Is it possible that the burrito, so recently regarded as a godsend, is in fact to blame?
“Hey bro,” he says to an older woman leading a wheezing pug. “Could you help me out real quick? I’m trying to take the train out to the island and see my grandma, but I’m a little short.” The woman walks on without regarding him. Now his insides are clenching. He feels sweat form on his brow. The street is bereft of pedestrians, save a few people who look too much like himself to be worth approaching.
Wait.
There’s one pocket he didn’t check. The little one where he sometimes…yes! It’s paper. A fiver, in fact. Well glory be.
Tim, thirty-one, was just starting a relationship with Kim, when his long-time friend Natalie, twenty-nine, told him she was maybe finally ready to give him and her the real chance they’d both always sort of known he secretly believed they had. So even though the Kim thing looked promising, he broke it off. He is questioning this decision now, because after about six weeks with Natalie it’s becoming clear that there was a lot more emphasis on that “maybe” than he had counted on. In fact, if he’s not mistaken, he’s actually being broken up with by her right now. She’s in the middle of a long monologue about how they never should have risked something so precious and rare as the true connection they’ve always had, and how some things are better than sex, even if it isn’t “cool” to say so, and what they need to do now is start figuring out how to get back to the way things were before. Let’s be adults about this.
They’re in her bed; it’s Saturday morning—about ten thirty. Her apartment is on East Ninth Street between C and D.
Tim’s nodding his head like he agrees with her. He doesn’t. He thinks they actually meant what they said while they were having sex last night: an unexpected call and response of I Love You and I Love You, Too.
Tim can’t remember who said it first and who replied. If he could only know that, he’s certain he’d have the key to the whole situation. At the very least he’d like to talk about the fact that it was said, but he can’t take the chance of saying “we” and then being told it was he who went first and that she was merely caught up in the moment, or worse, being nice. On the other hand if it was Natalie who said it first then maybe she’s waiting—secretly begging—for him to hold her to her words and save them both. Natalie, you are scared and that’s okay. Natalie, stop sabotaging the best thing that’s ever happened to either of us.
Tim: “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” and related platitudes.
God, he’s as bad as she is. Natalie can tell. In the larger karmic whatever sense, they totally deserve each other, or they would if they didn’t each deserve abject loneliness even more. Everyone gets what they’ve got coming, and when they don’t that just means that the injustice of undeserved suffering is in fact the very thing that’s deserved. Christ. This meta-analytical shit chatters away in Natalie’s head all day. She’s so smart that it’s actually disturbing—or else makes perfect sense—that she doesn’t have health insurance because she won’t stay at any job long enough to qualify. Or that she gets into these situations with guys like Tim. Oh, here we go, start ripping on him. All he ever did was whatever you wanted.
Yeah, well who says you can’t hold that against someone?
In case you can’t tell, Natalie’s having a little episode, but in her head of course. Real-life Natalie is sitting quietly in bed, speech long finished, sheet pulled up to her neck and naked beneath it, weirding Tim out with her silence, though it’s safe to say he wouldn’t be any less weirded out if he could somehow know what she’s thinking.
Tim’s dressed now, standing at the door. Natalie’s in a robe. It looks soft, well worn: comfort clothes. They have a quick, awkward good-bye kiss. It should feel like the end of something. It doesn’t, but it’s not exactly a beginning either. It just is, and then a second later it just was. Now Tim’s on the street. He should probably go home and get some work done, but fuck it.
Tim does freelance web design and plays in a cover band at a tourist trap in the West Village, an overpriced bar-restaurant his friend Ted owns. He’s not saving at all, but he’s been making rent every month and doing okay, which is more than he could have said not too long ago.
At Summer of Love, it’s always 1969, even though everyone knows the Summer of Love was ’67. Or, more to the point: precisely because nobody knows. Tim is a great guitar player, which is why he gets to play lead on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights, when Summer of Love has the Grateful Dead on the main stage, i.e., the dining room. They play two sets a night, like the real band used to, and they use authentic vintage set lists—except for dressing up, they make every attempt to re-create the original show. Of course Tim usually wears ruddy corduroys and a black tee shirt, so he actually is dressed up like Garcia, albeit nineties Garcia, but when people think Grateful Dead they think tie-dye so nobody gets the reference, or if anyone does it’s just like, Okay, so?
