Hatched

by Robert F. Barsky

  “I’ve already written to the bartender,” blathered Jude, to recover from the blunder.

  “Shit,” he thought. “Now he probably thinks I’m gay.” This was so ridiculous that Jude almost broke into a smile.

  A clink emanated from behind him, and Jude looked over to the bar, just as Robbie lifted his eyes from his labor. He then returned to polishing glasses, presumably to scrub away any chance of salmonella, and had either purposely, or clumsily, knocked a very elaborate-looking, tapered wine glass onto the counter. It didn’t break, but the sound awakened him to his employment beyond the spotted glasses. He looked back towards Jude and said, “Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you yet, dude.”

  Jude acknowledged that information with a nod. Silence. Jude was anxious to keep his conversation going with this guy, maybe it would help him with his eggsasperation in writing this text, so he pressed on, turning back to Ted.

  “It’s about eggs. I’m writing a story about eggs, for a contract I received.” All of that sounded ridiculous, but Ted was looking over to him with an encouraging smile, so he kept going.

  “I’m a novelist. I want to be a novelist. I guess that’s the same thing. Anyhow, I used to be a mover. Now I’m a writer. I write for a living. And I just got my first paycheck. For writing, that is.”

  Ted listened intently, but didn’t seem to know what he should respond. Robbie arrived at the table, tray in hand, and set down an ashtray, a little bowl of coriander-flavored egg-white balls, a favorite amongst the locals, and what looked to be a very full glass of whiskey. Jude looked at the assemblage before him with deep concern, because this was looking like a hell of a lot more than $12.00 worth of Jameson, and who knows if all these little goodies were extra?

  “I’m definitely fucked,” he thought, and raised his glass in a jest of abandonment towards Ted.

  “Cheers!”

  “Cheers,” repeated Ted, and drew a long swig then reached into his own little bowl of egg-white delights and popped a few into his mouth before clearing his throat. Jude sipped the whiskey, which tasted as delicious, sweet, earthy, and profound as anything he’d ever drank before—ever. He raised his glass again for a toast: “To liquid paychecks!”

  Ted turned back to the bar, grasped his own glass, and turned back to Jude. “Cheers.” He once again reached forth to clink Jude’s glass, this time with remarkable grace, considering that he looked otherwise like a ‘man in a suit’ near Wall Street, one of the hordes of such men that frequented Fabergé Restaurant. When he did so, the chain around his neck dropped forward.

  “Cool chain,” said Jude, feeling suddenly on top of the calm world of total satiation that people feel during the first few drinks in a nice bar on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, right before suppertime.

  Ted settled back onto the backrest of his barstool and fingered the chain.

  “From my ex. An ex. She gave it to me when we split up. We were into bondage. It was to help me remember her, I guess.”

  Jude laughed out loud, quietly at first and then, in the intoxication of the moment, with a kind of internal bodily violence, forcing the guffaws out of himself. He felt as though Ted was his new best friend, and he had only had a few sips of alcohol. Ted was smiling. He seemed like a really great guy.

  “My ex-girlfriend gave me this pen,” he lied, reaching down for the Montblanc. “It’s a Montblanc. It represents . . .” He was grasping for something great to say to his new best friend, but Ted was already swallowing a grin, thinking, no doubt, about how thick the shaft of the pen was in Jude’s hand. “It represents . . . um . . . the distance I’d have to climb to win her back! Mont Blanc, about ten million feet tall!”

  “Now it was settled,” thought Jude. “I’m funny, just like you, and I’m heterosexual, so my talking to you is cool. And I know about Mont Blanc, the mountain that the Romantic poets loved so much back in the era before endless alpine adventure sports, so he knows that I’m not some idiot bum in a bar.” Now they could talk, they’d worked it all out, the tensions and stresses of meeting a guy in a bar were past them, and they had done it without discussing the ongoing NFL draft, underway in Madison Gardens that weekend.

