Ablutions (4 page)

Discuss Merlin. He is seventy years old, with close-cropped white hair, a long white beard, and desperate, deep-set gray eyes. He chain-smokes brown More cigarettes; they tremble in his spotted, hairy hands or hang from the corner of his lipless mouth and he speaks from behind a screen of smoke, his fingers interlocking like puzzle pieces, a visual aid to some astrological peculiarity or possibly a dirty joke. His teeth are jagged, yellow, and rodent-like, and when he laughs his neck is all veins and tendons and you force yourself to look for no reason other than it is a difficult thing to do.

His vocation is mired in the pall of alcoholic fiction but he claims to be involved alternately in moviemaking, real estate,
stock speculation, and something called life coaching, which as far as you can tell is an ugly cousin to psychology requiring considerably less schooling. He speaks of his freelance work as a medium and of his relationship to the other side, hence his nickname, which he is aware of and apparently not offended by. Despite his many professions he is usually broke and twice has asked you for small loans to tide him over until the banks open. "No," you said flatly, and he bared his teeth and retreated like a crab into the shadows of the cold, smoke-filled room.

He is a man in crisis. He favors futuristic, multibuckling sandals and brightly colored nylon jumpsuits, but is known to wear for business purposes a voluminous double-breasted sharkskin suit and tasseled wingtips. These meetings invariably go poorly and Merlin complains of his clients and investors, christening them chickenhearts and babyhearts and yellowbacks. On such nights as these he grinds his fangs and slaps at the bar, cursing the cruel machine called Hollywood with mounting venom until complaints are made and Simon is forced to intervene, clamping Merlin's arm to hush him. Merlin drops his eyes in shame. He is envious of Simon's good looks and accent and he spreads a rumor that Simon was not born in cosmopolitan Johannesburg but the squalor of a desert scrubland, surrounded by "yipping pygmies and hippo shit." Merlin was born in Cincinnati but affects an English accent when drinking.

One night you and Simon are alone in the bar when Merlin, leather fanny pack slung over his shoulder, walks in to greet you. He comments on the empty room: "Ghost Ship," he says. He is suppressing a smile and looks as though he has just found a wallet in the gutter but is hoping to conceal this for fear that someone will claim it. He asks for a drink and you pour him a quadruple vodka and tonic with lime, on
the house. This is your new tactic for dealing with hangers-on such as these: You get them helplessly drunk and refuse all money, even tips, and in the morning when they are stuffing chunky bits of vomit down the shower drain with their toes, you hope that they think of you, and that the next time they visit the bar they will ask someone else to serve them. Simon knows what you are doing and he smiles his handsome smile, lowering his head to hide it.

Merlin sucks on a lime wedge and drops the rind into his glass and his shoulders shudder as he drinks and he raises his head to study his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. He lights a cigarette and the smoke slips upward in a slick blue ribbon. Simon asks him what's the latest and Merlin's eyes cloud over; there is lime pulp in his beard and before he speaks he shows you his teeth. "I've just come from a meeting," he says. Simon, nudging you, asks him if his ship's come in, and Merlin says it wasn't that sort of a meeting. An AA meeting, then, Simon says. Merlin shakes his head. "A psychic meeting," you say, and Merlin nods deliberately. He takes another drink and raises his eyes to meet Simon's.

"A round-table vision," he says. "The strongest any of us have ever experienced. You will be murdered in your home on the fifteenth of September. You will be shot twice, once in the brain and once in the heart. The heart shot will kill you but it will take some time to die. The shooter's a nigger, little and mean. He'll never be caught and he'll laugh as he drives away in your car."

Simon is clutching a dishrag. "Mean little ... what?" he says. His mouth is open, his jaw crooked and stiff. He is wringing the dishrag in his hands.

"You'll die on the burgundy rug in your front room. The light of the morning will be glowing in the windows. The blood pool will expand toward the walls and door. The door
is blue. The curtains are beige and a red telephone is ringing. Your voice is on the answering machine greeting and your body is twitching. The caller doesn't leave a message. Your body goes limp, and you die." He takes another drink and gasps. "This is what will happen to you on the fifteenth of September."

