THESE MANY EMPTY SATURDAY AFTERNOONS
“How you doin’ Pete?” Asks Steve.
“I’m thinking about knishes.” Pete replies.
Steve nods his head in understanding and resumes strumming his imaginary guitar. Pete has just returned from his errands – walk the dog, grab tattered copy of Swann’s Way, un-earth morphine lollipops from where they’re carefully hidden from Michael in the Café Bustelo can – and he sets down a plastic box filled with sushi on the wooden bar table in front of him. His shaky hands grasp the wasabi packet the deli thoughtfully furnished, “I call this one, Sushi Blues.” He commences to sing quietly, gruffly, accompanied by Pete’s [silent] strumming, “When there was no sushi, there was no packet. Ketchup, once, but never for fish. Bukowski said it best, ‘these many empty Saturday afternoons.’
Steve nods in appreciation of the recitation. “Ahh! The power of song!” Pete exclaims, having managed to crack the packet, sending a thin line of the verdant stuff oozing out like snail excrement. Rewarding himself, he takes a sip of watery Schaffer beer. Slowly. Everything is done slowly, meticulously. Even when he smiles, it is the lazy Cheshire grin of a man who was once at the top of his game and who has now sunk so low as to imagine himself still there.
Pete takes a long pull on his [morphine] lollipop and stares out the window at Gina The Wig Lady as she places her delicates into a basket that has been lowered from the window above the bar. Hanging out the window is Gina’s mother with whom she has lived her entire life, save for the month of September ’65 when Gina went to live with Vinnie Sip, two blocks down on Mulberry Street. But it pained her mother to have her so far away and so Gina dutifully returned, never to leave home again.
“Whadda ya’ say Pete?” Gina’s voice could reach through one hundred panes of bullet-proof glass. Pete shakes his head – even though Gina lays claim on this neighborhood back to when it was still called The Five Points, Pete’s been here since the forties and feels his association with The New York Intellectuals sets him above and beyond. Gina spits on the ground, lady-like and growls, “Don’t you never go home?”
“I am home,” Pete replies and lets his eyes flutter closed, singing along to the vibrations Steve is making in the bar’s dead air. “I walked in here, knew I was home….” He hums a few more bars and when he senses Gina has gone, opens them back up and smiles a languorous smile that once landed great beauties in his bed.
The next item to conquer is the soy sauce. Pete’s hands patiently look for a soft spot in the packet, but as luck would have it, does not find one - the thing is stitched tighter than the seam on any pant leg. Whadda they think this stuff is, gold? But time means little to Pete, and until happy hour rolls around and the bar needs this table for paying customers he can sit undisturbed, opening up as many packets of condiments, as slowly as he wants.
Some hours later, he’s managed to mix the soy sauce with the wasabi to his liking. But by then, the [morphine] pop has been worn to a nub, and the need for anything - sushi, women, even Proust – has fled.
Pete settles back on the bench against the window of the bar, relaxing into a dulled stupor that recalls a time when nothing mattered. This bar, this physical space is just a jumping off spot, a dock at the end of a sandy Montauk beach where he begins and ends each day. In-between he travels the length of The City reuniting with old lovers and friends, creating art, talking literature, and arguing the merits of the New Wave until darkness forces him to swim against the changing tides back home.
