A girl immediately went in after me. She was wearing a camouflage parka unzipped over shorts and a Buzzcocks Singles Going Steady shirt. She must not have minded Francis because the door didn’t reopen.
I didn’t want to walk past Vicki again so I headed deeper into the club. There had to be a back way or a window.
The alcove opened up to a larger dance floor. The prints on the wall were obscured by multicolored lights. I felt bad for whoever had done the paintings. All that effort. I saw an exit sign and made a line for it.
seven
times i
waited
1 los angeles 2016
2 dublin 2013
3 marrakech 2011
4 New York 2011
5 chicago 2005
6 los angeles 2011
7 new york 2011
seven bars
one nightclub
one loft
& a diner
1
(LAST TIME)
I was very upset and I only had twenty dollars left. My financial and emotional needs converged. I needed a place I could be comforted that would not charge me for drinks. I headed for Pym’s.
It was snowing again and the wind was ferocious. I wished I still had the scarf. I wished I had punched Francis. Aviva had looked real good in that bathroom, just inches away from Francis, telling me what for.
It was so cold that I was crying. I was also feeling pretty sorry for myself, so I let the tears have their own distinction. I didn’t name them, I just let them be wild and free, origin undetermined. Oh me, I thought to myself. I turned my collar up.
My mind was racing or stopping and thinking or doing something, I didn’t know. It was so strange seeing Vicki. She wasn’t how I’d remembered. I felt a pulverizing disappointment but I was no longer sure what for, and anyway, it wasn’t clearly disappointment either, maybe exultation, maybe frostbite.
Aviva had looked tremendous against that sink, lips so close to Francis’s and mine. It must have been the lighting. It must have been the lipstick. It often came down to lipstick. She was so angry. I remembered how much I loved when she would be angry at me. She cared so much. You need to really see a person to feel that kind of rage.
I opened the door to Pym’s and a fist hit my face and there was blood all over the place but, what with the slush, not so you’d notice. A hand pulled me in so I could bleed on the floor. No, not for that purpose. A hand pulled me in so I could get hit again.
My vision already could have been described by a highway patrolman as “blurry.” My life did not become more blurry. If there was an opposite of blurry that didn’t imply lucidity, that’s what was being accomplished right there, with my face being punched.
I saw clearly a fist, repeatedly. I didn’t achieve lucidity. I continued to get hit. I was focused on hoping it would stop.
Getting hit once doesn’t hurt. It will hurt later and the humiliation may, if psychic weakness is your inclination, last a lifetime, but the blow feels like nothing. Like a newscast on the radio in another room.
Getting hit repeatedly hurts like a motherfucker.
Flannery probably only hit me, truth be told, six or seven times. The back of my head hit a fairly solid wall a couple times, so I think nine or ten is a safe estimate of actual contact with solid mass. By contact number two, I was sober(ish). By contact number five or so, I heard a strange howl from Flannery’s direction that sounded like, “COCKSUCKER, WHERE IS MY SCARFFFFFFFF?” By contact number seven, I began to react. I think my hands went up. By nine, my head was jerking back and forth so much that maybe a head butt was in order. By the tenth, Flannery was laid out.
There was blood on my face. I was having a hard time seeing. My hands didn’t hurt as much as my face, so I assumed he got felled by lightning or a stray rhino.
“You okay, man?”
Drunk Fireman was standing over Flannery, fists clenching and unclenching. He glanced at me with woozy concern. Sarita and Sanita were on both sides of me dabbing blood from my face.
My mouth felt funny.
“Me? I’m okay. Okay. I’m not sorry at all. You want to know how many regrets I got? You’d need to cut off your hands to count ’em. All your hands.” I held up my hands in front of me. I looked at them and then at Flannery lying on the bar floor, moving only the smallest bit. “I sure am strong.”
Drunk Fireman and Sanita and Sarita exchanged looks. Drunk Fireman handed me a beer.
I held the beer to my face and shrugged. I smiled until I noticed how much smiling hurt and I stopped. “What happened? Why did that happen? I hate that that happened. Even if I’m glad I killed Flannery. Bye, Flannery. You’re a real jerk. Ow.”
Sanita said, “Flannery has always hated you, what with your personality and all, but this was craaazzzy. He saw you through the window and just went nuts.”
Sarita said from the other side of my face, “I think Sara Seventeen maybe let slip she’d given you the scarf that he’d given Vicki. Dude really loved that scarf. I mean, apparently.”
Sanita said, “Oh yeah. That’s it. I think I helped him pick it out. Wow. It was a pretty great scarf.” She shrugged and stepped over Flannery, into the cave of Drunk Fireman’s arms. I couldn’t blame her for anything but it felt like I should. Flannery already being unconscious and all. Then something even more terrifying occurred to me.
