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This howyoudoin’ financial advisor named Tony wants me to consult for him. He’s larger than life, something out of the musical Guys and Dolls, a real Marlon Brando high-roller type, dressed to the nines. I’m surprised he’s talking to me – his barrister, he says but means barista because I am no lawyer. I’m a nobody. But I’m also leery; he usually ogles the barely-legal nubiles with the hot bodies, tiny breasts, and fleshy arms in Baby Gap shirts behind the coffee counter. I’m leery because I do too.
“Consulting?” I ask in a soiled apron while filling stainless-steel air pots with half-and-half. Wall Street traders, et al – mofessionals, I call these legit gamblers for fun – buzz like a biblical plague of locusts in the store. Before noon, seventy-seven times a baker’s dozen swarm through. And then sum.
“Consulting,” he says.
“Obviously not about your tailor,” I say.
He tugs the lapels of his brushed, gray flannel pinstripe suit and strikes a regal pose, akin to Marlon minus the slouch felt hat ready to sing about shooting craps. Silver cuff-links with quatrefoils secure French cuffs. Tony metros buffed, manicured fingernails and oiled penny loafers like he owns a shoe-shine boy. “Howyoudoin’?” he says with cunning and a white picket fence of polished teeth. He eye-bangs one of the nubiles – the one without bangs. I grow chary because he’s now after her cherry. “I need computer help,” he says, eventually looking back at me.
“Why don’t you take a class?”
“I have,” he says. “ It sucked.” He’s clean-shaven with leathery taught skin and a square mandible jaw. He squints and almost cracks his jar-head of gelled black hair. “I was bored. Nothing made sense.” He talks with clean, meaty hands, fingering the air with a lapidary wedding ring that runs laps around mine.
“I know customers in the industry who could help.”
“Too technical. I want you,” he says, pointing like Uncle Sam.
“Not until I get my coffee!” shrieks a customer in a taupe business suit with a white ruffled collar. A different kind of mofessional, she’s older with ginger hair – bushy as an Old Testament hyssop. Occasionally, she hippies a tie-dye muumuu, matching scarf, and tan Birkenstock’s to her accounting office next door. Each day she brings a metal zarf, her chalice. We ceremoniously rinse the glass insert with hot water, fill with dark roast, and float three espresso beans on top, not that she needs the extra boost. She tips well, so what the hell? But I don’t know her name because I’ve never asked or heard it. “Hey, did you know we’re both bean counters?” she says, cackles like hell, and hurts my ears. Then she declares, “But you’re my Jimmy Priest of caffeine!”
Embarrassed, I feel outed as Judas or some priest as her transition lenses adjust from outside where it’s bright but very cold.
“Oh, ‘ey,” I say like in Guys and Dolls – my wife’s favorite musical and the only reason I know about it. “I love you but we’re doing business here.” My hands cup the coffee-smelling air like breasts.
The shrieker fondly squeezes the crook of my arm, fingering the vein. I wince; the needle feels stuck from the blood test last week. Other phantom pains linger, and her usual hug would have sufficed. Even one of her pithy New Testament references she sprinkles like holy water from her hyssop head.
“I see darkly,” she says on cue in a Gnostic way through smoky glasses. “You know that line? First Corinthians?” She squeezes for effect, right in the fucking needle hole.
I know I’d rather be handicapping the revealed secrets in the running lines of The Racing Form – how today’s horse races will play out, then bet like Marlon, hearing him sing: Luck be a lady tonight…
I smile as hyssop hops forward in one of three jam-packed lines, raises a forefinger, and shrieks, “Stay in your lane!” She’s referring to racehorses but mostly coffee customers of all races who cut each other off on foot in the store and road rage with quick middle fingers and sometimes fists.
Irked, Tony grabs my other elbow, voice low as in a confessional like he knows my secrets and says, “For months I hear you talk about downloading. Everyone knows; you are louder than the bat-shit crazy woman just now. You make it sound easy. I need easy.”
