Michael Rizza - Cartilage and Skin

“Look at that, Walter,” he said. “We’re in good company.”

“Damn right,” Ann said, and the two girls clinked glasses across the table.

No sooner than Bruni snuffed her cigarette, she picked up the pack and offered each of us a cigarette. Because everyone decided to smoke, I felt strangely obligated to participate, in order not to be left out of the mix, which would have surely continued to swirl around just as well without me. I now understood that sometime before Miriam had left us, Stephen had been planning to approach these girls, and this was why he’d told me not to vanish. Even so, I questioned why he wanted to attach himself to me. Were we supposed to pair off in couples? Was I supposed to make him look good? Did he need to feed off me to keep the conversation lively?

Then there was a slight break, a pause in the conversation, and Bruni, as though she’d been waiting for such a moment, turned to me, and with her breath held, with her lungs filled with smoke, she said, “All right, shy guy. Tell us one of your stories.”

“I don’t have any stories.”

“Come on, Walter,” Stephen said. “Don’t hold out on the ladies.” In a more flat and serious tone, he added, “We need to get him stoned. He’s nonstop when he’s stoned.”

“For now, get him another drink,” Ann said.

“I’d like to, but we’re being snubbed.” Stephen pointed his cigarette at me. “He insulted the waiter.”

This seemed to pique the girls’ interest; they both looked at me.

“That’s not true,” I said coolly. “I insulted his mother.”

“He’s a crazy fuck,” Stephen said, and the girls laughed, apparently indifferent to his cursing.

“Go apologize. I want another drink.” Ann held up her martini glass, pinching the stem between her thumb and ring finger. “What’s up with you two? You both have a thing for insulting a person’s mother?”

“It comes natural to us,” Stephen answered.

“Come on, shy guy. Where’s your famous story?” Bruni tapped her ashes. “You get no more cigarettes if you’re going to let it burn down like that.”

“Sorry.” I picked up the cigarette and took a drag; it was nearly down to the filter.

“I want a drink,” Ann said, now standing up. “When I come back, I want to see a drink on the table.”

She started away, and without a word between them, Bruni also stood up.

Instinctively, I looked at her as she moved past me. She was wearing a pair of gray, soft slacks that clung so smoothly to her, without a single wrinkle or crease, that apparently the girl was wearing either a thong or no underwear at all.

“My God,” Stephen said to me. “I’d burrow my face in that for hours.” He laughed. “It’s the bit of Italian blood in me. I hear it’s common to all the sons of matriarchy.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, with a sudden desire to destroy the silly look of glee on his round face.

Disregarding my comment, he kept talking.

“These girls seem to like us,” he said. “They’re partiers. They’re looking to have fun. They were sitting at the table, off by themselves, all dolled up, drinking vodka drinks. You can’t pass that up, Walter. You’ve got to make a move. But remember, my friend, always wait until the girl is on her second or third drink. That’s a good rule. These girls were primed for us. All the other guys in here left them disenchanted. Sometimes that makes them more desperate to have fun.”

“They’re as primed as goats,” I said sarcastically.

But Stephen eagerly started to look around.

“As hot as monkeys,” I said.

“Where’s that fucking bastard?” He suddenly stood up. With a jiggle of his ass, he strode toward the bar and left me sitting alone.

Adorning the girls’ table hung a picture of a calm, aquamarine sea and a crystal sky, but in the upper right-hand corner, a dark ominous cloud threatened to creep upon the peaceful scene with violence and devastation. Apparently, either Ann or Bruni didn’t like the green olives because a small collection of them soaked a square bar napkin on the table. They had been dissected, possibly out of boredom, “disenchantment,” or even “desperation”: On one side of the napkin were pitted olives and, on the other, a red, glistening pile of pimento. I briefly imagined that it was for the sake of this very operation that the girl had not requested her drink without olives — everyone has quirks.

Stephen came back right away, stood beside table, and pointed at me. He appeared to be standing with his feet wide apart, but that, again, was just his thighs.

“Wake up, monkey-boy,” he said. “You can’t leave just yet; you’ve got another drink coming.”

“Monkey-boy?” I asked.

“Talk a little. I hyped you up. Just don’t blow anything out of your nose again.”

“I was going to leave.”

“I don’t see a ring on your finger.” He sat down and started gathering together the empty glasses. “You’ve got no place to go. You’d rather go home and jerk off? Relax a little. Just don’t blow your nose on these girls.”

“My name’s not Walter.”

“They don’t know that.” He smiled again, as though we were in cahoots.

“I’m too old—” I started to say.

“That’s your advantage,” he blurted. “Everyone else here was popping pimples a few years ago. They don’t know how to talk or even think yet, except what they’ve learned from stupid sitcoms and MTV. What’s more,” he paused for effect, propping his elbow on the table and pointing his finger straight at my chin, “you’re established.”

“I’m established?”

“Yeah. No one else here has a pot to piss in, let alone any W2 worth bragging about, unless their daddy is helping them out. I hate those trust-fund babies. Fucking twits.”

“I don’t have any money,” I said, and before I could explain that I’d spent a decade as a bookworm, acquiring debt and student loans, he waved his hand in my face.

“They don’t know that either. Right now, shy guy, they’re in the bathroom, sizing us up. They’re saying that I’m a tad dumpy and you’re a tad dull. But every girl will take dumpy over dull any day. Wake up, Walter. Here come our drinks.”

Stephen studied the waiter intently as he set down our order and cleared away the empty glasses. He seemed too occupied or uninterested to notice Stephen.

Silent now, Stephen began to tap his finger against the side of his beer.

After a while, I began to think that the girls had run away from us.

“Maybe they had to shit,” Stephen said so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that I couldn’t help but smile.

Seeing my amusement, he warned me again: “Watch that nose of yours.”

Eventually, the girls returned. Ann had her arm over Bruni’s shoulders and was speaking into her ear. Ann detached herself to pat the top of my head.

“You apologized.” She picked up the martini and took a sip. Apparently, she didn’t care about toasting.

I then learned a few things about Bruni: It was she who disliked and dissected olives, and her hand had been wet because she’d used her fingers to fish the olives out of her glass. She gave me a brief, sweet smile that seemed to confess that her petty eccentricity, along with whatever else she might do, was hopelessly cute. However, when she casually put a wet finger into her mouth, to clean the drink off, I had a sudden realization that Stephen was right: I needed to wake up.

According to Stephen, although the actual details of my occupation were unclear, I was an expert in suicide. Somehow, I worked for the police department, but not quite officially as a detective, a doctor, or even a forensic scientist: I simply specialized in suicide. I would have liked to have been involved in the psychological end of this particular field, to have worked with troubled individuals in a preventative and recuperative way, and to have expounded for the girls a theory of mental anguish that leads to self-annihilation — but Stephen deftly foreclosed this option for me and placed me straight down within the gritty physical aspect of my clients’ last farewell.