Tim’s favorite coffee shop is at the corner of Ninth and Avenue A. It’s called Harry Smith, and if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the place odds are it isn’t for you, though try explaining that to the recent influx of yuppies. You can always tell an outsider because they call it Harry Smith’s, as in, “Hey do you want to come meet me? Where are you? I’m like a block off St. Mark’s at Harry Smith’s, yeah, it’s like a coffee place. It’s a little smelly but I think they’ll let you plug in your laptop.”
That’s what Tim hears a girl saying into her cell phone as he opens the door and steps in.
They used to have a strict no-phone policy here. Whoever was working would walk up to you and ask nicely, once. If you gave them any shit it was the boot. Those were back in the days when a cell phone was considered a rude luxury, an ostentatious marker of caste. The no-phone sign is still up, but the rule hasn’t been enforced in years. The future is whatever you submit to. Someone should write that on a wall.
The shop’s heritage is scribbled on its walls in Sharpie, that latter-day chisel, that soot-tipped stick. Above the front door, where in Dante there’s that warning about abandoned hope, some prophet—alias unknown—has scribbled PUNX NOT DEAD ITS SLEEPING. And underneath that, in smaller letters, black Sharpie again, but clearly the work of a different hand: EVERYTHING HERE IS THE BEST THING EVER. Tim, passing beneath it, thinks the same thing he thinks every time he enters here: Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.
Is that a prayer or a joke? He isn’t sure. It doesn’t matter. By the time he stopped knowing what he believed, and later stopped believing in belief, he had been coming here so long there was no question of ever stopping coming here, because it’s a place that he knows and where he is known. Tim even worked here for a stretch, in ’02, when things got really really bad.
A heart-shaped funeral wreath—it’s giant—on a stand in the middle of the room. A white sash like a beauty queen’s cutting across it. The sash reads: R.I.P. HARRY SMITH.
“The fuck?” he says to Lisa, who started sometime after he quit but has now been here longer than he’s ever seen anyone stay. He thinks they even made her manager, though it isn’t the kind of place you’d think of as having a manager. Tim sizes her up, as if for the first time, as if he isn’t in here four, five times a week for the last like eight years. Lisa is a thickset twenty-something with streaks of bright pink in her chopped-at-the-ears hair and a pair of seriously inviting green eyes.
“Tell me everything,” he says. “Make this okay.”
“It sort of is. I don’t know. I mean business has been all right, like the numbers and stuff. Lionel and Sadie aren’t selling or anything, they’re just sort of—tired, of this, I guess, business model. They’re going to sort of re-do it like a family place. Like where they could bring their own kids, you know? But they’re keeping on everyone who wants to stay, or I think they are. I mean, I’m staying. I don’t know, we’ll see how it goes, I guess.”
Tim has known Lionel and Sadie a long time. Actually, Ti
m knew Sadie before she even met Lionel, though they never talk about those days anymore. He remembers when their first kid was born, the boy, and then the girl came along. He was happy for them, settling down, getting the things they wanted out of life, but it never occurred to him that their lives might ever impact his own. (Of course, their livelihood is his second home and they also employed him, but as far as he’s concerned that’s a whole other thing.) Tim doesn’t like to think of Harry Smith as having had an initial business model, much less a new one. It’s always felt more like a public resource—a state park, say—than a business.
Again, this is coming from someone who worked here.
Lisa hands Tim the iced chai soy latte that became his new drink two years ago when his trademark double red eyes started leaving him too shaky and heart-palpitated to read the alt weeklies.
Lisa again: “Hey, there’s a line forming behind you and they’re not regulars, so they don’t think this is cute, but listen: we’re having a closing party a week from tonight. For just the staff and the, uh, friends of the store or whatever. You should come.”
