Stories From a Bar With No Doorknobs

by Joaquin Emiliano

  Stuck in a give-and-take between him and Rudy.

  Louis standing by, avoiding all eye contact, idly digging into his left ear.

  Martin chewing on a chicken bone, lost in his own thoughts.

  “It goes waitress, expo, kitchen!” he yelled. “We only take our direction from the people just below us, or we get stuck with some fucking table telling us they refuse to pay for their fucking meal!”

  Rudy wasn’t about to lose his job over this, doing what he could to clear the air. “Boss, I got fifty different tickets up at once sometimes, and if I got to get around the chain when someone needs something on the fly –”

  “I’M TALKING ABOUT BASIC FUCKING COMMUNICATION!” Marco screamed. Reaching out for the first thing he could find. Fuzzy knuckles wrapped around an ashtray, thrown violently against the wall. Ashes and butts scattered along the floor. “NO, FUCK IT! I’LL CLEAN IT UP!” He brandished a broom and stabbed at the mess he’d made. “I’LL CLEAN YOUR SHIT UP FOR YOU, HOW’S THAT SOUND?!”

  A regiment of waiters and waitresses had set up shop at the entrance. Orders backing up, waiting for a chance to do their jobs. Taking their first tentative steps to the window, before Marco let loose with another invective. Keeping us all in a holding pattern, no choice but to wait until he realized the dustpan he was searching for was attached to the base of the broomstick.

  Nick tapped me on the elbow and motioned with his face.

  Marco’s fly was open.

  I turned to him and nodded.

  A small, meaningless victory as the clock crept towards nine fifteen.

  ***

  Jonny pulled me out of rotation to bar back. This wouldn’t make life any easier for Nick, but those were the realities. Only thing worse than poor service and sub-par food was an under-stocked bar. I stuffed myself into the moldy service elevator and held my breath up to the second floor.

  The top half of Downtown Roadhouse was divided into two sections. The Oak Room, reserved for private events ranging from bachelor parties to family reunions, to rehearsal dinners for doomed marriages. Room two was The Attic, a nightclub famous for people’s complete indifference for why it was famous. Occasion had it that we could draw a crowd, but for the most part, it was always a pedestrian settlement of cruisers and drunken opportunists. That particular night was no different, and the bartender let me back into the cooler.

  I loaded the dolly with two cases of Miller Lite, two Rolling Rocks, one Corona Extra.

  Made my way back behind the bar.

  Heavy bass remixing some Notorious, outdated disco lights putting on a show. Dance floor dotted with sparse human shrubbery. Caught a middle-aged polo shirt dropping something into a drink. Glancing around. Waiting for his date to get back. I walked over and knocked the glass over. Apologized and told him I would alert the tender to the situation. Told the innkeeper what was going down, only to have him stare at me with incomprehensibly dead eyeballs: “So what?”

  I was stuck cutting the quickest path through the jungle. “We got undercover five-oh in the house tonight,” I lied, patting the eight ball in his pocket. “They’re looking to search, so keeping trouble away might just keep us all out of trouble.”

  He nodded and went about shutting down our would-be rapist.

  I rolled my charge into the elevator. Reached into my jeans and pulled out a bottle of Bud. Twist of the cap, and I took down all that I could, on the way down, happy for the smell of cheap domestic to drown out the fumes and surrounding thoughts of an oncoming collision.

  ***

  With a hefty grunt, laid the last of the bottles to rest. Duty discharged.

  Bisected my way through the main dining room, crossing paths with Marco, his furious mouth chomping on a cigar. “Where do we keep our fucking emergency kit?”

  “Under the bar,” I said, trying to stand clear.

  “Which fucking bar?”

  “Down here. The one down here. Ask Jonny or Carl.”

  He put on a sour, petulant face. “Fucking clumsy bitch.”

  Didn’t know what to make of that until I made it back by the first bend, caught Micki leaning against the wall. Face wet with tears, shirt lifted, hands pressed against her soft, white belly.

  “What the hell, Micki?”