“It’s horse-racing files,” I say, wondering if I’m that loud. “I don’t know much else.” Except for nude pictures I don’t even confess to my wife Hanna – can’t after what I’ve already said.
“That’s more than I know,” he says.
I want to say no. But I’m a sucker for attention, affection, and a little praise. Like Little-League coach Earl freely showed. But I was only a boy then. You know more than most pitchers your age, he said, but there’s a pro you should watch.
Tony asks, “What do you charge?”
“Hell, I don’t know. A martini every fifteen minutes?”
“Ok.”
“Ok,” I say, hoping this never comes to fruition. Like blurting to Hanna about Earl.
“When?” Tony says.
“After work.”
“When’s that?”
“Noon.” There go the races, maybe more.
“Noon?”
I nod.
“We’ll meet here,” he says, “have lunch, and I’ll show you what I need. Then we’ll have martinis. Deal?”
“Great.” We don’t shake hands or hug.
He scurries off like a cockroach exposed by a kitchen light.
+ + +
He arrives on time, suit collar turned up against the cold like a gambler, tie still in a Shelby-knot. We meet on the floor which needs a sweep.
“Where to?”
“I know a place,” he says, “though I’ve never been there before.”
“Sure.”
“I hear they’ve got great onion rings. You like onion rings? Sure you do,” Howyoudoin’ says.
“I like everything.”
“They got wine, whiskey, beer on tap.”
“Just pour them all into a doggie bottle.”
Howyoudoin’ laughs. “We’ll have to fit work in.”
Leaving, he looks over my shoulder for the hot girl.
We speed walk with the masses in scarfs and wool overcoats across the intersection to an alley-lane of bistros. We duck the wind like rodents in search of food and shelter. The sun shines but can’t break the cold. We dip in at a sidewalk sign chalked:
Halibut,
Onion Rings
&
Something Else
Ridiculously Good!
It’s a casual place, wood bar, cafe tables, the smell of bacon. Thankfully, it’s warm inside. The kitchen is open-faced along the back wall. Chefs move under French copper cookware hanging from iron racks.
“Remember,” Tony says, “I’ve never been here.”
A bushy-tailed waitress bunnies up in a black bodice almost exposing her pasty rack. She’s brunette, slim, and slutty as Playboy magazine Coach Earl showed me way back. The glossy pictures are etched and airbrushed in the prism of my sight – the way I see.
“Hey, Tony,” she hoarses and I think of horses; it’s almost post-time.
Tony’s eyebrows arch.
The bartender yells, “Hey, Tony!”
Tony says, “I don’t know how they know me.” He makes the sign of the cross, flashing quatrefoils. “Swear to God, I’ve never been here before.”
A woman waddles from the kitchen in a chef’s coat, plops next to Tony.
“Hi, honey,” she says. “Sorry about yesterday.”
He looks at me, shrugs.
“Tell him,” he says to her, “I’ve never been here.”
“He’s full of shit,” she says. “God, I love this man.” She bear hugs him, rubbing a round of breast into his beefy shoulder.
He turns tomato-red.
Bodice returns, says, “Mama you loving Tony, again?” She gives me a pint of Guinness, the creamy head inching on the rim; Tony, white wine in a polished glass with a U-shaped bowl resting on a straight delicate stem. Ceremonious as a zarf.
“See,” he says. “We didn’t even order and they’ve brought us drinks! I tell you, never have I
been here.” He echoes Guys and Dolls speech, points an obscenely long index finger upward. “I just heard they were good. I just didn’t know how good.”
Mama says, “When did you start talking like Big Jule?”
“Howyadoin’?” he says. “Who’s Big Jule?”
“Guys and Dolls,” I say.
“How’d you know that?” Mama says.
“Lucky guesser,” I say.
Mama says to Tony, “So now you’re a mobster.”
“Now I’m a mobster,” he says with a smile. “Who knew?” Then he says, “Look. Who knew they’d even have the game on for us?”
I look sideways at the TV like a pitcher a runner on first base while still ogling the bodice waitress. Tony slips a hand behind her. She balks and jumps like a jackrabbit.