Merlin finishes his drink and leaves without tipping. Simon has gone uniformly white and for once has nothing to say. You bring him a large shot of tequila and tell him Merlin is a fool, but he shakes his head and says the description of his apartment was exact. He drinks the tequila and points for another, and then another, and he continues drinking and soon is drunk and by midnight you are helping him into the back seat of a taxi. He is gurgling and cursing Merlin and the driver hands him a plastic bag should he have to vomit. You give the driver the address and watch Simon's head slide from view as the taxi rounds the corner at Santa Monica.

Back in the bar you consult the calendar that hangs above the register and see that Simon has four months and seventeen days left before he will be killed. You mark the date with skull and crossbones and turn to resume your work but the bar is still empty and there is no work to be done, and you stand with your arms crossed and wait for something to happen.

Discuss Sam, the bar's principal cocaine dealer, a black man in his mid-forties who grew up with the owner in a nearby suburb. He had hoped to find work at the bar but when it became clear his old friend would not give him any legal position he cornered the stimulant market and now does a brisk business out of a stall in the back bar men's bathroom,
this in spite of the fact that he keeps his stash in his gas tank and that his product smells of regular unleaded. He has three small children, sons, who sometimes accompany him to the bar as he works; they circle him and drag their hands down the front of his pant legs, demanding money, colas, chocolate Kisses, their mothers, and beds to sleep in. Sam does not like bringing his sons to the bar but says that at times it is unavoidable. You always take the boys into the manager's office, where there is a television set and a jar of candies, and ask them to stay put because if the fire department or any city employee found them on the premises on a Saturday night the bar would be closed and you would be out of a job and the state would take the children away to institutions and Sam to jail. The other employees complain about him but the owner and the owner's wife tolerate him, not out of any sentiment but because he gives them free drugs whenever it occurs to them to ask. You like Sam and always give him top-shelf vodkas when the others give him the well. His eyes are forever bloodshot and he is terminally exhausted and you imagine his head is stuffed with wood shavings and that he cannot hear a thing you say.

You are alone in the bar in the early evening. Having seen a scary horror movie the night before you sense the ghost lurking around every corner, her cold body hoping to cover yours and chill your blood to slushy ice. You stand near the jukebox (whose lights frighten the ghost) and are punching in songs when you hear the front door open and close and you turn and see the room is empty, which is not uncommon as people often come by to poke their heads in and check for a crowd, but still it frightens you when you think that the ghost might be blocking your escape route. You push this from your mind and are again focusing on the jukebox when the door opens and closes once more, and you turn to find the room still bare,
and your heartbeat accelerates and you stare hard at the lights of the jukebox, your eyes crossing, your fingers pressing in songs at random, and you think you sense a slowly approaching body shape at your side and you turn and see the shape is real and you shriek in sincere terror and the shape jumps back and curses and it is not the ghost but Sam. You are so happy you hug him and lift him from the ground and he asks if you are crazy because you looked right at him when he walked in, but he is wearing dark clothes and his skin is dark and the bar is dark and you both laugh at what has happened. "Next time I want you to give a great big smile when you come in," you tell him, and he smiles and his teeth glow like a slivered moon tipped over on its spine.

Raymond sits at the far right-hand corner of the bar and waves for you to bring him more napkins. He will use an entire stack before night's end, and not for cleaning up. His pens are in a line and he pulls from his pocket a small, jellyfish-colored ruler and he begins to draw, and to drink—whiskey in the winter, tequila in the summertime. If anyone should reach for a napkin from his personal pile he removes their hand and directs them elsewhere; this offends the bar patrons and they ask to view the drawings but Raymond will never allow it. He obscures the napkins with his forearms and hands and squirrels them in a bulging pants pocket, careful not to leave any behind. His hair is brown-gray, his bushy mustache dark brown and silky. He always wears the same T-shirt, which reads
ART SAVES LIVES
. His glasses sit on the end of a long, sharp nose; his eyes peer over top of the lenses, which gives the impression he is confiding something when he speaks with you. He looks to have been handsome in his
youth and in fact is still handsome. His thick hair is swept to the side, by turns boyish and Hitleresque, and he smiles easily and will speak with anyone but gives his attention chiefly to the employees of the bar, to whom he addresses many questions, some of them coherent and motivated by a genuine and good-natured curiosity, others seemingly not. Around the time you first meet him, for example, he asks if you have ever been buried alive. You tell him you never have and he nods and says that everyone should be buried alive at least once in his life, and you make no comment but steal away to busy yourself with an invented task. The query becomes legendary among the bar staff and forever after, whenever a customer asks a foolish question, you ask this person in return if he or she has ever been buried alive.

