In a Mist

by Devon Code-mcneil

  “Us outliers must stick together if we’re going to weather this city of the big shoulders.” It occurred to me, even as he off ered me the job, that there must be hundreds of people out of work and from out of state much more qualified than me to tend bar in an upscale establishment like Eddie’s. We shook hands nevertheless. I agreed to show up at four the following afternoon so he could show me how to mix a more palatable old fashioned. Then he asked me if I liked men.

  When he saw my reaction he tried to smooth it over.

  “You’ve got the job one way or the other. I shouldn’t have asked. I just like to know who I’ve got working for me is all. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

  I did my best to assure him I had no interest in men. He smiled, nodded, apologized again for asking. Two years later, he still declined, when in my presence, to make the comments concerning the more attractive female customers he would freely exchange with Jerome.

  The night after I arranged to move into the empty upstairs apartment was the night I saw her at the bar. It was a Monday, an unusually slow night at the Tiger Rag and, though I had only glimpsed her face for a moment on that afternoon following Benjamin’s death, I was certain it was her, alone in the corner booth. She took off her coat and hat to reveal her long, loose, sleeveless dress and dark, close-cropped curls. She sat with her legs crossed and watched as Eddie sat down at the piano and began to play the “Wolverine Blues.” Jerome approached her and she took a pen from her clutch and wrote on a napkin and he brought the soda water she requested. She lit a cigarette, only to extinguish it prematurely and light another a moment later. She produced a powder compact, examined herself in the mirror, and returned it to her clutch. It was as if she were waiting for someone. It occurred to me that she was waiting for Benjamin. I knew this was impossible, but nevertheless the scenario played out in my mind. The anticipation of the meeting, her early arrival, the ordering of the soda water so as to retain clarity of perception for the precise moment he appeared. That gradual, almost imperceptible transition from anticipation to anxiety as time passed and she remained alone. And then the threshold, the moment at which she loses hope, a phone call considered but not placed, anxiety given way to vexation. I wanted to go to her, to look her in the eye and tell her that he would not be coming, that she would never see him again. But I remained behind the bar and it was Jerome who collected her empty glass and that was when she ordered the dry manhattan.

  The dry manhattan was a house specialty, the preparation of which, under Eddie’s supervision, I had long since perfected. This time, however, at the last moment—after the Maraschino cherry was submerged, and without knowing precisely why I felt inclined to do so—I added a disproportionate quantity of sweet vermouth. I immediately regretted this decision. But there was no opportunity to start over, for Jerome hastened the drink to the occupant of the corner booth. I did my best not to look in her direction, and made some show of busily polishing wine glasses. And yet, without looking directly at her, in the periphery of my vision I discerned an unmistakable expression of disgust on Lillian’s face as she put the glass down. This was followed, inexplicably, by a smile.

  Though I had never been overly fond of her brother, with his trappings of professional and material and amorous success, his self-satisfaction, I was strangely upset by this peculiar smile on his sister’s lips only four weeks after his death. I now looked openly across the room as she raised the martini glass to her lips and drained its sickly contents in a single, saccharine draught. A table of bourbon-swilling regulars arrived at that point, momentarily requiring my attention. Only a minute or two had passed, however, before Jerome requested another dry manhattan for the corner booth. This I prepared with but a modicum of sweet vermouth. I then emerged from behind the bar, approached Eddie at the piano and requested the rest of the night off on account of a sudden, incapacitating bout of nausea. Eddie agreed, on the condition I arrive early the following afternoon as he had something important to discuss with me before I started my shift. Outside, I hailed a cab instead of walking the three and a half blocks to where my car was parked.

  * * *

  As I lay in bed that night it occurred to me she might have left something behind, forgotten her hat, left a note at the bar in case her companion arrived after she had gone. But the following afternoon nothing remained to indicate her presence the night before save a single lipstick-stained cigarette, half-smoked, in the ashtray on the table in the corner.