“It’s a rerun, asshole,” Mama says. “Second time today, an an ESPN filler.
On TV, Nolan Ryan takes the mound.
“Is this the no-hitter after the year off from his bad elbow?” I say.
“How’d you know that?” Mama says.
“Lucky guesser,” I say and remember watching it in Earl’s apartment.
“Lucky guesser,” she says. “Who is this guy?” she says to Tony. “An advisor, your lawyer?” She points a finger at me. “Get the lucky guesser another drink.”
“Steady,” Tony says. “We have work to do.”
“Sure thing, boss,” I say, tug on the lapels of my second-rate overcoat.
We nurse another round and watch Ryan like a great orator; his pitches, overwhelming speeches. The windup, arms above head, then slouching into a shell, leg extention, smooth windmill follow through. He strikes out the batter on three one hundred-mile-an-hour fastballs. Side retired. The catcher rolls the ball to the mound. Commercial.
Mama stands, udders swinging, says, “That Ryan has such a beautiful delivery. You know it’s coming but you can’t hit it. Course, that’s what the TV announcer said earlier when I was changing the grease. Anyway,” she sighs, touching Tony’s shoulder, “we changed the grease, so you can have good onion rings. Really sorry about yesterday. The grease is fresh today. Like you.”
“Baby,” Tony says with that picket-fence smile. “Love ya.” Then he says to me, “You got to have the rings.”
+ + +
We talk about our lives. Shoot the shit like craps. He played football at Cal: linebacker, place-kicker, tight end.
“All the positions,” I say.
“Well,” he says, shoulders going up.
“Including the cheerleaders?”
Maybe, he chuckles, says he’s been married twenty-nine years and has two sons my age.
I’m not feeling lucky or ready to confide. The truth hasn’t served me lately, so I say, “Spent five years in San Quentin. Rape.” I do an Elvis lip move.
“Really?”
“Kidding.” I bullshit more, divert. “I’m trying to establish my favorite writer's lifestyle.”
“Hemingway?” he says. “Got to be Hemingway.”
“Bukowski and Salter,” I say. “The currents of a connubial lifestyle.”
“Come again?” he says.
“I’m working on an MBA in horse racing.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “but I’m trying to have sex with my wife every day like on vacation.”
“Good luck,” he says, and laughs like a holler. “Good fucking luck,” he repeats. He slaps the table. “We’re gonna need more drinks. Hey,” he says, “why did that woman in the shop call you her priest?”
“I was in the seminary.”
“No shit? Father Jimmy! I knew there was something. So, you abandoned the faith for the ladies?”
“Just the seminary.”
The waitress brings another round, her mood soured like Hanna’s when I said I’d been tested for syphilis in spite of premarital blood tests.“Wait, what...?”
“I’m telling you,” Tony says lifting his glass. “This is the place, but of course…”
“Of course.”
The bodice waitress says, “Tony, I had to wait until Mama went away. I didn’t want to upset her. Bobby’s been getting headaches and nosebleeds.”
“What?” There go his eyebrows.
She says, “He passed out at school yesterday. I took him to the emergency room. They hooked him to machines that sounded like horses galloping.”
Tony looks at me like I had something to do with it.
She continues, “They took blood. God, they took so much blood.”
Last week, it felt like they took a Hebrew hin out of me.
“I thought he was iron deficient,” the waitress says. “Jesus, he’s sick. She slouches in a chair and cries like Hanna when I finally told her about my test.
Tony puts a hand on her naked shoulder, says, “What’d the doctor say?”
The waitress produces a medical bill, a prescription, and a diagnosis I can’t make out. She says, “The doctor said it might be cancer, a kind of leukemia you can’t cure. He wrote the name of the condition, but I can’t pronounce it. He said he’ll call with the results.”
Waiting for my blood test nearly killed me, might have well been positive. Hanna cried and said, “Who’s Earl and he did what to you as a child? And why are you just telling me this now?” Then she curled into a ball like the waitress in the chair.
