Fall and Rise

by Stephen Dixon

  I put my pen and notebook into my pants and coat pockets and head home by way of this street west and then left on Sixth to the quicker Seventh Avenue subway, approach, pass and start back to a bar I’d been to with May a few times over the years when it had a pianist playing mazurkas, polonaises and études, which the overturned stand-up sign outside still says it does, and go inside for old times’ sake and such but more realistically or whatever I should call it to dry off and have a coffee or beer.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Bar

  Not the same. Lot less light. Piano music though piano covered and keyboard cover locked. Before the place always so jammed. One customer at the bar and behind it a barmaid with her mouth right up to the mirror picking her teeth with a toothpick. She reams, she digs. Got it her face seems to say throwing the toothpick away. Before when there probably wasn’t so much rain. When there was and we were down here we’d get a cab or on a subway and go to either of, or a bus if we didn’t mind the long ride, our apartments to be dry. To drink wine or shot of warming this or that and maybe a snack and maybe read awhile or watch—or do both—part of a television movie in our undies or nude. Or one in her or his undies and the other nude, depending if the temperature outside was mild and if it wasn’t then if the heat inside was still up. And chances are one or the other of us after we’d fooled as May liked to say with one another would climb—but stop. On top of the other and get not climb or side by side each other or both of us on our knees facing one of the bedboards. But why bring all that back? I don’t know. You can try. “Lost like a dog, dark like a roach, dumb like a goat and almost half as hot as a cat it’d be too rudimental and simplistic to say, those are four of the foresown fates of man—Hasenai, it’s not safe: grab your son and bone and race back to your flat!” he says in his poem “Autumnal Ordinal Poems.” And disinfecting smell from the john, music from the jukebox. Not jukebox but whatever those big blinking modern record-playing machines are called and which I don’t think was here before. Debussy I bet.

  “Debussy,” I say to the barmaid, walking over bobbing my head at the jukebox as she turns puckering her lips from putting on lipstick in front of the mirror, but not taking a seat.

  “Could be. Like something from the bar?”

  “Sounds it. The little piano tinkle. Like rolling leaves, like falling trees. I mean rivers and leaves. The high keys. Rivers rippling, little leaves flipping in the air or on the ground briskly tripping. And ridiculous those descriptions. Not descriptions but likenesses or pictures of whatever they sound like or are depicting. Maybe depictions. But you probably know music so do you know…?” snapping my fingers. “By the same composer. Not Le or La Mer or The Valse. No, that was someone else. Piano pieces all in a series by Debussy that sound like this and maybe is. I bet the pianist knows. He on his break?”

  “Vacation.”

  “Oh, vacation, lucky stiff. But I bet he’s playing twelve hours a day on a resort ship or at a Nassau hotel or one on one of the Keys. Say, that’d be the right spot. But the sign outside—Never mind. I’m not nosy and I’m sure you have your good reasons.”

  “You’re not very thirsty either and the reason for the sign is it’s not my idea. The reason is it’s my boss’s. To keep music lovers coming in while the pianist’s away. You see what luck we’ve had. Sure, the freaky weather, but people are a lot smarter than he thinks. And the wind which keeps knocking it over could be God’s way of saying don’t pull the wool over the public’s eyes too much.”

  “You believe that?”

  “If I just said ‘politics and religion,’ you’d like a light know what I meant.”

  “Go ahead. I never get upset over those two subjects.”

  “But you should or you’re not human. If you were a Jew and I called you a Red kike, you wouldn’t mind? Anyway, you still don’t want anything to drink if you never did? False advertising, so I’m not holding you to stay here.”

  “No, I’ll have something.” I take off my raincoat and hang it on a wall peg. “My sweater.”

  “Yes?”

  “My sweater. No wonder I was so cold. I was at a party before and left it. Ah, it’s too ratty for anyone to take.”

  “People will do that at them—leave things. I’ve done it plenty. Once even my year-old baby.”

  “You have a baby?” sitting at the bar.

  “Now she’s not.”

  “What happened?”

  “She grew up.”

  “At the party I mean, and I didn’t mean anyone would take my sweater at mine. She was later taken home and raised by someone else?”

  “I went back for her after I got halfway home without.”

  “And, fretful the whole trip back, found she was the life of the party when you got there.”

  “Close. She couldn’t even walk a step then but was dancing without holding on in the middle of the room. People don’t believe that when I tell them. She never knew I was gone, so it had no lasting effect on her, and now she’s old enough to have a baby herself.”

  “I know I’m supposed to think I’m supposed to say this, but it doesn’t seem possible she could be that old.”