  “My college roommate became a writer,” said Ted, easily. “None of this,” he motioned towards the newspaper. “No bonds, no stocks, no housing market, and no consumer price indexes.” He lifted the newspaper up, and then turned it over to reveal a decapitated model in a pair of micro panties and a push-up bra. Even from a distance and in black-and-white newsprint her body looked warm, glistening, full, and, strangely enough, more human than Tina. Ted realized that Jude was looking at the advertisement, and not the graphs and charts and lists of stocks.

  “She is the very best reward for reading those numbers,” he reflected, almost inaudibly. Jude looked inquisitively into this strange businessman’s face. “Have you ever noticed that, Jude? Amidst all of these figures, there’s always one figure that matters! And her name is . . .” Ted scanned the page. “Givenchy! Nice name. Clearly an important figure!”

  “She keeps going up!” said Jude, wittily. Now he was really proud of himself, then slightly sickened at how stupid that must have sounded. What was going up? Her bra? His penis? “Jesus, I’m insane,” he thought. Ted let it pass.

  “Join me?” Ted paused.

  “Shit, maybe he thinks I’m bi?”

  “If you . . .” Jude had no idea where he was going now, but was saved by Ted sliding off the chair, drink in hand.

  “I have a meeting at four,” said Jude’s new best friend. Ted looked at his watch. Perhaps it was a Rolex? It was very fancy, whatever it was.

  “Let’s see, what time is it? I have a feeling I’ll need another drink before then. Can I offer you another?” Ted drew up a chair across from Jude, preparing, it seemed, to settle in for the duration. Jude was excited by the opportunity to chat, relieved to save himself the agony of putting eggy words on a page, and terrified about what such a meeting could mean, financially. Jude had only nursed a little bit from his first drink, but now beckoning to him was the possibility that Ted would pay for both.

  “I’d love that!” he took a long sip to indicate that he was almost finished, and then thought better of it. What if he leaves before paying? $12.00 might cover one, but no way in hell it would pay for two.

  “Sure, thanks! The, um, bloody writing, you know, doesn’t pay for much in this place.” He hoped that his hint was sufficiently subtle, and thought that maybe he ought to turn on a fluorescent sign on his forehead that might read: “Don’t forget to pay before you leave! Great idea for an invention,” he thought. “I’ve gotta remember that.”

  Ted rose in his chair and turned back towards Robbie, who was holding a glass up to the dimness of the whole world. “Robbie, another round. Thanks!”

  Robbie looked at Ted longingly. “Maybe he is gay,” thought Jude.

  Ted sat back down.

  “I’m glad to meet you, Jude. Jude. Cool name. Betrayal. Judas. Strange guy, probably Jesus’s best friend, otherwise, why ask him to do the betraying? You don’t ask that kind of thing of an enemy, since he’d do it, but not in the right way.” He paused. Jude didn’t reply.

  “Impressive, huh?” he smiled. “I’m no writer! Actually, I never finished my degree, but I have a diploma, even though I still have two more papers to hand in. I wonder if the two professors are still alive? One of the papers was for a class on ideas: The History of Ideas. Who even knew that ideas had histories? Here, Jude, I have an idea, would you please betray me? Tell you what, I’ll save your soul if you do. Ah, what the fuck, I’ll save everyone’s soul! A round for everyone, on me! It’s my last day on Earth, and I’ve got a platinum card! God gave it to me!”

  “Jesus,” thought Jude, “this is amazing.” He didn’t have a clue what to say. “When were you in college?” he blurted out. “Fuck, what a boring question.”

  “1981. I started in 1981, but was kicked out in 1983, so I transferred and started again the following fall, s
o I should have finished in 1987. Thirteen years to 2000, plus fifteen. Twenty-eight. What is it now? 2015, so that’s twenty-four years ago? I haven’t been in college in twenty-four years.” Ted feigned fainting, slumping forward in his seat, then looked up and smiled.

  “I read the Bible, in college, Jude. That was the first time I’d ever read it. But I never finished college. I guess that’s why I still haven’t finished the Bible!”

  “You did better than me,” said Jude. “On both counts!” He suddenly caught himself. Most of his friends, or people he’d met along the way, had little education, and he liked to be chummy with them by reminding them that on the one hand he was going to be a great writer, but on the other, he had as little education as they did. He was also friendly with a whole lot of people who did read the Bible, and often nothing more. He sometimes wondered who would read the Great American Novel, even if he wrote it.