Tony stares at the stack of paperwork. Lines furrow his forehead. He says, “I can’t even make out the diagnosis. Throm…purs…What the hell is that?”
The waitress reaches over and rubs the back of his jughead. “Our boy,” she says, “Our little shoe-shine boy.”
He looks at me.
“We can look it up on the web,” I say and sip my Guinness. “Primitive but easy to learn.”
I learned about syphilis online. There wasn’t much at first because I didn’t know where to look. My nickel-shaped chancroid sores were larger and more numerous than those pictured online. Suff for Guinness World Records, I thought ghoulishly. Then they went away, the sores, or dormant it could turn out. The disease can resurface decades later in the brain – neurosyphilis it’s called. Make you insane. The thought made me ill at ease and I had to be sure.
“Okay with you?” he asks her.
“Fuck yes.”
“Can we take the paperwork,” he says, “after we eat?”
“Whatever it takes,” she says.
First, she brings beer-battered onion rings, big as handcuffs. Next fried halibut coated in panko bread crumbs. Then roasted fingerlings. Finally, the ridiculous radicchio slaw – she spent all morning on the sidewalk sign. But after talk and thought of blood tests, I feel battered, ridiculous, and have lost my appetite. Probably more.
“Anything else?” she says later.
“Settle up when we come back?” he asks.
“Sure,” she says with a half-naked shrug.
+ + +
We speed-walk in the cold, enter a marble-floor skyscraper, take the elevator. The brass doors are polished, the brown carpet smells new. We exit on the 25th floor to a rustic wooden door. It opens to an empty office with a front desk and phone. There are vacant conference rooms with shiny walnut floors, brick walls, and views of the city where the sun glints off steel skyscrapers. Rusted cargo ships float in the icy bay. I wonder who won the first three races at Hollywood and if Hanna’s out of bed.
“I don’t trust my secretary,” Tony blurts.
“Why?” I say, feeling the effect of beer.
“She could be cookin’ the books.”
“Cookin’ the books? You are in the mob.”
“Cookin’ the books.”
“What are ya’ gonna do?”
“Learn this shit,” he says.
“You’re supposed to say, ‘Forgetaboutit.’”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Where is your secretary.”
“I gave her the afternoon off.” He opens a zippy metallic notebook: space age, 17-inche screen, built-in speakers, webcam, jacked to a T1 phone line. “First,” he says, “I just want you to get into the files but I can’t have you read any information.”
“Classified?” I think of blind dice from Guys and Dolls.
“Fiduciary confidentiality.”
“There’s a mouthful,” I say. “Okay, then. Drive A,” I say, pointing to the slit on the side. A disk goes in here. You got those?”
“Yeah.”
“C drive. That’s the hard drive.”
“Yeah?”
“D drive,” as the tray opens.
“I don’t get it,” he says, lost as me on Earl’s couch in front of the TV with his hand down my pants. Then Tony says, “Can you open her email? She’s hiding something. Attachments or some shit.”
“I need a password.”
“I don’t have one.”
“What’s her name?”
“My secretary?”
“No, your mother.”
“Listen, smart guy.”
I ask, “What’s her name?”
“Hillary.”
I type, but it doesn’t work. “Got a nickname?”
“Nosy.”
“No luck.”
“So much for that, let’s try these,” he says and hands me medical papers.
We search engines and type the doctor’s scribble. Thromb. Nothing comes up. We try different letters. Hyperlinks come up. I click on the first.
“Blood disorder,” he says. “Terminal,” he says and drops his head. “Click another,” he says and runs his hand down his tie, still knotted.
“The same,” I say.
“Can we print these?”
In another room, a laser printer the size of a small refrigerator spits out ten pages.
“You want to see more?”
“Tits,” he says.
“You wanna see tits?”
“Yeah, but hold on. Hold on a fucking titty minute,” he says. “Can we open spreadsheets through drive A?”
“No.”
“We’re not gonna be able to do anything.”
“I can show you the horse-racing site. We could watch a race.” I’m thinking the fourth or fifth race at Golden Gate or Hollywood.
“Jeez, that’s all I need.”
