Lee Klein - Jrzdvlz

I did not quite catch the wave of humor that washed over them, some suggestion of salaciousness, but I smiled and bowed my head in embarrassment.

“He blushes,” said another across the table. “A blushing bride.”

Drink transformed their every utterance into a burst of cheer. Laughter spilled from them as though they were brimming vessels themselves.

Was this what it meant to be a man? Someone who sat at a table and shared a laugh, exhaled humor with every breath, merry and easy, unaware of or at least uncaring about assorted seriousness that forever arose around them. I was pulled toward the door, sensing this was not my place, but first I needed warmth.

“The hat is an excellent touch, my friend,” said the guitarist. “Bride and groom in one. How much easier it would have been had I married myself, my first true love.”

More laughs. All then aired their marital woes. It seemed a hell, the way they described it, their wives more beastly than anything I’d ever been.

“Something scratches at the windows behind the house, so she investigates and whatever’s there perches on the fence out back and she runs into the snow in the middle of the night, no more than a rolling pin in hand, ready to engage in unholy combat with, at least how she described it, this devil with wings and horns, not so large, but not a raccoon either, she insisted, and she insisted so much I was sure it was a raccoon yet there was a thrill to her retelling, an insistence, that made me wonder.”

“Better than a watchdog,” said one of the men at the table.

Speech and sounds and nips from glasses all seemed orchestrated, synchronized, harmonious. For a time they compared their wives to dogs, and then wolves, and then incomparable beasts, each outdoing the last until each woman became an abstraction only meant to amuse. This was what they did: sang and drank and smoked and demeaned the mothers of their children. Idealized Eve of mine, should I ever find her, I would never talk like that. So many years an abstraction I would respect her reality should she ever appear.

“What do you lack, my love?”

I had been aware of her presence. Now that she stood before me the room blurred.

A waitress. Smiling. Able to look into eyes and play tricks on a soul.

“I lack,” I said, “a coat, and if possible gloves and shoes.” I held a bare foot out from under the table.

Everyone had an extraordinary laugh, as though I only existed to amuse.

“Come with me,” she said, and I followed as the others at the table catcalled and whistled before serenading us with some bawdy song.

She took me past the kitchen to where all the coats and hats were arranged as orderly as the tables now covered in ash and mess.

“The hat I recognized but the dress was not familiar—and not unbecoming, I might add.” She spoke as she bustled through boxes of clothing, examining some and rejecting them as unworthy, extracting others and dropping them in a pile of possibles. “I could ask about the wedding but any man flushed from the honeymoon and forced to wear his new wife’s dress, unable to locate his own clothes, must be in desperate need. Something about you says you’re a fugitive, but not running from anyone apt to chase you down. If your wife sent you into the night, I doubt she’ll give chase.”

Every once in a while she looked at me, measuring my size. “These’ll do. Try them,” she said.

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You won’t be the first I’ve helped who helps me long after I forget him.”

“I hope not to forget your kindness, Madame.”

“Madame is too formal from a man in a wedding dress. Call me Renner. And you?”

I stuttered and coughed. “Yes, my name… It is…” But she held her fingers lightly to my lips.

“No name is necessary to receive clothes on a cold night. I can help you faster than you can select a false name. Your real one must relate to the trouble that sent you here.”

“I wish no inconvenience.”

She leaned over the box and found spats, dusted and creased by the weight of shoes that might fit me. Her chest was exposed and freckled. I admired the slope of her breasts. She shook her head to scold me for stealing a look. I blushed even more.

“Shoes, coat, undershirt, ties if necessary, and here’s a less formal hat. Try this and if it’s not right we’ll see what else we have,” she said. “Shall I turn my head as you remove the dress?”

“I need to keep her on to protect against the cold.”

“Her?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you expect to stay out all night?” she said.

“I have no expectations.”

At first when I wore the dress, I could feel my wings as though they were there. But then I would flex my shoulders and roll them forward, thinking I was missing something essential. If I removed the dress as Renner suggested and returned to original form, I feared I would be wingless.

Had I mutated as a reflection of my changing mind, the kangaroo sacrifice a blow to it? If I removed the dress now, would I just be a naked man? Wharton had dreamed of pure water. Was my dream to stand naked as a man?

“Listen,” said Renner. “Stick around until we close and then escort me home. I’ve room enough to keep you off the streets.”

Here I was, wearing a stylish bowler now instead of a top hat, pants bunched at the waist and buttocks and thighs with the dress beneath it, all concealed by a navy blue coat with wide shoulders and golden buttons decorated with eagles, a sort of ceremonial military garment.

“It would be an insult to refuse.”

“I like how you say it,” she said. “Now let’s get back to it.”

We returned and the room filled with catcalls, approving nods, knowing winks. In the improvised theater of the tavern, I was the sacrificial beast, the unexpected guest making the evening’s proceedings all the more memorable. Rarely was anyone new there, I imagined. Their circle seemed rounded and reinforced with time and drink, the repeated processes of revelry, suffering, recovery, et cetera, forever.

In the long window glass I saw myself and yet someone else was standing there. In the pines, without knowledge of how I had looked, unaware of anything other than what I experienced, one with the elements, here in this city now, separation from one’s surroundings seemed required to cast a reflection.

I sat down at the table, in the same seat next to the flutist. Renner brought me a glass of golden liquid wheat topped with what resembled ocean foam. I dipped my lips into it and drank. It tasted the way straw smells, unexpectedly sweet and enticing, knowing its effects on others. I swallowed and everyone laughed again.

“Dear friend, you’ve grown old so suddenly, just a sip and you’re elderly.”

I had no idea what they meant until one made a show of wiping his lip.

“Excuse me,” I said. “My first.”

They seemed to have a storehouse of whoops at hand. As I began to speak they prepared to release them no matter what I said, for now I was guest of honor, priceless comedian, though I also wanted to say something humorless to test their reaction. I did not say, “I am the Leeds Devil” or anything of the sort, though the more I thought about it, the more it seemed impossible to state anything that might wipe the smiles from their faces like the mustache of foam across my upper lip.

“You claim it’s your first beer,” one said, “and yet you lost a bet that required you enter this tavern in a wearing dress. Hardly sounds like someone who’s never had a beer.”

I tipped my hat and smiled as, aglow, they awaited my response. All faces turned toward me, all flushed and beaming with many more sips than too many. I made the mistake of thinking before I spoke. Thoughts stalled the animal reaction needed to please.