  She blinked a few bloodshot stanzas, and peeled her hands away, revealing a peninsula of bright red flesh. Skin festering in early signs of milky white, second degree boils. Seems she stretched for a pitcher stationed above the coffee maker. Bit of a reach. With toes firmly tipped, one of her tits had pressed the brew button, sending a stream of boiling water down her body.

  “Fuck.” I reached out. Realized it wouldn’t make a damn difference. “You ok?” Realized she wasn’t. “Want to squeeze my arm?”

  She nodded.

  I reached out. She dug her nails into me and cut off my circulation.

  I drew in a breath, flashing back to that morning on the bench.

  She laughed through the tears. Blue eyes blazing with endorphins and broken capillaries. “Jesus, Lucky, are you enjoying this?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “It’s nice of you,” she said. “You are so fucking nice right now for this.”

  Coriander rushed over with an ice pack, just as Marco made his way back with the elusive first aid kid. The two started screaming at each other, and Micki maintained her grasp, the two of us staring at each other in unspoken lockstep.

  “Get back in the fucking kitchen, Lucky!” Marco yelled. “Come on, come on, we’re fucking backed up down our own asses here!”

  “Such a way with words,” Micki smiled, several times removed now.

  I reached down and removed her hand. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  But it was double overtime at that point, and after seven or so runs out onto the floor, Micki and her mother had already left for the emergency room.

  Marco was stuck with their tables.

  He located a baseball cap and wore it backwards on his head.

  It didn’t make him any better at our job.

  It did give us something to laugh about, as everyone in the back end who wasn’t wearing a do-rag turned their baseball caps to show solidarity with their empty, meaningless leader.

  ***

  Nick lit a cigarette and passed it over to me.

  The kitchen had slowed, winding down. Didn’t have to scream over the commotion when he asked, “When you headed for New York?”

  “Week from today.”

  “Got your bankroll ready?”

  “One thousand, tucked in twenties.”

  “I really hope you take them for all they’re worth,” Nick said. Took the cigarette and exhaled. “I want you to come back up some ten large or so. Get us out of this mess before summer ends and we’re all stuck waiting for the end of the world.”

  “Got the Long Island game, then hoping to catch a few high-limit tables at the Diamond Club.”

  “You don’t seem too into it.”

  I stole, took a drag. “I’m actually ok.”

  “Is Katie ok?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Don’t be cool.”

  A busboy dropped off another stack of remnants.

  Nick and I wandered over.

  Saw a pepperoni pizza with only one slice missing.

  We shrugged. Reached in, and picked out a few pieces for ourselves.

  Chewed on the dough, undercooked and sticking to our teeth.

  “She’ll be ok,” I said. “She has to be, anyway. What’s she going to do otherwise?”

  Rudy wandered by, dabbing his forehead with a moistened towel. “We’ll all be fine. My father is the King, and the King takes care of his children.”

  “My father is Prince,” I snapped. “Pop sensation, and his albums outsell your dad’s.”

  “My father will damn you straight to hell, boy.”

  Nick laughed. Rest of the line went along for the ride.

  Rudy didn’t seem too happy with winning the argume
nt, then asked if I could give him a ride home.

  ***

  Nick had to get back to his house early, take care of the dogs.

  Had Chester Springs pick him up and had me take Rudy home.

  Or whatever that passed for in those days.

  We went deep into East Verona, where the streetlights ceased to work and gas station signs had lost their lettering…

  He pointed to the left.

  I waited for a low rider to pass on by, then pulled into the parking lot of a single-story motel.

  The parking lot was half empty, half destroyed.

  A few traffic cones forming a police tape perimeter around a gaping hole.

  I parked, pulled the brake. “You living here, Rudy?”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “I was unfaithful to my wife, and now she’s got me living here.”

  I lit a cigarette. “Not great.”

  “I don’t mean to stray.”

  I nodded. Caught him eyeing my cigarette. Let him take a drag.