+ + +
He dials his wife. Cradling the receiver to his clavicle, he says, “She’ll be wondering. Won’t yours?”
“She’s at home, taking a day off.” For all I know, she may just take off.
“Call her,” he says. “Tell her to come. Let’s meet the missus Jimmy. Bet she’s a beaut. What’s the number?”
“She’s lovely,” I say. “Next time.”
“So be it.”
He puts the receiver to his ear and his eyebrows go up. “Hey,” he says. “We’re going to that new bar in the alley I was telling you about. What’s that? Yeah, I have to pay him. Martinis,” he says. He listens. “We’re leaving now.” He hangs up. “She’ll meet us in twenty minutes.”
+ + +
We stop at a street cart with a B rating from the health department. Tony buys a latte in a paper cup.
“Am I drinking martinis alone?”
He says, “This is for our waitress.”
I don’t bother asking as he gives me sticky packs of raw sugar and wonder about 4th and 5th race results.
At the bar, Tony presents the latte.
“Thank you,” the waitress says. “So sweet.”
“Speaking of,” I say and hand her the packs.
“I couldn’t remember how many,” Tony says.
She shrugs and strokes the cup.
“You bring me a fucking latte?” comes a voice.
“Mama,” the waitress says, “this is for you.”
“Well, whatdayaknow? Howyadoin’?” she says to me.
“Best rings ever,” I lie.
“Good. Hope to see you again.”
“Enjoy your latte,” Tony says and kisses her cheek.
“You are such an asshole,” she says. I love you both. See ya tomorrow. I’m teaching Bobby how to make onion rings after school.” She waddles out.
Tony and the waitress look at each other. Then she seats us in a booth, dark as a Confessional. She says, “I’ll tell her tomorrow. Bobby won’t be here. I have to take him to the doctor. You find anything?”
Tony says, “Nothing you didn’t already know. We have printouts of treatments, research, but not much. God, I’m sorry. I can’t believe it.” He drops the papers on the table, defeated.
“Ok,” she says. “Martinis coming up.”
She brings tall ones. Blue-cheese stuffed olives on green toothpicks. The glasses have crooked elbow stems, the damnedest things. Like bent arms.
“I’m taking it home,” I say.
“The waitress or the glass?”
I almost smile as the waitress comes back.
“You didn't find anything?” she says. “Really?”
“It’s a rare degenerative disease, thrombo…purpura. I’m so sorry,” Tony says. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”
She goes away and returns with more martinis while we’re nursing our first ones, copy and paste.
The empties pile up, a junkyard of boozer’s body parts. The waitress tries not to cry. But it’s not the empties she’s crying about.
As I gulp, Tony says, “Jesus, I can’t believe this.”
+ + +
Tony’s wife arrives like an opera diva for a curtain call, pretty as Rene Flemming.
“There she is,” he announces, stands, and claps. “Hey, hey,” he says. She enters his open arms and he kisses her cheek.
She’s wrapped in a loden overcoat. When she unfurls, a paisley scarf is revealed, then a silk blouse, ecru. A black bra shows through. She has large breasts. Her silky blond hair sprigs from a bun, held by a yellow #2 pencil. When she smiles, a space appears between her teeth like mine.
“We got you a Chablis,” Roy says.
“You’ve been busy,” she says, in a husky voice – opera to my ears. She examines our stockpile. “Oh, what cute martini glasses.”
“That’s what I said.” My arms are out. But I’m not getting a hug.
She looks like she could, but sits next to Tony. Her eyes are wide, weathered, and tired.
“Honey,” Tony says. “This is, Jimmy. Did I tell you about him?”
“Weeks ago, while you were building the courage to ask for help.”
“Hello,” she says, “I’m Ludy.”
“Ludy, nice to meet you.”
“He’s been in San Quentin,” Tony says toward the bar.
“How exciting for you?” she asks, confused.
“I’m an MBA student,” I lie.
“Oh,” she says, relieved. “But what were you doing in San Quentin?”
