Why We Came to the City

by Kristopher Jansma

  What were William and his date talking about? What did anyone actually talk about? The dry weather? His boring job? Her ambitions to someday work in fashion?

  George leaned back a bit too far on his stool and nearly fell. “Be right back. Going to hit the loo. Keep an eye on our friend over there. I want to be able to give Irene a full report on Mr. Cho’s hot date when she gets up.”

  Jacob sighed and took advantage of George’s absence to check his phone for messages from Sara. But there was nothing. He saw that William and his date were pretending to squabble over who paid the check. Oh my goodness, who will win? Jacob wondered, rolling his eyes as she acquiesced and permitted him to pay. And what did you want to be when you were a child, William? A spineless, self-important, soulless jerk? A hypocrite who studied literature before going into finance? Someone who beds the finest woman in all of Manhattan and then ditches her the second she needs help? Jacob had half a mind to stalk over there and lay him out, right onto the plate full of obsessively picked-over fish bones. But he remained seated, tracing something out on the surface of the marble bar, writing the ancient characters in the sweat from his drink: . Once Jacob had been forced to write it five hundred times in a notebook.

  What did you want to be when you were a child?

  It was the day he knew he could never become this thing.

  The two ladies began to count out their bills and fish through their change purses for the exact right amounts. Jacob’s father had done the same after every meal, as if a penny wasted here or there might be the difference between starvation and survival. Never tipping—not even when they’d gone to the Gramercy Tavern and Jacob had dipped his jacket sleeve in mustard, and the waiter had scrubbed it out with club soda for them—even then his father had left the exact bill, down to the rotten penny, and left without a word. Sometimes Jacob’s mother would still pretend to forget an umbrella or pen, then rush back to find it and slip a few dollars onto the table—a few dollars of the pitiful allowance that Jacob’s father gave her each week to cover the costs of groceries and housekeeping . . . not because he couldn’t afford more—a lot more—but because he didn’t trust her with it.

  “Get you anything else?” Flo was asking.

  “Just the check,” Jacob said. He didn’t feel drunk at all, but it seemed like George had had enough. He looked over and saw that William and his date had left. The bill came, and he almost sent it back. How could there be only three drinks on it? From George’s slump and dreamy eyes, Jacob would have sworn that he’d tossed back three on his own before he’d even arrived. When everything was settled, Jacob got up off the stool and went back to the men’s room to see what had become of his fine feathered friend. The little door marked Hommes was locked, however, from the inside.

  “You fall in?” Jacob called.

  “No, no,” George called back. “Sorry. Just a minute. Texting Sara something.”

  Jacob thought he sounded drunker than when he’d left.

  “That’s disgusting, George. That’s how people get parasites.”

  He could hear George shuffling around clumsily. Jacob sighed. “We’re all settled up. I’m going outside for some air.”

  • • •

  Jacob stepped out onto the sidewalk. It was a few moments before he realized that he had left Oliver’s umbrella inside, and so against all his principles, he texted George to please grab it out of the bin before he came out. Great winds rushed down the valley between the dark buildings. It was surprisingly quiet, there on the cross street. In fact, Jacob couldn’t see another person all the way down the block in either direction. How often did that happen in Manhattan, he wondered, even at this hour?

  Both lanes of Fiftieth Street were being ripped up, so traffic was being diverted around the block. No construction crews were working so late, but the lanes were still closed off by fat barrels, striped in orange and reflective white. Somewhere several young women were screeching about something or another, but only an echo reached Jacob’s ears. The wind blew westerly, carrying empty soda bottles and discarded Subway sandwich wrappers. A chewed-up looking scarf. A mashed-down cardboard box. Swarms of cigarette butts. He watched them scatter over the broken blacktop, heading out toward the avenue. Far off, by the old Lehman Brothers building, he watched two tall men in dark coats with briefcases exit a gleaming white revolving door. Glass, of course. They were all glass these days, the doors, the buildings too. Transparent but tinted. Delicate but impenetrable. Lessons learned, after 1929, were limited to making sure the windows no longer opened. No one liked to see their stockbroker sailing down past their thirtieth-story window. Jacob remembered the time Irene had taught him to press his hand against the building glass. It vibrated, alive. They built them to be slightly flexible, she’d explained, so they could lean this way and that, in high winds.