  “Now I don’t know what’s going to happen to us,” he said. “What I’m supposed to do. I get so angry when I wonder why I can’t do better by her or me. How I’m going to end up doing this for the rest of my life? Why isn’t there something better waiting for me after all this?”

  “She’ll take you back,” I said.

  “No, she’s mad, son. She is angry.”

  “Want me to be blunt?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Divorce is expensive.” I shrugged against my own callousness. “And Jesus wouldn’t approve anyway, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow any such way, Rudy.”

  “Thanks for the ride, Lucky.”

  “Get some sleep.”

  “I am so damn tired.”

  He sighed and got out.

  I kept watch as he elbowed his way past a stuck door, into his room.

  Waited for the door to close.

  Got out when it didn’t, and wandered over.

  Saw Rudy sleeping in a chair by the bed.

  Don’t know who he was saving the sheets for, but that wasn’t any of my business.

  I closed the door, tried the knob.

  Locked.

  We were all safe for another evening.

  ***

  Nick’s parents were away on a work weekend, and we all gathered there.

  Outside. Stuck a dome of wet stars, and as far as the temperature went, we were certainly at the top of that particular ladder.

  It was ok, though. Korben with his job. Milo with his own nine-to-whenever. Chester, Rome, Jeff, all of them, all of us, with placid understanding that something had to change.

  So hey, did I ever tell you about the time the guy got shot out in the parking lot? Or maybe the mass catastrophe when one of our own got thrown down the stairs? Or the aftermath, when Marco skipped town with several hundred thousand dollars of debt hanging from his neck?

  No difference.

  No worries.

  Next time, there would always be a next time.

  Someone else, some manager, some psychotic owner thinking he could turn it all around by sheer will to power. We would never be left wanting for tyrants. Not as long as the wheel kept spinning, and the world chose its gods with green.

  Time being, none of us were going anywhere.

  Sucker Punch.

  When stripped of their brash and dismal tomorrows, they weren’t all bad memories.

  Every time and again, it was a peaceful buzz in place of endless tempest. Resting comfortably with my back to the bench, rather than waking up to a uniformed request for some form of ID. The perfect sunsets before vagrant dawns spent stranded some twenty miles from home. Rare moments when city streets, the significance of pedestrians, details and the color of stray cats sent dead friends and miscarried affairs scurrying to their cave.

  Sitting in Battery Park City as September took a bow. Elbow propped on the back of my bench. Cigarette tip a distant relative of the westbound sun. Reserved sips of Jack Daniel’s from a dented flask. Content with letting the scenery stroll past. Watching the giant clock across the Hudson tick towards six-fifteen.

  World Trade Towers peering over the tops of lesser buildings.

  Enjoying seventy degrees of gentle breeze.

  Eyes closed for just a moment. Primed for further, inexplicable outcomes.

  Never mind that for a few days now, legions of random men had been trying break my nose.

  I took a moment to reach into my jacket. Notepad, pen, quick dictation –

  He passed a sign to his right reading LOS ANGELES, 350 MILES. To his left, a deer, dead on the side of the road. Probably clipped by a passing truck. Its insides poured onto the tar, and flies cautiously walked along the surface of its lifeless eyes.

  – didn’t know what it meant, and maybe that had been the sole reason for this field trip to Tribeca.

  End of story. I snubbed my smoke, took another pull from the flask. Settled up and stood. Paused for a couple pushing a stroller of triplets. Got moving.

  Still dazed with irreconcilable levity when I

  made the mistake of one casual glance towards another bench. Saw her lacing up a pair of roller skates. Caught in the middle of a similar blunder, her gaze reaching to meet mine. Only half an opportunity for me to think I recognized those features. Dark skin, cushioned eyes, thick hair reaching down to rest upon her knees. Small mouth, abbreviated lips that bordered on violet dusk.

  White t-shirt blessing lovely overtures, torn jeans stopping watches up and down the east side of Manhattan.

  Sensed my stare wasn’t welcomed in those parts, and I kept walking.

  Kept walking. Carrying that uncertain moment on my back.

  Unacceptable.

  I turned, expecting a brisk walk back to ground zero.