  “I learned out there, on the road, like Jack Kerouac. Or like that creepy character in Lolita, what was his name? Humbert. Right. Humbert Humbert.” He paused and took a sip from his drink. “Sometimes I felt like Humbert Humbert when he traveled with Lolita from one hotel and motel to the next, all over the states.” Ted nodded, knowingly, so he kept going. Even if he didn’t know what Jude was talking about, he seemed interested. “Like Steinbeck’s déjà vu of the Okies,” continued Jude, emboldened and anxious to show off the intellectual wares that might qualify him to be a writer in his new friend’s eyes. “Like Hemmingway and Dos Passos and Miller when they went to Paris. Then there were all those Beat generation writers and artists who moved into that shitty hotel in Paris. Have you heard about that place? Ginsberg and Burroughs and Corso, what was the name of that artist? Anyhow, they went to Paris, and then they just kept traveling, for most of their lives. Like Chaucer’s characters when they left Canterbury and went . . .” He paused, and then reflected to himself. “Where did they go? Weren’t they going to Jerusalem? It was a crusade, but is there a tale that takes place there?” He decided to play it safe. “Well, anyways, they went all over the place.” He was reaching, it was time to quit.

  Ted looked interested and, more importantly, non-judgmental in the face of these non-and pseudo-details. Jude decided to change tack.

  “Actually, most of the time I am just a mover,” he continued. “Not like a mover and a shaker, or a shaker mover, just a mover. I have moved people’s shit all over the place. I went to Asphalt U, and then I did graduate work at Interstate College. It took me a long time to find the exit, but here I am. Pretty nice truck stop!” His eyes indicated in their sweep of the Fabergé Restaurant bar.

  Ted continued to look interested and encouraging, but the jokes weren’t registering, apparently. Or were they? Jude wondered if Ted got the shaker joke.

  “Been to California?” asked Ted.

  “Fuck yah!” Jude paused to take a long sip of his drink, draining the one he’d ordered in time for the arrival of Robbie, who bore two fresh ones on his serving tray. They looked much larger than his original, and he once again feared for inevitable financial ruin that would ensue if Ted were to leave without paying.

  “I’d take sunny California right now,” interjected Robbie, the bartender, presumably to indicate to Ted and Jude that he was overhearing them. Ted and Jude ignored the comment, and neither looked towards him. They were both focused downwards, towards the pad of paper and the pen on the table before Jude.

  “Californ-I-ay!” said Robbie as he moved back towards the bar.

  The bar was dark, and Fabergé Restaurant had only muted windows, covered by a near-opaque, off-white coating to preserve the general sense that when guests were in Fabergé Restaurant they were indeed deep inside of a Fabergé egg, right down to the smooth, off-white walls and coated windows. It seemed even darker and more rarefied, as the vision of California sunshine entered the minds of Ted and Jude.

  “Yah, I’ve been to California plenty,” said Jude, ignoring the interruption and looking up towards Ted.

  “I always feel like everyone wants to move there at some point. And once they’re there, everyone wants to move away from there, as far away as possible!” He paused, and then suddenly felt that maybe he was being insulting to California.

  “Occupational habit,” said Jude. Back then, I only met people who were moving, so I had the feeling that everyone associated with the place was moving there, or moving from there. I guess if you live in New York, you have the feeling that everyone lives in one of the boroughs but wants to live in Manhattan, or if you’re from Hollywood you just figure that deep down, everyone wants to be an actor.”

  “Yah,” replied Ted, absentmindedly. Something had made him appear preoccupied.

  “Living in Manhattan,” Ted began. “Couple million for an apartment big enough to cook dinner in, but still not big enough for guests. Everyone, almost everyone, is so in debt that they can’t be considered to own anything here. It’s the most amazing island on the planet, but most people will drown in their own debt before ever really experiencing what makes it so special.”

  “That was profound,” thought Jude. “Who the hell is this guy? Is he rich, or not? Really rich, getting richer? Or poorer?”

  “Have you lived here a long time? Or, sorry, do you live here? Are you from here?”

