Cartilage and Skin

by Michael James Rizza

  The waiter brought me a plastic basket of french fries and a glass of something thick and black. When I looked up at him, to question what was in the glass, I noticed that the tattoo that wound up his arm and disappeared under his shirtsleeve, apparently spread over the rest of his body in some mysterious fashion and peeped up around the edges of his shirt collar. Not saying a word, I simply looked at his shiny, black eyes, but still he seemed to become very annoyed with me. He waited a second and then stepped away. Whether he acted like a bitter, ugly thing to all the patrons or just to me didn’t matter; I decided not to leave a tip unless he showed a glimmer of warmth the next time he came to my table.

  I sipped my beer and found it tolerable. The french fries were thick-cut, salty, and soggy. Even so, I ate and drank and watched the people seated in the dining area, since my back was toward the bar. The couple sitting in front of me appeared to have only recently met because the young man was interrogating the girl, who looked like a delicate creature, with soft bare shoulders and auburn hair. His words were abrupt and quick, swarming all over the girl. Unfortunately, rather than a frontal view of her, I had one of his cherubic face, which was round, pink-cheeked, and coated with a closely trimmed beard.

  Through his questioning, I learned that she was the youngest of three girls and, because of the decade or so separating her from her sisters, she was a “change of life baby” or, as her dopey date interjected, “an accident.” I couldn’t see her expression, but a slight, telling pause in her voice preceded her correction: she was “definitely planned.” In fact, she was lucky to have been born later because by then, her parents were already established in life. While her sisters had “to play with pots and pans and to make toys out of sticks and mud,” she got everything she wanted. Just as I was beginning to appreciate the young woman’s wit, the bearded boy felt compelled to interrupt.

  “A spoiled little girl.”

  He grinned stupidly and babbled on. He used his fork to punctuate his sentences in the air, and although she started to say that even in childhood she’d “never really cared for material things,” he began another line of questioning. He wanted to know what she intended to do with a degree in English. He asked this in a roundabout way, not only implying her impracticality but also alluding to the spoiled little girl theme. Beneath the flourish of his words and the humor in his tone, he in essence accused her of having the comfort of getting a useless degree because she planned on being supported by a happy husband. It took him a while to get to the point because he somehow connected it to, or rather veiled it within, an anecdote about his cousin’s ex-fiancé. She let him finish, before simply calling her education “a pleasant stepping stone” to law school. She had wanted to be a lawyer ever since she’d read about Atticus Finch and Sol Stein’s magician in ninth grade.

  The inflection in her voice suggested that this subject thrilled her. She clearly wanted to continue talking about her plans, such as what law schools interested her and also what branch of law. Yet the buffoon swallowed whatever was in his mouth, set down his fork, and looked seriously at the girl.

  “Promise me this,” he said. “As soon as you finish all this schooling and you start raking in the cash, if you’re still looking for a husband, well—” He broke off with a smile.

  “You’ll be the first guy I call.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  He held up his glass of beer, and they toasted.

  By now, my own beer, as well as the fries, was finished. I looked around for the waiter, and seeing him going from table to table, I wondered if he was intentionally avoiding me. At the same moment that I was trying to get the waiter’s attention, the young man held up his hand, as though hailing a taxi, and called to the waiter as he skirted past our tables.

  “Another round,” the young man said.

  The waiter nodded once and continued walking. His little black eyes met mine, but he kept going without a word.

  My interest in the prospective lawyer and her suitor was momentarily diverted because two young women sitting across the aisle had just rejected their first round of libidinal advances. They were both pretty blonde-haired girls dressed in black. When the set of guys approached them, sat down at the table, and exuded a profusion of arrogance and idiocy, I at first assumed that they were the girls’ dates, boyfriends, or lovers. Defeated, they eventually got up and headed back to the bar. The girls set their empty martini glasses at the edge of the table, and the wiry waiter exchanged them for fresh drinks. Shortly afterwards, a second round of rutting young men advanced. They stood above the table, drinks in hand, and talked to the girls, who gazed up thoughtfully. This pair of young men was less bold, or perhaps more sensible, than the first one because they didn’t plop themselves down uninvited. The girls nodded and responded, apparently willing to give the rutting boys a chance to make their appeal, put on their show, or do whatever kind of trick needed to woo the girls. Because of the music, I could only discern random fragments of their conversation. These two weren’t actually rejected because the spokesman had the foresight to take his leave before he ran out of things to say or was unequivocally dismissed.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “I’m going to have your waiter bring you your next drinks on me, and while you are—”

  “Don’t bother,” one of the girls said and slid two empty, turned-over shot glasses to the edge of the table.

  “Better yet,” he said, smiling.

  “I think they’re from that guy.” The girl pointed toward the crowded bar area.

  “Better yet. While you’re drinking that guy’s drinks, let us know if we can join you, just for the drink.”

  “We’ll let you know,” the girl said.