  Then, at his back, Jacob felt a rush of cool air. He turned, expecting to see George at last, but instead it was William Cho.

  “Were you still in there?” Jacob asked.

  William nodded cautiously. “Yeah. I bumped into George in the bathroom. Or I mean, he bumped into me. Then he locked himself in a stall.”

  “He’s pissed,” Jacob said coolly. “You broke up with our friend when she was sick.”

  He expected William to make some excuse, but the boy made no motion to deny anything.

  “So she finally told you she’s sick?”

  Jacob’s face twisted. He hated that he’d been the last to know, but especially that William had been the first.

  “And I guess you hate me too now?” William asked.

  Jacob coughed. “Well, that’s not really fair. I hated you before.”

  William nervously kicked at the wall. “How is she doing?”

  Jacob didn’t feel like telling him anything. “What happened to your date?”

  “I put her in a cab,” he said, extending his thumb over toward the avenue.

  “Seemed like she’d have been happy to go home with you.”

  “She’s the daughter of a woman my mother knows through her church,” William explained. “I tell her I’m not interested, but they don’t care. ‘But Sung-Lee went to Harvard to study art history! And now she works for an important pharmaceutical company,’ and I say, ‘Good for her.’ She says, ‘But Sung-Lee’s father owns four spa complexes in Passaic County.’ Eventually it’s easier to go on the date than to explain to my mother that I’m in love with a white girl with no family who’s dying of cancer and won’t return my calls.”

  Jacob didn’t want to laugh but couldn’t help himself. Then the door to Bistro 19 squeaked open again, and out spilled a very drunk George, his arms wrapped tightly around a dozen umbrellas. He looked up in surprise at William, then at Jacob, then back down at the umbrellas in his own arms. There were floral patterned ones and small beige ones and green ones, and there in the middle of them all was Oliver’s black one, from Harrods.

  George didn’t quite seem to know how he’d come by them all. “Which was yours?” he asked.

  Jacob broke down and laughed until he thought he’d cry. William, not sure what else to do, laughed too, and George laughed so hard, he dropped the umbrellas onto the sidewalk. The two boys hurried to help him pick them up, and then it seemed like they ought to book it before anyone realized what George had done. Suddenly the night seemed young, and before any of them quite knew it, they were in a cab, umbrellas stuffed in every pocket, the sounds of horns and motors bringing them down and east.

  The driver let them out below Union Square, which was mobbed with the usual late-night crowds of skateboarders and spectators. Little brunette girls in wool caps emerged from Whole Foods, burdened down with reusable bags. Yuppie couples headed out of Craftbar and into karaoke bars. Kids trying to look dangerous while sipping Jamba Juice outside the Best Buy. An old man lingered by the windows of an antique emporium, looking at an $8,000 Louis XV armchai
r—if he was worth a million bucks or homeless, Jacob couldn’t tell.

  “Here’s what I propose,” William said. “We’re going to get royally smashed. And I’m going to tell my bosses that you’re looking for legal advice about your investments. And they’ll pay for it. Tell me something, George. Are you looking for new ways to invest your money?”

  “Am I ever!” he cheered. “You know, I’ve got this bottle-cap collection back home in Ohio, but I really hate having all my assets tied up in beverage futures.”

  William grinned. “What if I told you I could turn those bottle caps into a triple-tax-free retirement account? Let’s discuss it further over drinks.”

  “Let’s!” George shouted, as if Willy Wonka had just invited him into the chocolate factory.

  Jacob raised his hands to the full moon. “You know, with this sort of responsible behavior, it’s hard to fathom how you all managed to destroy the American economy.”

  “Rats to the economy,” William said. “I hope we all end up on breadlines.” George was already half inside the bodega. He emerged in a moment with three cans of Red Bull, which tasted to Jacob like an emulsion of toothpaste and motor oil but provided a jolt sufficient to make them feel like college freshmen once again. This shit’s going to give us all cancer, he nearly said, but realized it wouldn’t have been funny even under other circumstances.