  Only two steps to find her roller skating towards me.

  Legs spread too far. Arms held out like a model airplane, pinwheeling.

  Eyes remaining on mine this time. Her head tilting, matching my own impossible recollection.

  “Are you Lucky Saurelius?”

  I nodded. “Are you Zelda?”

  She grinned, dazzled the scenery with her smile. “Wow. Lucky.”

  “Zelda.”

  “I saw you walk past.”

  “Yeah, gave my eyes some liberties. Sorry.”

  “Wondered why this creep was staring at me like that.”

  “That creep was me.”

  “I know, stupid.”

  “Hello.”

  “Hi. Give me a hug.”

  I did. She agreed, roller skates sending her body against mine. Arms draped around my neck. I brought my own around her waist, keeping her afloat as her wheels found traction.

  Came face to face, holding her hands in mine.

  There was that same tiny scar on her cheek.

  Zelda grinned. “Wow, again.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long has it been, do you think?”

  “High school,” I said. No hesitation, a database of previous lives always at the ready. “It was after you left Verona. You were visiting. There was a school dance. We were sitting in your car. You were smoking a cigarette. I didn’t smoke yet. You told me about the scar on your cheek. It was quiet. We were listening to Erika Badu.”

  She smiled. “How did you do that, just now?”

  “I have trouble letting go.”

  Zelda released me from her hands. Watched my arms drop against my hips. “There.”

  “That was easy.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “North.”

  “Me too.”

  “Thank God…” She took hold, hooked on, and we shuffled forward.

  To our left, the sky was blue, orange, pink. Garish. Perfect.

  ***

  We hooked a right across the West Side Highway.

  Her wheels a set of untamable, wild horses.

  I insisted we could make the l
ight.

  “What if we can’t?” she asked.

  “We’ll be the first to know.”

  We did. And we were. And we slow-rolled our way along Harrison Street, below a short tunnel built between two wings of the BMCC. Half a block of darkness as cars cautiously ambled past.

  “How did I not know you were still in New York?” I asked.

  “You didn’t know where to look.”

  “Maybe you didn’t know where to be.”

  She smiled askance, raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you going to be a famous director?”

  “Still could be.”

  “But will you be?”

  “No.”

  “So what’s left?”

  “Been thinking…” and thinking about it made me smile for the first time in a while. “Writer, maybe.”

  “If it’s maybe, then it’s never.”

  “Well, then. Writer. Only.”

  “Only?”

  “Why the hell not?” I glanced up at the dimming clouds. “Writer. Only. That’s all there is.”

  We paused at the corner of Greenwich Street.

  Red light.

  I pulled out my flask. Had a hit. “Want some?”

  “Jack Daniel’s?”

  “Not a bad guess.”

  “I could taste it on your breath.”

  “You mean smell.”

  “I mean taste.”

  “Want some?”

  She had a tug. Winced. Smiled. “Writer juice.”

  “At least you understand.”

  She stared up at me. “So far, so good.”

  The light turned green.

  “Careful. There’s some glass.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Wait… there’s a lot of it. All over the crosswalk.”

  “Piggy back?”

  “Hop on…”

  Zelda leapt onto my back. Crushed my neck in a tight chokehold. Tested me all the way towards higher ground. I set her down, gently.

  She gave my arm an appreciative squeeze.

  A passing ambulance gave two whooping coughs. Set its siren ablaze and barreled down the street.

  I nodded. “Shall we beat on?”

  “Boats against the current?” She quoted. “Borne back ceaselessly into the past?”

  I was left with nothing to say, other than Uh-huh.

  “Thought so.”

  She took hold of my arm, and soon we hung a left, shambling our way up Hudson.

  ***

  We were at the corner, split junction of Sixth Avenue and Sullivan.

  “This is a Chilean restaurant,” I said, pointing to an awning, brown and yellow tiger tail. “Only one in Manhattan, near as I can figure. Named after a river. In Santiago.”

  “Any good?”

  “Never been. Always mean to, never do.”