  His eyes lingered on her face as he first turned his body and then his gaze, in slow motion, away from her. Suavely, he started away, his sidekick following.

  The waiter dropped off the drinks that the young man with the beard had ordered, and although I held up my hand and said, “Excuse me,” the waiter turned his back to me and faced the blonde-haired girls. He said something that made them laugh.

  “Excuse me,” I repeated, but to no avail. He was gone.

  The bearded boy was watching me, but I looked down at the empty plastic basket and then pushed it and the glass to the edge of the table, as I’d seen the girls do. The waiter was so obviously snubbing me that I wondered what I had done to him, if not recently, then perhaps long ago—but I couldn’t recall ever seeing him before; I’d have remembered his tattoo, let alone his effeminate cheekbones and his fierce little eyes. I absently scanned the room, which was decorated with pictures of lighthouses and seascapes and craggy shores, as though I couldn’t hear the bearded boy softly explaining to the girl that the “waiter was being a prick.” Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the girl with the lovely smooth shoulders turned in her chair to steal a glance at me. She then said something in a hushed tone, at which her cherubic companion chuckled, saying, “Poor bastard.” If the girl returned his laugh, I would have felt wounded and pathetic. Instead, the girl got up from her seat and walked past me toward the bar. I followed her with my eyes and, from behind, saw that the lower part of her was also sweetly shaped. When I turned back around, her date had his eyes fixed on me. He apparently didn’t notice or care that I had just been ogling her.

  “What’d you do to him?” he asked.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Well, Miriam, that girl, went to get you a drink.” The slight smirk on his face suggested that he found the situation entertaining.

  “I’m okay,” I said quickly.

  “Well, she’s got it in her head now. No stopping her.”

  “I wish she didn’t.”

  He shrugged, and I shifted my attention back to the waves crashing against jagged rocks in the picture above my table.

  When the waiter returned, he wordlessly set down a fresh glass of the thick, black brew and cleared away the things I’d dirtied. Of course, I had planned on
ordering a different kind of beer, but I didn’t say anything. I was curious on whose tab was this drink and thus to what extent I was obligated to thank Miriam. I started to lower my mouth down to the glass, but then suddenly conscious that this movement lacked elegance, I sat back, lifted the glass in my hand, and took a sip. Watching me, the bearded boy grinned.

  Miriam came back and slipped herself onto the chair. Looking over the rim of my glass, I watched her as she began to turn around in her seat, my eyes lighting first upon the gentle curve of her breast and then briefly upon her forearm that was placed on my table, before moving up to her smile and beholding the face that belonged to that tantalizing figure. Her shrunken chin sloped radically toward her neck, and her raised upper lip revealed an expanse of pink gum, and her eyes, unfortunately, were set too close to the bridge of her nose, which, by the way, was dimpled at the tip. All the desire she had aroused in me an instant ago was abruptly shocked by her ugliness. As I felt my blasted passion begin to shrivel beneath the radiance of her beaming countenance, I returned her good humor the best I could; I imagined that I smiled back at her or at least did something semi-civil with the corners of my mouth. She apparently didn’t notice my disgust because she said, “Don’t mind that bastard,” then held out her glass to me, and added, “Cheers.”

  I clinked my glass against hers. Slowly sipping my drink, I vaguely listened to her speak, transfixed by her mouth shaping the words. Evidently, her upper gums were always exposed, even when she wasn’t smiling. My beer, she said, was on Stephen’s bill.

  “Wait a second.” The bearded boy laughed. “It’s nice of you to be generous with someone else’s money.”

  “You don’t have to—” I started to say.

  “I didn’t—”

  “Don’t you be a bastard now too.” Miriam cut him off.

  They both seemed very happy.

  “Really,” I said, looking at him now because it was easier. “I’ll pay for my own drink.”

  “No, no.” He waved his hand. “It’s my one act of charity in this life. Don’t take that from me.”

  “Thanks then,” I said.

  “Besides, now I won’t have to spend so much time in purgatory.”

  The girl began to turn around and settle back in her seat.

  “Let me treat you two next then,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I would like my drink today, if you know what I mean. By the time you get service—” He ended this sentence with a chuckle.

  “I have no idea why he’s snubbing me.”

  “Oh, I know,” the girl said, with her back to me again. “I asked him.” She fell silent, as if to tease me.

  I waited a moment and then asked, “Why? What’d he say?”

  Before she would answer, she wanted me to join them at their table. Gathering up my umbrella and overcoat, and switching my sports coat to the back of a different chair, I sat next to the girl; I couldn’t imagine sitting across from her. The waiter had given her a very brief explanation, and she wanted the rest of the details from me. The girl said that I had insulted the waiter’s mother.

  At this, Stephen perked up in his seat and started to laugh. “What, ho?” he exclaimed.

  “I don’t know him or his mother,” I said.

  “Out with it, Walter,” he said.

  “I have no idea.”