“Nothing, Honey,” Tony says. “It was a joke. He’s been showing around my computer.”
“I know, honey. I know more than you think.”
I interrupt, “Now, what’s the A drive?”
“Not a fucking clue,” he says. “A-hole?”
She says, “Now, that’s enough, Tony.” She chugs her Chablis like she’s in a hurry.
“So, seriously,” Tony says, “Jimmy was almost a Catholic priest. But then he fell in love and got married.”
“Really?” She smiles like Hanna used to. “You studied theology?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who’s your favorite theologian?”
“Do you have one?”
“No, I was just wondering.”
“Thomas Merton, a monk and writer. His most notable book is No Man Is An Island. That is, no one is self-sufficient without God or others. Pretty practical stuff to live by. Then Merton fell in love with an other – a nurse when in the hospital for back surgery. When returning to the monastery, he locked himself in the office so they could talk on the phone. I don’t think they consummated because he was celibate. I can’t remember her name – ”
Tony jumps in. “Practically too many martinis,” he says. “That’s why you can’t remember. Hey, Honey,” he quicks, “maybe Jimmy could renew our wedding vows?”
Before I can say I’m not qualified, she says, “That’s rich.”
“Who’s rich,” the waitress says, bringing another round. “You folks new around here?”
“I am,” I say. She leaves without the empties or me.
+ + +
Tony’s look wanders. “Honey, what’d you do today?” he asks.
“Had a chamber of commerce meeting, then came home and read Elle,” she says. “Then tooled around the internet. It’s so today.” She feels the stem of a martini glass.
“My wife reads Elle,” I say. “What’s so interesting?”
“Women stuff.” She has a French manicure – her nails match Tony’s cufflinks. She strokes the crook of the martini glass, examining the elbow joint. Then she takes – I’m afraid it will Jenga the pile – and waggles it. “Good weight,” she says. “Thought they’d be plastic, but they’re real glass.”
“What kind of women stuff?” I ask. “What kind of stuff did you read about?”
“An article about Prozac.” She puts the glass back and something creeps up my spine faster than Earl’s hand.
“What about it?” I ask.
“Just the side effects. You know, lack of sex drive,” she says. “Mood changes.”
“My wife’s on Prozac.”
“Is it true, then?”
“Yes,” I say. Yesterday, I found her slumped in the bathroom, empty prescription bottle in the sink – she always runs out. She was crying. “Who’s Earl?”
Tony says, “It ain’t true here, baby.” He licks Ludy’s cheek while grabbing her fluffy breast.
“Stop that,” she says, and slaps his hand.
“Come on, baby.” He grabs himself like Earl. “I’m a healthy boy.”
She kisses him and puts her hand on his lap.
“Behave,” she says to him.
I say, “I hope my wife and I are as happy and playful when we’ve been married thirty years.”
But I can’t play their game; Hanna’s not a groper. I’d only be her nurse, even if I had never told her about Earl.
“Are you going to have kids?” Ludy asks.
“No,” I say and drink. “You have two sons?”
“Yes,” she says. “But I'm not a good mother. I’m a failure, in fact. My son hates me.”
I say, “Parenting doesn’t come with a manual?” Hanna’s prescription dosage doesn’t either. One week, the doctor says this; the next, that. Hanna degrades in milligrams, sassy to lassitude.
Ludy and Tony shake their heads.
I hit a nerve, try to recover. “All you can do is love and hope for the best.”
“If you’ll excuse me.” She gets up and walks to the bathroom.
Tony tugs his sleeves, a cufflink spills on the table like a brick. He refastens bling and whispers, “All is not as it seems. There have been problems, indiscretions, so don’t kid yourself. It’s not all bliss.”
I nod, feeling my elbow throb and Tony’s eyes as the waitress walks by. The clock on the wall warns 3:30. The seventh and eighth races – the last ones are over. I’m going to be late.
“Got someplace to be?” Tony says. “A horse race?”
“Something like that.”
+ + +
Ludy returns, eyes welling, puffed as a boxer’s. She wipes her lids with tissue, black liner smeared.
