Slash Back Blazers

Avery Green finds himself in Chinatown. He'd left The Randolph on Broome Street just before it closed. Green is polite. The Bowery is two blocks away to his left, there's still traffic on it. He turns right. Chinatown is empty and smells like fish and rotting vegetables and his footsteps echo on the buildings across the street. Green knows he's somewhere near City Hall. He turns left.

There is a man on a corner. He's Chinese and overdressed, like Green. He leans on an umbrella. As Green passes, the man falls almost into step with him. They walk for almost a block. Green has his hands casually in his pockets, where he might have a knife. The man reaches in his own jacket pocket and takes out a box of cigarettes with a tiger fighting a dragon on it. He puts a cigarette in his mouth, but doesn't light it. A faint blue Chinese symbol on the cigarette down near the filter.
"Good evening," he says to Green. "Do you have a light?"
They stop, Green reaches for his platinum Dunhill lighter and pulls out long, thick red bead. It sits in his open palm.
"No, I don't seem to. Sorry. This, is a hair bead."
The man looks at Green. "I think I have some matches. Would you like a cigarette?"
"Thanks."

The woman Green had met two days ago at the Farmer's Market by the courthouse in Brooklyn sold essential oils in a stall. She'd been wearing a floor-length denim skirt and wrapped her dreadlocks in a brightly patterned fabric. She wore no makeup on her almond colored skin. Green came with her back to her house in Crown Heights where she made him roti and they drank coconut water. Unwrapped, her dreadlocks fell to the tops of her thighs. Green left the next morning. The bead had been in her hair. His lighter stands brightly polished on the windowsill next to her bed.

Green smokes. The taste is chemical and brackish.
"I was on Nostrand Avenue yesterday," he says. "There was a man outside his deli chopping sugar cane with a machete. He was selling it by the half-meter."
"You can chew it, you know," the man says.
"I don't know what you'd do with it. The man had a machete."
Green tells the man of a mural next to the deli. An angry black woman is being shot by a laser beam from a green and orange devil in the sky. The devil is dressed in a suit very much like Green's, his head is round and bald and he has angry eyes. The same woman is painted further down the wall with a caption: I've got my eye on you, Devil.
"I miss the country," the man says. "In the country you feel demons closer than in the city. That's what my grandmother says, anyway."
"The city's too crowded," laughs Green. "There are no ghosts here."
"Aren't there?" The man tosses away his cigarette and lights another. "My name is Lin."
"I'm Epson Miller." They shake.
His name is not Epson Miller, nor is it Avery Green.

Mr. Lin wishes Green a good night and disappears around a corner. Green continues downtown. He thinks of the loneliness of his life. He knows he can go back to his room at The Pennsylvania Hotel on Thirty Third Street. He turns right and heads toward Tribeca. It is dawn when he reaches the Battery and turns around. It's eight thirty as he walks up Mulberry Street between Kenmare and Spring Street. The sky is an almost electric blue tinged with white behind the red brick buildings. It is a perfect light.

These are the days like Edward Hopper paintings, thinks Green. Everyone in them is a ghost.

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.