by Michael Kun
“Is it okay?” the man says.
And I say, “As long as you stay away from hamburgers and pizzas and desserts for the next 24 hours. Go ahead and look.” I gesture toward the mirrors.
The man steps up to the mirrors and looks at his reflection, first up, then down. He turns sideways, then looks up and down again.
He looks at me in the mirror and mouths, “Thanks.”
I mouth, “No problem.”
His wife walks to the mirrors.
“Let me look at you,” she says, and she takes him by the hand. She pulls him away from the mirrors and into the middle of the room.
“You look fantastic,” she says to him. “Absolutely fantastic.”
He tugs her toward him and puts his hand on the small of her back, and they dance several steps to the song on the radio.
The song is called “Wonderful, Wonderful You.”
When they’re done dancing, he walks back to the dressing room to get changed. The woman helps me clean up the mess around my work area. They pay me for fixing the tuxedo, and I put the money in the cash register. Then the woman hands me an envelope.
“This is for you,” she says. “Thanks.”
I watch them walk to their car. I watch the man carry his son to the car and place him sleeping on the back seat. I watch him hang the tuxedo on the hook in the back of the car, then hold the passenger door open for his wife. I watch him get in the car. I watch the headlights pop on. I think they wave to me, but I can’t tell through the headlights. Then they drive off.
I open the envelope. There’s fifty dollars inside. I take a pen and write CARL on the envelope, then stuff it in my jacket pocket and head home.
x
I work, and I work, and I work, and I find some pleasure in working. The rhythm of the machine, the ticking of the bobbin, the comfort of the cloth, even the prick of the needle on my fingertip. People bring their clothes in with tears or rips or holes, a pair of pants or a jacket for instance, and they beg you to fix them, they need you to fix them because they love those pants or that jacket, because those were the pants or the jacket they were wearing when they first met So-and-so, or when their daughter graduated from middle school, or something else of that nature. And sometimes you can fix it. You move some material from another part of the jacket, or you put a few invisible threads under a cuff, and it makes them happier than you could ever imagine.
Sometimes I stay at work late, finishing up a suit jacket or a dress as the case may be, trying to keep from getting too far behind. Sometimes it’s nine o’clock before I go home. Sometimes it’s later.
Sometimes I have lunch with Debbie and Palmeyer, and we talk about World War II or Red Buttons, the comedian, and we’ll remember things we thought we’d forgotten.
Sometimes I go to Carl’s apartment and sit on the couch with him and watch television. Sometimes, on weekends when he visits with the boys, we take them to a Braves baseball game. Sometimes we take them back to Cadbury and show them how to bait a hook. We teach them how to peel shrimp. We teach them how to scrub their stinking little hands with lemon so they won’t attract cats and flies.
Sometimes I stay at home and read a magazine or a newspaper.
Sometimes I stay at home and drink a beer or smoke a cigarette.
Sometimes I go sit out by the cracked little swimming pool at the apartment building and listen to the children playing, trying to find each other with their eyes closed, trying to find each other just from the briefest sounds of their voices.
One child will say, “Marco.”
And the other will say, “Polo.”
Then, “Marco.”
Then, “Polo.”
“Marco.”
“Polo.”
And so on, and so on, until the first child finds the second. Then, the next day at work, I’ll say to Debbie and Palmeyer, “Do you remember that game you used to play in the pool called Marco Polo?”
Sometimes I go to sleep early, or I rent a video from the video store down the street.
Sometimes I go to Fat Matt’s Rib Shack and eat a plate of ribs and drink a beer and smoke and listen to the band.
Sometimes I go to the laundromat and wash my clothes because the machines at my apartment building aren’t very good. One of them ended up ripping my chicken shirt so badly that I couldn’t fix it. It was nothing to get upset about. It was just a shirt.
Sometimes I go to the grocery store.
Sometimes I go on a date..
Mary Beth, who’s short and has to tip her head back like she’s in a dentist’s chair whenever we kiss.
Nancy, who won’t eat meat.
Lauren, who will.
Carrie, who likes to smoke and dance.
Jackie, who likes to drink and dance.
Susan, who talks about her dead mother.
Ann, who has freckles everywhere and giggles at all my jokes.
Kathryn, who gets migraine headaches.
Teresa, who sleeps in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt.
Serena, who likes to watch football on television.
Maria, who has two children.
Tracy, who wears short skirts.
Vickie, who wears long, flowery skirts.
Molly, who listens to books on tape.
Laurie, who likes to climb mountains.
Cindy, who smells of perfume.
Monica, who smells of potato chips.
Sherrie, who smells of bananas.
Wendy, who smells of lemons.
There are others whose names I don’t remember. They’re all nice women, but if you don’t love them, it’s easy to forget almost everything about them. They just become names. Then they disappear altogether. Like I’m sure I’ve disappeared in their minds. I become Ham Something, then I become No One.
Sometimes I go to the movies, walking into the theater just as they’re dimming the lights so no one will know that it’s me and that I’m alone.
Sometimes I drive to Eddie’s Attic on Wednesday nights and pretend I arrived by chance.
I know what I’ll say if I see Renée there.
“Oh, I just stopped by because I became such a big music fan listening to you play,” I’ll say.
That, or “I happened to be driving past and thought I’d stop by for a beer and a smoke.”
Whichever feels right.
I sit in a booth at the back where I can see both the entrance and the stage. Sometimes the door will swing open and the street lights will flicker through, and I’ll see a woman standing in the doorway wearing a cowboy hat and boots, and for a second I’ll think it’s Renée. Only it never is. All women look alike when they’re wearing cowboy hats and boots, especially from a distance, especially in the dark. Still, my heart jumps a little each time it happens. My heart jumps when I scan the sea of cowboy hats in front of me.
Is that her?
Is that her?
Is THAT her?
Or her?
Or her?
Or her?
Sometimes I stay until closing time, drinking and smoking until everyone has finished playing their guitars and singing their songs. Songs about husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends who broke their hearts. Songs about cars and trucks and trees that smell like June. And people who died. And people who didn’t. And people they loved but who didn’t love them back. And people they kissed, and people they didn’t. Songs about the ocean. Songs about birds and long walks at night when the moon looks like a melon ripe for picking.
Listening to those songs, it’s hard not to think of yourself and your own life. It’s hard not to think of your own songs in your mind, songs you’d sing if you knew how. Maybe a song about a girl you loved and who loved you back. About how she loved you so much that it frightened you. It frightened you because you knew in your heart that she couldn’t always love you like that; you knew that the way you knew the sky was blue and your mother loved you. How you knew that you’d just end up making her sad and sorry. And you’d sing about how she left
you, and how you’d wished she’d said something cruel when she left, only she didn’t. And you’d sing about how you drove all over town hoping to see her, how you saw images of her here and there like the ghosts that remain after a the pop of flash bulb, how you would drive past her apartment at night just so you could see the glow of the light in her bedroom and knew that if she looked out the window at that precise moment you’d be looking at the same sky. And in the song, she’d come back to you unexpectedly, and she’d look a little different, and she’d sound a little different, but she’d still be the same, more or less. Not perfect, but she would be yours, and you would love her for not being perfect.
That would be your song.
And if you wrote a song like that, what would you call it?
What?
Maybe you would call it “Winona Forever.”
Maybe you would call it “Winona Forever,” and you’d cry just a little bit every time you sang it.
THE END