You ask Raymond what he does for a living and he says, "I breathe and walk and when I'm told to sit I sit and when I'm told to leave I leave and return home to luxuriate and think of how much I despise them." He implies there is a correlation between his daily work and the drawings, which leads people to believe he is some type of an architect, but you suspect there is no place for him with even the most incompetent firm.

He is full of mystery and a looming evil but the strangest thing about Raymond is his choice of shoes. The first time you see them you burst out laughing and leave the room for fear you will offend him. Later you tell Raymond how much you like the shoes and ask if he would mind your sketching them (you are an amateur artist) and he makes a grand gesture of your request, loaning them to you on the spot and walking off into the night barefoot. You take them home and make several ink drawings and later present one to Raymond, along with the tiny, elfin shoes, and he is pleased with the rendering and your interest in his footwear.

Cocaine is everywhere and most every employee at the bar will take cocaine while he works. As many times as it has been offered to you and as drunk as you have been you have never, in your many years here, taken cocaine. As a boy in junior high school and then in high school you took every drug under the sun and came to understand, after countless irretrievable days and nights, that stimulants were for the brainless rich, those hoping to jump-start inspiration into their complacent existences. You listened then to the late-night stimulant talk and you listen to it now after hours, the only difference being that those presently fighting for the spotlight are older and even less interested in being alive.

One night, for reasons made invisible by whiskey, you take cocaine. You snort only a small amount but fall victim to the drug and soon it is four-thirty in the morning and you are gasping like a fish out of water, gnashing your teeth and waiting for your turn to speak. There are ten in a circle and everyone wants to speak and no one cares what the person presently speaking is talking about. Someone starts crying about having been molested as a child; someone starts crying about a dead mother; someone wants to go to Las Vegas. You slip out the side door and into your car. It is five-thirty in the morning and the sky is the color of a three-day-old bruise. It is beautiful.

Your wife hears you walking up the steps. She has been waiting for you and is angry and her eyes are fierce as you enter the bedroom and so without a word you turn and walk back down the steps with your bicycle over your shoulder. Your wife is calling your name but you do not answer. You are racing down the steep hill toward Sunset and the rush of cool morning air plucks your cap from your head and drags teardrops across your face and you cannot stop laughing and you wonder why you have not done this before. Cars swerve
around you and honk their horns as you veer into traffic; your balance is gone and you hop a curb and soar over the handlebars onto the sidewalk. Looking up at the sky you decide you will ride your bicycle to and from work every night. In a month's time you will be in excellent physical shape and your eyes will glow golden with all they have seen.

You remount the bike and pedal east on Sunset toward downtown. There is a shrieking in your eardrums and you locate a rising lump on your forehead but your fingertips come away free of blood and you carry on. Broadway is in transformation as the shop owners roll up their metal shutters to begin another day of commerce while the addicts, winos, and prostitutes head for their hotels for a few hours' rest. You follow these night crawlers and call out to them in greeting but they do not call back. They are tired and uninterested in all you have seen or think you have seen. They have seen more and their eyes are not glowing golden but gray and lifeless.

Now you too are tired as you pedal back up Sunset. It is warmer and you are dripping with sweat that smells of whiskey and cocaine. Your vision is half black from the blow to your forehead and your body is ringing with pain and you remember your angry, waiting wife and the long hill that you will now have to climb and you wonder why you ever went out for this ride on your bicycle. You will never ride this bicycle again, you decide, and once more you hop a curb and spill over the handlebars. You flag down a man delivering papers in a pickup truck and offer him twenty dollars to take you home and he accepts the money and loads your bicycle in the truck bed atop the newspapers. He does not speak English but whistles at your lump. "No bueno," you say. "Muy borracho." The man nods, and smiles. "Muy borracho," he says. "No bueno." He makes a show of holding his nose at your smell.