  “If she was like me at her age she’d have had her first by now and leaving it at wild parties too—but with her brains, forgetting where to go back for it. Fortunately, I’ve kept her a child.”

  “Probably a good idea. I’d both love and hate to be a father today, maybe something else I’m supposed to think I’m supposed to say.”

  “Why? And you were never a father?”

  “Did I say that? Even if I did, it’s true. And you’re about to say something like how I’m missing the best—”

  “You are. And if you were a father but the right kind, you’d have it with someone else to help bring it up, which I never had the luck to have. And unless you’re ten years younger than you look, you shouldn’t wait.”

  “You’re right, I will. The right woman, she gets proposed to right away, no time-wasting, from me and our future child.”

  “If you’re laughing to yourself, you’re making a big mistake.”

  “I’m not. I’ve just about made up my mind. No, I’ve made it. This second. All my women and no women before—the heck. I’m getting too old. I’m beginning to taste the grit between my teeth. I don’t know what that means. But yes, I met a girl—a woman—I’m sure she’s a good seven or eight years younger than I—tonight—at that party—one with the left sweater—left and right, both sleeves—that, who I’m going to pursue to try to marry and have a child by. I will. The woman. Will and try.”

  “You could be a little high now, so don’t jump to quick decisions. Girls still say yes to marriage proposals even if they keep their maiden names, and get depressed if the man suddenly backs out.”

  “No, I’ve decided. I’m tired of living alone. Being—etcetera, and getting old, gritty teeth. I want a kid under my feet. By my feet with a little silky head to pat and a wife sitting on the floor with her arms or head on my knees or lap, all while I’m seated in an easy chair, or any but some hard wooden chair, just enough lamplight over my shoulder so as not to coarsen the scene with its glare, and a rug so my wife doesn’t bruise her knees while reclining beside me and my child doesn’t get hurt when it falls. I mean it. Carpet or rug. And me even in a hard wooden fold-up chair if that’s what it has to take to succeed. I’m game. So done.” Same piano piece comes on after a half minute being off. “You didn’t have a jukebox before. Not a jukebox. What’s that machine called again?”

  “Jukebox, what else could it be?”

  “All right, jukebox. But music to my ears. Before, remember when I snapped my fingers? Well it’s not like me to forget a famous piece’s name that I also love. It’s something like études, though I’ve always associated those with Chopin. Preludes, that’s what they are and I’m sure this one is. Deedle leedle lee. Like that. Deedle leedle leedle lee, leedle dee. Like leaves, rippling trees. You hear it?”

  “Sort of. So what drink
will it be?”

  “Goddamnit,” slapping my head. “Brahms. An intermezzo, for piano—one in B? No, I always forget the number and key. I know Chopin’s Waltz C-flat in D-minor or something, but this which she played as much? I used to love to unlock the door to her place, woman before the future mother of my child to be, and with my own keys, ones that go in the holes, when she was practicing this piece—coffee?”

  “Saving it for my Irish coffee and serious Black Russian drinkers and it’s been sitting on the hot plate so long it’d be too bitter to drink straight. I know I could make more, but I’m too lazy.”

  “I’ve done time behind counters. I could make it.”

  “Strictly you know what. Maybe you should go to a real coffee shop.”

  “Can’t. I’m here, drying off. Running across some hitherto unseen but intriguing things about myself, and it’s still drizzling and now that I know my sweater’s gone I’ll be even colder on the street. And if it’s just the tip, I’ll give you as much as for those sickening mixed drinks.”

  “Okay, I’ll be honest.” She empties an ashtray and wipes it clean though it only had a broken swizzle stick in it. “Though the boss is at his busier place he might drop in and see your coffee and how much your tab is and that you’re not a regular to do favors for like that and say to me how come I’m not peddling the drinks better even with this weather and the pianist away? So how about it? An Irish coffee would warm you up quicker than anything and the bitter coffee in it sober you up a little also if that’s what you think you need, or keep your high even. And I make them with real whipped cream I whipped myself, so you get some food value from it too just when you might have to use it.”

  “Make it without—I was going to say ‘without the whiskey and cream,’ but I know about bosses and I’m no wiseguy.” She looks at me as if I am. I look at the mirror and see her still looking at me. A sign on the mirror says Guinness is good for you. “Good, that’s what I want to be and the weather and your business to be like—so a Guinness please. It’s supposed to be healthy besides.”

  “Ad’s an antique, and as for the medicinal qualities, all the health Guinness gives is the runs. Closest thing to any brew Irish or English we have is Molson’s Ale.”

  “Then, Miss, after you give me some jukebox change, I’d say you’ve made a sale.” I give her a dollar.