  Eddie was leaning back in his chair when I poked my head in his office. The surface of his desk was covered in empty low-ball glasses, coffee cups, accounting ledgers, back issues of Down Beat and the Tribune. He gestured to the empty chair, broke the news that he was opening a second club across town on the south side, to be called the Lotus Blossom. He then off ered me the position of assistant manager of the Tiger Rag. There would be a considerable raise, eff ective immediately, though I would have to continue my duties as bartender until he hired a suitable replacement.

  “When I make up my mind as to someone’s character,” said Eddie, “there’s no two ways about it. My ex for example. I knew she was no good the moment I laid eyes on her.” He grinned at me, and winked.

  “Things happen for a reason. Even terrible things. Without the atrocities of the Civil War, how many cornet horns and marching snares would have found their way into French Quarter hawk shops?” It was a question I had never bothered to consider.

  “If you hadn’t dropped out of college after your grandfather died, who would I have to help me out? A man’s got to take stock of who he is and what he really wants.”

  I accepted his off er without further hesitation. We shook on it. Eddie poured me a drink, and then another, and I went to work that afternoon, elated, in a soft scotch haze. That week, as I put in long hours learning the basics of managing the business by day, tending bar by night, Benjamin’s worldly possessions were sold off , donated, cast out on the curb. I do not know if Lillian Hirsch paid another visit to her brother’s apartment. During this time my only encounter in the front porch involved the two cleaning ladies Leventhal had hired the weekend before I moved in. Middle-aged Inez, and Maria, much younger, who took charge of introductions. On the day I took possession, I discovered that they had done a remarkable job of eff acing virtually every trace of Benjamin’s existence from the upstairs flat.

  Leventhal was unusually friendly when he presented me with the keys. He told me of his plans to renovate the downstairs apartment and increase the rent.

  “You’re doing me a favour. I was wrong about you,” he called out, as he made his way down the stairs. “Thought I had you figured out but I was wrong.”

  Shortly after Leventhal left I happened upon the first in the series of objects that had, for whatever reason, survived the purge. On the floor in the back corner of the bedroom closet, I discovered a black velvet barrette, rhinestone studded, a single strand of dark hair curled in its silver clasp. The following afternoon, I came across a gold-labelled one-litre bottle of balsamic vinegar, one third full, in the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink. I poured the vinegar down the drain, rinsed the bottle and set it in the light of the sun on the sill of the kitchen window overlooking the street below.

  It was not until almost a month later, when I gave the bathroom its first thorough cleaning since Maria and Inez had scoured it immaculate, that I made the third discovery. Though it was perhaps the most insignificant of the three, in my mind it forever has greater magnitude in that it was immediately preceded by an altogether diff erent discovery, one entirely unrelated to my inheritance of wayward household objects. It was an unseasonably warm mid-winter day, February sunlight streaming down from the domed skylight overhead. By leaning my stereo speakers against the hallway wall at an angle of forty-five degrees so that they faced toward the bathroom ceiling, I discovered a peculiar quirk of the apartment’s architecture. The sounds of Tallis’s Spem in Alium reverberated with cathedral-esque resonance. The result was overwhelm
ing. I stopped scrubbing and remained on all fours, eyes closed, like a supplicating monk, amidst the stringent aromas of lemon and pine and the faintest trace of stale urine, in a state of transcendence. I did not open my eyes again until the forty-voice motet reached its exultant conclusion. Still marvelling at my revelation, I finished cleaning the bathroom as I listened to Tallis’s minor works. It was then I came across the condom. It was still in its package, lubricated, computer tested, hermetically sealed.

  I thought then about Benjamin Hirsch. I knew so little about him. I wondered if he had been aware of the acoustic properties of his bathroom, if he would have appreciated the profundity of my revelation. What had his life been like before he had moved in? What eff ect had the apartment upon him, with its pristine hardwood floors and twelve foot ceilings, its miraculously powerful water pressure, its opulent fixtures? I thought of Lillian Hirsch, of my encounter with her at the bar, of the strangeness of my reaction. I thought about my grandfather, dead at sixty-seven, of the trip home to the funeral in Davenport and how I didn’t return until four months later. I thought about Eddie, his ability to overcome loss, his courage in starting over, how this courage had paid off and how his subsequent good fortune had contributed to mine. I considered my promotion, how the move upstairs was not, as it might have been, a strain on my bartender’s wages, but entirely appropriate given my new position as assistant manager of the Tiger Rag.

