Patrick deWitt - Ablutions

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.