by Susan Minot
They stood on Madison and looked down the empty avenue at the lights sparkling way downtown. Not a cab in sight. George pivoted. “Let’s go over to Fifth,” he said and strode off on long legs. It was like being in a race. Bonnie wanted to cry out, What’s the rush? The other night they’d gone out to a movie with her brother and George had not wanted to get a drink afterward. They had hurried home. Then when they got there, George had turned on the TV. Bonnie asked him if there was something he wanted to see and he said, Not really, he just wanted to let his mind wander, just wanted to stop thinking for the day. He had held his arms out to her and said, Come here, and she’d nestled in his arms while he changed the channel with the automatic device, not having to move. Bonnie thought of that now, of his not having to move and not wanting to think.
“What’s the matter, baby?” said George, his voice sweet. “Why the dragging feet?”
His arm came back and went around her. “Nothing,” she said. Though it was minor, she was aware of it being her first lie to him.
* * *
•
Later at home—they went back to Bonnie’s tiny apartment—Bonnie asked him how work was that day and he said, Fine, with a clipped tone, meaning he did not want to talk about it. But now Bonnie was irritated he’d taken her early from Isabel’s.
“But what did you do?” she said. He was on the bed with a book. “Something interesting? Any detail will do.”
George, head against a pillow, kept his eyes on his book. “It was a day at work,” he said. “No big deal.”
“I know.” Bonnie kicked off her boots. “I was just wondering what you do. I realize I don’t really know.”
“Nothing interesting,” he said. “Believe me. If it were interesting I’d tell you.”
“But I like to know how it’s not interesting,” she said, trying to sound encouraging. She sat next to him.
“Well, it’s boring. I had a boring day at work. I discussed some idiotic ideas with idiots.” He looked across his shoulder at her. “Satisfied?”
It was one of those questions one doesn’t want an answer to. She shifted away from him.
“Where are you going?” he cried.
“To get ready for bed.”
“Come back soon,” he said, smiling. The face meant to soften her, but she turned away from it and tried to think of something else. She’d been in a lovely slow dream and did not want it to end. But once a person became aware of being in a dream it was difficult to stay asleep. The thing that kept one asleep was not knowing that you were sleeping, and not thinking. She tried to block out any further disturbance, but a voice came, insistent, breaking through the dream membrane. Hurry, the voice said, getting louder, Hurry.
• CAFÉ MORT •
It’s always an endless night. I come in when it’s light outside and at some point, which I never see because I’m setting up or seeing to the few stray people who come in here early, night falls and before I know it the floor-to-ceiling windows on the café side are black. Car headlights pass in the darkness and you can see the bullet shapes of people’s heads blotting out blurry lights as they move up and down the street, so it’s not complete darkness.
Jerry our manager stands at the door between eight and ten, otherwise he lets Sharon do the seating, even though he’s still on. He lost his brother in the Gulf War and wears an army pin on his lapel. Jerry is a jerk and I avoid him as much as I can, but if you want to keep your job you have to get along with people.
It is only out of desperation a person would take this job, waiting on dead people. Some of the waitresses are proud of it. Not me. But a person has to work. I don’t register myself unless I think and gather my thoughts for at least a minute, and that’s impossible in this place. It’s the story with work, turns out; it keeps you from thinking. Instead you are occupied with fascinating details like which person wants onions on her coffin or how many more pieces of Daisy Pie are left in the fridge or which order got switched back from the Terminal Tortellini to the Cremated Shrimp.
The usual girls are on tonight. Sharon has a well made-up face, with coral lipstick, and looks more like a banker than a waitress. She takes great care with her tables, holding the pepper grinder out stiffly in front of her. Rita is long-legged and wants to be an actress. She brings in yogurt for supper, is on a diet, and admits to being always hungry. Her bangs sprout in a soft wave over her forehead. When she swings around a corner her ponytail fans out leaving a bird shadow on the parquet floor, the only nice thing about this place. The men at the bar watch her with longing and resentment.
Then there’s Karen who’s been here forever. Grief has made her gray around the eyes, as if someone pressed a dirty sponge to them. She slips into the bathroom hallway and smokes Silva Thins, taking quick, intense drags, four in a row, before hurrying back when the cook screams that an order is up.
* * *
•
When I got to work tonight I felt something strange. Maybe my patience is running out, I thought. I felt at the end of my rope. I admit I’ve felt that before but usually at the end of a shift, and then at night I go home and take a hot bath and lie in the tub on my stomach, rocking the water and imagining I’m on a boat. None of us can get to sleep right away. Sharon has a bowl of popcorn and watches TV to calm down. Rita smokes a joint. Then before you know it the next day has come and you’re here again. It’s difficult to get out of a rut.
But something is going on tonight. I have a different feeling. Even Jerry notices. As I’m putting the ugly topaz candle jars on the tables, he says, “Hey”—still not knowing my name even though I’ve been here awhile—“with your hair back like that you look sort of cute,” surprised. I’ve been wearing my hair the same the whole time. Then he goes back to knocking his fists together, waiting for the night to get busy.
