Tim Horvath - Understories

The first of the Conversations had taken place at once in Rome, in Vegas, and in Hoboken. No one knew then what they were, of course; they just seemed the talk of talkers, mundane as could be, the little dramas that unfold in the lives of all in front of the private audience of the participants and whoever else happens to be within earshot.

In Rome: a couple argued over whether or not it was safe to rent a motorbike and go zipping around the city. She cited the blind curves and the age of the cobblestones and the profusion of stray cats who might straggle their ways across his path, and reminded him that he himself admitted he shut his eyes sometimes when he sneezed on their own wide, clearly demarcated American highways, seconds when he might as well have been in an alternate universe, might as well have been tripping out again like he did in his frenzied youth, which she was glad she’d only come onstage for at the curtain call — and as an afterthought, she almost added, What about the possibility of a flashback? She didn’t approve, left the room when he so much as broke out the pink Colman’s mustard tin in which he stored his joint-making sundries. Now they were going around and around like the ceiling fan in the café, and the waiter, a squat, dark-skinned older man with a Father Guido Sarducci mustache and enviable teeth, was ready to spike their cappuccinos with a local liqueur in order to placate them just a touch, take the edge off their bickering. He, the waiter, didn’t follow the news all that closely, being mostly consumed, when he wasn’t working, with his collection of vintage early-twentieth-century opera 78s, his Gigli and Tamagno, but he knew enough to note that the griping of Americans had led them to the brink of global economic collapse and that this wasn’t good for him, or anybody, and here again this American couple was demonstrating that most characteristic trait that marred their nation: noncompromise en extremis adolescenti. She should let him go off and ride his bike and pump up his virility, since that is what it was all about (though the motorbikes, in his opinion, were unbecoming and puggish), and meanwhile she should go off and flirt with some of the local men (ahem) to make herself feel better, preferably as her guy rode by on his motorbike at the nexus of a moment when he’d catch her in the act and — if he were to crash, then, at least it would be noble and meaningful. He was about to offer them a free dessert, which would surely catch them off guard — a tiramisu that the chef had recently perfected, its admixture of custard and mascarpone so sublime that he himself had eaten some left behind by a couple earlier that day, she who was dieting and he who was diabetic, and he’d laughed, the waiter, unapologetically downing the residue in the kitchen in the presence of the chef, honoring him rather than scraping his art into the trash. The tiramisu he was bringing them he had taken from the refrigerator and had sensibly lopped off half, still sizable enough to serve as a full portion in many places, Merulana, where he used to work, among them, that pen of miserly oafs and fifth-rate thugs, and now he proudly bore the dish toward the bickerers, anticipating their broadening smiles of surprise and then, shortly after, when the spoons met their mouths, the murmurs of pleasure that would inevitably follow, and he was making his approach when the Conversation ruptured and blew apart the room, glass counters raining down shards, chairs left spinning from warped overhead fans, bodies reduced to semiskinned skeletons that would still be smoldering when the sirens came.

In Vegas, a father and a son argued about how the son had played his poker hand. The father was a lifelong cardplayer who’d taught his son to play at a formative age, maybe four, five, getting him a leg up on his generational brethren, since the strategies of poker were among the eternal verities, as worthwhile to instill as alphanumeric characters and the hitting and pitching fortunes of the Yankees. The son was inclined toward long bouts of staring into inclement weather, mesmerized by window-splatter and downflowing rivulet, and for a while the father thought there was maybe something wrong with him, that his swimmers hadn’t traveled in first-class, but later on in life it turned out that this same son had been even then composing rudimentaries (his word for the early symphonies), been absorbing rhythms and, as he would later describe it in an interview on public television, synesthetically allowing the notes to fall upon the staves of the mind. When the father listened to the son’s compositions — and he did, he really tried, spent hours, reset his ringtone so it played none other, pushed himself on the treadmill to his kiddo’s homage to Lugosi or Ligeti — he heard randomness, chaos, a defiance that his son had never exhibited behaviorally (his dad had all but told him how to sneak out, all but lowered him onto the limb that extended by his window, all but signed a contract to the effect that he’d look the other way if the boy wanted to meet up with one of their cute neighbors, the blond — what was her name — Nichole or the other one and run down by the creek and smoke a bowl and do some undershirt groping and some grinding). No, he’d been unswervingly a good boy, and the father listened intently to the music in hopes of gleaning traces of lust — for power, for nubile flesh, for market share, for bragging rights in the AL East — none of which was in evidence. So here they were out in Vegas, the trip arranged by dad, turned the big six-oh. All he wanted was to spend some alone time with his boy without his mom’s platitudes, her admonitions and her sayings and most especially her voice, its cloying the sound equivalent of that godawful soap she insisted on torturing them all with in the bathroom, that floral ambush. And so he’d flown him out here, where the kid kept ordering some kind of lemon slushie business, and he must’ve reviewed the rules a dozen times, no exaggeration, made him a cheat sheet with the terms— flop, turn, river —not even anything technical, played out a slew of open hands with him in the comfort of their suite, slipped him a crisp pile of bills to play with (though whom, exactly, was he trying to impress with those tips?) and brought him to the 50/100 no-limit table, and the kid stood by and watched at first while his dad showed him the ropes, and when the seat emptied next to him and his son put down his lemon ice and got dealt in, it reminded him of when he’d taught the boy how to drive, a wavelet of nostalgia until he remembered that then, like now, his son proceeded to do everything wrong, got the wheel locked, drifted over the median, and now he’s playing it too thin-icy when he’s toting three jacks, then playing his next hand like he’s got the nuts and the next thing you know, he mucked the hand, as if he zoned out comp letely mid-play, still that kid at the window, at the wheel, only now he’s ruining not only his own fortunes but his dad’s and, frankly, this whole trip. His dad pulled him aside, and while he would’ve settled for an explanation of the thrown hand, what he meant was, What’s going on in there ? and wanted to know What will be enough ? and Will we ever be any way other than this ? Whatever words he was going to drive at these were swallowed in the shattering, flesh rending, everyone diving for the closest table or bolting for the exits, a panic of smeared colors, till all that could be heard was the music of the slot machines and a roulette ball, its hops growing farther and farther apart until it came to rest.