“Where the fuck is Big Timmy?”
More looks were exchanged. But really, with the dizziness, the blood, skinheads lying on the floor, what were looks?
Drunk Fireman said, “He left. So that’s all right. I probably coulda taken him but it would have been real retarded. And this one,” he pointed down at Flannery, “Jeezus, what a fucking commotion. Good thing he did all those shots before you showed. Might have hurt you otherwise.”
I was drinking the beer, which wasn’t helping its cooling effect on my face but was helping to keep me from crying. “Must have been pouring it down his sleeve. Are both my eyes there?”
Sarita checked. “Yes sir. You’ll be back on the clocktower in no time.”
“Oh good. I got grudges.” I kicked Flannery’s foot gently. “What do we do with him? I don’t want to be around him when he wakes up, but I don’t feel like I should have to leave. I have a smooshed face. I need to drink and fill it out.”
Drunk Fireman said, “Actually, brother, I think that’s going to puff up real nice on its own.”
Sarita touched my swelling. “Oh, Sam, ouch. You’re going to have an extra couple centimeters of cute.”
Sanita curled further into Drunk Fireman and said, “Don’t worry, Sam, cute can spare it.”
I stepped over Flannery and sat down at the bar. Sanita walked behind the bar and served me. She motioned to the back room. “Virgil’s been passed out in the back for the last hour.”
“Oh.”
“You find Vicki?”
Drunk Fireman pulled Flannery out by one ankle. Sanita poured out four healthy shots of Jameson. When Drunk Fireman came back in, we raised our glasses.
“Up with us, down with them.”
We slammed the glasses down. Drunk Fireman didn’t seem that drunk, actually. He was one of those types who got more sober when he drank. Maybe I’d ask him for a ride home.
I said, “Anyone seen Aviva?”
They exchanged looks again.
seven
moments
of
clarity
1 New York 2002
2 paris 2004
3 new orleans 2010
4 New York 2012
5 New York 1999
6 New York 2012
7 New York 1999
seven bars
one nightclub
one loft
& a diner
10
How long is a marriage supposed to last? I mean, being realistic. When I was a teenager, I didn’t want to get married at all. When I was twenty-one, I wanted to get married young and be divorced by thirty, so that I’d be someon
e who believed in true love when I was young and then wised up. When I met Aviva, I thought all my ideas had changed and I wanted to be married forever.
When I first moved in with Aviva, we had already broken up twice, woken up so often to broken glass that we threw out the rugs. We knew each other’s moves so well it was like dancing, which neither of us did with other people. She said, “This is nice. Now we can keep an eye on each other.”
When I saw Aviva in the window of Odessa, the Ukrainian restaurant, she was not alone.
The slush had made a slippery banana of Avenue A and I was soaked. I had told myself that I was just taking the long way to the train, maybe to sober up, maybe to take in the winter air, maybe to by chance pass by where I had been told my wife had gone to eat. They hadn’t mentioned that she might have company.
Big Timmy. My wife. A plate of pierogies. She looked tired and happy. Sour cream and apple sauce always made her happy.
Fuck it, Big Timmy wasn’t anything but a man, and a pierogi ain’t nothing but a dumpling. I went in.
I shook myself off before getting to their table. They saw me coming. They were either really digging in or were doing a silent communication over the table. I had a small window of opportunity before decisions were going to be made for me.
“Aviva. Timothy.”
Big Timmy didn’t look at me. He said to Aviva, “Your call, lady. Just say the word.”
“He’s my husband,” she replied. She shrugged like she couldn’t help it. Electricity ran through me. She registered how dinged-up I was.
I said, “In a better world, it would have happened over you.”
Big Timmy saw my face too. He stood up. I put my hand on a fork.
“Tim,” I said, “you know and I know you can kill me, but that’s my wife. I’ll do something permanent to you before I go down.”
A couple waiters were watching but they were used to late-night standoffs. There was at least a girl with us to cover the check.
Tim said, “You are worthless. Someday she’s gonna know that. Someday everybody’s gonna know that. I hope Flannery did that to you cuz you fucking deserve it.” He inhaled deeply and it felt like he was taking breath directly from my lungs. He exhaled and I felt napkins flutter behind me. With a tectonic shift, Big Timmy said, “Fuck this noise,” and walked away. The door slammed behind him and the waitstaff looked relieved. I collapsed into the booth.
Aviva gathered all the napkins from the table and dipped them in ice water. She came and sat on my side of the booth and dabbed my face.
“Sanita and Sarita texted me. About Flannery. They were so excited.”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything.”