  They began at a quiet Greek place called Smyrna, more or less because it was the nearest visible restaurant with a bar in front. William’s AmEx had soon procured them a round of cocktails involving metaxa and brandy, plus an order of braised baby octopuses to share. Jacob grew listless as William and George actually did become deeply engaged in a conversation about the capital gains tax, SEP accounts, and something to do with paying for Sara’s contact lenses with pretax dollars. Boring. Jacob gulped at the brandy concoction but only felt further lost inside the brown fog of his own head. Oliver, Irene, Rabbi Kantrowitz, the scent of his father’s corn-riddled feet—everything he had intended to obliterate came crowding in.

  The bartender, a hipster kid in a peasant vest whose mustache and goatee were devilishly curly, brought them all a round of complimentary ouzo shots. They downed them all in one, with a cry of Opa! at the bartender’s gleeful count. Jacob felt the kid’s eyes lingering on him afterward, and so when he excused himself to the closet-size restroom a minute or two later, he wasn’t entirely surprised when the kid followed him in.

  “Won’t your friends miss you?” he asked mischievously. The single hanging light in the bathroom was dim against the deep, violet wallpaper but cast handsome shadows over his face.

  “Those two?” Jacob said. “They’re not my friends. The Asian guy’s actually a Shaolin monk. Don’t let the suit fool you.”

  “And the other one?” the bartender giggled, as he closed his eyes and eased close enough to graze his mustache against the bridge of Jacob’s nose.

  “He’s my priest,” Jacob said, breathing in deeply, letting the smell of his cologne fill his nostrils . . . something vaguely like currant jam that lifted away the smells of the restroom, and the memory of worse smells: of his father’s feet, of Thomas’s puke.

  “I was guessing you were Jewish,” he said, opening one eye as if to check.

  “I’m a rabbi, actually,” Jacob said. “We walk into bars looking for a punchline.”

  He pressed his lips to Jacob’s. The brown fog began to clear as Jacob turned his eyes up to the ceiling and arched his back. Something started up in his guts like a four-stroke engine, throbbing, waiting.

  “My name’s Jeff,” the bartender murmured.

  “Nice to meet you, Jeff.”

  “This is where you tell me your name,” he breathed.

  “I—I—” Jacob tried. He tried to say his name, or maybe he did; he was past knowing or caring. With eyes clamped shut, he felt the quickening of his heart and let its echo mix with his own breathing to fill his ears. He felt Jeff’s hands move down over his chest and then lower. As the sensations rose up his spine, he tried to intercept them at the base of his skull, to convince himself that they weren’t being induced by the hands and lips of a total stranger but by someone else.

  What came instead was the long-lost memory of a boy named Isaac. Jacob’s first kiss, during swim class at school. Jacob was uncomfortable enough at this but then, unwilled, the image changed in his mind to that of George, and feeling loathsome enough already, he finally settled on the one person he knew he could keep in mind: Oliver. How awful, he thought, to cheat on your boyfriend and then imagine you’re with him. He shuddered, half at Jeff’s touch and half at his own mental use of the word boyfriend. And it wasn’t cheating, was it, when just a few hours ago they’d been discussing the openness of their arrangement?

  Jacob began to imagine what might be happening if Sara hadn’t called. If George could have held his shit together a little better. He wouldn’t be there, in the violet restroom of a Greek restaurant with hipster-bartender Jeff, but home. Well, Oliver’s home . . . which by now felt more like home to Jacob than his own. They’d be in the cradling softness of the cracked leather divan, smelling the faint perfume of the laundry Oliver had carefully laid out on all the windowsills to dry throughout the day. Oliver didn’t trust dryers and preferred to do the washing by hand, as he’d done at school. Up on the wall, the blowup of an old French magazine cover of a gentleman in a silk top hat, rakishly low on his head. Jacob tried to hear the music in Oliver’s study. He’d have on something familiar. The Eighth Symphony . . . just loud enough to mask the sound of an Animal Channel special on the elm bark beetle, which had introduced Dutch elm disease to North America. Not the beetle’s fault really, but a fungus it carried. Jacob had liked the name of the fungus—Ophiostoma ulmi. Ophiostoma ulmi. Ophiostoma—

  It all came swiftly to an end. Jacob swayed, low, and felt everything ebbing away. Jeff moved his head away to one side, and Jacob felt cold. La petite mort, Jacob remembered every time. The little death. What better way to describe it?