Well that’s something, anyway. A party. Tim takes his drink over to the brown couch, where there’s a spot open next to Jana, whose name is pronounced as if it started with a Y. She’s olive-skinned with a cute nose that goes out just a smidge too far to be as cute as it could be, and a dark pixie haircut that’s either brushed to look unkempt or actually is. She wears dark tank tops that favor her smallish breasts without being too showy about it, and black jeans with one of those belts with the double row of metal pyramid studs. They’ve been friendly with each other for however long she’s been coming to Harry Smith. Tim can’t remember the first time he saw her but he knows he’s got seniority, patron-wise, which makes sense because at thirty-one he’s probably what—five, six years older than she is? They’re about on opposite ends of a long trip to college. That’s another way of saying she was still in high school the year he thought he was going to get famous, and probably she was taking The Bible as Literature for a funky junior elective while he was working here.
“So what do you think of all this?” Tim says to Jana, gesturing at the wreath. He wonders who ordered it, if it was Lionel and Sadie or one of the other regulars. (Every regular secretly believes he is the regular, most cherished and beloved, so if someone else was told about this before him, who and why?)
“What’s to think?” Jana says. “Everyone sells out, apparently. This city is a dead fucking husk.”
Riot opens the front door. Figure he’s about Tim’s age, might even be older. With homeless people it’s hard to tell. He holds the door for a bottle blond in end-of-season-sale designer wear. A case in point for Jana if there ever was one.
“After you, miss,” Riot says with an exaggerated courtesy that is really leering. It’s amazing the girl doesn’t bolt, she’s so obviously icked out by him. Time was, Tim thinks, a girl like that wouldn’t set foot in a place like this. These days, she probably lives around the corner, pays four figures for a fifth-floor walkup, and when the deliveryman brings the Thai food she tips him $2 instead of $3 because she always remembers what Daddy said about a penny saved and a penny earned.
Lisa sees Riot and the first thing she says is “No.”
“Hey c’mon man c’mon,” he says, “I got money today. I just gotta use the john first.”
“No way.”
The girl Riot held the door for has found her friend. Not surprisingly, it’s the girl who was on the cell phone when Tim walked in.
“All right all right,” Riot says. He orders a coffee and throws his five on the counter.
Lisa isn’t sure what to do. What she’d like to do is throw Riot out on his ass. He’s been banned for life from this place more times than anyone can count, but here’s the thing: if she throws him out he’ll stand in the street and scream about fascism and panhandle passersby and generally make a scene until somebody—probably Lisa—calls the cops and then they’ll show up and then there’ll be that scene going down out front. What she’s thinking is that maybe if she just serves him, he’ll be cool. Who knows? Stranger things have happened at this place, though not many.
She takes his money and turns to pour the coffee. Riot takes the bathroom key from the counter and heads for the back.
Tim and Jana have been silently watching all this go down. Tim’s been trying to decide whether he should get involved: maybe tell Lisa to cool off; maybe tell Riot he can have a dollar if he goes outside. Who knows what Jana thinks of these people and all this? She’s sipping a black coffee. Tim wonders if it’s got sugar at least. He says, “Well, you’re coming to the party, right?”
“Who wants to celebrate death?” Jana says.
A few minutes go by. They sip their drinks without talking. It occurs to Tim that Riot still hasn’t come out of the bathroom. “Hey, Lisa.”
“Was thinking the same thing, hon,” Lisa says. She shouts: “RIOT! TEN SECONDS AND I KICK THE FUCKING DOOR IN.”
Tim laughs and shakes his head. Lisa will never last as manager after the place goes bourgeois.
“Four…three…two…OKAY ASSHOLE HERE I COME. YOU BETTER HAVE GODDAMN PANTS ON.” Lisa’s ready to kick, but the door’s not locked. This could be anything.
It isn’t.
What’s in the toilet is gross (Riot didn’t flush) but at least he’s not playing with it. Or shooting up or something. In fact, he seems to have forgotten about what’s in the toilet altogether. He’s got a Sharpie out, is detailing some of his 9/11 theories on the lid of the tank. “People have to know,” he tells Lisa. She grabs him by the jacket, sort of hurls him into the hall, hits the flush with her boot.
