Scott Nicholson - Curtains

Big guy, woolly Groucho Marx eyebrows, but his nose was small and sharp, more like a hawk's bill than an eagle's beak. He was an easy 6' 2" if he was an inch, and he was at least an inch. He was slouching down into the collar of his slicker, trying to make himself invisible. Fat chance.

He shook off the afternoon rain that had collected on his broad shoulders. Even in the dim light of neon beer signs, I could see his black smoldering eyes roaming over the joint. He wasn't here for the atmosphere, though we had plenty of that. A television in the corner, tuned to a 24-hour sports station, the sound turned down. A row of ragged barstools, their cotton stuffing oozing out from under the vinyl seats. A jukebox by the restrooms, broken down and so old that it featured "The Brand New Hit from Hank Williams!" A couple of regulars slouched in a booth, deep in their cups despite the early hour, whiling away the day until it was time to get down to some serious drinking. And all of that was doubled back in the long, foggy mirror that covered the wall behind the bar, the mirror that had a perfect round hole from a passionate gunshot maybe twenty years ago. He wasn't here for the scenery.

And he wasn't here for the smell. Stale urine laced with crusted vomit that never completely dried, just sort of congealed half-heartedly. The musty smell of the soggy carpet, worn down to the threads or, in places, all the way through to the rough pine planks underneath. The odor of old cigarettes which had seeped so deeply into the walls that you could kill a nicotine craving by chewing on a piece of the peeling wallpaper. And, of course, the grainy smell of every kind of imbibement known to man, at least the stuff that was under twenty bucks a bottle.

No, despite all this decadent splendor, he was here for something besides a blind date with a watered-down slug of rotgut. He was looking for someone. He walked across the floor to the chipped bar and sat down in front of me.

"What's your pleasure?" I asked, still not looking up, rubbing on a cigarette burn I had been working over for a few weeks.

"Business is my pleasure," he said, his voice husky and raw, his throat a clearinghouse for phlegm and bitterness "Honey, time to go to work," my wife called from the kitchen. She put up with my writing, humored my foolish ambitions, and served as a whimsical sounding board for my evolving plots. She even let me use our apartment's overgrown pantry as a study. At least my new hobby kept me at home, unlike my earlier flings with surfboarding and collecting Civil war relics. My writing was fine with her, as long as the bills were paid.

I gulped down the gritty dregs of my coffee and looked at my wristwatch. "Coming, dear."

I left Marco in the middle of his story, along with the guy with the raincoat. I thought of him as "Fred," but that would probably change to something more noble and tough, like "Roman." Yeah, Roman would work just fine. Roman would be looking for his wife, who had run off in the middle of the night with his best friend. Naw, that was too banal "Honey!"

"Okay, I'm really coming." I hit the "save" button on the word processor and jogged out of the study and into the kitchen and gave Karen a husbandly peck on the cheek. I turned before going out the door. "Be home this evening?"

"No, I've got to pick up Susanne after her soccer and then I've got a fundraiser meeting at the library."

"Then I'll grab a burger on the way back in."

"No, you're going to heat up the pot roast and microwave some potatoes for us."

"Oh, yeah. Bye. Love you."

I was two minutes late at the magazine stand where I worked. I liked the job. From my position at the register, I had a clear view of the street, and the company was good, mostly educated people who actually relished honest differences of opinion. And it was great place for scoping out characters, finding faces that I could press into the two-dimensional world of fiction.

Henry, the store owner, gave me a little ribbing about being late, but he was never in a hurry to be relieved. I tried to picture his life outside the shop, but when my imagination followed him down the street, with a couple of newspapers tucked under his pudgy elbow, my imagination always gave out when he turned the corner. He was like a minor character who served his plot purpose and then dutifully shuffled off the page.

I restocked a few monthlies and had to rotate a couple of the afternoon editions that had just rolled off the presses. One of my favorite parts of the job was getting to smell the fresh paper and ink. I'd open a box of magazines or comic books and take a big relaxing sniff, like one of those turtlenecked actors "savoring the aroma" of a cup of expensive French roast.

To me, words on paper were magic: entire universes lined up in neat rows on the bookshelves, filled with heroes and heroines that dared to dream; fantastic voyages to the outermost edges of the cosmos or the inner depths of the mind; unthinkable horrors and profound rhapsodies; the vast revelations of consciousness, all for cover price and tax.

I was arranging the cigar showcase when Harriett Weatherspoon came in. She had parked her poodle by the door, and it pressed the black dot of its nose against the glass.

"Hello, Sil," she said, in her canary voice.

"Afternoon, Mrs. Weatherspoon. What will it be today?"

"I think I'll just browse through the bestsellers today."

"We've got the new Michele McMartin in. And probably a R.C. Adams or two. Seems like they come out every couple of months nowadays."

"Now, Sil, you know those are ghost-written. They come out of one of those prose-generating computer programs I read about in Writer's Digest."

"Million-sellers all. What does that say about the state of literacy today?"

"Charles Dickens is rolling over in his grave."

"Along with the ghosts of several Christmases."

Mrs. Weatherspoon bought a paperback and a couple of nature magazines and went out into the bright spring afternoon. She stopped at the door and unhitched her poodle's leash, and for a split-second, I thought she was going to hop on the little varmint and ride off into the sunset. But she wrapped the leash around her wrist and went down the sidewalk, chin-first.

I was watching her slip into the human stream when I saw the man in the raincoat. He stood out from the crowd because the coat was canary yellow and also because the day was sunny and warm, with not a cloud above the skyline. Unexpected showers occasionally blew in off the coast, but most of the other pedestrians needed only an umbrella in their armpit for security. The raincoat-wearer was on the edge of a meaty crush at the corner, waiting for the light to change, and in the next moment he was gone.

"Canary yellow," I said to the empty store. "Good piece of detail. Roman's slicker will be canary yellow instead of just plain yellow."

I searched my memory to see if I could dredge any more fictional sludge out of the fleeting vision. He had been Roman's height, and he had a jot of black hair. Not the dark brown that most people call black. This was shoe-polish black. But I could steal no other features from him, because I had only seen him from behind.

Arriving home after work, I started warming up dinner and went into the study. I turned on the word processor and began spewing words, with my tongue pressed lightly between my teeth the way it does when I'm onto something and I forgot where I am, when I get sucked into a world that is trying to create itself before my eyes.

"Business is my pleasure," he said, his voice a clearinghouse for phlegm and bitterness. I hadn't heard that corny line in a few months, but I wasn't about to bring up his lack of originality.

I looked into the pits of his eyes. His pupils were as dark as his shoe-polish black hair, and they were ringed by an unusual reddish-gold color. Our eyes met for only a second, and mine went back down to the bar.