  When he got back to the table, George and William had moved on from IRAs to the topic of Irene, barely noticing his absence. Jacob quickly got their bill from the other bartender—Jeff was no longer anywhere to be seen—and slid it to William, who signed it and pocketed the receipt wordlessly, while George detailed the trip to Shelter Island and the discovery of Irene’s second tumor. He paused just long enough to bequeath a tall beige umbrella to a shaggy-haired gentleman next to him, and by the time they’d gotten back out onto Twelfth Street, the current surgeries had been outlined, and William was looking green-gilled. They ambled along the sidewalk, past the Strand and down Fourth Avenue, looking for a bar called Queen Elizabeth’s that William had heard about.

  Not finding it, they ended up in a Brazilian restaurant, mostly because George had to pee again, and in the meantime Jacob and William had two caipirinhas apiece and made pleasant small talk. Then, in exchange for a scarlet umbrella, their server told them where to find Queen Elizabeth’s, through an unmarked door in the back of an Indian restaurant named Shantih. They had a few drinks there, which all seemed to involve egg-white foam, and after that Jacob couldn’t remember much. A sports bar. Some New Zealanders. George handing out umbrellas like party favors. They had called Sara at some point, to check in. No news. Was George okay? she asked. Depended on what she meant by okay. Don’t be cute. Can’t help it. So she’d be sleeping in a hospital chair all night while they gallivanted around the city? He’d offered to send George back there, and she’d hung up.

  Jacob remembered mostly feeling as if his feet were stuck with tar to the sidewalk, although at other times as if he were drifting like a loose barge through Greenwich Village. And he remembered thinking he’d never been happier in his life. He’d long forgotten whatever beef he’d had with William, and whatever worries he’d felt for George. He’d obliterated the name Oliver from his mind and thought he had no father on this ea
rth. Who Irene was or where, or what might be being pumped into her or carved out of her—all were questions he’d forgotten how to pose. That which was Jacob was coming apart.

  His last, hazy memory was of standing out on the sidewalk, staring in confusion at the flooded street. He remembered George asking, “Hey, when did they put a river through here?” as Jacob had felt a sopping wetness in his socks. Passing cars were throwing up black waves in confusion.

  “A water main burst on Sullivan!” someone—he thought it was William—was saying. George had opened up the last of his umbrellas—a huge yellow one—and was attempting to climb into it so as to sail home again. Jacob pitched backward and all he could see were the tops of buildings and a starless sky. The last thing he remembered feeling that night was William’s surprisingly strong arm around his shoulder. Jacob was already half dreaming that George was now rowing them downstream in the yellow umbrella. The things he thought and saw were connecting nothing with nothing, and everywhere there was the roar and flash of fire trucks.

  • • •

  The boy lived in a “not very Jewy” part of Westchester. At least that’s what his mother said when his father wasn’t around, which, thank God, was fairly often. Things had a way of working out like this for the boy. His father sold supplemental life insurance and was generally best avoided. His mother did everything for him, and as far as the boy could tell, his father never did anything for her. She had even become Jewish for him, something she brought up a lot, which was why the boy was Jewish, but his father acted as if this were no skin off her back at all. The boy did as many nice things for her as he could think of, to try to make up for it all. His mother told him how special he was at least once a day and sometimes more often.

  Every morning his mother drove him thirty-five minutes up 684 to go to Moses Maimonides, the school his father had picked out for him to attend. He was in the third grade. He asked if he could attend the school right down at the end of their street, and his mother said no; it was just for Catholics. He didn’t know what that was, so she explained that a Catholic is a kind of Christian, which is someone who believes in Jesus, who lived a long time ago and who Christians thought was the Messiah. That last part was in the Torah, which he had at school, about a man who would come to bring all the sinners on earth up to heaven. Anyway, they thought it was Jesus, who’d be back later, but other people, like them, disagreed and thought whoever it was hadn’t come around yet. The boy asked why it mattered if he’d come and gone or not come yet, and his mother said that this was a good question.