I suddenly think, What if this were the last night I was here? The thought is newly alluring. But I don’t get carried away with it, believe me.
* * *
•
Gil, a regular, is in his usual place hunched at the bar with his baseball cap on. “Turn off that shit,” he’s saying. On the TV is a baby being born. You learn about regulars pretty fast by osmosis. Gil was shot in a hunting accident. A few stools down is Manny in his spot. “You better shut up or I’ll turn you off,” he says. Manny, a big guy, no surprise had a heart attack.
Mac is the bartender—he and his girlfriend used to hang glide. Being an employee, he was the survivor. He specializes in insults. “I’m just trying to bring a little light and laughter into this hole,” he says. When Jerry’s back is turned, he flicks bottle caps at the hanging crepe lampshade which hovers over his dark, bottomless floor back there.
There are three girls in a row at the bar with their legs crossed, rib cages tilted up. They laugh together, each with a different look for Mac. The first one lowers her eyes, clamping her lips around her cocktail straw. The one in the middle, the boldest, talks for everyone. The third, shy, is folding her square napkin, having finished her drink first, and ordering another. Someone said she was the one driving when they crossed the median into oncoming traffic.
Some customers are okay. There’s a nice man with cropped silver hair and coffee-colored skin who comes in on Thursdays. He’s polite. From where I stand politeness counts for a lot.
“We’d like the Grilled Shovels and the house red,” he says. “But no fries, please. We’re watching our weight.” He looks up. “We’re saving it for dessert.” He always dines alone. We found out he’s a twin, but his brother’s still alive. After I take his order, he says, “We thank you,” and goes back to his book.
Roman and Neil are here tonight. They keep to themselves, trade their soups halfway through. Roman was on an airplane which went down, headed for Fort Lauderdale, and Neil had cancer already, but drank ammonia to join Roman. They smoke like chimney stacks and talk in a steady stream to e
ach other in low close voices. The theme here is devotion. Though as we waitresses know, devotion can keep a person locked in, too. Everyone who works here has that in common. We’re all stuck in the irons of devotion. Sharon nursed her dad over a long illness till he went. Rita still wears the leather jacket of her boyfriend who wiped out in it. Just now she dropped the blue-cheese dressing container and our station is like a white rink. There’s a new girl shadowing her tonight, Maggie, who stands by, haunted. She looks the way I did when I started; I think I’ve actually changed. I’m betting she’s an orphan.
I have my qualifier, too, though I don’t talk about him. He was young, my beloved. An outdoors man. A crevasse in Alaska is all you need to know.
* * *
•
“Marry a man,” says Gil, holding up a small pitchfork with an olive on it, “who fascinates you.”
The regulars seem to come in for the sole purpose of handing out advice. Clichés abound.
“Never tell the whole story,” they say.
“Keep your family close.”
“You can only trust your mother.”
At the bar it never stops. “You only go around once”…“Life’s worth living”…“You do what you gotta do”…“You can’t take it with you”…“What’re you waiting for?” etc. Coming from these people you can see it as either instructive or ironic, depending on your perspective.
I ask the Chinese cooks in the kitchen, What year is it? The Year of the Dog. Sharon, who studied religion and the Far East, says, whispering, that the dog guards people in the afterlife. The head cook, Ring—though I think it’s really Ling, but everyone calls him Ring—lost his nephew at sea.
Tonight the cooks are pouting and seem particularly disappointed. Have I not noticed that before? They’re listening to the radio in their language. At the end of the night they’ll make noodles and crab and egg cakes for supper, their own cuisine, and it smells like the docks back there.
* * *
•
The guy with eyes ringed like a raccoon’s is dining on the shredded pencil: I figure a writer.
“More coffee?” I ask him.
“No,” he grumbles. “It wasn’t fresh and it was putrid.”
Karen says he used to be a priest, but left the priesthood.
“It didn’t answer all the questions,” he explained.
The beige woman is in tonight. She has beige hair, a beige suit, and beige panty hose. Her bag is also beige. She sits alone, but she likes to have the table for four in the corner so she can face out to the room. She says she doesn’t like anyone behind her. Sometimes she buys drinks for the bankers. She hardly looks up, just watches the miniature TV she carries in her purse. She asks me if we have diet Scrambled Clouds.
“Scrambled Clouds are diet,” I say.
She orders them and eats one bite. When I put down her bill she looks up from the TV. “The point of life is love,” she says wide-eyed, apparently having just discovered it. Karen says she was a suicide.
Everyone has his or her attitude.
The tiny woman with her hair pulled back tight is a Russian dancer. She orders the same whenever she comes in, September Odes. Sharon says her dances were famous for expressing despair: people running endlessly in place or staring out at the audience with accusing expressions. Or, her dancers would just stand, mouths open in silent screams. Once, going by, I heard her say to Sharon, “Happy? What the hell is there to be happy about?”