  I realized, of course, that things could have just as easily gone the other way. Eddie had warned me from the outset that there was no guarantee his latest venture would prove successful, that my promotion might only be temporary. But the Lotus Blossom was thriving, and I was turning out to be a decent manager, somehow living up to Eddie’s expectations. Sometimes I tried to make sense of the circumstances of Benjamin’s death. I wondered what brought him to walk alone on West Webster Avenue in the early hours of December 26th. If disaster could strike down Benjamin, so young, so self-assured, why not me? And yet I could not help but feel that this fear was unfounded, that I had somehow become immune to misfortune. I was still alive, happily so, and would be, I was certain, for some time to come.

  * * *

  The day Benjamin would have turned twenty-nine happened to fall on Good Friday. After closing up the bar the night before, Jerome and I celebrated the long weekend and I overslept the following morning. It was early afternoon by the time I made it to Sunset Memorial Lawns. Benjamin’s headstone was an obelisk, upright, tapering as it rose, greyer than the sky. No one was there when I arrived. I did not hear her approach from behind, though I felt her presence, just as I had felt the absence of her brother several months before. When I turned to face her I saw that her eyes were reddened, her features wan. Without her make-up she more closely resembled him. She wore her cloche hat, the same black wrap-over coat, now torn at the right cuff. In her arms she held a bouquet of lilies, their stems wrapped in silver cellophane. I did not know what to say to her. After her gaze passed through mine I knew it did not matter. She knelt and placed the flowers on his grave.

  I turned to her once more. On this second glance the vacuity of her gaze was replaced by a tentative recognition. It was then I smelled the liquor on her breath. It occurred to me my association with her brother in her mind might serve my own end, that I might use this unlikely semblance, the feeling of knowing someone intimately—a stranger. The true nature of my relation to Benjamin was immaterial. All that mattered was that I was there, at his grave, to console her for her loss. She did not recoil at my touch. Her face turned against my left shoulder, her hands upon the small of my back, I could feel her inaudible sobs. She was surprisingly receptive to my consolation. Or perhaps, given the circumstances—my proximity, our privacy, the profundity of her sadness—it was not surprising at all. Eventually she pulled away and stood by my side, staring at her brother’s headstone. We remained there for some time, unspeaking, and then she walked away.

  I almost called out to her. As I remember that moment I call out to her. I off er her a lift. She accompanies me to the Tiger Rag where I turn on the lights, make her a cup of coffee. Quietly, soberly, in the corner booth, I give my account of her brother. Somehow, with utter naturalness, as if the gradual, retroactive acknowledgement of something known all along, the truth comes out, dissonance giving way to harmonic resolution. This confession is not at all awkward, and requires little explanation. But I do not call out. Instead I stoop to collect the bouquet at my feet, and breathe the heady fragrance of the soft white trumpet bells.

  The White Knight

  The game of chess is a supernova, which can warm the backside of an amoeba, or incinerate an entire civilization.

  Pavel Rublev

  System Chess Champion, 2087-2091

  My name is Frank Rinehardt and I am twenty-seven years old. I like racquetball, film history, hard liquor and chess. Up until a month ago I was a PhD candidate at Berkeley. My unfinished dissertation was on the use of chess as a metaphor in the films of Humphrey Bogart. There are those in the twenty-second century who believe Bogart was the greatest screen actor of his era. There is a smaller group that consider him to be one of the greatest artists of any era. Several key proponents of this dogma belong to the Film History Department at Berkeley. This was the dogma to which I subscribed, until recently.