  “I was born in San Francisco. When I was ten years old my dad bought property in Sonoma. You know it? The wine-growing region. Anyhow, his family came from Russia, like tons of Jews did. Well,” he settled more deeply into the barstool, “the Jewish Pale of Settlement, that is. My family called it Russia, but it was actually the Ukraine. Anyhow, they came from there, with all kinds of fantasies about America. Except he came thinking that he could save America from the perils of perfection, so he didn’t go to the Northeast. Actually, his original idea was to buy zillions of acres of farmland, because he wanted to create communities on the basis of farmer co-ops, groups of people who could work together to avoid everyone else. He felt a bit out of water in the prairies, though, because he really was a displaced European. And he was interested in zoology, classifying every kind of living being. Except, I suppose, mold.” He looked for a reaction in Jude and noted the intense stare, but no resonance specific to what he was saying. “Anyhow, my dad’s entire life was devoted to these ideas that he got from tons of reading, especially stuff by another Russian, a guy named Kropotkin.”

  Ted looked for recognition in Jude’s eyes and then moved on.

  “And a French guy named Proudhon.”

  “I don’t know them, should I?” Jude was confident now, even in ignorance.

  “Well, I was named after Kropotkin, Ted Mikhail Kropotkin. Mikhail, that’s my middle name. And I liked whatever it is that I’ve learned about Proudhon, except for the fact that he was anti-Semitic. Anyhow, we used to live in the Napa Valley, but when my brother died, P.J., my brother,” he paused. “Anyhow, when P.J. died we moved to a place that wouldn’t remind my dad of what had happened, so we went to Sonoma, where my dad just bought as much land as the sale of the property in Napa would buy, which turned out to be quite a lot.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “Never knew her well. She was a hippie-type. My dad met her in California, and he told me that she was really into everything that he read about and talked about. She also liked his open-mindedness and his belief in free love.” He sipped his drink.

  “That part she liked, and my dad did, too, but only in theory. She was really pretty.” He said it as though it wouldn’t be obvious. “I look exactly like my dad!”

  Jude smiled, and then felt badly for doing so. “This guy is cool looking,” he thought. “There’s something about him. Maybe that’s what he got from her.” Jude felt drawn in by this biography, and grateful that Ted was still telling it with such detail. “Maybe,” he thought, “he IS gay.”

  “Anyhow, my dad tried to be a hip Californian progressive, but I think that he only ever liked my mom. After they split up, there were lots of middle-aged hippi
es who used to come over to the house, but I don’t think that he ever really dated any of them. He was really absorbed by his reading, and he’d philosophize about changing the world. In his later years he really got into classification, like they do with animals and bugs. He wanted to classify people into specific types and try to figure out a scientific system that would help them interact better, so that they’d all be relatively happy. That’s what he called it: ‘relatively happy.’ It meant happy relative to the general state of nature. I never really understood where he was going with all this, but there it is. And then he died before I ever got to understand him anyway. Really shitty.” He cleared his throat, and then again, and a third time, violently. And then he had a swig of his drink.

  Jude used the occasion to down as much of the whiskey as he could, in preparation to say something, now that Ted had offered so much. But there wasn’t a chance. Ted glanced at his watch, and then gave a look of horror.

  “Shit, I think that this thing starts at 4 o’clock.” He was fumbling in his pants pocket, and from there pulled out a very fancy looking invitation. “Yup, 4:00 p.m., right, good.”

  Jude was suddenly terrified that Ted would run to his meeting and leave him with the bill for all four drinks, when all he could afford was the tip.

  “Nice to meet you, um, Jude,” said Ted, looking suddenly distracted, already off somewhere else. “I want to hear about your writing. And your eggs. You here often?”

  “Well . . .,” began Jude, suddenly thinking of what he owed the bank.

  Ted stood up to leave, but as he did so he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket from which, thankfully, he pulled out a long, flat, leather wallet, the leather of which Jude could literally smell over the fumes of his whiskey. Ted opened it and removed from a quarter inch pile one of the bills, which he deposited on the table without looking to see its denomination. It was $100.