“Duh, Sam. Obviously. But like everyone else in this stupid town, Drunken Fireman thinks you’re the cat’s pajamas. He’s telling everyone you took Flannery out with one punch.”
I winced. “I’m not sure he’s really thinking that one through.”
“Probably not. But you buy him drinks and don’t treat him like a Pegasus cuz he’s a fireman and you don’t treat him like a leper just cuz he’s basically a cop with a lot of dead friends. You treat him like you treat everyone.” She licked some sour cream off her spoon. “Of course, it’s a bit problematic when you treat your wife like a man, but I guess that’s something else. We don’t need to get into all that.”
I said, “We aren’t as much husband and wife as other husbands and wives are, I know that.”
Aviva pulled out a small bottle of whiskey and, not bothering to hide it, tilted it over her mouth.
I went on, “But I think we do have a bond that a lot of couples don’t have . . .”
“A lot of couples are dead, sure.”
“I’m being serious. Tonight has made me think a lot . . .”
Aviva pointed a dumpling at me. “Tonight, where you spent the entire night chasing after that prissy bitch.”
“But you were always on my mind.”
Aviva laughed. “Yeah, because I was in half the places you went. I had a bit of a night myself. Not that anyone’s asking.”
“Yeah, see? You were always there. And I want to hear all about it.”
It was crazy how the bright diner lights made Aviva even more desirable. Maybe it was the dried sweat from all the night’s troubles or the fact that there was no darkness to hide the rips and tears on her black ensemble. Or maybe I just liked the lines under her eyes and the way she wore her mascara and eyeliner, and I liked her face. It was a face that could carry a lot, one I knew that I could breathe around, late at night and early in the morning.
I told her I really liked her face and waited for her to stop laughing.
“Do you remember when we first met, how awkward you were?” I asked her.
“I wasn’t awkward, you were boring.”
Her leg was against mine. It wasn’t rubbing but it was against mine and it wasn’t being pulled away.
“I meant to show you the photo book. They printed that picture of Virgil at Tompkins.”
“I know all about that, Sam. I hooked that shit up. Editor used to work for me. I was at his loft when he was doing the final selection. But you were already in the running. It’s important you know that, Sam. Like, really know it.”
“Thank you, Aviva. God, I held that book at crazy angles on the train so people could see what I was in.” I paused. “I’m thinking of getting a digital camera. You know, see what happens.”
“I feel like I may have suggested that before.”
“It’s possible that I’ve been a bit wrong about a number of things. Tremendously, egregiously wrong. Like, wrong in a way that would make a stupid man blush. Wrong in a way that Sorry doesn’t cover. Though I swear that apologies and groveling and true contrition coupled with a complete overhaul of actions and worldview, are in the offering. Whether they’re accepted or not. I have been wrong—stupidly, cruelly wrong, like it’s a job. Not for nothing, I’d like to be wrong less.”
Aviva said, “Speaking for the world at large, I think we’d all like that.”
I smiled at her through drying blood and expanding flesh. “I want to go home. I’m tired.”
“Okay, Sam. You can sleep on top of the covers.”
I nodded.
“I’m a bit gakked out, so I may need you to go down on me so I can sleep.”
I nodded again.
I moved out of the booth and threw my last twenty down. My wife took care of the tip.
I put out my arm.
Aviva, as if from muscle memory, took it.
I went home with my wife, who loves me.
one
time
we
got
back
together
About the Contributors
Nick Zinner plays guitar in the three-time Grammy-nominated band Yeah Yeah Yeahs and hardcore group Head Wound City. His photos have been published in four previous books, as well as in the New York Times, Vice, and Rolling Stone. He has exhibited in solo shows in Tokyo, Berlin, New York, London, Los Angeles, and Mexico City.
Zachary Lipez lives in New York City, where he has tended bar for the last twenty years. He is a regular contributor to Noisey, and his music and culture writing have also appeared in Vice, Hazlitt, Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, Talkhouse, Inc., and Penthouse.
Stacy Wakefield’s artist books, published for many years under the imprint Evil Twin, have been collected by institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and London’s Tate Modern. She runs a studio dedicated solely to book design and production. Her first novel, The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory, was published by Akashic in 2015. She lives in the Catskills and Brooklyn.
All rights reserved. No part of this book maybe reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without The Prior Written Consent of the publisher.
Published by Akashic Books
Photographs �
�2018 Nick Zinner
Text ©2018 Zachary Lipez
Designed and edited by Stacy Wakefield
ISBN: 978-1-61775-667-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018931231
Printed in China
First Printing
Akashic Books
Twitter: @AkashicBooks
Facebook: AkashicBooks
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.akashicbooks.com
About Akashic Books
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