  On the evening of February 17th I poured myself a high-ball and went to bed after marking an entire seminar’s worth of undergraduate assignments. In addition to my research, I was a teaching assistant for a third-year course on representations of the Second World War in twentieth century film. I had been asked to prepare a lecture on Casablanca and give the class an assignment based on my research. This was an entirely reasonable request, as the film comprised the longest chapter of my dissertation. I first saw the film by accident, as a bored undergraduate on a blind date, having met up with the wrong “red-haired Cynthia” in the lobby of the Brattle, a run-down 2-D repertory movie house. I had made plans with the other Cynthia to see Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, but it was Valentine’s Day and I had nowhere else to go and when the young woman in the lobby insisted on seeing Casablanca, I didn’t make a fuss. She thought the film was trite. I disagreed. It wasn’t until the next morning that she discovered I was the wrong Frank. But by that point it didn’t matter. Despite our disparate tastes in twentieth-century cinema we’ve remained lovers ever since. And it was Casablanca that led to my interest in film history, and eventually to my specialization in chess metaphor scholarship. As I researched the film I discovered that the circumstances of its creation amounted to a series of peculiar accidents. In this respect the film seemed not unlike my own life. The only diff erence was that Casablanca was a masterpiece.

  It occurred to me that if I could make sense of the film in a way in which no one had managed to do before, I might imbue my own life with a sense of purpose it seemed to lack. Through my graduate research, I became increasingly convinced that the magnificence of the film had nothing to do with the numerous writers who contributed to the final script, or the often chaotic circumstances of wartime film production, or Ingrid Bergman’s initial failure to be cast as Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls, or even the inspired direction of the churlish Michael Curtiz. It was my conviction that the most significant achievement in cinematic history must be credited entirely to Humphrey Bogart. Furthermore, this achievement had nothing to do with his acting ability, but was in fact a product of his life-long interest in chess. As I explained to my students, the use of chess as a metaphor in Casablanca is extremely subtle. The entire film contains only a single chess scene, the chess board purportedly included by Curtiz only at Bogart’s urging. The board appears at the moment we first meet Rick Blaine, the character that solidified Bogart’s reputation as one of the greatest icons in the history of the silver screen. At 9 minutes, 14 seconds Rick is seated in his café, contemplating a chess game set up on a board before him. Ugarte, portrayed by Peter Lorre, is seated to his side. As Rick cautiously advances the White quee
n’s knight to the fifth rank, Ugarte persuades him to hold some documents on his behalf. The documents in question are blank transit letters allegedly signed by General Charles de Gaulle, guaranteeing passage from Casablanca to the freedom of Lisbon. They will become the focus of the film, what Hitchcock would refer to as the McGuffin, or Lacan the objet petit a. At 11 minutes, 38 seconds, as Rick reaches for the letters, he accidentally knocks over the Black king directly in front of him. This is the instant upon which, traditionally, most Casablanca chess metaphor scholarship has centred. But if you ask me, and will excuse my metaphor, the Black king is in fact a red herring. The real crux of the scene occurs at 12 minutes, 5 seconds. This is when the White knight inexplicably vanishes from the board.

  In order to understand the significance of the missing knight, one must first know something of Bogart’s relationship with chess. He was a lifelong enthusiast of the game, a strong amateur player who achieved expert status according to 1950s US Chess Federation standards. His ability was perhaps best illustrated by his draw with Sammy Reshevsky in a 1955 simultaneous exhibition in Hollywood. Before he made a name for himself with Petrified Forest, Bogart would hustle at chess for dimes in Times Square and Coney Island. After his acting career took off he continued to play both on and off the set. It is speculated that the solitary game in Casablanca was actually based on a correspondence match Bogart was playing at the time. His opponent remains unknown. What is known is that in 1943 the FBI paid Bogart a visit and insisted he cease his correspondence with European rivals. The FBI had been monitoring Bogart’s mail and were convinced his chess notation contained encrypted information. In 1945, Bogart appeared with Lauren Bacall on the cover of Chess Review. During his interview he said he liked chess better than poker because you couldn’t cheat at chess. Someone should have told that to the FBI.