Alone, you hear yourself chewing and swallowing. You sound like an animal. With company everyone eats, talk obscures the noises in your head, and nobody looks at what your mouth is doing, or listens to it. In this high blindness and deafness lives freedom. Would I think so if I hadn’t left her?
She screamed and broke objects. Nevertheless, I refused to kill her.
Jimmy phones me after midnight. He’s been living in Paris. I haven’t spoken to him for over a year, but I recognize his voice, and I recognize the bar, too, the only one in Berkeley Jimmy likes. I hear the din of a Friday-night crowd and a TV I imagine Jimmy standing in the phone booth, the folding door left open to let me know he doesn’t want to make conversation. He says he needs five hundred and seventy dollars for his rent, which is due tomorrow. He wasted a month trying to find an apartment in Berkeley, and he’ll lose it if he doesn’t come up with five hundred and seventy dollars. He’ll pay me back in a couple of days. I know he won’t. He never pays me back. He says,“I would go to your place, but I’m hitting on some bitch. I just met her. I can’t split.” What about tomorrow morning? Impossible. “I don’t know where I’ll be,” he says.
I get out of bed and put on my clothes. My hands tremble a little when I tie my shoelaces; I have to concentrate on the job like a kid who just learned how to do it. Then I drive across town to Brennan’s, being careful to stop at stop signs. At night cops get lonely and need to have a word with you.
Brennan’s is crowded and loud. I can’t spot Jimmy, though he’s the only black man in the room — if he’s there. He is. He’s waving to me from the bar. I must have been looking at him for a few seconds before I saw him, because he is laughing at me.
The woman on the stool beside him is wearing jeans and high heels. She’s blond, like all his others. When I walk up, Jimmy turns his back to her, takes my hand. He doesn’t introduce us. She looks away and begins watching the talk show on TV I slip Jimmy the check I’ve written. He doesn’t look at it as he folds it into his wallet and says, “Thanks, man. I’ll pay you back. Have a drink.” I tell him I’m not feeling good. I can’t stay. But he has ordered an Irish whiskey for me. It’s waiting on the bar beside his own.
He tells the guy next to him there’s a free stool at the end of the bar. Would he mind? The guy picks up his beer and leaves. I take his stool and Jimmy hugs me, laughing at this accomplishment. The blonde, on his other side, glances at me and then back to the TV as if she doesn’t expect to be introduced and is indifferent, anyway. I wonder if the Irish whiskey will be good for my flu. My hand trembles when I pick it up. I ask Jimmy how it was in Paris. He says,“Oh, man, you know. I get tired of them, even the finest ones.” The blonde, I suppose, is also fine. What lasts is him and me. This idea is at the margins of my mind, fever occupies the middle like a valley of fog. I know for sure Jimmy has flattering ways. He says, “Look, man, do you really want to do this?” He’s studying my glazed eyes. I think he’s concerned about my illness, and then realize he means the money. “Didn’t I?” I say, reaching into my shirt pocket before I remember that I gave him the check. Now I’m embarrassed. “Talk about something else, will you?” I say, though he wants me to ease the burden of gratitude. I get out of bed with fever to give him money … I don’t finish the thought. The blonde turns, looks at me with cold blue intelligent eyes, but I see better than she does. I see that the connection to Jimmy is her fate. He’s going to hurt her. She holds her martini as if she is invincible, and smokes her cigarette in a world-weary manner. I say, “I’m sick, man. Would I be here if I didn’t want to be?” The blonde half-laughs, more a cough than a laughing sound. She wants me to leave and shows it by putting down her martini and heading for the ladies’ room. Jimmy turns and watches. Her jeans are cut for trouble. The door shuts behind her and Jimmy says, “Her name is Gunnel. She’s bad.”
He laughs, unable to contain his excitement. Then he slaps my arm, surprised by how entertaining I am, though I’ve been very dull. I laugh, too, but I won’t ever give him another cent, I think. That’s what I always think. Then one night the phone rings and he says, “Hey, man,” his voice low and personal, like there’s nobody in the world but him and me.
Boris drove past me in his new car, speeding down Euclid Avenue, picking his nose. He didn’t see me. He was watching the road, driving fast, obsessed with his nose. Each life, says Ortega, is a perspective on reality.
Boris laughs at his unexpressed jokes, then gives me a compassionate look for having missed the point known only to himself.
I found a modest place with only three main dishes on the menu, none over ten bucks. Not good; not terrible. In Oakland near the courthouse. Nobody I know is likely to walk in. I don’t remember the name of the place, I never noticed. I was eating dinner and reading the legal papers, telling myself they’re written in English, they will have a great effect on my life, so I should try to understand them, I must be calm and read slowly, when the door opens and lets in a draft with street noise and perfume. The noise hits me like a personal criticism, the perfume cuts through the steam coming off my plate. I look toward the door. I see a white linen blouse, pearls, and a face heavily made up, correct for the pearls but not for dinner in this place. Maybe the pearls are to suggest that she’s meeting somebody here, but something tells me she is alone. Her green eye shadow is a touch sloppy, as if she wants to be beautiful, but she has troubles, agonies, who knows. Maybe she’s a lawyer, works too hard, and wishes she’d had a child instead of a career. The green eye shadow, part of a mask, tells more than it hides. I look away to avoid her feelings. I don’t know her. I’m eating dinner. I’ll soon finish, smoke a cigarette, and then go home to sleep without a body against whose heat to press my complications. The food tastes like pork or chicken, but not enough like either to create anxieties. I don’t remember what I ordered, but it’s boring. I like it.
I’m trying to eat and read, not to look at her, though she is garishly depressed and sits five feet away. The waiter goes to her. It’s his job. She tells him she wants the fish, but without sauce, and she would like it grilled, not poached. I look. He starts to ask what else she wants. She interrupts, asks if the wine is dry. He says, “Yes.” She says, “Very dry?” He says,“I’ll ask,” and hustles away to the kitchen. I hear him consult the chef in a foreign language, maybe Arabic. She calls from the table,“I don’t want it if it isn’t very dry.” He comes back, whispers, “It’s very dry.” She then says that she’ll have soup and salad, but no cream in the soup, and bring the salad dressing on the side, then adds “Please” with a too strong voice and a frightened stare, like a person who is basically shy, struggling to be forthright. Instead of forthright, a kind of begging enters her tone, almost sexual. She smiles, amused at having betrayed herself, and also as if the waiter must be grateful for such a gift, which has now established a bond between them. He smiles politely and hurries away, confused by messages. She sits alone. As the waiter goes about his business at other tables, a light inside her grows dim. She feels abandoned. I want to rise and go hug her, or at least mess up her clothes, but you can’t do anything for anybody. “Oh, waiter,” she cries, “could you please bring the bread now?” He starts for the bread. “And I’d like a little water.” He hurries to her with bread and water, as if that’s what she wants.
Every wildness plays with death. Washing your hands is a ritual to protect against death, and so are all the small correct things you do every day. Aren’t there people who do nothing else? They pay their bills on time and go to the doctor once a year. They have proper sentiments and beliefs. They are nice people. I wanted to do dull ordinary chores all day. I wanted to be like nice people only to forget death, only to feel how I’m still alive.