“All right, asshole,” she says. “You’re finished. Straight out the door or I’m calling.”
“You’re just a cog in their machine,” Riot says. “Towing the fascist line.”
“You know what?” She reaches for the phone. “You’re right.”
“Fine, okay, shit, Jesus. Put my drink in a to-go cup and I’m out of here.”
Tim’s from somewhere shitty in the Midwest. He was a good student, growing up, then college was a lot to handle (shrooms, mostly) so he wound up dropping out of Colorado State spring semester freshman year, took some time off, then got into the jazz program at The New School and moved to New York. He even graduated, though barely, since after moving to the city he discovered the then-burgeoning freak-folk scene. Tim knows his old band, Flash Pounce, could have gotten big if they’d stuck with it. They had a legendary live show, every venue wanted to book them. They broke up for the usual reasons: artistic differences and a couple of them got way too into speed and then the trumpet/synth player got engaged, decided to move back to Chicago.
Natalie calls Tim on Tuesday night, technically Wednesday morning. It’s about two thirty. He was sleeping, but when she asks if she woke him up he says she didn’t. He says he just got home, in a way that he hopes somehow implies he was out on a date.
“It’s too bad you’re so far away,” she slurs. “I miss you.”
“I could catch a train, I guess.” There are no cabs in the part of Brooklyn where Tim lives.
“No, it’s so late.”
“Yeah, you’re right. So.”
“Tim. Listen. Listen. Maybe we could…talk?” There’s a weird weight on that word. Talk about what? Them? What’s left to say? Is she going to break up with him again for good measure?
But he says sure, of course, and she starts talking. Saying the filthiest things, actually, first about what they did over the weekend, then made-up stuff. She describes in torrid, exalting detail all the nasty things they’re doing to each other that they’re not doing to each other. At some point he realizes she’s jerking off. So…He should, too—right?
This hand is Natalie’s hand.
This hand is Natalie’s face, etc.
“Oh fu-uck,” she says, and makes some noises in the phone that Tim tries to convince himself he is hearing for the second time t
his week, though if he’s going to be honest with himself (he’s not) she sounds way more excited right now than she did when they were together in person, though it’s not exactly a revelation that everyone’s their own best lover. Who knows what you want better than you do? (Little joke.) Anyway, he’s been on the verge himself for, say, four or five minutes now. What’s he holding back for? There’s no etiquette when she’s not really there.
It’s Saturday night. They’re doing 4/30/77, which means no bluesy Pig Pen–era stuff, plus the country tunes are jazzier and slowed way down. A ’71 “Friend of the Devil” is a three-minute up-tempo ramble. A ’77 “Friend of the Devil” is two, three times as long and you sing it like a dirge, as much despair as you’d bring to singing “St. James Hospital” or something. And then “Terrapin Station,” a spacey epic about which the less said the better.
For one last encore they do “Touch of Grey,” the Grateful Dead’s only number-one hit, even though it didn’t get written until 1980-something; officially released in ’87. No matter what show they’re doing, they always do last encore “Touch of Grey.” It’s house policy.
Luckily, the tourist crowd goes back to their hotels early. Maybe they all have matinee tickets for tomorrow. Tim’s out of there by midnight. Pretty nice out, actually. He walks from the one village to the other. He’s almost there when his phone buzzes. Any guesses who this is gonna be?
“Hey, where are you, are you home?”
“No, actually I’m on my way to a party near your place. You want to come meet me?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Tim.”
“Why do you keep saying that? I want to see you. You want to see me.”
“I liked what we did the other night.”
Silence from Tim.
“Didn’t you like that?” she says. “Wasn’t I good?”
How to even begin to approach answering that question? Maybe say, You weren’t actually anything. You weren’t there, I wasn’t there. Or: this is too weird. He could say all those things right now. He could say what he really feels and see where it gets him.
Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever Page 13