“Sorry. I’m having a bad day,” she says.
“I understand,” I say.
“More than my son,” she says. “Well, you would, wouldn’t you?”
I nod but have no idea.
“Would you have enjoyed being a priest?” she asks. “Fulfilled, I mean.”
Before I answer, Tony blurts out, “The waitress needs a hug.”
“What?” Ludy says with a whiplash glance. “Who needs a hug?”
“The waitress needs a hug; her boy has cancer.” Howyadoin’ jounces his ginormous shoulders, says, “I’d like you to be the one to give her the hug.”
“I don’t even know her,” she says.
“Just give her a hug,” he says. “It’ll get your mind off your troubles. No man is an island, right? Show some compassion. You’ll feel better.”
It sounds like a line out of Guys and Dolls. Mind off your troubles – who says that any more?
Ludy says, “There you go again, Tony. Why don’t you just go ahead and do it yourself.” She looks away odiously.
“I want you to be the one,” he says.
“I want you to be the one,” she mocks. “You mean...Oh, my God, she’s the one!”
I feel stuck in a train wreck and look away. There’s a live baseball game on TV, Nolan Ryan reruns put to bed. They went on too long anyway, like certain marriages. There’s a collision at home plate – the runner’s launched the catcher. The baseball trickles away like blood. The catcher lands on all fours, falls over like a mortally wounded animal. I can’t look at that either, then see the martini glasses on the table, looking broken but still in one piece.
“Jesus, Tony,” Ludy says. “I’m not hugging her. Hug her yourself.”
“I just,” he starts, a shell of a howyadoin’.
The waitress comes up. “Anything else?” she says in a timid, hoarse way.
Ludy shakes her head and looks away.
“Just the tab, please,” says Tony.
She brings it like a secret hidden in a billfold. Tony gives her a black credit card, thick as a brick. When she brings it back, he figures the tip, waving the pen like something will appear magically. After he signs, we don coats. I go to wave to the waitress, say thank you, and that I’ll keep her son in my thoughts. Prayers too. But she’s disappeared. I head for the door.
“Remember what the therapist said?” Ludy is saying outside. “Oh, you,” she says, lowing into a sob.
Wishing I could do something, I say, “Wait.” I stagger inside and grab a used martini glass.
In the brick alley, I present it like a chalice at Communion, one palm on the corrugated base; the other hand, on the crooked stem. I look past the etched images of finger and lip prints on the transparent rim to what’s on the other side. I see through a glass, but not darkly. “You should have this.”
“Oh.” She lunges, hugs me, sniffling. But I’m not the waitress. “Thank you,” she says. “Thank you so much. You would have been a good priest,” she says, holding on in the cold. A phantom pain shoots my elbow as she takes the martini glass.
Then it hits me. Maybe she’s being nice but doesn’t want it. Maybe she doesn’t want to remember where it came from, want do this is in memory of me. Would you?
“Father Jimmy,” Tony says. We shake hands like arm-wrestlers, grabbing forearms awkwardly. Then what the hell, we embrace. “I knew somebody was getting a hug.”
“Howyadoin’,” I say. “See ya in the morning. I have to go.”
“I know you got a thing.”
I walk and can’t get away from them fast enough. At the corner, I see cackle-hyssop waiting to
cross at the stoplight. In those darkened glasses, she looks like a Salvation Army rep or a spoofy blind biblical prophet, begging for change. I rub my elbow, think of her hugs, and wonder if I should have been a priest. Or if it’s too late for salvation or change. I exit the lane, then head to the pharmacy, and see if Hanna’s prescription is ready.
Thomas Weedman has a BA in English from Notre Dame and an MFA from Lindenwood. He’s been a seminarian, a forklift operator, barista, and a professional gambler. He is the author of Dreaming of Apples in Eden and Tainted. His short stories have appeared in the Acorn Review, TheWriteLaunch, The Paragon Journal, The Penman Review, Marathon Literary Review, Limited Experience Journal, and forthcoming at DLG Publishing, Constellations, and Running Wild Press.