. This is why Mike taught me hunting, fire-starting, knife sharpening, and other man things: to keep me from growing soft. I don't know if it worked. I can no longer sharpen a knife and I still believe in ghosts.