  I also had no idea why he suddenly called me Walter.

  By the way the two of them had welcomed me, I sensed that I was acting for them as a reprieve from each other. My presence afforded them a break from the inane inquisition.

  “I suppose we can get the waiter’s version,” the girl said. Although she sounded as if she were attempting to taunt me, I readily agreed.

  “Get his version.”

  At once, the girl rose from her chair and sprung away with a tiny, happy bounce in her step. Both Stephen and I watched her go; then Stephen made an audible sigh. All the joy on his face dissolved into an exaggerated pout.

  “Shame, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “I have no luck at all.” He shook his head, but suddenly his grin returned, as if he’d just realized something. He leaned over the table and whispered: “You know why they really call it doggy style, don’t you?” He nodded knowingly, sat back, and sipped his drink.

  Realizing that I wasn’t going to respond, in fact didn’t know how to respond, he leaned forward again.

  “When you’re doing her from behind,” he whispered, “you don’t have to look at the mutt’s face.”

  He erupted with laughter, and his cheeks grew even rosier.

  “I have no luck at all,” he repeated.

  He was still laughing when Miriam returned. Seeing him so pleasant and jovial, she lit up with a smile.

  “It was in a doctor’s office. That’s all he would say.”

  I tried to think, but I was certain that the bastard, the prick, was mistaken; I didn’t know him.

  “A doctor’s office?”

  “That’s what he said.” The girl sat down with her foot under her, elevating her a little.

  Besides the optician and the dentist, I hadn’t been to a doctor in many years, even though I was at an age when I should get regular checkups. I wasn’t enthused by the prospect of having some doctor’s lubed finger wiggle its way toward my prostate. Like most men, I decided to wait until I pissed blood or couldn’t pee at all.

  “No, the prick’s mistaken,” I said.

  Amused, the bearded boy pretended to be stunned by my profanity. I suspected that all his expressions were not only exaggerated but also mock expressions. While such jovial affectation seemed to give him a bit of charisma, it also suggested that any relationship with him would be carefree and involve scarcely any emotional investment, both easily established and easily broken.

  Despite having no story to tell, I remained at their table and listened to them. I treated them to the next round of drinks. On a plate in front of Stephen was a half-eaten baked potato, a dollop of sour cream speckled with parsley flakes, and a few sliced mushrooms sitting in a thick brown pool. The waiter twice tried to take the plate away, and each time Stephen picked up his fork and said, “Hold up, my friend.” Then once again, the plate sat untouched.

  Miriam began a story of her own, to which the bearded boy silently grinned like a culprit to some petty, ludicrous crime. I learned that over the past month or so, Miriam and Stephen had gotten to know one another pretty well by way of email. They had met in a chat room for Jewish singles, and because neither of them was actually Jewish, they were drawn together. At this point, Stephen interrupted to say that he was surprised to discover that, like him, Miriam leaned toward Mardukianism. Miriam humored him with a flash of her gums and said they were having trouble finding a church. Anyhow, after they’d typed their way into each other’s heart, it was her idea that they arrange a meeting, face-to-face.

  “That’s sweet,” I said.

  Interestingly, their conversation was more fluid and natural when they had me as their medium. They weren’t so much concerned with finding out about my life as they were with using me to reveal each other. After a while, however, even this became stale, and Stephen decided that we all needed a shot.

  “Why are you still holding that stuff in your lap?” Miriam asked me. Before I answered, she picked up my overcoat and umbrella, her fingertips brushing along my thighs, and handed the bundle across the table to Stephen, saying, “Put this on that chair.”

  When the shots came—some viscous liquid the color of urine—I reminded myself that not only was I a lousy drunk but also I was supposed to be Dick Diver.

  “Pick them up, boys,” Stephen said.

  “What is it?” Miriam asked.

  “No questions,” he said, raising his glass. The girl looked doubtfully at the shot, but then picked it up. I felt obliged to follow.

  “What are we toasting?” she asked.

  “Alcohol.”

  “No. How about to happ
iness?” she suggested.

  “Sound good, Walter?”

  “No,” I said, feeling self-conscious and silly, as I held up a shot glass with two strangers.

  “What, ho?” Stephen exclaimed.

  “To stupidity,” I declared, but before I could drink my shot, Miriam grabbed my wrist.

  “That’s no good at all.”

  “I like it,” Stephen said.

  Because she was holding my wrist, I switched the shot to my other hand.

  “Then let’s toast to love,” I said quickly and gulped down the putrefaction in one swallow.

  Stephen followed first, then Miriam.

  “That was a better toast,” she said.

  “It was the same thing,” he said.

  “Don’t be a brute.”

  Maybe to some degree it was the alcohol, yet this was the first thing that Stephen had said that struck me as genuinely funny; in fact, it was the first thing I’d heard in a long time that made me laugh, and once I started laughing, it seemed to erupt out of me in great waves of mirth that came from deep within.