If you divide people into those who look at the positive side of life and those who see things more generally in the negative department, then I’d say there’s a good cross section of humanity here. Some people feel they’ve suffered more than others; others feel lucky and fortunate. Pretty much across the board, the people’s lives, at least what we can see of them from our point of view, are filled with the same amount of pain and suffering and good fortune and bad, but some handle it more gracefully than others. One might say that the lucky ones are the people who feel they’re lucky.
Rita is counting a tip. “Divide this four ways and you got bus fare to nowhere,” she says.
* * *
•
Frankly I don’t notice much difference between the people in here and the ones who don’t come in, but I suppose that’s why I have this job.
Purple Fingers waves me over. “Excuse me, miss.” I look at her. I’m tired and I look. She is wearing a scarf of lilacs. “I’m being bitten to death by mosquitoes,” she says. “Ever since I walked in here.” She scratches her thigh as proof. Some customers come in just to complain. I tell her I’ll mention it to the manager. Then she looks at the dessert menu.
“What’ll I have?” she says. “I can’t decide.”
“Have the fattening thing,” says the larger woman with her. She’s wearing a gold noose necklace. “And I’ll stay thin.”
The new girl, Maggie, is at the counter waiting for some beers. I hear her say she lost her parents in a diving accident. I feel proud that I spotted it.
* * *
•
The electrocuted woman who comes in occasionally tonight brings her little girl with her. The kid smashes a coffee cup and dumps all the sugar packets into her lap. Her mother doesn’t notice a thing. When the daughter sweeps the menu rack off the table, it clatters to the floor and everyone ignores it, not wanting to embarrass the electrocuted woman for some reason. Some deaths receive extra reverence. Karen deals with it, picking it up and saying, No problem, having more patience than all of us. Karen’s little brother fell out of an apartment window when Karen was five. She had dared him to touch a pigeon. Some things are harder to live with than others.
Jerry seats a family of three at a center table. They want only dessert. For drinks the parents order coffee and the little boy says, “I’d like a queen-sized tea,” which makes them all laugh. They drowned in a sailing accident and everyone looks happy. They order Morphine Supremes with vanilla ice cream.
The thing about going in an accident is that a person exits his life unaware of his departure. An old-timer might see departure on the horizon. Does it matter much?
One judge who comes tottering in some nights left the bench when he was ninety-eight. He says his life was long because he didn’t get angry at people and didn’t fret about things he couldn’t control. “That’ll kill you,” he says.
There’s a Mr. Putnam who comes in. He’s blind. He tried to commit suicide when he was twenty but instead blinded himself and says afterward, he felt grateful for the rest of his life. The woman with the braids on her head who was an archaeologist says the secret to life is to keep walking through it without analyzing it too much or clinging to it too much. Just to keep walking. That was my beloved’s attitude, but look where it got him.
Gil is being his usual jerk. “Can I wipe the ashes off your apron?” he says to Rita as she walks by.
“The tonic in this drink tastes funny,” Manny says.
“So laugh,” says Rita over her shoulder. Maggie follows behind, learning fast. You can see this beginning to suit her. You can see her relief at finding this job.
* * *
•
The night wears on. Bitterness, anger, and recrimination are the prevailing themes among the late-night clientele. No one’s eating anymore, just drinking. “I never got a chance,” says the woman at the end of the bar to no one, smoking a pipe. Everyone starts to lose it.
Mac washes glasses and leaves them upended. “Jerry, you interested in the numbers?” he says.
Jerry is standing at the door. “Stick with your work, Mac,” Jerry says, keeping his back to the bar.
Then a group comes in. It’s unusual for anyone to come in this late. It’s a woman in a white nightgown with a paramedic on either side of her. The paramedics in white pants and shirts were driving an ambulance which got broadsided by some idiot at a red light. The woman
in the nightgown looks bewildered. The paramedics immediately abandon her to sit at the bar. They order White Russians and split a bowl of Elegies, leaving their patient unattended.
The woman in the nightgown is probably in her seventies. She’s wearing a soft light blue sweater over her nightgown, and has an IV pole wheeling along beside her. Her hair is nicely done; still, she looks frail. Jerry doesn’t seem to know what to do with her and points her to a stool farther down the bar. The woman moves away from him dismissively.
Sharon breezes by me. “Two Floods on seven,” she says, barely moving her lips, face polished as porcelain. I get the Floods and deliver them, and coming back I pass the nightgown woman half perched on a barstool, facing out. Her eye catches mine. She has a strong, direct gaze. Sometimes you see truth in a face. This woman looks flabbergasted; I see she’s right. She’s not in my section, but then she’s not in anyone’s section and Mac is behind her, wiping his hands, chatting up the paramedics. I stop and ask the woman if there’s anything I can get her.
“Excuse me,” she says. She has a nice rich voice.
“Yes?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t belong here,” she says. She smirks, perfectly willing to forgive the mistake.
“You don’t?” I say.
“No,” she says and lifts her arm as if to say, See? Need I say more?