Tomas and Trixi and Aberdeen and Mixi have coupled off in the corner. The men look like vultures eying the carrion of reservation. Trixi runs a hand through her hair and scratches the nape of her craned neck. Her ordinarily nacreous smile shines with an amethyst tint: the consequence of a black light that has suddenly been turned on. Tomas, now with an orange face, places a hand on her shoulder. Aberdeen, meanwhile, has taken to talking about his life in the most pedantic way possible, as is discernible even from this distance. Mixi's head doesn't move; it's difficult to tell if he's boring her into a coma or if he's strumming heartstrings with the dexterity of Don Giovanni or Derek Trucks. Regardless, the party has not dawdled in putting up the proverbial velvet rope, so it seems as though there is nothing left to do besides find another locale to carry on the failed experiment that is the night.
“What are you drinking?” I ask Jane as she runs up behind me with her eyes glued on Nixi's bare breasts. “What are you drinking?” I repeat even as her eyes try to direct my attention towards Nixi. “I know,” I respond. “What are you drinking? I'm buying,” I add.
“I can buy my own drinks, thank you,” she contends. Her eyes dart to the side again.
“Yes, I know about them; impressive, huh?” She smiles mischievously. “Look, I know you can buy your own drinks; this isn't a question of abilities. I'm just trying to be nice.”
“It's not nice,” she objects; “It's patronizing.”
“Tell you what, I plan on drinking quite a bit because this night has been an absolute waste, just like the rest of the fucking week, so I'll buy this round if you buy the next.”
“What?” she says with a very coy grin, “Suddenly we're going Dutch?”
“You know, that's a terribly offensive thing to say,” I begin. “I am Dutch.” Her face reddens. “I'm just fucking with you,” I say before she manages to interject. She smiles and suddenly we're at the bar with drinks in our hands, her Borinquen freckles now visible in the soft light snowing down from above. The music is too loud, but not as imposing one would think. The night begins to haze over as reality and memory become diluted by a steady stream of alcohol and New Wave favorites that pulse in a driving rhythm both rigid and determined. I pine about my inability to find Coprolalia, as if his face is the gray exhaust left by the Roadrunner — tangible only in the sense that it makes the coyote's chagrin that much more unnerving. Jane smiles tepidly as my diatribe runs its course; she seems to enjoy the silent side of the rapport, as she lacks that penchant for speaking in memoirs like most college students.
Episodes from her life are linear, plot-driven. She seems edgy, a purveyor of awkward mannerisms. She may be interpreting our interaction in strictly cerebral terms, curious of my intentions, not entirely certain of her own — that odd miasma of anxiety and anticipation, which summons fits of nervous laughter and shifty eyes. Then again, she may have the disjunctive orientation to the world: a bizarre and paranoid form of cognition dominated by 'either…or' propositions that polarize all potential scenarios into camps of best and worst — a kind of cataract that can eventually envelop all but the last vestments of sanity.
I manage to extract only limited details about her life even after the drinks begin to show their affects (on her — they have been showing their affects on me for about four hours). She's from outside of Buffalo, of Polish and Puerto Rican ancestry, in the music program at the New School, cellist, violinist, guitarist, pianist, songwriter (rarely song-singer), part-time barista, full-time feminist, non-smoker, former Catholic, Working Families Party member, vegetarian, marijuana enthusiast. She talks about music with an almost choleric fervency. She thinks that Webern was a bit too chaotic at times (“Not as chaotic as Xenakis, whom I can respect — I just can't listen to him”), that Bartok was one of those geniuses that will one day be universally appreciated, and that Prokofiev was (“without question”) the best composer of the twentieth century. She calls Shostakovich a musical ironist, but doesn't expound upon the subject. Giuliani's “La Melanconia,” she believes, is the most beautiful piece of music ever written for the guitar. On rainy days she likes to get stoned and listen to Brad Mehldau, Billie Holiday, Fiona Apple, Andrew Bird, or Jesse Sykes — depending on her mood. Her favorite living author is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Her favorite dead author is either Galdos or Proust — it once again depends upon her mood. She thinks organized religion to be the first form of organized crime, and prides herself an agnostic even though she doesn't know, until I inform her, that the term comes from the Greek, gnosis, to know. “Just slap an 'a' onto the word and you negate the meaning; therefore, it means 'to not know'.” Her favorite instrument is the vibraphone.
When engaged in political discussion she becomes cynical with alacrity. Her resignation from the banalities of the left that one encounters either on college campuses or in burnt-herb dens seems rational, but it's clear that such a disparaging, if not almost fatalistic, outlook weighs heavily upon her conscience. We agree that the economists in charge of the IMF should be tried for crimes against humanity.
She's beautiful in the sense that I miss some of the things that she says because of prurient fantasies. While the word adorable comes to mind, I am reluctant to use it even to myself because the adjective makes me think of stuffed animals and other puerile fixations. Still, there is no better way to describe her. When she smiles, it's like the introduction of a horn section.
Last call finds us still at the bar, four drinks having passed from glass to gut in the previous two hours. Nixi is long gone; Trixi, Mixi, Aberdeen, and Tomas are, too. She tells me that she is going home. I nod, try to get her number, learn that she has a boyfriend. We part once we walk out the door.
9
My roommate bursts through the door with his parents and several bags of over-sized provisions from either Costco or K-mart or Wal-mart or perhaps some regional — mart that I've never heard of. To reiterate, he had returned to his parents' estate in Connecticut for the ambiguous period of “a few weeks” after the spring term let out. I guess now seems as good a time as any to return and wake me up.
He laughs boisterously as he expounds upon the virtues of the neighborhood and the joys of living without amenities such as clean streets, peace, or eight hours of consecutive sleep — the most common interruptions being, in no particular order: Reggaeton, car alarms, domestic violence, and an array of sirens emitted from sources such as ambulances and buildings with roof alarms that could be considered hidden, provided one is incapable of discerning the large, red bar across every door to every roof, which reads:
Do Not Exit
Alarm Will Sound
or, like ours:
Not
A Sound
Gunshots are rare. Even so, his parents clearly don't share his enthusiasm.
“What are you doing on the couch?” he asks as I open my eyes to examine the three. There is a large can of beer in the foreground. The television is still on. Tom slams into a wall and becomes an accordion. Jerry lets out with a high-pitched and jubilant cachinnation.
“I must have dozed off,” I respond with the taste of Pepper's cigarette still in my desiccated mouth. “I was watching this documentary a—”