  “Hurray. And the place even makes extra cash from you too.”

  She gives me four quarters and steps on the pedal to open the lowboy refrigerator. Light-blue light illuminates her body when she squats to get the bottle out. Thin, tall, too-tight shirt to cast aspersions, I mean call attention or dramatize her very large compared to her tiny waist and nearly nonexistent hips, breasts, or why ever a woman would wear a shirt so tight with no garment beneath that the color and contour of her aureoles show and nipples push through and is probably unhealthy besides. To sell more drinks and get bigger tips, but doesn’t excite me, I think mainly because it looks so damagingly tight. And somehow, in recent years, two…three, and I don’t believe because of any libidinal decrease, the breasts of strangers even with the nipples erect and whatever age and size…I prefer the woman I love or am in the process of or think I will when she’s taking off her clothes and making no show, except maybe a parody of one, but just those.

  She pours my ale. I taste, say “Ah, real great,” put a five-dollar bill under an ashtray in case someone suddenly comes in with the wind and go to the jukebox at the end of the bar. “Brahms Intermezzo,” it says, but not who’s performing which one. I stick a quarter in and press “Slow Movement Mozart Concerto,” figuring it’ll be piano and the romantic movement used as the musical theme for a popular Swedish movie years ago, but it’s violin and Prokofiev.

  I try opening the door to the men’s room near the jukebox; it’s stuck or locked. “Excuse me,” jiggling the doorknob, “anybody in there, and going to be long?” No answer.

  “Is there someone in the men’s room,” I yell to the barmaid, “or do you keep it locked for your own reasons?”

  “Is this fiver minus your drink all for me?”

  “No why, how much is the ale?”

  “Two.”

  “You being funny then? Take a dollar. But the john here?”

  “Probably the clean-up man. Give him a good knock. He could sit in the shithouse all day.”

  I knock, not good, and a woman says “Please, I don’t feel too well. I won’t be out soon. Go next door.”

  “This is the men’s room, ma’am. You can’t use the ladies’?”

  “It’s too filthy. Please, nothing I can do now, and I won’t talk anymore.”

  “How filthy is it?” Doesn’t answer. “Mind if I use the ladies’ room?” I say to the barmaid. “Men’s is being used by a woman and, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go bad.”

  “She’s in there? Wondered where she went. Thought she ducked out on the check when I was doing my nails and I truthfully didn’t care she looked so sad. Be quick, will you? Not just the boss but the whole city health force frowns on the mixing of washroom sexes. And the mayor himself still keeps his rent-controlled apartment around here and a minimum of twice has stopped in to hear.”

  “What’s he drink?”

  “It was only told to me—probably to hype business—never seen.”

  “I shouldn’t be long,” and I open the ladies’ room door slowly. It’s not filthy at all. Floor mopped, no wall cracks or remarks, mirror, commode, sink and pipes shiny and clean, vase of fresh flowers over the toilet’s water tank and above that an oil painting of beach grass or machine reproduction of one down to the smudged signature and raised brushstrokes in an oak or imitation oak frame. Seat seems to be clean, and I pull down my pants and sit. This is going to be a long one; should’ve brought a book. I look around: nothing much else to see. Alarm tape bordering the small barred window, so it also can be that kind of place. I try to smell the flowers from where I’m sitting. But I can’t smell, if they do smell, anything but what I’ve so far in bulk, liquid and gas expelled and don’t remember smelling anything but cleanser and disinfectant when I came in here. “Please for poor ole Petie’s sake don’t take posies from WC or vase to your home or to throw away on the street,” notice on opposite sides of the vase says. My mother, far back as I can remember, always had flowers on our water tank, fresh or dried. Except Christmastime when she put a holly branch in and middle autumn when it was twigs with different colored leaves from the park. Not in a vase but an old cough-medicine bottle that can now only be bought at a flea market or antique shop. The bottle was still on top of her tank last time I was there. I don’t know how we never broke it. I guess the bathroom was the one place in the apartment my sister and I never fought or played, since we couldn’t roll around on top of one another without clunking our heads on the sink pedestal or one of the tub legs. Or maybe we did break it and she had a supply of these bottles we never knew about, though there wasn’t much room in the two-bedroom apartment where she could have kept them hidden too long without our finding out. I should call her and ask, or go see her. Just call her to see how she is, or go see for yourself. Why am I always putting it off, not being a good son, because how long would it take? Hour out, drinks, dinner and talk, which could be illuminating and fun, hour-plus back, ladened with enough of her breads and overcooked food in plastic containers to fill two large shopping bags and feed me for a week. Not tonight go, though I don’t think it’s too late to call and haven’t for two weeks.